For Immediate Release: May 20th, 2015
Contact:
Scott Parkin, +1.415.235.0596
Keith Brunner, +1.802.363.9615
Climate justice groups call for mass actions in lead up to Paris climate talks
Rising Tide North America and allies today launched a call to “Flood the System” through a series of coordinated mass actions across the US and Canada in the leadup to the United Nations COP21 climate negotiations in Paris this fall. [1]
Organizers claim that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process has been co-opted by elite interests and that any Paris outcomes will be insufficient to meaningfully address the climate crisis and ensure justice for the majority of the world’s people.
From September to the end of November, Flood the System envisions an escalating series of direct actions and demonstrations targeting the economic and political systems at the root of the crisis, inspired by recent movements led by low-wage workers, immigrants, and communities responding to police brutality.
Plans are already coming together from New England to the Pacific Northwest, where organizers hosted a “festival of resistance” this week involving a massive blockade of the terminal where the port of Seattle is hosting Royal Dutch Shell’s arctic drilling fleet.
“Communities on the front lines of fossil fuel extraction are fighting back,” said Ahmed Gaya, an organizer with Rising Tide Seattle. “From Seattle, to Alberta, to Appalachia, people are organized in opposition to extraction, and taking action to uproot the systems driving the crisis.”
Rising Tide NYC organizer Sandy Nurse said, “Last September four hundred thousand of us were in the streets of New York for the People’s Climate March. The next day, thousands joined the Flood Wall Street march and sit-in, shutting down the heart of global capitalism. Now it’s time to join with and support other movements in rapidly escalating the pace and scale of our resistance to the level of the crises we’re facing.” [2]
NOTES FOR EDITORS
2] http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/23/flood_wall_street_100_arrested_at
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Rising Tide North America is a grassroots climate justice network with over 50 chapters, local contacts and ally groups in Canada, Mexico and the United States confronting the root causes of climate change.