Category: Featured News

Best of the Rising Tide website, things formally featured on the scrolling slider on the front page or on the old front page.

Citizens Block Coal Train

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{shared from Blue Skies Campaign}

Breaking: Citizens Block Coal Train with Civil Disobedience

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MISSOULA – Members of the organizations Blue Skies Campaign and 350-Missoula participated in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience next to Montana Rail Link (MRL) tracks on Sunday, to prevent the passage of a coal train through Missoula.  Seven people held a peaceful sit-in on MRL property and stretched a banner across the tracks, while about twenty people gathered nearby holding signs that read “Stop Coal Exports.”  A coal train on its way to the West Coast was held up in Hellgate Canyon by the protest.

“We’re working protect the health of the Missoula community,” says Abby Stoner, a volunteer with the Blue Skies Campaign who lives near the railroad.  “Coal trains pollute rail line communities with coal dust and toxic diesel fumes, while causing unacceptable noise pollution and delaying traffic at heavily used railroad crossings.”

The groups that participated in the protest are also concerned about coal’s contribution to climate change.  “I protest the extraction of Montana coal and it’s shipment through our community,” says Lee Metzgar, an environmental scientist affiliated with 350-Missoula, who was one of the five sit-in participants.  “Years from now, as my grandchildren struggle with a hotter and more extreme climate, I hope they know that we tried to make their world a bit more beautiful, healthy and safe.”

The protesters gathered near the railroad at Madison Street and Greenough Drive, shortly after a coal train left Bonner on its way to Missoula.  Five people sat down near the tracks, while the rest of the group gathered nearby with signs.  The sit-in did not occur on the tracks themselves, but was meant to be close enough to the railroad that MRL would have to stop the train.

Several coal trains per day pass through Missoula en route to the West Coast, where much of the coal is exported overseas through Canadian ports.  Companies like St Louis-based Arch Coal want to build new coal export terminals in Oregon and Washington State, while opening vast new lands in Eastern Montana to coal mining.  If this happens, the number of full and empty coal trains passing through Missoula each day could increase by as many as thirty.

Both organizations involved in Sunday’s protest are concerned about the impacts of coal exports on the health of Montana communities and the global climate.  Blue Skies Campaign is a volunteer-run, Missoula-based group that works to protect Montana communities from coal pollution.  350-Missoula is concerned about climate change and the impacts of burning fossil fuels.  The group advocates for a transition to clean energy.

A Little Will Go A Long Way. Donate To Rising Tide North America!

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Our Annual End of the Year Plea for Support.

Dear Friends of Rising Tide,

Wow. And we thought 2012 was huge.

In 2013, we did some amazing things. Not only did we fiercely resist oil, coal and fracking, but we also embodied the saying “Think Globally, Act Locally” with a deep compassion. We are a large decentralized network spanning Canada, Mexico and the U.S. allying with those most impacted by fossil fuel extraction. Whether it’s blockading pipelines and tanker trucks or organizing training camps to educate the next generation of climate activist, we’ve truly built a network that uses bold and effective organizing to make a better world possible.

Can you help us sustain it?

Please donate to Rising Tide North America and give 2014 the gift of fierce compassion.

Here’s just a taste of the things we did in 2013:

  • Canyon Country Rising Tide, based in Moab, UT, joined with friends and allies from throughout the region to organize an action camp in southern Utah to oppose the first tar sands mines in the United States. The camp ended with a mass walk on to a tar sands mine.
  • Over a thousand Rising Tiders, student climate activists and other supporters from across the continent marched during the climate activist conference Powershift in support of the Shadbush Collective’s anti-fracking direct action in Pittsburgh.
  • Five northwestern Rising Tide chapters have fought massive tar sands refining equipment shipments, known as the megaloads, in Idaho, eastern Oregon and Montana. So far, five actions have taken the tar sands fight to corporate and governmental offices, and highways and byways of the Northwest United States.

We’re an all-volunteer network of activists and have done a lot this year. Now we need your support to keep going in 2014.

Can you give $5, $50 or $500 to support us in 2014?

Thanks for all you do.

Love & Solidarity,

Rising Tide North America

PS- Did you see “The Climate Movement’s Keystone Preoccupation” penned by members of the Rising Tide network? It’s definitely worth a read.

Rising Tide Chicago: Citizens Dressed as Elves Set Up Frack Rig on Governor Quinn’s Lawn

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RT ChiFrom Rising Tide Chicago

Citizens Dressed as Elves Set Up Frack Rig on Governor Quinn’s Lawn

Chicago, IL —Monday morning four concerned community members dressed as elves visited Governor Quinn’s Chicago residence and set up a hydraulic fracturing rig

with a large red bow attached on the front lawn.  The “elves” said they were delivering a present from Santa who has been nervously watching the dangerous practice of hydraulic fracturing or fracking inch closer and closer to becoming reality in Illinois during the past year.

The elves delivered the frack rig because people that live far away from where fracking is planned are the ones making the decision to bring the dangerous practice here. “We are delivering this rig today because if Governor Quinn and the other people that have opened up our state to fracking had to live next to fracking and had to obtain their water from a well I think they would not bring fracking to our state,” said Mike Durshmid of Rising Tide Chicago.

Hydraulic fracturing is an environmentally damaging practice of obtaining natural gas in which large amounts of water, sand and chemicals are combined and then forced deep underground to break shale rock to release trapped oil and gas. Fracking has been linked to earthquakes and air and water pollution in Colorado, Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, states that have been using the practice for some time.

The climate implications of fracking were front and center during the delivery as the elves spoke about how their home, the north pole had been irreversibly damaged due the loss of ice. They also drew the connection to climate related disaster like Hurricane Sandy and the extreme drought that Southern Illinois experienced a few years ago and how these events would become more frequent and intense if we continue to emit more greenhouse gases like the methane that is released during hydraulic fracturing.

“We just can’t afford to allow the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, and must find a way to live that does not put continued economic growth above preserving a habitable planet. For this reason we must stop fracking from starting in Illinois and also work to make larger systematic changes” said Angie Viands of Rising Tide Chicago. The frack rig delivery, organized by Rising Tide Chicago, comes on the heals of several public hearings on hydraulic fracturing in the state that drew many hundreds of residents expressing their concerns about the practice and some vowing to resist it if it comes to Illinois.

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