Hundreds march, tell Rich Fitzgerald “No fracking in Allegheny county parks FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 19, 2013 Contact: Ashley Bittner 412-370-2310 Saturday October 19 – Pittsburgh – At 2pm this afternoon Protect Our Parks will lead a march from the David Lawrence Convention Center to the Allegheny County Courthouse demanding that Rich Fitzgerald revoke the Request for Proposals for fracking in Deer Lakes Park and stop all efforts to open county parks up for fossil fuel extraction. The march is intended as a celebration of the parks which make one of the nations largest county parks systems with over 12,000 acres of protected area. Participants will bring beach balls, fishing poles and other equipment they use to enjoy the parks. “We're here to show Fitzgerald who the parks belong to and what they are really for,” said Ashley Bittner, Protect Our Parks member and life-long Allegheny County resident. “These are public lands for residents and visitors of Allegheny county, and we will not allow them to be exploited for private profit.” Polls from the Post-Gazette and Tribune review show that a majority of county residents oppose fracking in the parks. “The County Council has an opportunity to show that they actually have the interest of the public at heart and distinguish themselves Mr. Fitzgerald who has so blatantly sold out to the gas industry,” continued Bittner. The March coincides with Power Shift 2013 a youth climate conference happening at the David Lawrence Convention Center throughout the weekend. Over 5,000 young people will come to Pittsburgh for a weekend of workshops, trainings, and actions to build the movement to stop climate change. Conference organizers are working to help highlight the work being done locally against fossil fuel extraction and many conference attendees will be joining the march. Keith Brunner of Rising Tide Vermont came to Pittsburgh for the conference, “We stand in solidarity with the Protect Our Parks campaign, knowing that this fight is part of a much larger movement against all forms of fossil fuel extraction which are devastating local communities and the climate.” Power Shift will culminate with a day of action on Monday, October 21 with several actions planned across the city targeting key institutions which are standing in the way of a clean energy future. Today's march will feature a giant puppet show starring a marionette of Rich Fitzgerald controlled by his gas industry manipulators. It will conclude with a rally at the County Courthouse. Speakers will include Protect Our Parks organizers, community members living near county parks, and residents who have been impacted by fracking in other parts of the region. The march is also part of the Global Frackdown, an international day of action against fracking organized by Food and Water Watch. ###
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.
Climate Activists Are The Real Super-Heroes
Last week, our world took a turn towards the surreal.
On Monday, Disney’s TV network, ABC, aired a spin-off of the popular Avengers movies called “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” The show’s main antagonist is a shadowy hacktivist group called “The Rising Tide” with a logo that looks a lot like ours. The highly-rated first episode frames the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., protecting the government’s secrets and lies, as the heroes, while “The Rising Tide” are “a looming threat” for exposing the truth
Sign this petition demanding that Disney stop co-opting Rising Tide’s name and logo.
In reality, Rising Tide is not an underground group that undermines humanity, but a network of climate activists challenging the root causes of climate change. Rising Tide North America works in solidarity with communities that live on the frontline of fossil fuel extraction and climate change.
Our chapters and allies have stood with communities living next to coal mining sites and who have had their property seized for pipeline construction. Rising Tiders have been faced criminal and civil prosecution, been physically attacked for taking non-violent action and mocked by industry in the media.
Groups fighting for truth, justice and ecological sanity should not be portrayed as the bad guys on major network television shows.
Will you stand with us in demanding that Disney stop co-opting our name and logo on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?
Sign the petition now.
No, Actually, We Are The Rising Tide
Sometimes our idols die hard.
This long time Marvel Comics true believer is finding Joss Whedon’s new TV show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a deal breaker after decades of love and devotion to Marvel Comics and Whedon’s fantasy world that’s given us Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But now, the other true love of my life, Rising Tide North America, is under attack by the real corporate super villains, Disney and ABC Studios, seeking to co-opt our name and brand for some ratings and commercial air time with Whedon’s new show.
Rising Tide vs. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Whedon’s new television series, premiering tonight on ABC, depicts a secret NSA/Dept. of Homeland Security style agency confronting a “looming new threat” called “The Rising Tide.” In this spinoff of the popular Avengers movie series, Rising Tide is a shadowy cyber-terror group similar to Anonymous. Their role in the show is to expose super humans, like the Hulk and Thor, and secret government agencies like S.H.I.E.L.D.
In our estimation, exposing governmental secrets and lies is a most worthy pastime and similar to what groups like WikiLeaks and Anonymous have done in real world. Unfortunately, the series plays to our mainstream culture’s fears around anarchists and radicals, and portrays the group as a threat to national security. Some reviews call the group “cyber-terrorists.” This is par for the course in a Hollywood that uses pop culture to turn government agents into heroes and seekers of truth, justice and ecological sanity into evildoers.
Some may say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but the big problem for Rising Tide North America is that Whedon’s show uses our name and a very similar logo to ours for his villains. In a most humiliating blow, at the end of the first episode, the lead Rising Tider, Skye, actually joins S.H.I.E.L.D. as an asset. So not only are we depicted as terrorists, but one of our own actually switches sides and joins the police state.
We are the REAL Rising Tide
Rising Tide is an all-volunteer international climate justice network challenging the root causes climate change.
Rising Tide originated in 2000 at the sixth United Nations Conference of Parties (COP) meeting at the Hague. It formed as direct action network forming an opposition to the talks were deeply influenced by corporate lobbyists, marginalizing representatives in the Global South and pushing carbon markets as a (false) solution to the climate crisis. Over 300 groups from both the Global South and Global North signed the Rising Tide statement in 2000. Since then Rising Tide network have grown and spread throughout the United Kingdom, Australia and North America.
In North America, we have over 50 active chapters, local contacts and allies in our network. Rising Tide North America formed in 2006 in the heart of Appalachia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, when climate and anti-extraction fighters with Mountain Justice and Earth First! decided it was time to make climate change an issue relevant to more than the D.C. Green non-profit industrial complex.
Our goals remain:
- Bringing non-violent direct action into North American climate movements (something we think we’ve been successful at lately)
- Work in solidarity with frontline communities directly impacted by fossil fuel extraction and climate change.
- Challenge the false solutions to climate change. This includes “clean coal,” nuclear power, natural gas, overly-compromised non-profits based in Washington D.C. as well as market based mechanisms like carbon trading.
Currently, our network is waging campaigns from the coalfields of Alaska to Ed Abbey’s redrock wilderness in southern Utah to up and down the Keystone XL Pipeline route to Appalachia’s devastated mountains.
In effect, we are everywhere. And we are the real Rising Tide.
Rising Tide Philly Targets TD Bank’s Cherry Hill Headquarters Over Investments in Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline
Rising Tide Philly Targets TD Bank’s Cherry Hill Headquarters Over Investments in Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline
Local grassroots climate change group takes action against the largest funder of the Keystone XL pipeline and presses for a clean energy future.
Contact: Elias Schewel, Rising Tide Philly
Contact: mr.schewel@gmail.com / 267 918 9739
Cherry Hill, NJ – On August 20 at 9:00 AM, a group of citizens concerned about climate change’s effects on the Philadelphia region and on southern New Jersey will gather to peacefully protest in front of the TD Bank headquarters located at 1701 Route 70 East, Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The protesters are pushing for TD Bank to stop its funding of tar sands petroleum extraction in Alberta, Canada, because of the threat this practice presents to the global climate and to First Nation peoples in Alberta.
TD Bank is also a major funder of the Keystone XL pipeline which would bring tar sands petroleum from Alberta to Texas to be refined and exported. “We want TD Bank to withdraw its funding from both the KXL pipeline and from tar sands extraction, now,” Rising Tide Philly organizer Kevin Starbard summed up the demands.
The Friday protest is organized in coordination with a simultaneous action of hundreds of activists mobilized by 350.org as part of the national Draw the Line weekend of action to hold President Obama accountable for his campaign promises on renewable energy.
The Rising Tide Philly protest in Cherry Hill was planned with help from citizens in Texas and Oklahoma who are fighting the pipeline as part of the Tar Sands Blockade.
Philadelphia resident Rachel Leone explained the importance of connecting TD Bank and Tar Sands extraction in the environmental movement: “Tar sands extraction is already poisoning the water supply of thousands of indigenous people in central Canada, in violation of multiple treaties, and we here in Philadelphia will continue to suffer the worsening effects of climate change, things like Superstorm Sandy, if dirty energy projects like tar sands extraction don’t stop.”
Over 69,000 people across the nation have signed CREDO’s Pledge of Resistance against the Keystone XL Pipeline. Tens of thousands more will attend nationwide Draw the Line protests meant to get the message to Obama that climate change is a major concern, and we will hold him to his campaign promises. Until Obama’s State Department blocks the KXL Pipeline and until TD Bank divests from tar sands, Rising Tide Philly will continue to target TD Bank for their profiteering from climate disaster and genocide of indigenous people in Alberta.
###