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.

No, Actually, We Are The Rising Tide

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cant stopSometimes 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.

pdxWe 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.

Join us in demanding that Disney stop co-opting our name and logo in their depiction of a shadowy cyber-terror group.

Rising Tide Philly Targets TD Bank’s Cherry Hill Headquarters Over Investments in Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline

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RT PhillyRising 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.

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Fearless Summer Week of Action June 24th-29th

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Over the past few years we’ve witnessed a rising tide of courage from the frontlines; communities from the pinewoods of East Texas to the hollers of West Virginia have come together to defend the land and the people from the ravages of extreme energy.  Yet with every new frack-well drilled, pipeline laid, and mountain blasted, the extraction industry pushes our planet closer to irreversible tipping points.

But now we are coming together as a movement to push back.

For too long we have struggled separately and we are running out of time. If we are going to reclaim our future, we must begin to speak with one voice. That’s why we are calling for the national movement against extreme energy to join in a summer of coordinated action. As this industry continues to escalate its attack of life on earth, we must respond by asserting our dignity and escalating our action for a livable future. In the face of unfathomable ecological destruction and looming runaway climate change, we must take the kind of bold action that is necessary to save the planet.  We must all draw our lines in the sand.  We must face our fears together; we must take our future fearlessly into our hands and change business as usual.

Will you join us in ringing in a #FearlessSummer?

This spring has already featured a slew of bold actions across the county and there’s no sign of it slowing down.  We’ve created a movement calendar and, as you can see, this is going to be a bold and busy summer of action!  This summer will be moving non-stop with regional convergences, training camps, and focused direct actions all over the continent targeting extreme energy.  By embracing a common message that elevates the voices of those most impacted
and rejects all forms of dirty energy extraction, each of these actions can become more powerful.

To call attention to our new unity and collective power, we are calling for the first week of coordinated action against extreme energy on June 24th-29th. Weeks of action will be flashpoints that will build momentum and solidarity throughout the long, hot summer and push our message of fearless, united resistance into the national conversation.  Our support for these struggles know no borders and we stand in solidarity with the indigenous people of Turtle Island (so-called North America) and their own fearless struggle, “Sovereignty Summer.”

No one owns #FearlessSummer.  We encourage you to empower your community to plan your own action against the extraction industry and utilize our social media to help amplify your struggle.

TransCanada Caught Training Police to Treat Peaceful Anti-Keystone XL Activists as “Terrorists”

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For immediate release

June 12, 2013

Contact: Ron Seifert, Tar Sands Blockade, 940-268-5375, kxlblockade@gmail.com

TransCanada Caught Training Police to Treat Peaceful Anti-Keystone XL Activists as “Terrorists”

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Slide from TransCanada security PowerPoint presentation featuring Rising Tide and Tar Sands Blockade activists.

Houston, TX — In the midst of recent national controversy surrounding government surveillance of the public, a recent Freedom of Information Act request to the Nebraska State Patrol has exposed evidence that TransCanada provided trainings to federal agents and local Nebraska police to suppress nonviolent activists protesting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline by arresting them on “anti-terrorism statutes.” The presentation slides, obtained by grassroots landowner advocacy group Bold Nebraska, target Tar Sands Blockade activists by name.

“This is clear evidence of the collusion between TransCanada and the federal government assisting local police to unlawfully monitor and harass political protestors,” said Lauren Regan, legal coordinator for Tar Sands Blockade and executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center. “These documents expose the truth that the government is giving the nod to unlawful corporate spying. By slinging false allegations against peaceful activists in this presentation, TransCanada puts them at risk of unwarranted prosecution.”

Although TransCanada’s presentation to authorities contains information about property destruction, sabotage, and booby traps, police in Texas and Oklahoma have never alleged, accused, or charged Tar Sands Blockade activists of any such behaviors. Since August 2012, Tar Sands Blockade has carried out dozens of successful nonviolent direct actions to physically halt construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas and Oklahoma. All of these acts, as well as every pipeline protest in Nebraska, have maintained strict commitments to nonviolence.

“Try as TransCanada might to slander Tar Sands Blockade and our growing grassroots movement, we know who the real criminals are.” said Ron Seifert, a spokesperson with Tar Sands Blockade who was pictured in the slideshow. “The real criminals are those profiting from this deadly tar sands pipeline by endangering families living along the route and pumping illegal levels of air toxins into fence-line communities.”

“If anything, this shows the effectiveness of campaigns to stop the Keystone XL pipeline and fossil fuel extraction as a whole,” said Scott Parkin, an organizer with Rising Tide North America and a non-violence trainer also pictured in the slideshow. “We’ve been fighting coal, oil and natural gas for a long time using these time-honored tactics and strategies. We’ll continue to use them precisely because they have been so effective in making change throughout American history.”

Grassroots resistance to Keystone XL is growing in Texas and Oklahoma where TransCanada is currently digging up freshly laid sections of the pipeline that failed integrity inspections. The East Texas Observer reports that at least 70 “anomalies,” including dents and shoddy welds in the pipe, were identified in a 60 mile span, and in some areas these imperfections occur at a rate of three per mile.

“A discovery like this presentation reveals that TransCanada has no problem lying to authorities and intentionally misleading the public in pursuit of its own private gain,” says Seifert. “If TransCanada officials cannot be trusted to tell the truth about the peaceful nature of Keystone XL protestors, why should we believe they’ve told the truth about the integrity of their pipeline and the real threats it poses to the hundreds of rivers and creeks that it crosses?”

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The full slideshows can be found at: http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/transcanadapolice/