Help Make Climate Justice A Reality In 2013!

scenes from a tree sit-2Donate to Rising Tide North America and Help Make Climate Justice a Reality in 2013

Our climate movement is fierce.

And we’re not afraid to stand up to the worst drilling and mining companies on the planet.

Over six years ago in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Rising Tide North America emerged as a radical force in the climate movements. Seeking to connect the dots between climate change and social justice, we have built a network throughout North America that has not only fought on the frontlines of climate justice, but challenged the root causes of climate change while there.

Donate to Rising Tide North America and help make climate justice a reality in 2013.

2012 has been a watershed year for the climate movements. Community led campaigns against fracking have sprouted up in OH, PA and NY. Appalachians occupied and shut down the largest strip mining site in West Virginia. Climate activists joined up with Texas landowners to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline.

At the center of each of these environmental mobilizations and campaigns have been Rising Tide chapters and activists. This year, we’ve:

 

  • Started new chapters from Alaska to Santa Cruz, CA to Toronto to Vermont to the Florida Keys.
  • Worked with the Tar Sands Blockade in a direct action campaign to stop the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline.
  • Trained and organized activists for civil disobediences at the Mountain Mobilization in West Virginia, the Coal Exports Action in Helena, Montana and many other events.
  • Coordinated with the “Summer of Solidarity” which included actions against fracking, mountaintop removal and tar sands.


As we begin 2013, we’re asking you to make a donation to Rising Tide North America to keep our momentum building.

Whether its $5, $50 or $500, we’ll take whatever you can give. We’re an all-volunteer network of activists and we don’t take money from large foundations or celebrity donors. We only have you.

Please donate and help us build this movement.

December Update: Climate Action Rocks 2012, Get Ready For 2013!

December Update: Climate Action Rocks 2012, Get Ready For 2013

Check out our latest newsletter!

Climate Justice Activists Launch Hunger Strike With Blockade At Houston Refinery
Bob Lindsey Jr. and Diane Wilson began a sustained hunger strike to demand that Valero divest entirely from the Keystone XL pipeline and invest that money into the health and well-being of the people of the neighborhood of Manchester (next to the refinery.) Hunger strikers began their protest in the Harris County Jail after blockading the refinery for several hours.
Read More Here: http://tarsandsblockade.org/13th-action/

Raising Resistance: Action Across North America in Solidarity with Unist’ot’en
Allies of the Unist’ot’en Camp held solidarity actions across North America, and around the world, warning industry and government to end their trespass against sovereign Wet’suwet’en territory. The camp is working to stop several proposed pipelines and shale gas projects in the Peace River Region.
Read More Here: http://unistotencamp.wordpress.com/

Rising Tide Vermont Disrupts Shell Oil Exec
In solidarity with the Tar Sands Blockade, Rising Tide Vermont interrupted a presentation by a Shell Oil executive.  After nine consecutive interruptions, during which members of RTVT read statements from the Ogoni and other people on the frontlines of Shell’s operations, the event was cancelled and police were called.
Read more here: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012311150032

Days of Action Against the Keystone XL Pipeline
Over 100 people in Nacogdoches, Texas rallied to defend their homes and protect their water from toxic tar sands. In solidarity, over 40 communities rallied across the country and the world against tar sands and deadly resource extraction everywhere.
Read More Here: http://tarsandsblockade.org/12th-action/

Keep Rising Tide North America Going in 2013
Climate action has rocked 2012. Rising Tide has been a central part of organizing it. Now we need you to join us and keep it going on 2013. Whether its $5, $50 or $500, please donate and help us build this movement.
Donate Here:https://www.wepay.com/xmmxkxl/donations/rising-tide-north-america

Newswire

Upcoming

Two People Barricade Themselves Inside Keystone XL Pipe To Halt Construction

For immediate release December 3, 2012 Contact: Kim Huynh, Tar Sands Blockade, 940-268-5375, *kxlblockade@gmail.com *

Check the live blog for breaking updates and video: http://tarsandsblockade.org/14th-action/

Photos with visuals inside and outside the pipe will be available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarsandsblockade/

Two People Barricade Themselves Inside Keystone XL Pipe To Halt Construction

Using Completely Unprecedented Technique, Blockaders Barricade Unburied Segment of Pipe in Solidarity with Anti-Extraction Struggles Across North America

*WINONA, TX – MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2012 7:30 AM –* Several protesters with Tar Sands Blockade sealed themselves inside a section of pipe destined for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to stop construction of the dangerous project. Using a blockading technique never implemented before, Matt Almonte and Glen Collins locked themselves between two barrels of concrete weighing over six hundred pounds each. Located twenty-five feet into a pipe segment waiting to be laid in the ground, the outer barrel is barricading the pipe’s opening and neither barrel can be moved without risking serious injury to the blockaders.

The barricaded section of the pipeline passes through a residential neighborhood in Winona, TX. If TransCanada moves ahead with the trenching and burying of this particular section of pipe, it would run less than a hundred feet from neighboring homes. Tar sands pipelines threaten East Texas communities with their highly toxic contents, which pose a greater risk to human health than conventional crude oil. TransCanada’s existing tar sands pipeline, Keystone XL’s predecessor, has an atrocious safety record, leaking twelve times in its first year of operation.

“TransCanada didn’t bother to ask the people of this neighborhood if they wanted to have millions of gallons of poisonous tar sands pumped through their backyards,” said Almonte, one of the protesters now inside the pipeline. “This multinational corporation has bullied landowners and expropriated homes to fatten its bottom line.”

Recently, over 40 communities worldwide planned actions with Tar Sands Blockade during a week of resistance against extreme energy extraction and its direct connection to the climate crisis. A growing global movement is rising up against the abuses of the fossil fuel industry and its increasingly desperate pursuit of dangerous extraction methods.

“I’m barricading this pipe with Tar Sands Blockade today to say loud and clear to the extraction industry that our communities and the resources we depend on for survival are not collateral damage,” said Collins, another blockader inside the pipe and an organizer with Radical Action for Mountain Peoples Survival (RAMPS) and Mountain Justice, grassroots campaigns in Appalachia working to stop mountaintop removal coal mining.

“This fight in East Texas against tar sands exploitation is one and the same as our fight in the hollers of West Virginia. Dirty energy extraction doesn’t just threaten my home; it threatens the collective future of the planet.”

“At this late stage, doing nothing is a greater danger than the risks of taking direct action to stop destructive projects like Keystone XL,” said Ron Seifert, a spokesperson for Tar Sands Blockade. “That’s why folks working with groups like RAMPS, the Unist’ot’en Camp fighting a natural gas pipeline in British Columbia and Tar Sands Blockade are willing to use everything including their own hands and feet to ensure we all have a safe climate and healthy, thriving communities.”

Today also marks day 5 of the Houston Hunger Strike in which Gulf Coast activists with Tar Sands Blockade are going without food to demand that Valero divest entirely from the Keystone XL pipeline and invest in the health and wellbeing of the communities it’s poisoning.

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RTNA & Thirty National & International Groups Call For Support Of the Tar Sands Blockade

Rising Tide North America is excited to have led this call to support the Tar Sands Blockade. Not only is stopping the expansion of fossil fuels infrastructure of the utmost priority, but the harsh repression of environmental activists from both TransCanada and law enforcement needs to be called out again and again. We stand with the Tar Sands Blockade and people fighting environmental destruction and human rights repressions everywhere.

To sign onto the letter, please email contact@risingtidenorthamerica.org

An Open Letter In Support Of the Tar Sands Blockade

Dear Friends,

As we write, our friends with the Tar Sands Blockade are blocking construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline in the woods of Texas. For the past six months they have built a movement of climate activists, rural landowners, Texans, Oklahomans and people from all over the country to fiercely resist it. For two weeks, they have captured the imagination of the world with a daring tree- sit and bold ground actions near Winnsboro, TX that have delayed TransCanada’s operations.

TransCanada has responded by allowing its employees to operate their heavy machines with reckless disregard for the safety of protestors and tree-sitters. Police have responded with brutal means such as pepper-spray and Tasers against peaceful protestors. Prosecutors have responded with elevated charges.

It is clear what is at stake. NASA’s leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen has called the Keystone XL pipeline, “a fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet.” If all the carbon stored in the Canadian tar sands is released into the earth’s atmosphere it will mean “game over” for the planet.

In 2011, we saw the Tar Sands Action galvanize environmental and social justice communities in an unprecedented show of unity during the sit-ins in front of the White House. Every day members of Indigenous communities, faith communities, labor communities, anti-mountaintop removal movements, anti-fracking movements and many more stepped forward and put their bodies on the line in solidarity. In the year since, we have witnessed people from the Lakota nation in South Dakota and from Moscow, Idaho putting their bodies in roads and highways blocking large transport trucks carrying oil refining equipment to develop further tar sands extraction. Now, the Tar Sands Blockade has taken the next logical step confronting climate change.

If we are determined to prevent the pursuit of extreme energy from destroying our communities, natural systems and climate, then peaceful, yet confrontational, protests like the Tar Sands Blockade are necessary actions for change.

Let us be clear: there is not an inch of daylight in between us and those blocking construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas. We stand with them as we’ve stood with those fighting mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, those defending old growth forests in Cascadia and those challenging nuclear power across this country.

We stand in solidarity with those who stand up for us all.

Sincerely,

Alliance for Appalachia

Alliance of Community Trainers (ACT)

Center for Biological Diversity

Climate Ground Zero

Communities for a Better Environment

Community to Community

Council of Canadians

CREDO Action

Earthworks

EcoWatch

Energy Action Coalition

Friends of the Earth U.S.

Forest Ethics

Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives

Global Exchange

Global Justice Ecology Project

Grassroots Global Justice

Greenpeace Canada

Greenpeace U.S.A.

Indigenous Environmental Network

Missourians for Empowerment and Reform (MORE)

Mountain Justice

Movement Generation

Movement Strategy Center

New South Network of War Resistors

NoBiomassBurn

Occupy the Pipeline

Oil Change International

Peaceful Uprising

Platform

Radical Action for Mountain Peoples’ Survival (RAMPS)

Rainforest Action Network

Rising Tide North America

Ruckus Society

Sierra Club

smartMeme Strategy & Training Project

Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards

UK Tar Sands Network

350.org