Category: RT Newswire

USE ME! Essentially, this is a catch all for everything. This is probably the ONLY category where things that are not directly related to Rising Tide affiliates/allies should go. For example if a coal company goes out of business (and we didn’t directly cause it) it should probably only go here.

Rising Tide North America Continental Gathering in Utah; July 18-20

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Click here to register for the Gathering!!

Click Here to Donate to the Gathering!!

Update on the Location:  If you are planning on attending the gathering please orient your travel toward Green River, Utah. If you are flying, either Salt Lake City or Grand Junction are the best bets, although we’d suggest Grand Junction, CO (it’s just closer).  We hear there are really cheap flights from LA and Las Vegas on Allegiant Air ($60!!)  into Grand Junction if you search. From both SLC and Grand Junction there are daily trains directly to Green River for fairly cheap. From SLC the train leaves 3AM; 4pm from Grand Junction. Of course, we can find people accommodations in either location if you plan on arriving early and shuttles or car pools can be available. Just make sure you let us know ASAP.  If you register for the gathering, you’ll receive another email requesting you travel info if you need help getting there. If you don’t register, we don’t know you’re coming!! Again, the accommodations are most likely going to be camping, so come prepared.

Our strength comes from our connection, our power from our unity.

WHAT: Rising Tide Continental Gathering

WHEN: July 18-20, 2013 (17th arrival, 21st departure)

WHERE: Utah; Exact Location TBA

CONTACT: gathering@risingtidenorthamerica.org

INFO: https://risingtidenorthamerica.org/2013/05/gathering/

DONATE: https://www.wepay.com/donations/rising-tide-continental-gathering

The Pitch

This July, many of the members of Rising Tide-affiliated, anti-extraction, and climate justice groups around the U.S., Mexico, and Canada will converge in beautiful Utah to train, discuss, strategize, and develop the structure, dynamics and capacity of the Rising Tide network.

Rising Tide is an international, all-volunteer, grassroots network of groups and individuals who organize locally, promote community-based solutions to the climate crisis, and take direct action to confront the root causes of climate change.  Some network members are called Rising Tide, others are not.  In its essence, Rising Tide seeks to create a broad, long-term, international, collaborative platform for direct action and climate justice organizing.

The Rising Tide North America network consists of groups and local contacts throughout Canada, the United States, and Mexico.  Local groups work on a wide variety of issues that pertain to the local communities in which they reside.  If you are already part of the Rising Tide network, if you are interested in joining as an individual or a group, or if you want to find out how a grassroots, horizontally-organized, dedicated network of direct action-oriented, climate justice organizations can change the world, the Rising Tide Continental Gathering may just be the place to come.

All of the groups involved in the Rising Tide network are actively organizing on the ground in their communities.  Many are taking the lead in staging bold direct actions that are altering the course of the climate fight.  Many are participating in national and international projects that are at the forefront of movement building and solidarity work against tar sands, fracked oil and natural gas, and coal exploitation.

The Rising Tide Continental Gathering will provide a significant venue for networking and forwarding proposals that will impact the course of the burgeoning anti-extraction and climate justice movement.  The gathering will also promote solidarity work with frontline and fenceline communities that must be a part of our struggles.  The network itself is
collaboratively creating the agenda for the gathering, ensuring that participants will get out of the gathering what they put into it.  Come, participate, and help it grow.

The Goals

The focus of this year’s Rising Tide Continental Gathering will be:

1. Broaden connections between network groups and share resources

Through meeting each other and being present and working together in the same place, we hope to open space to talk about furthering network communication and collaborations and generally expanding and strengthening our working relationships.

2. Strategize around growing the power of the anti-extraction and climate justice movement

We also hope to create space for developing strategies around our different struggles.  Regional, industry, and affinity breakout sessions will all provide spaces in which we can develop this work, make proposals, and strategize together as a network.

Get Involved

We want the Rising Tide Continental Gathering to be as collaboratively created as possible.  We plan to offer the time for members of the network to talk about their interests.  We also need a lot of help with event outreach, logistics, and fundraising.  Currently, you can plug into four working groups in operation.  Contact us for more information about
helping out.

Why Utah?

Utah is gearing up to be another major front of tar sands and fracking related organizing.  After the Rising Tide Continental Gathering, Utah-based groups Peaceful Uprising, Canyon Country Rising Tide, and Before It Starts are hosting the Utah Tar Sands Action Camp from July 21 to 28.  We are encouraging folks interested in attending the Rising Tide Continental Gathering to also engage in the action camp.  The Rising Tide network chose this specific collaboration as a strategic place to forward anti-extraction and climate justice work in the U.S.  However, we do understand if participant schedules do not permit attendance of both the gathering and the camp.

Basic Logistics

Travel

Please make your travel plans early and orient them toward Salt Lake City.  The gathering will occur at an as of now undetermined,  location in Utah.  We will organize and inform you of emerging pick-up and drop-off travel arrangements to transport everybody who does not already have a ride to and from the gathering site.

We are prioritizing limited travel funding for folks who may be coming from out of the country or at least from far away.  But if you need assistance in getting to the gathering, we are happy to help in any way that we can, through ride shares or possible partial or full travel funding.

Utah Summer

Utah in July has the potential to be hot – really hot.  Please come prepared to be in a likely outdoor environment.  Bring bottles for water, sunscreen, and clothing to be comfortable and to protect yourself from the sun.  We encourage gathering participants to bring camping gear, tents, blankets, or sleeping bags suitable for summer weather.

Updates and Information

Please check our website often for updated info about rideshares, travel, schedules, and site logistics.  As we get closer to the gathering, we will post new ways to be involved, working group updates, and the agendas there.

https://risingtidenorthamerica.org/2013/05/gathering/

Three Arrested at Peabody Coal Shareholders Meeting in Gillette, WY; Mineworkers, Navajo Ask Pointed Questions of CEO Boyce

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3 arrested at Peabody Shareholders meeting in Gillette, mineworkers, Navajo ask pointed questions of CEO Boyce

3 Arrested at Peabody Shareholder Meeting in Gillette
Groups from Wyoming, Black Mesa, St. Louis and Colorado Join Together to Confront World’s Largest Coal Company

GILLETTE, WY– Peabody Energy shareholders affiliated with Powder River Basin Resource Council, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), CO-FORCE (Coloradans for Fair Rates and Clean Energy), and Forgotten People from Black Mesa/Big Mountain in Arizona converged in Gillette, Wyoming, on Monday, April 29, 2013, at Peabody’s Annual General Meeting. Peabody has always held its meeting near its headquarters in St. Louis, but moved it this year to avoid public scrutiny. After the meeting, an activist affiliated with MORE was arrested dropping a banner saying, “Peabody Attacks: Pensions, Diné Lands, Climate.” 2 other activists were arrested for holding up banner in the parking lot that said “Peabody Abandons Miners.”

Shareholders asked targeted questions to CEO Greg Boyce and the Peabody Board of Directors regarding its current business model which consistently externalizes its costs to coal mine neighbors, workers, and the environment. Peabody’s creation of now-bankrupt Patriot Coal to unload its pension and healthcare obligations to retired miners is a recent example of how Peabody disregards its own workers. Shareholders stood with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in Gillette in demanding that Peabody pay its retired miners what they were promised, while thousands more rallied in St. Louis.

Just as Peabody is threatening the livelihoods of UMWA retirees, Peabody was also confronted today by two residents of the Black Mesa/Big Mountain area in Arizona. For decades, Peabody has been involved in the forced relocation of tens of thousands of Diné and Hopi on Black Mesa. In January, residents of Black Mesa attempted to meet with CEO Greg Boyce in St. Louis. He refused, and twelve people were arrested attempting to deliver a letter from Black Mesa residents to Peabody.

“This winter, we travelled to Peabody’s headquarters in St. Louis to bring them a message from the people of Black Mesa, whom Peabody is displacing from their ancestral lands to expand their strip mines. Instead of holding a dialogue, Boyce hid behind security and hired police; now we have come to Gillette so that we can express our concerns face-to-face,” said Don Yellowman, of Forgotten People on Black Mesa/Big Mountain in Arizona.

Shareholders also drew attention to Peabody’s attempts to cheat American taxpayers by leasing artificially cheap coal from the Bureau of Land Management. This practice is now under unprecedented investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the Department of the Interior, and Congress, and it could pose a large risk to the financial viability of Peabody’s mining efforts in the Powder River Basin. Today, over 135,000 petitions were delivered to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell calling for a moratorium on new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin. The petitions follow an April 15 letter to Secretary Jewell signed by the leaders of 21 environmental, public health, consumer rights and community organizations calling for a moratorium and comprehensive review of the federal coal leasing program.

“Peabody’s chickens have come home to roost,” stated LJ Turner, a Wyoming rancher who lives near Peabody’s North Antelope Rochelle Mine. “For too long, Peabody has ignored the true cost of its coal mines in the Powder River Basin, but now Congress and others are starting to pay attention to the impacts of mining on people, our air and land, and the climate.”

Shareholders’ concerns are underlined by a recent subpoena of Peabody by the Securities and Exchange Commission, related to the building and development of the Prairie State Energy Campus in Marissa, IL. Peabody, once the full developer of the project, sold of 95% of the plant to hundreds of towns and cities across the Midwest who are now paying for the plant’s extreme cost overruns in their monthly bills.

Oklahoma: Two Activists Lockdown to Protect Cross Timbers from Tar Sands

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tejasTwo Protesters Lock Themselves to Equipment to Protect the Cross Timbers from Tar Sands

Press Contact: Eric Whelan, gptsrmedia@gmail.com, 405-863-2888

Monday, April 29th: Spaulding,OK Earlier this morning two Texas residents locked themselves to machinery being used to construct TransCanada’s dangerous and controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in Spaulding, OK through Muscogee Creek Nation land by treaty. Benjamin Butler and Eamon Treadaway Danzig took action today to prevent the Cross Timbers bioregion from being poisoned by this inherently dangerous tar sands pipeline, just as the surrounding wetlands and residential areas have been poisoned as a result of Exxon’s Pegasus pipeline rupture near Mayflower, Arkansas. The Gulf Coast Project is the Southern segment of TransCanada’s 7 billion dollar Keystone XL pipeline, which is slated to transport toxic diluted bitumen from Cushing, OK, to Gulf Coast refineries in Houston and Port Author. Recent Tar Sands spills in Minnesota and Arkansas, as well as an explosion at a Tar Sands refinery in Detroit have highlighted the urgency in stopping Tar Sands extraction and transportation.

Butler and Danzig are acting as a part of Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, a growing coalition of groups and individuals dedicated to stopping the expansion of Tar Sands infrastructure throughout the Great Plains. Their actions follow the escalating number of work-stopping actions that have occurred in Oklahoma this past month.  Both anti-extraction activists cite concern of the effect a spill will have in the Cross Timbers bio-region that they call home. Their action comes in the wake of the rupture of Exxon-Mobile’s Pegasus pipeline which spilled Tar Sands bitumen in neighboring Mayflower, Arkansas. In addition to the high rates of sickness that the surrounding community displayed, the spill in Arkansas has polluted Lake Conway and has had devastating effects on local wildlife. The permanent effect on people’s livelihoods and the health of affected ecosystems remains to be seen.

“This pipeline is essential for continued tar sands exploitation which poses an imminent threat to the health of indigenous communities near the point of extraction, fence-line communities around the toxic refineries, and ultimately the health of every living being along the route,” said Benjamin Butler, who was born at Tinker Air force Base in Oklahoma. “I believe in a more beautiful world, one where the profits of a corporation don’t outweigh the health of the people and the planet.”

“These companies come through with false promises and leave sickness and devastation in their wake,” said Eamon Danzig of Denton, TX. “People in Mayflower experienced fainting, nausea, and nosebleeds from the benzene gas which separates from the diluted bitumen in a spill and hovers above the ground. Leaks, ruptures, and other accidents on tar sands pipelines are so commonplace and inevitable that I can’t let this pipeline be built through the Cross Timbers.”

The Tar Sands megaproject is the largest industrial project in the history of humankind, destroying an area of pristine boreal forest which, if fully realized, will leave behind a toxic wasteland the size of Florida. The Tar Sands megaproject continues to endanger the health and way of life of the First Nations communities that live nearby by poisoning the waterways which life in the area depends on. This pipeline promises to deliver toxic diluted bitumen to the noxious Valero Refinery at the front door of the fence-line community of Manchester in Houston.

Currently, there is staunch resistance to the expansion of Tar Sands infrastructure—Lakota and Dakota peoples in “South Dakota” have sworn to protect their land and people from the Keystone XL, lifelong Oklahomans and Texans are consistently halting construction of the inherently dangerous Keystone XL, and the Unis’tot’en Camp has entered the third year of their blockade of the Pacific Trails Pipeline.

Anti-Extraction Campaigner Glen Collins Sentenced to 60 Days for KXL Action

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glen-texas-279x300From RAMPS:

Glen Collins is in Smith County Jail in Texas tonight after pleading guilty to charges of trespassing and illegal dumping stemming from his blockade of the Keystone XL pipeline last December.  In one of the most striking actions in the Tar Sands Blockade campaign, Glen locked himself with Matt Almonte to a concrete barrel inside the KXL pipeline.  He was sentenced to 60 days in jail – the longest sentence of the three activists arrested that day.  We are currently waiting to find out how the 3 weeks Glen spent in jail following his action will be counted against his sentence.  Due to the overwhelming weirdness of the Texas legal system, it’s uncertain how much time he has left to serve.

Glen has checked in from jail and is doing fine as far as jail goes.  We are supporting him in every way we can from up here in WV.  To help support Glen, please donate to the RAMPS general fund which we are using to pay for collect calls from jail, commissary and sending him books to help pass the time.

Glen took action in Texas as a part of our deep commitment to true solidarity, made of action, not words across all struggles against extraction.  As he said at the time, “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.  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.”