Category: RT Press Releases

Media Release: Tar Sands Blockade Calls For Non-Violent Direct Action In Texas To Stop The Keystone XL Pipeline

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 25, 2012

Contact: Ron Seifert: 843-814-2796 and at ronseif@gmail.com

A Call for Nonviolent Direct Action to Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline from the Tar Sands Blockade

Texas—This summer, environmental activists from across the country will be converging in Texas to blockade the Gulf Coast portion of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Tar Sands Blockade will be coordinating nonviolent direct actions along the pipeline route to stop the zombie pipeline once and for all. We are working with national allies as well as local communities to coordinate a road show that will travel throughout Texas and Oklahoma as well as a regional training effort for activists interested in getting involved in the blockade movement against the Keystone XL.

“Our action is giving a new meaning to ‘Don’t Mess with Texas,’ says Tar Sands Blockade Collective Member Benjamin Kessler. Kessler is also a member of Rising Tide North Texas and Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Tar sands giant TransCanada will be granted permits for construction of the Gulf Coast portion of the pipeline from the Texas Army Corp of Engineers as early as today. President Obama announced he wanted to expedite the ‘Gulf Coast Project’ earlier this year when he gave his ‘all of the above’ energy address in Cushing, Oklahoma.

The Keystone XL remains key to the expansion of the Alberta tar sands, and leading NASA Climate Scientist James Hansen has called the pipeline “a fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet.” According to Hansen, if the carbon stored in the tar sands is released into the atmosphere, it would mean “game over for the climate.”

350.org Founder Bill McKibben has worked hard to get Hansen’s message out to the public and to lawmakers in Washington. After more than 1,200 were arrested during the onset of the Tar Sands Action last fall, and another

12,000 turned out to surround the White House to tell President Obama that the Keystone XL is not in the nation’s best interest. McKibben was elated to hear that the Tar Sands Blockade is continuing to foster the spirit of resistance against the pipeline in the south with the use of nonviolent direct action.

“Let’s be clear what the drama is here: human bodies and spirits up against the unlimited cash and political influence of the fossil fuel industry. We all should be grateful for this peaceful witness,” McKibben said.

Because this is an export pipeline, working Americans will pay the cost of environmental destruction, and never see any of the profits.

“The pipeline will make TransCanada rich while encroaching on ranch land, poisoning Texas’ working class communities, and destroying the environment that makes the Lone Star state so beautiful,” says Tar Sands Blockade Spokesperson Ron Seifurt.

This is not a political issue as much as President Obama and Governor Romney would like it to be in this divisive election year. This is a community issue. Ranchers, landowners, green activists, occupiers and self-identified tea party members are currently working together in common interest to stop the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas.

Tar sands oil threatens streams, water tables, grasslands, forests—all of which families along the pipeline route need to survive. Texas landowners are organizing on their own to stop the pipeline, and we are doing everything we can to help them.

For more information visit http://tarsandsblockade.org/

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Rising Tide North America is an all-volunteer climate justice network with over 50 chapter, allies and local contacts throughout Canada, Mexico and the United States that works to confront the root causes of climate change.

Rising Tide North Texas, based in Denton, TX, is the North Texas chapter of Rising Tide North America.

Rising Tide Chicago Disrupts Heartland Institute’s Climate Denial Conference

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Contact:  Josh Trost, 312 343-8259 email:thisperfectworld@yahoo.com

Rising Tide Chicago Action Video

“HEARTLAND’S LIES DESTROY OUR PLANET,” CLIMATE ACTIVISTS SAY
Activists protest “climate denier” mis-information at Heartland
Institute’s annual climate change conference

CHICAGO—Today, two climate action advocates with the group Rising Tide
Chicago challenged the nation’s biggest climate denier organization on its
home-turf – a national conference taking place in Chicago organized by the
now infamous Heartland Institute. The two activists displayed a banner
during the Conference which read “Heartland’s Lies Destroy Our Planet.”
The Protesters were escorted out of the building by security while
chanting.

The action came at the end of the second day of Heartlands “6th Annual
Climate Conference.” The fossil-fuel industry-funded Heartland Institute
is a self-proclaimed “think tank” fueling the climate change denial
industry to work against the public interest.

“I’m willing to risk my arrest, because if Heartland Institute gets its
way, it could be the end of civilization as we know it,” stated Alice
Coffey an activist who risked arrest at today’s event.

“Anyone who can deny climate change has never been to Texas where there is
an historic record drought caused by the climate crisis,  or Arizona,
where we no longer have monsoon season, but haboob season – just wind, and
dirt and heat, but no rain,” said Ian Fecke-Stoudt, who also participated
in the climate confrontation.

A second group held a rally outside the event earlier in the day.  Scores
of activists demonstrated outside the Hilton Hotel protesting the
Institute and the Conference while a banner was dropped from a hotel
window.

“The Heartland Institute exists to spread climate disinformation to
protect the profits of the few,” said Josh Trost of Rising Tide Chicago.
“Climate Deniers have no right participating in policy discussions.
Daily, the global scientific consensus strengthens as planetary health
indicators decline. Each lie is a theft from the remaining time we have to
act to limit escalating climate chaos.

“For the sake of the future of humanity, we demand the Heartland Institute
to respect the global scientific consensus and stop disseminating climate
lies,” Trost said.

James Hansen quoted in The Guardian said, “[Climate change] can’t be fixed
by individual specific changes; it has to be an across-the-board rising
fee on carbon emissions,” said Hansen. “We can’t simply say that there’s a
climate problem, and leave it to the politicians. They’re so clearly under
the influence of the fossil fuel industry that they’re coming up with
cockamamie solutions which aren’t solutions. That is the bottom line.”

In May 2012, DeSmog Blog reported that the Heartland Institute had added
the Illinois Coal Association (ICA) as a new “Gold Sponsor” for its 2012
ICCC-7 climate conference. ICA joined following the Heartland’s leaked
documents and Unabomber billboard campaign. In Heartland’s leaked 2012
Fundraising plan, Murray Energy gave $100,000 in 2010 and was expected to
give $40,000 in 2012; the company’s subsidiary, The American Coal Company,
is a member of the ICA.

The Heartland Institute has lead many mis-information campaigns which have
included:

  • Denying the harmful effects of tobacco
  • In 2010 the Institute defended BP during its infamous oil spill in
    the Gulf of Mexico
  • The Institute opposes the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact,
    which was signed into effect in December of 2005 by the governors of eight
    states that border the great lakes, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois,
    Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York, and the premiers of
    the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario. The compact was proposed in
    light of the unprecedented low levels of water in the lakes, which are now
    at the bottom end of the historical fluctuation range of 4-6 feet. In
    order to mitigate diminishing water levels, the compact will limit the
    consumption of water from the Great Lakes to areas within these eight
    states, or to areas outside of the boundary only by petition subject to
    strict regulation.

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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.

Tar Sands Megaload Fight Moves West To Spokane

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 21, 2012

Contact:
Justin Ellenbecker, Occupy Spokane: ellenbecker22@yahoo.com, 509-599-4549
Helen Yost, Wild Idaho Rising Tide wild.idaho.rising.tide@gmail.com, 208-301-8039

Photo:See available Facebook photos here

*Washington/Idaho Megaload Resistance*

At about 11:30 pm on Sunday night, May 20, a dozen activists from Occupy
Spokane and Wild Idaho Rising Tide converged in Spokane, Washington, to
protest megaloads of oversized equipment bound for Alberta tar sands
operations from the Port of Pasco.  ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil has been using
Highway 395, Interstate 90, and city streets in Spokane and Spokane Valley
since mid-October to transport road damaging shipments weighing up to
400,000 pounds and stretching over 200 feet long.  Diverted in Idaho from
their originally intended Highway 12 route by court challenges and from
their alternative Highway 95 path by Moscow area protests, these pieces of
a tar sands/bitumen processing plant will expand Canadian carbon fuel
extraction, American dependence on oil, and continental greenhouse gas
emissions, while reaping hefty profits for one of the wealthiest
corporations on Earth.

From the pedestrian walkway over East Third Avenue near South Regal Street,
Spokane climate justice activists draped banners asserting “No Dirty
Energy,” “Occupy 99%,” “Climate Killers,” “Highway to Hell,” and other
statements (see photos).  While waiting for the megaload convoys’ arrival,
they observed flaggers and warning signs posted along Third Avenue, support
vehicles cruising the area, and up to six Spokane city police cars parked
near the demonstrators.  Between midnight and 1:00 am on Monday, four
megaloads traversed Third Avenue, narrowly fitting under the pedestrian
overpass and between parked cars and activists with protest signs lining
both sides of the street.  Convoys consisting of Washington state trooper
escorts, flagger vehicles, and pilot trucks displaying illuminated
“oversized load” signs accompanied a silver, cylindrical module, two large,
blue, trailer-like boxes, and a frame structure full of pipes and parts.  A
protester later saw another megaload among a cluster of vehicles similarly
leaving the interstate at the Altamont Street exit in Spokane and the
Barker Road off-ramp in Spokane Valley.

Recognizing the international impacts of these transports, citizens
throughout the Northwest will continue to coordinate and organize
demonstrations to oppose and impede tar sands megaload traffic, to prevent
increasing carbon emissions causing global climate change and to dissuade
investors in such dirty energy schemes.  The mostly foreign-owned
corporations who have mined only two or three percent of the Alberta tar
sands are advancing the second fastest rate of deforestation in the world,
as they consume more energy, mostly derived from natural gas, than tar
sands fuels ultimately yield.  Their largest industrial project on Earth
pollutes exorbitant volumes of fresh water and deposits heavy metals,
carcinogens, and oil across vast swaths of Canadian boreal forests and
wetlands.  Resident First Nations villages practicing subsistence
lifestyles suffer rare cancers and disproportionate deaths, as the single
greatest contributor of atmospheric carbon in North America bodes “game
over” for the Earth’s climate.

People interested in upcoming expressions of First Amendment rights through
anti-megaload assemblies in the Spokane area can contact Occupy Spokane
and/or Wild Idaho Rising Tide for more information about the time and
location of protests.

St. Louis 99% Protests Peabody Coal Shareholder Meeting, Demand Company Pay Fair Share

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 1, 2012

CONTACT: Cathy Sherwin – 314-452-2179

St. Louis 99% Protests Peabody Coal Shareholder Meeting, Demand Company Pay Fair Share

New Wave of 99% Activism Hold Mega Corporations Accountable Over Tax Dodging

(St. Louis) – Today the 99% of St. Louis joined growing national protests at corporate shareholder meetings today by voicing disapproval of tax dodging practices both inside and outside the Peabody Coal shareholder meeting.  Several frustrated shareholders attended the meeting while over one hundred other protestors rallied outside, brandishing signs that highlighted the impact of corporate tax dodging on federal program spending in Missouri.

We are here today to stand up against corporate power,” said Colleen Kelly.  “Rather than contributing to the common good, corporations would rather buy off politicians and make obscene profits.  That cannot stand; we are here today calling for a different kind of society.”

Over the past three years, Peabody Energy made $1 billion in domestic profits, but paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2008 and 2009, and $0 in state income taxes in 2008 and 2010. According to the corporation’s annual report, it plans to pay a tax rate of about 26% this year—well below the federal rate of 35%. In addition, 2 of the last 3 years Peabody has paid more to lobbyists and groups like ALEC than taxes.

If Peabody Coal had paid its fair share in 2010, 326 more children could have had access to the Head Start program, 280 Missourians would have had the medical care they needed, or Missouri could have seen an increase of over $30,000 in disability compensation for veterans.

“I pay my taxes-Peabody Coal should too,” said Zach Chasnoff, a local small business owner,  “Peabody’s refusal to pay its fair share of taxes has real consequences for communities like mine – cuts to critical public services that keep out communities safe, serve our veterans and seniors, and make sure our kids get the quality education they need.  If Peabody Coal wants to be a world-class company, it should act like one by paying its taxes instead of lobbying for tax loopholes at the expense of our communities.”

With the economy continuing to punish working people and big corporations like Peabody Coal proving themselves unaccountable to the concerns of the 99%, working people and homeowners are descending on shareholder meetings to confront CEOs and other members of the 1% over their economic concerns.  Activists with the 99% Spring have disrupted or shut down several corporate shareholder meetings, including confronting executives with questions about compensation, lobbying, and tax dodging.  Here’s coverage from the GE shareholder meeting in Michigan and Wells Fargo in California.

After last year’s Occupy protests, this spring has seen a new wave of protests from voters and taxpayers against the rich corporations and politicians who have created an economic emergency for the 99%. The protests are being organized by The 99% Spring, a loose coalition of community and faith groups, unions, and progressive advocacy organizations.

For more information, visit www.the99power.org and www.99uniting.org.