Category: RT Press Releases

Breaking: Two Arrested for Blocking Tar Sands “Megaloads” in Idaho

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via Wild Idaho Rising Tide

News from Moscow Idaho, two arrested blockading Exxon’s megaload trucks bound with tar sands equipment for Alberta.

Early News: More Protesters Arrested for Blocking Tar Sands “Megaloads” in Moscow, Idaho

PRELIMINARY NEWS RELEASE

March 5, 2012

Four remarkably brave activists eluded the barricades and put their bodies between enormous Alberta tar sands upgrader parts and the ecological and climate devastation they will visit on us all.  As three of the last five of 78 ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil megaloads moved through downtown Moscow, Idaho, two protesters were arrested for linking arms and sitting down in Washington Street late Sunday night, March 4.  Police arrested two men but pulled two women to the side and detained and released them when the convoy passed.  The women did not appreciate the discrimination.

In a video by Joshua Yeidel of a KRFP Radio Free Moscow interview, We Won’t Be Accessories to Genocide: Moscow ID, March 4, 2012, one of the dismissed women explained her and her many allies’ motivations for marching, chanting, and even obstructing megaloads and risking arrest in cold and dark winter conditions.  “We’re not going to be accessories to genocide and climate change and increased cancer rates and all the other ecological damages that the tar sands intends to cause…”

Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and community members have gathered along Moscow streets to raise their voices in protest more than forty times since July 15, 2011, when the first transports of outsourced equipment rumbled up to 425,000 pounds on Highway 95 from the Port of Lewiston to the climate-wrecking tar sands.  Despite heavy, industry-sponsored police presence and closure of entire rights-of-way, some citizens have entered the crosswalks and streets to briefly block the shipments and halt their ecological death march, before state, county, and city police officers surround, harass, and drag them away and/or arrest them.

For a video shot by Joshua Yeidel of Sunday night’s action, Megaloads and Arrests, Moscow, Idaho, March 4, 2012, please see this video.

Fifty-one of Zachary Johnson’s photos of the March 4 demonstration are available on the Wild Idaho Rising Tide Facebook page

WIRT members extend our gratitude, love, and highest esteem to the four good souls who sacrificed their freedom to stand up for what’s right last night and to all of the supportive citizens on the streets and sidewalks, who spoke out and bore witness for a greener planet, healthier humanity, and a livable, worthwhile future for everyone’s descendants.  Please join friends and activists at 9 am on Monday, March 5, at the Latah County Courthouse for the arraignments of Cass Davis and Jim Prall.  One of their spouses reported that they are doing well in jail.  Besides this brief press release compiled from WIRT activists’ input, we will send a more comprehensive, campaign-inclusive story later today.

Meanwhile, for more news, photos, videos, and interviews, please see the WIRT Facebook page and web site/blog and listen to the Climate Justice Forum radio program on Mondays at 7:30 to 9:00 pm PST on KRFP Radio Free Moscow.

Rising Tide North America Statement of Solidarity with Occupy Oakland

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Rising Tide North America Statement of Solidarity with Occupy Oakland

San Francisco, CA– The climate justice group Rising Tide North America released this statement in response to the brutal attack against Occupy Oakland on Jan. 28th by the Oakland Police Department and subsequent lies and misinformation being spread by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and her administration:

“Rising Tide North America stands in solidarity with Occupy Oakland and the marchers in the Jan. 28 “Move In Day” march that was brutally attacked by the Oakland police department. The march was meant to turn an abandoned building into a social center that would provide services that the original Occupy Oakland encampment had provided to the local community before being evicted by the city of Oakland.

“The Oakland Police responded to the “Move-In Day” march with violence and brutality. They used batons and chemical weapons on peaceful protestors, and “kettling” techniques to detain and arrest over 250 marchers. Furthermore, stories are now emerging from the Alameda County jail that police and jailers brutalized detained Occupy Oakland marchers, refused to provide necessary medication and medical treatment and denied them access to legal counsel.

“Oakland Mayor Jean Quan has also begun a media campaign calling on Occupy Wall Street leaders to “disown” Occupy Oakland. But instead Quan’s actions show how truly out of touch she is with the city of Oakland and the country at large. While Oakland schools are being closed and families evicted, Quan’s police force responds to the non-violent opening of a community center with rubber bullets and tear gas. While corporations are handed the keys to the city by Mayor Quan, non-violent protestors are brutalized while in custody.

“The same corporate state that is profiting from foreclosures upon low income people’s homes, laying off workers and eliminating essential public services is also profiting from the climate crisis and rampant environmental destruction. As we have watched uprisings from the Middle East to the Midwest, the actions and words of ordinary people are beginning to be heard more and more. Singling out Occupy Oakland for prosecution and misinformation only further pierces the veil our elected and corporate leaders have over the general public.

“The power of all Occupys to stand up to police and state pressure in defiance of Corporate America gives us hope. Rising Tide North America supports the Occupy Movement and will continue to stand in solidarity with them. In the words of the International Workers of the World: “An injury to one is an injury to all.”

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Rising Tide North America is an all volunteer climate justice network with over 50 chapters and local contacts that works to confront the root causes of climate change.

Climate Group Calls for Extraction Phase-Out on Anniversary of BP Oil Spill

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Groups to mark Gulf Oil Spill anniversary with actions against corporate fossil fuel extraction

For Immediate Release | Contact: Rae Breaux; 818-271-0386 (cell)

Washington D.C. — On April 20th, dozens of environmental, climate, and social justice groups will target government and corporate operations with aggressive protests and civil disobedience in an International Day of Direct Action against Extraction organized by Rising Tide North America to commemorate the first anniversary of BP’s Gulf oil disaster. The protests were organized to demand an end to the environmental destruction and climate destabilization created by fossil fuel and other extraction industries.

“For all practical purposes, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast function as a third world resource colony within the US.  For a hundred years, our people and ecosystems have been sacrificed to provide cheap energy and big profits,” said Devin Martin, a Cajun native of southern Louisiana.  “We pay for the hidden costs of oil and gas with our health and our lives through air pollution, oil spills, and a completely corrupted state government.  We already lose a football field of coastal marsh every 38 minutes, and now rising sea levels from climate change will put my home, including New Orleans, under water permanently.”

The day of action will feature events organized by Gulf Coast residents fighting offshore drilling, local residents in the south side of Chicago resisting two of the largest coal plants in the nation, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York residents opposing natural gas hydrofracking, Canadians fighting tar sands mining in Alberta and residents of Oregon and Washington resisting coal and tar sands exports along the Columbia River, as well as other community groups engaged in fights against extractive industries. Protests are also planned for the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Continue reading

21 Arrests at Dept. of Interior Occupation!

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Residents from Gulf Coast, Appalachia and interior West join students and
climate justice activists in calling for more action on extractive industry.

For Immediate Release

Contact: Scott Parkin; on site mobile- 415-235-0596;
Henia Belalia; on site mobile- 510-529-8927
Email— extraction@risingtidenorthamerica.org

Photos available at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

6:40pm (EST) UPDATE: Police are reporting 21 people have been arrested, including youth and adults from across the country. Residents of Utah, Wyoming, Texas, Vermont, Georgia, Washington DC and California were among those arrested while occupying the Department of Interior offices.

Washington D.C.— Over a thousand climate activists marched from Lafayette Park to the Department of the Interior’s headquarters in Washington D.C. today. Reclaim Power coincided with the end of Powershift, a mass youth climate conference, and came only 2 days before the anniversary of the BP Gulf Oil Disaster. As many as 300 protesters ran inside the headquarters in a Wisconsin-style occupation calling for the abolition of offshore oil drilling, coal mining and tar sands extraction. In an act of civil disobedience, young and old alike occupied the lobby for over an hour, smiling and singing protest songs.

donate for legal support for arrestees at the 4/18 sit-in at the D.O.I.

The Dept. of Interior has oversight over two agencies, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) and the Office of  Surface Mining (OSM), which are responsible for the BP Oil Spill, mountaintop removal coal mining and tar sands oil drilling in southern Utah. Furthermore, the Dept. of Interior just opened up over 7,000 acres of land to industry for coal extraction in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

“Our demonstration today is to show that Wyoming might be small in population but mighty in heart,” said Kevin Uransky, a resident from Wyoming’s coalfields and member of High Country Rising Tide participating in the sit-in. “We don’t want to just stand by and allow big corporations to destroy our homes, our way of life, and some of last open, beautiful, and undeveloped terrain left in the United States. We want to show that Wyoming has a voice not to be drowned out by those of more represented states, we have a voice, we have an opinion, and we want to be heard.”

 

Reclaim Power is being led by residents of residents of the Gulf Coast, Appalachia and the interior West – regions directly impacted by heinous oil, gas and coal extractive industries. Participants are calling for the Obama Administration and the federal agency to phase out harmful mining and drilling practices and facilitate transitions to sustainable local energy systems.

“The Dept. of Interior has been allowing the killing of my community and Appalachia’s mountains by the coal industry for decades,” said Junior Walk  from Boone County, West Virginia. “King Coal has poisoned Appalachia with toxic water, toxic air and toxic waste. It’s time for real action, not merely political posturing. I commend these fiery activists taking risks and making change for our communities and the climate.” “For all practical purposes, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast function as a third world resource colony within the US. For a hundred years, our people and ecosystems have been sacrificed to provide cheap energy and big profits,” said Devin Martin, a native Cajun from southern Louisiana. “We

pay for the hidden costs of oil and gas with our health and our lives through air pollution, oil spills, and a completely corrupted state government. We already lose a football field of coastal marsh every 38 minutes, and now rising sea levels from climate change will put my home, including New Orleans, under water permanently.”

Reclaim Power also seeks to highlight the ruthless manner in which extractive industries are allowed to treat workers and the communities they operate in. Obama’s Dept. of Interior allows the fossil fuel industry to run amok over ecosystems, communities, workers and local economies. Last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster killed 11 workers and spilled over 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The results have devastated local economies, fisheries and wetlands. Mountaintop removal is
a radical form of coal mining in which up to 800 feet, sometimes more, of densely forested mountaintops are literally blown up to reach thin coal seams. Already, over 500 mountains and 2,000 miles of streams have been lost due to this devastating mining practice. It has been recently discovered that oil companies in southern Utah greatly expanded the acres of land to be developed for tar sands extraction from 60 to over 30,000.

The 758 million tons of coal to be extracted from the four competitive leases in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin will be the equivalent of 300 new coal-fired power plants.

Today’s march and sit-in are a preview to Rising Tide North America’s “Day of Action Against Extraction” happening April 20th, on the anniversary of the BP Oil Spill. The day of action will feature protests by Gulf Coast residents fighting offshore drilling, Appalachians resisting mountaintop removal coal mining, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York residents opposing natural gas hydrofracking, Canadians fighting tar sands mining in Alberta, as well as other community groups engaged in fights against extractive industries. Protests are also planned for the UK, New Zealand, and Australia.

Demands from today’s Reclaim Power action and the April 20th Day of Action
Against Extraction include:

  • An immediate phase out of fossil fuel extraction and a just transition to truly sustainable forms of energy
  • Community control over natural resources
  • Recognizing the sovereignty of indigenous nations and their right to control resources on their lands.
  • Reparations from both state and corporate entities that have profited from extraction in order to fund ecological restoration, full health coverage, and sustainable livelihoods in impacted communities.

For more information please visit extractionaction.net

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Rising Tide North America is an all volunteer climate justice network with
over 50 chapters and local contacts that works to confront the root causes
of climate change.

 

donate for legal support for arrestees at the 4/18 sit-in at the D.O.I.