Mass Climate Protest Disrupts NYC Financial District — Hundreds Risk Arrest

Thousands Flood Wall Street With Mass Sit-In for Climate Justice

For immediate release:

Thousands ‘Flood’ Financial District Following Sunday’s Historic March

Interviews available upon requests

Photos available here

New York, NY — 3,000 people dressed in blue are currently between Exchange Place and The Bull in Manhattan’s financial district, sitting down to interrupt the business day and targeting corporations and businesses financing and fueling the climate crisis.

“Communities that are first and most impacted by storms, floods and droughts are also on the frontlines of fighting the dig-burn-dump economy causing climate change,” said Michael Leon Guerrero of the Climate Justice Alliance. “We are flooding Wall Street to stop its financing of planetary destruction, and to make way for living economies that benefit people and the planet.”

“Many of us were also involved with Occupy Wall Street,” said Michael Premo, an organizer of Flood Wall Street and a Brooklyn-based artist. “Just like the financial crisis, the climate crisis is a product of an underlying political crisis. It’s the result of policies that serve the shortsighted interests of the few over the survival and well being of everyone.”

Yesterday’s historic 400,000-person march showed widespread support for action on climate change, and Flood Wall Street is confronting those who stand in the way of change and connecting the climate movement with a long tradition of nonviolent direct action.

“Throughout history, people have engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience in response to moral crises, when political leaders have failed to act,” said Vida James, a Flood Wall Street organizer. “What could constitute more of a moral crisis than the health and survival of our planet, our communities, and our grandchildren?”

Art, music, and giant visuals are prominent features of the festive demonstration, beginning the day with the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, a local activist marching band. Nearly a hundred people carried a 300-foot banner that read: “Capitalism = Climate Chaos — Flood Wall Street,” among many other visuals.

The day began with speakers from around the world that have been impacted by climate change, emphasizing that leadership on climate justice must come from below.

“The real solution to global warming is organizing workers worldwide for the construction of a new model, with justice, equality and respect for life,” said Elisa Estronioli, a Brazilian land-rights activist.

More updates coming.

MEDIA ADVISORY
September 22, 2014
Phone: (406) 356-6316
floodwallstreet@riseup.net
http://floodwallstreet.net

Mass Sit-in to Draw Connection Between Climate Change and Wall Street

IFloodNYMedia contact
Bessie Schwarz
Phone: (406) 356-6316
floodwallstreet@riseup.net

Mass Sit-in to Draw Connection Between Climate Change and Wall Street

Protesters Wearing Blue Hope to Shut Down Financial District After Climate March

New York, NY — A “flood” of people from across the globe, dressed in blue, will take to the streets of New York’s Financial District on Monday to highlight the role of capitalism in fueling the climate crisis. Coming a day after the historic People’s Climate March, #FloodWallStreet will show that the next step for the climate movement is to target polluters and those profiting from the fossil fuel industry. #FloodWallStreet participants expect to be arrested in droves as they carry out a sit-in near Wall Street. Speakers will include acclaimed author-activists Naomi Klein, Chris Hedges and Rebecca Solnit, as well as members of communities at the front lines of the climate crisis.

WHEN: Mon Sept. 22, 11:00 a.m. (March to Wall St. & sit-in begins – full schedule below)
WHERE: Battery Park
WHO: Hundreds of concerned citizen in blue marching in the streets with expected arrests

Speakers – 9am:
-Naomi Klein
-Chris Hedges
-Rebecca Solnit
-Members of front-line communities around the world.

VISUALS: Hundreds of activists wearing blue, sitting-in, risking arrest, and accompanied by a marching bands, large puppets, a 300-foot #FloodWallStreet banner and other large-scale art pieces.

#FloodWallStreet is a response to the Climate Justice Alliance’s call for non-violent direct action.

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Auxiliary Events

The full schedule of events following The People’s Climate March is available at: http://www.beyondthemarch.org/

Photos

Images available for use.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzJeebkqbirEMktlX3pyVV9lQ2c&usp=sharing_eid&tid=0B1ROsbfXH_GiYXlfVkdPLVpndzA

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzJeebkqbirEMktlX3pyVV9lQ2c&usp=sharing_eid&tid=0B1ROsbfXH_GiYXlfVkdPLVpndzA

Seattle Activists Mount Tripod – Stop Exploding Oil Trains

RisingTideSeaSept

UPDATE 3:32pm PDT: Abby has been extracted after an epic 8 hour blockade. Donate to get all five awesome climate defenders out of jail!

Five residents of Seattle and Everett, WA, working with Rising Tide Seattle, have stopped work at a Burlington Northern Santa-Fe Rail Yard in Everett by erecting a tripod-structure on the outbound railroad tracks, directly in front of a mile-long oil train. Follow Rising Tide Seattle for live updates on Facebook and Twitter.

Seattle resident Abby Brockway – a small business owner, and mother – is suspended from the structure 18 feet above the tracks while four other residents are locked to the legs the tripod. The group is demanding an immediate halt to all shipments of fossil fuels through the Northwest and calling on Governor Inslee to reject permits for all new fossil fuel projects in Washington, including proposed coal and oil terminals.

Donate to support Abby and the other involved in the action!

“People in the Pacific Northwest are forming a thin green line that will keep oil, coal and gas in the ground,” said Brockway, “Just one of these proposed terminals would process enough carbon to push us past the global warming tipping point – we won’t let that happen.”

Today’s protest has shut down work at BNSF’s Delta Rail Yard in Everett. With the increase of fossil fuel transport in recent years the yard has become a crucial staging ground for coal trains headed to Canadian export terminals and oil trains bound for Washington refineries. An oil-train carrying explosive bakken crude oil sat stalled while the protest continued.

“Exploding oil-trains running through my town are just a reminder of how out of control the fossil fuel industry really is,” said Jackie Minchew an Everett resident and retired educator locked to one of the tripod’s poles.

In a controversial move, Burlington Northern Santa-Fe recently announced a tentative deal with Union leaders to reduce train crews from an engineer and conductor to a single engineer. The oil train that de-railed and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec was crewed by a single engineer. BNSF claims that oil-trains will continue to have two person crews, but critics point out that nothing in the proposed contract binds the company to that statement. Under the proposed deal Coal Trains would be operated by a single crew-member.

“BNSF is endangering workers, communities and our environment. They should keep the conductors and lose the oil trains,” said Brockway.

The surge in oil-train traffic is already impacting other commodities like passenger rail and agricultural shipments. Farmers from the Midwest to Washington State have faced what they call “unprecedented” delays in moving Wheat and other products to West Coast ports. Amtrak service through fossil-fuel train corridors has also suffered significant disruption and officials have expressed concern that the problem will only get worse as more terminals come online.

“Railroads can be part of the solution, transporting crops and people or part of the problem with coal and oil. We should make that decision, not the fossil fuel companies,” Said Patrick Mazza, a longtime climate activist also locked to the tracks.

Mazza says he is taking this action for his daughter who will turn 18 tomorrow.

“My last act as a father before my daughter reaches full adulthood tomorrow is to put my body on the line today,” Said Mazza, “It is up to us of the parental generation to do our absolute best to leave the least climate disrupted world we can, to put our bodies on the line to give our kids a fighting chance to deal with what we have left them.”

Development of extreme energy projects like the Alberta Tar Sands, Bakken Shale Oil and coal from the Powder River Basin, has fueled an explosion in proposed fossil fuel infrastructure in the Northwest. More than twenty new or expanded coal, oil and gas terminals are proposed between British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. In both states and British Columbia these proposals have been met with fierce local resistance. Local communities have challenged both the safety of transporting coal, oil and volatile gas through their communities and the role of fossil fuel export in fueling catastrophic climate disruption. Proposed coal terminals in Longview and Bellingham or oil terminals in Vancouver and Gray’s Harbor, would lead to more carbon emissions than produced in the state of Washington each year.

“We could pass every climate initiative proposed by Governor Inslee, but if we let these terminals be built our future is on the chopping block,” said Liz Spoerri a Seattle middle school teacher also locked on the tracks.

While proposed coal and oil terminals have been controversial for years, climate activists in the Northwest have significantly intensified their tactics this summer. In Montana, residents sat on the tracks to block a coal train last April, and again on August 16th. In early July a woman locked herself to a 55-gallon barrel filled with concrete, blocking oil-trains at a Portland facility. In a similar action on July 28th three people blocked oil-trains at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes by locking themselves to concrete filled barrels. Most recently three Seattle residents, including state legislative candidate Jess Spear, were arrested blocking oil and coal trains near the Seattle Waterfront.

“People in the Northwest are not going to allow this region to become a fossil fuel superhighway,” said Mike LaPoint, an Everett small business owner locked on the tracks. “This is just a sample of the resistance that will happen if any large fossil fuel project is permitted.”

Despite controversy the number of fossil fuel trains on Washington’s rails continues to rise. While larger coal and oil terminals are undergoing lengthy environmental reviews, projects at Washington’s refineries have brought approximately two oil-trains per day to communities like Seattle and Everett. While the Department of Ecology conducts a study on the safety of oil-by-rail construction continues on a new terminal at the Phillips 66 refinery in Ferndale, and local officials are attempting to fast-track an oil-train terminal at Shell’s Puget Sound Refinery, without environmental review. Each of these projects could add up to six oil-trains per week to the rails. Expansions at the Fraser Surrey Docks coal export facility in Vancouver, Canada would increase the number of coal trains moving through Washington. Activists are demanding an immediate moratorium on all new fossil fuel terminals.

“Politicians play a blame game and talk about safety, but new terminals keep getting rubber stamped and built,” said LaPoint, “If elected officials won’t stop the fossil fuel takeover, we’ll have to do it for them.”

Stand with Poisoned Inmates

Graphic by Adam Peck via Think Progress.

This is climate injustice.

In January, thousands of gallons of the toxic coal cleaning chemicals contaminated the drinking supply for 300,000 people and hundreds of inmates at the South Central Regional Jail (SCRJ) in Charleston, WV, were deprived of access to enough safe water.

Many inmates suffered from illness and injury from dehydration or chemical exposure. Some even faced violence and legal repercussions for seeking medical help and for asking for clean water to drink. You can hold SCRJ accountable and ensure the basic human rights for inmates if you speak out right now!

Click here to demand basic human rights and safe water access for inmates at West Virginia’s South Central Regional Jail.

Our allies with West Virginia Water Hub and Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival (RAMPS) met and corresponded with more than 50 inmates, and based on their stories, it’s clear that this failed crisis response is just the latest example in a larger pattern of abuse, violence, and negligence by the jail’s staff and administration.

WV Water Hub and RAMPS are amplifying the voices of inmates and exposing this horrendous abuse in order to force a response from prison authorities.

Add your voice: sign RAMPS’ petition to demand basic human rights for inmates in coal country.

RAMPS has stated that they are acting “in solidarity with broader movements of resistance to the growing prison state and poisonous extractive industries.” Combined, the systems of state repression and fossil fuel industry profit are creating a perpetual crisis. Like RAMPS, our movements must respond in kind and directly confront fossil fuel expansion, challenge the political power of that system, and act in solidarity with those facing the brunt of the crisis.

That is climate justice.