Tag: direct action

400 March, Seven Arrested While Disrupting Philly TD Bank Locations over Pipeline Financing

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standing_rock_rally_sept_2016-20-credit-hanbit-kwonContact: Jed Laucharoen, (917) 291-1910, jedtsada.seas@gmail.com

Over 400 People March in Philly #NoDAPL Solidarity Action

7 Arrested While Disrupting 5 TD Bank Locations over Pipeline Financing

PHILADELPHIA — On Saturday afternoon, over 400 Philadelphia residents marched through Center City in response to a global call for solidarity action against funders of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Thousands of water protectors, led by the Standing Rock Sioux, are camped near pipeline construction in North Dakota. The Camps aim to halt the Dakota Access Pipeline, which would pass beneath the Missouri River, threatening the water supply of millions. The crowd stopped at multiple TD bank locations. Earlier in the day, business was disrupted at 5 TD Bank locations resulting in 7 arrests and several branch closings. TD Bank is one of the top banks financing the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“We in Philly stand with the Standing Rock Sioux today. The Dakota Access Pipeline threatens our Native land, sovereignty and water. We call on TD Bank to stop its funding of the Dakota Access Pipeline and to stand up for Indigenous rights,” said Charlie Under Baggage, Philadelphia resident and citizen of the Oglala Lakota Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation.

td2TD Securities has pledged $365M committed to the project, in revolving credit and project-level loans*. It is also a Coordinating Lead Arranger and Joint Bookrunner of a credit agreement with Dakota Access, LLC.

“We know that only by unifying as so many have done in Bismarck, ND and in cities across the United States, we can stop this pipeline and prevent further injustices against Native communities. When we stand with our allies in communities of color, in environmental justice communities and with Indigenous people worldwide, we are unbreakable.” said Liz Ellis, who is Peoria, and a postdoctoral fellow of early American studies at UPenn.

The march was organized by Philly #NoDAPL Solidarity, a coalition of Native Americans and non-Native allies, who have come together to support the Standing Rock Sioux in their struggle, and accelerate the termination of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics (together, majority owners of Dakota Access, LLC) are also heavily involved locally, in the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery and the Mariner East pipeline. Philly #NoDAPL recognizes the connectedness of these struggles and the need to unify broadly to win.

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Oklahoma “Glitter’ Activists Found Not Guilty!

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okOklahoma “Glitter’ Activists Found Not Guilty!

Reposted from Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance

Judge Phillipa James announced today a Not Guilty Verdict in regards to last month’s Disorderly Conduct trial of local environmental activists Moriah Stephenson and Stefan Warner. Stephenson and Warner were arrested nearly two and a half years earlier when glitter spilled off of a Hunger Games-themed banner that the activists hung in the open-to-the-public atrium of the Devon Energy building. The glittery banner read, “The Odds Are Never in Our Favor.”

At their trial, Stephenson and Warner explained that the banner was intended to highlight the disproportionate ways in which oil and gas development occurs. Stephenson explained, “Our intent was to highlight that the odds are never in our favor, our being the people’s favor.” Stephenson explained that oil and gas development disenfranchises communities of color and low-income, rural communities, a practice commonly referred to as environmental racism. Stephenson told the courtroom, “The purpose of the demonstration was to raise awareness about Devon Energy’s involvement in tar sands extraction and the environmentally racist nature of tar sands extraction.” Warner contributed that the large tax incentives that oil and gas corporations receive have exacerbated our current economic crisis in Oklahoma. Additionally, oil and gas corporations gain wealth from hydraulic fracturing, while homeowners are forced to pay for earthquake damage that results from the disposal of fracking wastewater.

The activists’ lawyer argued that Stephenson and Warner’s actions were a form of protected free speech. Judge Philipa James found that Warner and Stephenson were both engaged in political protest and that the evidence presented by both the defense and the City of Oklahoma City established that there was no “public alarm” caused by the protest activity.

For interviews or questions, contact: Moriah Stephenson (405) 283-6140

Rising Tide North America Solidarity Delegation to the Philippines Begins!

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philippines_typhoon2This week, Rising Tiders from Portland and Seattle traveled to the Philippines on a solidarity mission to visit Indigenous communities in Mindanao on the frontlines of climate destruction, capitalism and imperialism.

They will be traveling in Kidapawan, currently in a state of calamity due to a crippling drought and the recent site of a massacre in which farmers and indigenous folk were fired upon after setting up a street blockade to demand that inaccessible government food rations be distributed.

And then traveling to Davao for two human rights conferences: the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines general assembly, and the International Conference on Peoples’ Rights in the Philippines.

As the group has said:

“We believe that joining our allies on this trip to the Philippines is the most important way we can show our solidarity with this People of Color led movement in the United States, and our allies in the Global South. In fact it is the thing we have been repeatedly asked to do by our BAYAN kasamas.”

Historically conditioned as a colonial experiment and geographically located in the rapidly changing climate of the Global South, the Philippines stands as a frontline nation against political and environmental repression.  As international mining companies seek to drive communities off their ancestral mineral-rich land, the Philippine Armed Forces uses its monopoly on violence to enforce this destructive logic of capital accumulation, while escalating deforestation is wiping out ecosystems, poisoning water sources, and removing natural sources of carbon sequestration.

Meanwhile, though the country is hardly industrialized enough to be a major contributor to climate change, it bears some of the worst effects, such as increased risk from sea level rise and massive typhoons.  Yet despite it all, the Filipino people rise up and resist.  Now is the time for uncompromising solidarity with our allies in the Philippines fighting for their right to life, dignity, and a world in which we all can live.

Transnational solidarity is an important step in fighting the root causes of climate change. Furthermore, ensuring that our allies in the Philippines fighting for their right to life, dignity, and a world in which we all can live are given support and solidarity from the Global North.

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Twenty-One People Arrested Blockading Oil Train Route in Vancouver, WA

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vancouverTwenty-One People Arrested Blockading Oil Train Route in Vancouver, WA

via Portland Rising Tide

Over 100 people stopped rail traffic by forming a human blockade across the tracks in Vancouver, WA on Saturday, June 18.  Watch a recap video and donate to their legal fund.

Organized by the Fossil Fuel Resistance Network in response to the recent oil train derailment in Mosier, OR, the action united voices from across the region in concern not only about the potential local impacts of continued oil-by-rail, but also about the immediate and critical threats of carbon emissions and climate change. During the blockade, many community members spoke about their grief and rage that corporate greed is putting our local ecosystems and communities at risk and fueling the sixth great global extinction.

The Union Pacific train that derailed in Mosier on June 3rd contaminated the Columbia River and local sewer system with crude oil fracked from the Bakken Shale, ignited a fire that released toxic oil smoke into the air, evacuated local neighborhoods and schools, and ultimately drained the city’s entire aquifer.  In the last three years alone, oil train derailments in North America have killed forty-seven people, spilled millions of gallons of oil into waterways, forced the evacuation of thousands and caused billions of dollars in property damage and environmental destruction.

Community members connected the local disaster to a greater climate crisis – ecosystems across the planet are rapidly destabilizing, confirming the worst case scenarios of climate scientists’ predictions.  “We need Governors Brown and Inslee to do more than just advocate for a temporary moratorium on oil trains!  We need them to enact an immediate just transition to a post-fossil fuel economy,” said Portland resident Audrey Caines.  “If governments are not going to take decisive and immediate action to keep fossil fuels in the ground, people’s movements like this one will.”

Speakers also addressed the social consequences of fossil fuel infrastructure, stating that marginalized communities bear disproportionate risks and consequences, as oil train blast zones, pipeline routes, and drilling sites typically exist in low-income rural areas and communities of color. In Mosier, the disaster threatened food and water sources for local Native tribes.

BNSF and the Vancouver city police tried to disperse the crowd multiple times.  In an act of pure intimidation, BNSF ran an engine within 50 feet of the protesters on the tracks and blew it’s horn repeatedly.  Despite the looming non-verbal threat, nobody sitting on the rails made any moves to leave.

The Pacific Northwest has seen a growing movement against fossil fuel transport throughout the region.  Concerned residents point out that proposed new fossil fuel terminals and terminal expansions, including the proposed Tesoro-Savage oil terminal in Vancouver, WA, could result in a dramatic increase in coal and oil trains passing through the Columbia Gorge each week. Mosier would see five times the amount of oil train traffic if these projects are approved. “This is not just the beginning!” said Portland Rising Tide activist Mia Reback. “This movement is growing and will not stop until all fossil fuel extraction projects are shut down and all known fossil fuel reserves are kept safely in the ground! Oil barons beware: we will be back!”