environmental justice – Rising Tide North America

cross-posted from the Green and Red Podcast

Last month, Texas was hit by a series of severe winter storms. The resulting polar vortex left more than four and half million Texans without power and water. Some for several days. Some still are without water. The death toll across the state has exceeded 100 people.

Texas’s power grid is independent of the rest of the country’s. It’s governed by a corrupt body called the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). ERCOT is rooted in decades of privatization and the rollback of oversight and deregulation of Texas utility markets. Deregulation is what led to the power crisis. This deregulation has benefited Texas’s wealthy elite, oil companies, private utilities, but not the low-income, Black and Brown communities throughout the state.

Communities already struggling at the intersection of economic and environmental injustice were hit the hardest by the Texas power crisis. Neighborhoods surrounding Houston’s complex of oil refineries and petro-chemical plants were subjected to additional pollutants when the complexes had to shut down during the winter power outages. A lack of essential services pushes them further to economic precarity.

We’re also cross-promoting an episode of the Green and Red Podcast. This interview features environmental justice organizer Bryan Parras from Houston, Texas. So please listen and hear about the root causes of the environmental and economic injustice in Houston’s “petro metro”.

Environmental justice demands that we ask what kind of world we want to live in, and is as much a social issue as an environmental one. Our practice, as part of a movement to build a livable future, is to empower marginalized communities and to dismantle the systems of oppression that keep us divided. As part of that, Rising Tide supports mutual aid efforts in the wake of disasters like the Texas winter crisis.

So, we’re asking you to donate and support the mutual aid and community organizations that continue to support those hit hardest by the power outages. It’s been almost a month since the storm, the lights aren’t on and the water is still not running for everyone.

Here’s a list of mutual aid links in Texas that need support:

For immediate release, July 31, 2017

Contact: Laurel Sutherlin, Rainforest Action Network — 415. 246. 0161

For High Resolution Photos, please contact Ayse Gursoz at ayse@ran.org

Kinder Morgan Richmond Terminal
Richmond, CA 94804

For Second Consecutive Week Activists Shut Down Kinder Morgan Richmond Terminal; Demand Halt to Trans Mountain Tar Sands Pipeline

UPDATE: 8/1/17

The arrestees, Henry and Jean, are out of jail! They were released early this morning.

We’re still waiting for confirmation of what their charges are from the lawyer. We’ll update all when we know. Thanks Henry and Jean ?? And thanks to all the wonderful people who did legal support and jail support. Can’t do it without you!?

And thanks to the other two arrestees from Monday, July 24th’s action at Kinder Morgan – Stardust and Bob ???

DONATE for fines and other legal costs: http://ow.ly/qlvj30e1PYe

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7/31/17

Richmond, CA — In a sign of growing escalation, seven protesters locked themselves to steel barrels and blocked three gates of the Kinder Morgan Richmond Terminal for the second time in two weeks, demanding that the company halt its new Trans Mountain pipeline in Canada. In what many environmental and Indigenous activists are starting to call the “Standing Rock of the North,” the controversial project would triple the capacity of an existing pipeline from Edmonton, Calgary to Burnaby, British Columbia — an increase to 890,000 barrels per day. This project is based on the extraction of tar sands oil, one of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuels.

If arrests are made, protesters will need donations for bail ASAP. Watch here for the DONATE link, if it becomes necessary.

“Our First Nations relatives are not going to allow the Trans Mountain pipeline to go through their territories in Canada,” said Pennie Opal Plant of Idle No More SF Bay. “Investing in any fossil fuel infrastructure is foolish. We all know that we must transition off of fossil fuels in order to prevent catastrophic climate change. Why waste so many resources on a losing proposition?”

The growing Bay Area resistance to this Kinder Morgan pipeline stands with over 140 tribes comprising The Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion. The groundbreaking alliance of Indigenous nations formally opposes all tar sands pipelines crossing their traditional lands and waters. The recently elected government of British Columbia also opposes the project.

“Thanks to California’s brand new cap and trade climate bill AB 398, it’s now extremely likely that this very terminal we are blocking today will be a destination point for the tar sands oil that would be piped in by Trans Mountain,” said Andres Soto of Communities for a Better Environment. “AB 398 is an abomination and a threat to environmental justice worldwide.”

AB 398 passed just two weeks earlier despite opposition from a broad coalition of climate and environmental justice groups. The new law blocks the ability of local air quality agencies from establishing rules limiting greenhouse gases and opens up the door for refining tar sands crude in Richmond, which would worsen air pollution in surrounding communities.

“From the fence-lines of Richmond, we stand in solidarity with the First Nations fighting on the frontlines of tar sands extraction,” said Adrian Wilson of Diablo Rising Tide. “It is time to start fighting back against these oil companies polluting our communities from the cradle to the grave of the fossil fuel death cycle.”

Kinder Morgan, a spin-off from Enron, is one of North America’s largest energy infrastructure companies. The company claims it will start construction on its 715-mile Trans Mountain pipeline in September despite fierce opposition to the project from numerous First Nations and other communities and cities along its path.

“We salute all the water protectors, coast protectors and climate warriors on the front lines of these pipeline battles, standing up for Indigenous rights, the water and a safe climate,” said Grand Chief Serge Simon of the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake on behalf of the Indigenous Nations who have signed the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion. “Resistance to Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion tar sands pipeline and tanker project will be strongest in British Columbia, but it won’t stop there: Kinder Morgan can count on fierce resistance all over North America by Indigenous People and their allies.”

“This is clearly just the beginning,” said Patrick McCully of Rainforest Action Network. “This is the second week in a row that activists are blockading this facility — and you can expect protests up and down the West Coast as banks and oil companies continue to try and profit from climate chaos and human rights violations that will be caused by these disastrous tar sands pipelines. Companies like Kinder Morgan are on notice. Banks like JPMorgan Chase are on notice. Get out of tar sands. Get out of extreme oil. Get out of the climate change business and get on the right side of science and history.”

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Diablo Rising Tide is the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Rising Tide North America. Rising Tide North America is an all-volunteer grassroots organizing network in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico who confronts the root causes of climate change with non-violent direct action and grassroots organizing and education. You can find out more at www.diablorisingtide.org

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Tag: environmental justice

Support Environmental Justice in Houston

Two Arrested After Shutting Down Kinder Morgan Terminal in Escalating Protests Against Major Tar Sands Oil Pipeline