Tag: Rising Tide Seattle

Seattle: #YouShellNotPass Blockades Shut Down Terminal 5

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pics via Brandon Hill

#YouShellNotPass Blockades Shut Down Terminal 5 At The Port Of Seattle

Seattle, WA, Hundreds of people blockaded the gates to Terminal 5 at the Port of Seattle, stopping work on Shell’s Arctic Drilling rig Polar Pioneer.

“Everyone is out here today, we have scientists, teachers and city councilmembers risking arrest because they understand the severity of this moment,” said Sarra Tekola a student with Divest University of Washington who recently won a vote to divest their school’s endowment from Coal. “Climate change isn’t a polar bear issue it’s a human rights issue, climate change displaces people from their countries, 40 years ago desertification kicked my father out of his country in Ethiopia and it’s going to get worse. This is our lunch counter to sit on, this is our history to be made, we hold the world in our hands.”

A loose network of several dozen groups calling themselves the sHell No! Action Council (SNAC) organized today’s action. SNAC has focused their opposition to Arctic Drilling on the impacts of Global Warming on the impacts on peoples in the Global South and indigenous communities.

“For the past few years, the Philippines has ranked highly as a country most vulnerable to climate change. My heart fills with dread every time I hear another news report on an extreme weather event in the Philippines, where my family still lives” says Bayan PNW Coordinator Katrina Pesta*ño*. “As the U.S. consumes 20% of the world’s energy resources, we Filipino Americans believe it is our duty to organize for more renewable energy sources and against activities that would extract fossil fuels from the earth,” added Katrina. “Islands like the Philippines continue to disproportionately face the brunt of disaster brought on by global climate change.”

City Councilmember Kshama Sawant joined hundreds of Seattlites prepared to risk arrest in today’s action. While the majority of participants were local, some travelled from as far as the east coast and the gulf south.

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via Brandon Hill

“Just last week I was at a rally in front of a polluting Shell asphalt
refinery in Saint Rose, Louisiana. Neighbors there are sick from Shell’s pollution. Shell cannot safely operate the facilities it already has. There’s no way this company should be allowed to drill in the Arctic,” said Anne Rolfes, a New Orleans resident participating in today’s action.

Others traveled from Alaska to show their opposition to Shell’s plans, including a number of Alaskan Native activists.

“I’m here as an Inupiaq person to support and stand with the activists and kayaktivists in the effort to keep the Arctic Ocean free of drilling for oil. Quyanaqpak for helping protect our way of life,” said Allison Warden, who travelled to Seattle from the Arctic for this weekend’s events.

Part of the group locked down are the Seattle Raging Grannies. “My generation is responsible for the way things are and we owe it to our children and grandchildren to stand up to make a change and protect their future” said Annette Clapstein.

Zarna Joshi dressed in a sari and holding a sign that says Vande Mataram, I bow to my mother, said. “I will not allow the future of our planet, my mother, to be destroyed by this greedy, short sighted, capitalist system that is utterly failing the people.” She says she wants to invite her Indian brothers and sisters to join in this fight for our future.

Organizers with the sHell No! Action Council say the process they used to organize their protests was just as important as the outcomes. The council called mass meetings and used a spokescouncil modeled off the planning for the 1999 WTO protests. Over 200 people participated in democratic planning for today’s actions.

”Today we’re not just shutting down Shell, we’re challenging corporate capitalism, imperialism and colonialism with a vision of people power and true mass democracy,” said Ahmed Gaya an organizer with Rising Tide Seattle, one of the groups participating in the sHell No! Action Council.

Pictures Available Here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/132256949@N04/sets/72157650744653893/
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*Spokespeople*
Katrina Pestano, Bayan PNW Coordinator – 206-403-0349
Joaquin Uy, Bayan PNW – 206-427-2999
Sarra Tekola, Divest University of Washington (UW) – 206-718-7347
Anne Rolfes, Louisiana Bucket Brigade – 504-452-4909
Jill Mangaliman, Got Green Executive Director – jill@gotgreen.org
JM Wong, Parisol – dameimee247854@gmail.com
Ahmed Gaya – Rising Tide Seattle, 773-960-2587
Emily Johnston – 350 Seattle, 206-407-5003

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BREAKING: Activists Use Tripod To Block Shell’s Seattle Operations

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seattle*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*

Contact: Charles Conatzer
charlesadamseattle@gmail.com
(206)556-9251

Activists Use Tripod To Block Shell’s Seattle Operations

May 12, Seattle, WA.  Days after the Foss Maritime announced that they
intended to defy Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, and illegally host Shell’s Arctic
drilling fleet, Seattle activists have blockaded Shell’s Seattle fuel transfer station by erecting a tripod.

Seattle resident Annie Lukins, who is suspended from the top of the tripod,
says she made the decision to block the facility because like everyone who
lives near the shore, she has a stake in stopping Shell.  “Shell already
knows the impacts of drilling in the arctic. They are placing themselves in
defiance of climate science, in defiance of the treaty subsistence rights
of the Inupiat, and in defiance of our elected official here in Seattle.
I’m here because I’m not the only young person who wants to raise her
children near the shore. Whether they are my kids or the kids of the
Inupiat people of the arctic, I want the next generation to be able to to
eat fish from the ocean whose flesh doesn’t carry the killing toxins of
crude oil. Shell has already proven they cannot safely operate in the
arctic, and the niger delta has shown us that they don’t clean up after
themselves. We need to ban arctic drilling now.”

“By coming to seattle in defiance of the mayor’s announcement, Shell is
proving again what we already know.” Said Marianna Coles Curtis, who helped support the protest “They are getting away with illegally docking their
drilling fleet here by paying $500 a day. It’s like a parking ticket.  This
is a company that made nearly $15 billion in profits last year, so $500 a
day isn’t anything to them. It just shows how companies like Shell, BP, and
Exxon can trample all over a community, and then get away with a small fine
that hardly takes a chip out of their profit.”

Shell’s criminal activities are worldwide.  The oil giant has come under
public scrutiny for numerous environmental and human rights violations.
Shell is responsible for the spilling of 1.5 million tons of oil in the

Niger Delta over the last 50 years. According to human rights watch groups,
Shell has made inadequate efforts to remediate impacts, and the oil has led
to massive fish kills which have devastated the local fishing economy.

Shell’s Arctic drilling mission has also sparked controversy. In 2012,
Shell ran one of their Arctic rigs aground, violated permits regulating air
pollution, and failed to certify crucial safety equipment. These
violations have prompted Inupiat leaders to come forward in opposition to
Shell’s Arctic drilling project, saying that it poses too great a danger to
the tribe’s treaty subsistence rights.

Next week, thousands of protestors from Seattle and beyond plan to converge
at terminal 5 and Harbor Island to non-violently resist the progress of
Shell’s Arctic drilling rigs and support vessels.  On May 16 a
family-friendly Paddle in Seattle will rally people on water and land to
protest their presence.  Then  May 18,  activists plan direct action on
land. Read more about “Festival of Resistance” at Shellno.org.

“We are going to stand up.” Lukins said. “Until Barak Obama has to make a
choice – arrest an entire movement for standing in defense of our own
environment and in defense of the treaty rights of indigenous people, or
end arctic drilling!”

DIRECTIONS: The Tripod is on 16th Ave Southwest on Harbor Island, just
north of the corner of 16th Ave SW and Lander St. Turn north onto 16th Ave
SW off of Spokane St and drive north until lander street, the protest will
be on your right.

### PHOTOS AND INTERVIEWS WITH ANNIE AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST ###

Seattle Activists Mount Tripod – Stop Exploding Oil Trains

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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.”