Tag: san francisco

Bay Area: PG&E, We Need #PowertoLive! On December 16th!

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cross-posted from Diablo Rising Tide

We shouldn’t have to choose between deadly blackouts or deadly fires. We shouldn’t be at the mercy of PG&E’s negligence while vulnerable communities who need #PowerToLive and the public continue to pay the price.

Join us on December 16th at noon at the PG&E corporate headquarters on 77 Beale St in San Francisco to #ReclaimOurPower and let’s start a wave of action that continues through the winter. There will be speakers, programming, and more! Accessible and kid-friendly.

PG&E, we demand you:

1. GIVE BACK ALL SHAREHOLDER PROFITS UNTIL PG&E CAN SAFELY PROVIDE POWER. STOP PROFITING OFF PEOPLE’S LIVES.

PG&E has paid out billions in shareholder dividends to predatory investors, while people are dying due to PG&E’s negligence. PG&E has failed to upgrade infrastructure for the stresses we face amidst climate change. Their equipment failures start fires that burn down cities, displace whole communities, and poison the air we breathe across entire regions. PG&E dodges accountability by continuing to seek executive bonuses amidst bankruptcy, shutting down power instead of repairing their equipment, and spending thousands on an exclusive retreat the day before the largest shutoffs.

2. INVEST IN VULNERABLE PEOPLE’S BASIC POWER NEEDS. STOP PUTTING PEOPLE AT RISK.

Disabled people have died in the shut offs — even one loss is too many. Ten more years of blackouts are unacceptable because blackouts kill disabled people and harm Black and Brown, working class and poor communities. #NoBodyIsDisposable! PG&E must invest in: solar-powered batteries to power the equipment of every medical baseline customer during power outages; HEPA air filters for chronically ill people, elders, and children in areas impacted by fire smoke; groceries for people who live paycheck to paycheck; alternative lodging for people whose homes depend on power to survive; compensation for small businesses who experienced losses during the shutoffs; and, payouts to victims of PG&E-caused fires.

3. TURN PG&E OVER TO THE PEOPLE.

PG&E has a well documented history of criminal negligence of its infrastructure, which has caused fires, death, and destruction. Now, PG&E has claimed that it will take ten years to fix California’s grid — that means 10 more years of rolling black outs with the public footing the bill. This is unacceptable and will consistently put so many lives at risk. We won’t let PG&E continue with their negligence. A public takeover of the grid will allow for the needs of the public, rather than shareholders, to be the priority. By switching to a publicly owned grid, California can create a more democratized, decentralized, and sustainable power grid for all.

RSVP To Join the Action Here

San Francisco: Strike for Climate Justice on September 25th!

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Cross-posted from Diablo Rising Tide

Strike for Climate Justice!

This September, millions of people will take collective action to demand climate justice.

Join us in San Francisco for a mass non-violent direct action on September 25th to confront the corporations and governments responsible for this crisis.

Wednesday Sept 25th: Direct Action – 7am at Montgomery & Market in downtown San Francisco

RSVP for the action!

DISRUPT: THE CLIMATE WRECKERS IN THEIR CORPORATE SUITES: We have identified and will take nonviolent direct action to disrupt key locations of climate of corporations, financial institutions and government offices along or near Montgomery St.We’re asking affinity groups to take nonviolent direct action and disrupt these locations.

CREATE: SOLUTIONS IN THE STREETS: We will paint 20 circular street murals of solutions to climate chaos and injustice along Montgomery St., together with music and popular education about solutions, transforming “Wall St West” (Montgomery St) into a positive vision of solutions. There is a Bay Area tradition of large scale community street murals for climate justice, culminating last Sept in 50 street murals of solutions in the streets around SF Civic Center.

We are asking affinity groups–and mural teams from our communities–to commit to one mural. Music and education is also encouraged along the streets.

SUSTAIN: We will not just show up for an hour or two, but like other catalytic climate justice actions around the world. We will sustain our action for the full workday, beginning at 7am and continuing to 5pm. The public is invited to join us.

The first KICK OFF MEETNG for the September 25th “Strike for Climate Justice” will be September 4th at the Omni Commons in Oakland. Details here.

Read the full Call to Action here.

Initiated by Idle No More SF Bay, Extinction Rebellion SF Bay, Diablo Rising Tide, 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations, and the Society of Fearless Grandmothers

For more info: https://www.climatejusticesf.org/

San Francisco: Climate Shenanigans Target California Democratic Convention

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photo courtesy of Diablo Rising Tide.

via Diablo Rising Tide

This weekend, as California’s Democrats, the next generation’s “real climate leader” Gov. Gavin Newsom and a dozen or so presidential candidates gathered in San Francisco, guerrilla climate advertisers with Diablo Rising Tide pasted, projected and otherwise displayed messages to the liberal masses about fossil fuels and climate change.

One of California’s biggest secrets is that the oil lobby has captured the  state government and dominates the public and political discourse around fossil fuels and climate change.

California writer Dan Bacher recently outlined a must-read of the power, influence and methods that the oil lobby uses around the state:

photo courtesy of Diablo Rising Tide.

“The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) is not a household name in California, but it should be. It’s the trade association for the oil industry and the largest and most powerful corporate lobbying organization in the state. If  you want to know the industries, organizations and people that control California, WSPA and Big Oil are right at the top of the list.

WSPA represents a who’s who of oil and pipeline companies, including AERA, BP, California Resources Corporation, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Plains All American Pipeline Company, Valero and many others. The companies that WSPA represents account for the bulk of petroleum exploration, production, refining, transportation and marketing in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, according to the WSPA website, www.wspa.org.

WSPA and Big Oil wield their power and influence over public discourse in 6 major ways: through (1) lobbying; (2) campaign spending; (3) serving on and putting shills on regulatory panels; (4) creating Astroturf groups: (5) working in collaboration with media; and (6) contributing to non profit organizations.”

photo courtesy of Diablo Rising Tide.

In San Francisco this weekend, WSPA remained behind the scenes, but disruptions, bird-dogs and protest were peppered through the weekend targeting Newsom and presidential candidates.

  • At one point 11 year Charlie asked Newsom why California wasn’t adopting a Green New Deal. Newsom, doing his best impression of Dianne Feinstein, told Charlie that “California is doing enough on climate.” Clearly, in a state where hundreds of oil drilling permits were issued in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, a million acres of federal land are being opened to fracking and an entire city burned to the ground during wildfires, the state of California and its governor is not doing enough.
  • A group of Porter Ranch residents found Governor Newsom to ask him when the infamous Aliso Canyon methane storage facility was going to be closed. He re-committed to closing the facility, but forgot to include what his timeline. Maybe he should have just done it the first time and he’d not have to re-commit.
  • Climate youth also converged outside and inside the convention calling for stronger climate action.
  • And then the “conservative voice” of the Democratic presidential candidates, former Colorado Gov. John “Frackenlooper” Hickenlooper was booed during most of his speech after attacking climate action, healthcare for all and socialism. We should have disrupted that shithead.

More shenanigans await as we aim to continue fucking with Big Oil and its lacky politicians.

Bay Area: Indigenous and Climate Activists Blockade #OilyWells Fargo HQ

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Swarming the front of Oily Wells.

via Oily Wells

Today in San Francisco, a coalition of over 50 organizations, organized by 350 Silicon Valley, blockaded the global headquarters of Well Fargo.

The action culminated a 3-day 34-mile march at the front door of the banking giant’s global headquarters with an Indigenous grandmother’s led sit-in across the front doors and a simultaneously organized barrel blockade across San Francisco’s iconic California Street.

Below is 350 Silicon Valley’s press release and lots of reasons Wells Fargo needs to be put out of business:

SF Rally Targets “OilyWells” Fargo’s Funding of Big Oil

Alarmed by Climate Crisis, Hundreds Expected as Multi-Day March Ends

PALO ALTO, CA – At a mass rally in front of Wells Fargo Bank’s global headquarters at noon (PDT) today, demonstrators will call on Big Oil’s largest lender to halt its financing of fossil fuels and invest instead in clean energy solutions to the climate crisis

The rally aims to expose another aspect of the scandal-plagued bank’s unethical practices—its central role in the ever-expanding oil and gas industry—at a time when the U.N. has called for “rapid and far reaching” action within 12 years to avert environmental, social and economic catastrophe caused by ever-rising carbon emissions.

Idle No More SF Bay blocking the front doors to Wells Fargo world HQ.

The rally caps the historic 3-day March for Fossil Fuel Freedom (34 miles from Palo Alto to SF) with hundreds of marchers from more than 50 Bay Area grassroots organizations. Marchers paused at a series of “stagecoach stops” to hear talks by former Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, Redwood City Mayor Ian Bain, and other prominent environmental and labor activists; and to sing along with The Raging Grannies and Thrive Street Choir. The march and associated events are all part of a campaign, led by 350 Silicon Valley, to rename the nation’s fourth largest bank “Oily Wells.”

“Oily Wells has a dirty-energy secret, backing the biggest new projects and profiting handsomely from climate chaos” says Stew Plock, vice president of 350 Silicon Valley, lead organizer of the rally. “If they don’t quit, then consumers and investors should quit them.”

The bank is a leading lender to the fracking industry and on pipelines carrying Canadian tar sands, one of the most environmentally damaging sources of fuel (including the proposed Line 3 in Minnesota and Keystone XL in the Midwest). [EDITOR’S NOTE: For more on Wells Fargo’s dirty-energy funding, see the 10th annual Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card, led by Rainforest Action Network, embargoed until March 20.]

Barrel blockade.

“We urge Oily Wells to become the first major U.S. bank to avoid all fossil fuel infrastructure projects, as a few big European banks have already begun to do,” says Isabella Zizi, an organizer with Idle No More SF Bay. “If you cut off the flow of money, you can cut off the flow of oil. That’s why the divestment movement is so important.”

350 Silicon Valley’s partners include SEIU 1021 and 521, Sierra Club, Diablo Rising Tide, Idle No More SF Bay, Rainforest Action Network, Sunrise Movement, California Interfaith Power & Light, Sunflower Alliance, and Extinction Rebellion. They join hundreds of other groups in calling for divestment from fossil fuels, and a prohibition on oil and gas infrastructure.

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For complete details, visit https://oilywells.com/.