It’s Getting Hot In Here

Via SAMS

Ison Rock Ridge is a mountain in southwest Virginia under attack by coal companies seeking to blow the top off of it for seams of coal. Today in Appalachia, VA, 50 Virginia residents and Mountain Justice activists marched through the town to celebrate Ison Rock Ridge and protest it’s pending demise.

Here’s the press release:

Local Residents March in Downtown Appalachia to Celebrate Ison Rock Ridge and Protest Mountain’s Pending Demise

Appalachia, VA – Over 50 people marched through downtown Appalachia, calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to deny the proposed surface mine permit for Ison Rock Ridge and keep the ridge standing. People marched with puppets of Ison Rock Ridge, King Coal holding Governor McDonnell and Representative Morgan Griffith, and signs saying “Keep Ison Rock Ridge Standing,” and “Friends of Mountains and Miners,” while musicians played traditional Appalachian tunes.

“The EPA is our last line of defense, here in Appalachia. We support what they have done to date to hold up this permit and we just want them to stick to their guns and stand strong,” said Sam Broach, former miner and president of Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards.

The event was kicked off with a rally at 10 a.m. downtown with speakers from SAMS and allied organizations representing 10 different states. After the rally, the group marched through downtown Appalachia with the signs and puppets while chanting “Keep Ison Rock Ridge Standing.” People marched to the Andover Community Center where they celebrated the mountain’s 460 millionth birthday with a fish fry and birthday cake. The party was a celebration that the mountain remains standing, its cultural value preserved and the health of neighboring communities protected for generations to come.

“If this permit is approved, we will only see an increase in the already-devastating health impacts on our people as result of mountaintop removal coal mining,” said Jane Branham, a nurse and vice-president of Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards. “Our people are dying from the pollution in the water and air and the EPA is the only agency that is willing to take a stand to protect us.” Continue reading ‘Appalachians Celebrate Ison Rock Ridge and Protest the Mountain’s Pending Demise’

This morning a group of climate activists in Portland, Oregon gathered at the base of one of the city’s busiest bridges, to urge morning commuters to help put the final nail in the coffin of the Palomar natural gas pipeline.  The pipeline’s main backer, NW Natural Gas, is holding its annual shareholder meeting this afternoon.  This presents a great opportunity to call the company out on its support for a piece of fossil fuel infrastructure that would carve through stands of old growth in Mt Hood National Forest, cut across salmon-bearing streams, and add to the region’s dependence on fossil fuels.  As one of our banners proudly proclaimed, NW Natural must learn that Oregonians won’t let the Palomar project move forward – not now, and not ever.

You can help stop the Palomar Pipeline by sending a message to NW Natural’s board of directors right now.

Earlier this spring, climate activists in Oregon celebrated NW Natural Gas’ withdrawal of its original application to build the Palomar Pipeline.  This was and remains a major victory for our movement, but NW Natural is already plotting to bring back a scaled-down version of the pipeline.  Palomar was originally supposed to bring imported LNG (liquefied natural gas) to the western half of the US, by connecting a proposed LNG terminal on the Columbia River to existing gas pipelines.  Now the terminal associated with Palomar is dead, and NW Natural seems to have given up the western half of their project.  But the company is discussing submitting a new application for a shorter Palomar Pipeline as early as next year. Continue reading ‘Protecting Oregon from a New Palomar Pipeline’

Between April 17th and April 20th, Rising Tide North America along with friends and allies around the world commemorated the BP Oil Disaster with days of action against extraction.

From the BP Shareholder’s meeting in London to a 300 person occupation of the Dept. of Interior in Washington D.C. to direct actions in Chicago, Oregon, Ft. Worth, TX, New Zealand and lots of other places around the world, the direct action wing of the climate movements is putting “action” back into “climate action.”

Here’s a new video about that week.

Continue reading ‘Video: Rising Tide Day of Action Against Extraction’

via RAN.org

Cross Posted from RAN’s Understory

by Ginger Cassady

Climbers are hanging from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge right now, calling on Chevron to take responsibility for its oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

Last week, the 30,000 Ecuadoreans affected by Chevron’s toxic legacy in the Amazon issued a moving “Open Letter to the United States” calling on Americans to stand with them in demanding justice. Today, a group of RAN activists heeded their call by unfurling a banner reading “Chevron Guilty, Clean Up Ecuador” from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge in the shadow of Chevron’s Richmond refinery:

Brand New Video, Standing Up to Chevron:

Mitch Anderson from Amazon Watch reports near the Richmond Bridge:

Stay tuned, more video is coming soon. Continue reading ‘BREAKING NEWS: RAN Activists Unfurl 50′ Banner “Chevron Guilty-Clean Up Amazon”’

Guest post by Wilma Steele (Meador, WV, Mingo County) regarding the upcoming march on Blair Mountain

The March on Blair Mountain is a unifying rally involving environmental justice organizations, workers, scholars, artists, and other citizens and groups. Visit appalachiarising.org or marchonblairmountain.org for information. See you in June 4 – 11!

Guns are now silent! The blood stained earth, spent shell castings, and unmanned cannon stand as the silent evidence of what happened on old Blair Mountain.  Ninety years now she’s kept the past a secret. Her story is only whispered now and then among poets and scholars, or retold by a few of the miners’ sons & daughters.

Blair Mountain stood strong as the world changed. Don Chafin and President Harding thought their victory would bring them lasting fame, but few remember them, and those who do only remember their shame. Roosevelt, instead, took center stage. He brought in a New Deal and made way for a new powerful union.

King Coal no longer owned his workers!  With the UMW, the miners stood united. At the company store script had no value and miners’ pockets jingled with copper and silver.  The miners even bought their own houses. They carried in the few precious things that hadn’t been destroyed when Baldwin Felts pitched them out on the streets.  Upon their walls they hung pictures of FDR and John L. Lewis in the place of honor – beside of Jesus and their old banjo.

Sounds of music and the whistle of the train drifted in the wind.  Blair Mountain stood quietly above the new road and cars. It seemed as if she was watching as big new machines were brought up the mountain.  King Coal no longer needed so many workers!  Blair watched as many miners packed up their families, their red bandannas, their ginseng hoes, and their banjos: they left their mountains.

It seemed like they took some of the mountaineers’ heart and soul with them. Money was rolling in the hills now but only a few were getting rich. Coal operators were still doing well. Miners’ wages were much higher. The UMW owned 75% of their own D.C. Bank, as well as their own journal. This new UMW president had his wonderful accomplishments printed in their paper.

The miners had new hospitals, and they really needed them. The new machines roll out the tonnage, as well as the black clouds. The miners’ faces looked as if they had been sand blasted with coal dust. Wise doctors saw miners that were old men at age forty and identified the cause as black lung. Our union, which fought so hard for rights of workers, was now as silent as Old Blair on the subject.

The death rattle of the coal miners’ lungs brought Dr. Buff and Dr. Rasmussen to champion their cause. They were joined by Ken Hechler, Nader and his Raiders, and other honest men.  The powerful were silent: where were our senators and where was our strong union? The miners marched to Charleston with only a few champions, but they had the truth that would not be ignored. Their wisdom reached across party lines to Cleo Jones. It was a good thing, too, because his sharp eyes caught the sly change of one word that would have made the bill powerless. The bill became the law.

Continue reading ‘The Wisdom of Old Blair Mountain’

Cross-posted from Beyond the Choir
Church this morning must have been quite awkward for some people. The sermon might have gone something like “I know we’re all disappointed that the rapture didn’t come, but don’t worry, its not like it’s the end of the world or anything.” Ha ha.

I was among many progressives making fun of the rapture all day yesterday, but ultimately the joke might be on us. When it comes to global warming and climate chaos, the script is a bit too familiar. According to a recent poll, 44% of Americans believe increased severity of “natural” disasters is “evidence of biblical end times. ” That’s nearly half the people in the most powerful country on Earth. 38% believe God uses Nature to dispense justice. It’s an important poll that climate change activists and sensible people everywhere should take seriously.

The #rapture meme picked up remarkably fast. While some have seen billboards declaring May 21^st, 2011 to be Judgment Day for a while now, it wasn’t until a couple of days ago that it started getting into the media and many Americans learned that a small fundamentalist sect believed they uncovered the true date of the Beginning of The End. Within a few days over a million people joined multiple “post rapture looting” facebook events, pranks were being played across the country, it was all over the news, and people were cracking jokes on twitter like there’s no tomorrow.

So why did that meme spread so quickly? Unfortunately biblical notions of the coming Apocalypse are not just entrenched in our culture, but are also rearing their ugly heads in our political landscape. And they’re shaping policy.

John Shimkus, The Republican Congressman who hoped to chair the House Energy Committee told reporters this Autumn that we didn’t need to take action to reduce greenhouse gasses because he knows the planet won’t be destroyed. How does he know? God told Noah that it wouldn’t happen again after the Great Flood. Obviously. Shimkus went on to clarify that “The earth will end only when God declares its time to be over.” And its not just Shimkus – the November election saw a wave of new Republican leadership hell-bent on scriptural justifications for inaction on global warming.

In his excellent article Apocalyptic beliefs hasten the end of the world, Jason Mark discusses the depth of biblical explanations used to explain the recent Mississippi river flooding and tornado in Alabama. He cites “two surveys by the Pew Center [that] reveal what climate campaigners are up against. According to a 2010 Pew poll, 41 percent of Americans believe that Jesus will return by 2050. A roughly similar number — 36 percent — disagree that human activity is causing global temperatures to rise.” Jason points out that while causality between these two stats is dubious, worldview clearly plays a significant role in the public’s response to climate science.

Continue reading ‘The Rapture didn’t come, but don’t worry, the world is still boiling.’

Crossposted from 350.org

Today I got to stand next to more than 50 Massachusetts mothers, children, workers, community leaders, and people of faith to kick off something truly unique – a “crowd-funded” citizen’s campaign to hold Senator Scott Brown accountable for voting to gut the Clean Air Act. At 12:00pm on the sidewalk in front of the JFK Federal Building in Boston, also known as Scott Brown’s district office, we held banners and puppets of Scott Brown and his fat cat supporters “Coal” and “Oil, signs, and a blow-up of the new ad our friends and neighbors funded.

The text of the ad read: “Senator Brown: On April 6th you voted to gut the Clean Air Act. Was it because dirty energy companies and their corporate front groups poured more than $1.9 million into your campaign last year? Are you working for people or Big Polluters?” Interested in joining us in funding the ad? Check it out here.

Continue reading ‘Massachusetts Residents Call Out Scott Brown, Rally Strong for Clean Air’

This week the Port of Morrow Commission (located in Boardman, OR) announced that they had agreed to a lease with Salt Lake City based Ambre Energy for the construction of a new coal terminal on the Columbia River.

The terminal will be used to upload Powder River Basin coal to barges to be shipped down river to Longview, WA. In Longview, the coal will be sent to Asian markets for combustion.

Ambre Energy’s website states, “It is Ambre Energy’s intention to establish one of the few coal export facilities on the west coast of North America to provide access to growing Asia-Pacific markets for U.S. thermal coal.”

Boardman, OR is the location also of a coal plant that state and local environmentalists campaigned to have closed. It’s been announced that Boardman will be closing down by 2020. Continue reading ‘More Coal Along the Columbia River’

Yesterday more progress was made in the effort to move the state of Massachusetts beyond coal and towards a clean energy revolution. The Utility and Telecommunications Committee had open public hearings for several proposed bills which call for an end to fossil fuel dependence in the state, one of which was written by students from Students for a Just and Stable Future (http://justandstable.org/). The hearing started with an introduction of the bills by Rep. Eherlich from the 8th Essex District, who continued to explain how organizing around the coal power plant in her community is what drove her to first become civically engaged.The hearing was well attended by concerned community members, public health advocate groups as well as students from across the state.

After Representative Eherlich spoke, members from Environmental League Massachusetts and the Sierra Club outlined the health risks posed by coal power plants. The Sierra Club also offered reference to their recent publication on how renewable energy sources can replace the base load power for the grid which is presently generated by fossil fuels and nuclear power. Four members from Students for a Just and Stable Future then spoke on behalf of their drafted legislation, house docket #2625, which is entitled “An Act to Phase Out Coal Burning and Use”. Unlike other bills in front of the committee that ask for this to be done by the year 2020, Students for a Just and Stable Future believe that the issue demands more urgency and should be accomplished by 2015. The students who spoke addressed the many externalities pushed onto local communities and the environment throughout the coal commodity chain covering everything from the devastation due to mountain top removal to the effects emissions are having in the form of acid rain and global climate change.

Continue reading ‘Students Stand Up and Say “No More Coal”!’

A few words about my friend, Tim DeChristopher: he is not a hero. Albeit a bright, inspiring and magnetic presence, Tim is also human – a man with his own set of fears, insecurities and weaknesses. And idolizing him only serves to alienate him to a cold, lonely pedestal– a veneration that in reality troubles him. Viewing him that way is also critically disempowering to our movement. It gives us the green light to remain stagnant. “I could never be so brave, nor measure up to his actions.”

Let us not forget that in December 2008, at the time he waltzed into the federal auction, Tim was void of any formal training. He acted spontaneously, from a very vulnerable and inexperienced position. In fact, the first thing he did after being questioned by a federal agent was to call a friend for help. By neglecting to embrace his ordinariness, we are silencing his deep desire; that of every day people taking bold, non-violent action.

Equally as disconcerting is overhearing people say: “Tim, you’re truly extraordinary — good luck in there.” Have we accepted the plausible scenario of a 2, 5, or perhaps even an 8-year-prison sentence imposed for peacefully raising a bidder paddle? Can we sit idly by as our judicial system clearly sends out the message that activists either take plea bargains or mentally prepare themselves to sit behind bars for x amount of time for acts of peaceful civil disobedience? Unacceptable, that these should be our options.

Continue reading ‘An ordinary man taking on extraordinary tasks’