It’s Getting Hot In Here

Last Saturday, while listening to the “Why Direct Action?” panel at the Midwest Rising Convergence, I whispered to my close friend Todd sitting next to me, “I think I’m going to risk arrest on Monday.” He responded, “Why shouldn’t you?”

While making my mental pro-con list, I realized that Todd was right. My con list was short: I might have a record, which as a college student with the unknown in front of me seems reason for concern. However, the pro list was much longer. I would be fighting the corporate powers of Bank of America, Peabody Energy and so many others found in St. Louis in ways that my years of rallies, protests, phonecalling and voting had never done.

My privilege was the most notable item on my pro list. I knew that because of my socioeconomic status and my community of friends and fellow activists I would be bailed out of jail quickly. Using my privilege as a white female with enough money seemed like one of the biggest services I could provide where others in the movement can’t due to the unequal realities of our legal system. As activist Lisa Fithian said, “It should be our rich white kids risking arrest.”

When 15 of us, the Midwest Rising 15, sat down in the downtown St. Louis intersection, Peabody Energy on one side, Bank of America on the other, we linked arms and chanted. Looking around the circle at the strong, determined faces surrounding me, I knew I had made the right decision. We spent 10 hours in jail, charged with street demonstration and failure to obey police orders. The last one released, I exited to fifty people cheering and waiting for me.

The love I felt reminded me of how lucky I am to be part of a group of people fighting for a more just world, and some unexpected pros worked themselves onto my list. First, my arrest had inspired others. It had invigorated not just me, but those waiting outside. For all of us who work so close to burnout, seeing new tactics used is inspiring and makes us feel alive again. Second, getting a brief look into the legal system reaffirmed my commitment to fighting systems of oppression. The convergence had already linked economic and climate justice movements, but hearing stories of people held overnight with no food or water reminded me that movements working together are even stronger. I was both depressed and inspired when I reminded myself that in the United States we are innocent until proven guilty.

We must all continue to think strategically to fight for justice for people and the planet. As sixty sit in jail, sixty more risk arrest today and hundreds others gear up for action regarding the Keystone pipeline, as Tim Dechristopher spends two years in prison, I am humbled to be a part of a growing movement realizing and exercising the power of civil disobedience as a tactic for change.

If you are willing and able, I ask you to contribute to the bail funds for the Midwest Rising 15 here.

Our Editor, Christine Irvine at Tar Sands Action. Source: Shadia Wood

70 people from across the US and Canada were arrested at the White House this morning for the first day of a two week sit-in aimed at pressuring President Obama to deny the permit for a massive new oil pipeline. Over 2,000 more people are expected to join the daily civil disobedience over the coming days.

At stake is what has quickly become the largest environmental test for President Obama before the 2012 election. The President must choose whether or not to grant a Canadian company a permit to build a 1,700 mile pipeline from the Alberta tar sands to refineries on the gulf of mexico.

Environmentalists warn that the pipeline could cause a BP disaster right in America’s heartland, over the largest source of fresh drinking water in the country. The world’s top climatologist, Dr. James Hansen, has warned that if the Canadian tar sands are fully developed it could be “game over” for the climate.

“It’s not the easiest thing on earth for law-abiding folk to come risk arrest. But this pipeline has emerged as the single clear test of the president’s willingness to fight for the environment,” said environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, who is spearheading the protests and was arrested this morning. “So I wore my Obama ’08 button, and I carry a great deal of hope in my heart that we will see that old Obama emerge. It’s hot out here today, especially when you’re wearing a suit and tie. But it’s nowhere near as hot as it’s going to get if we lose this fight.”

McKibben was amongst those arrested today, along with the co-founder of NRDC and former White House official Gus Speth, gay rights activist Lt. Dan Choi, author and activist Mike Tidwell, Firedoglake founder Jane Hamsher, and many others. Continue reading ’70 People Arrested in Opening Day of Tar Sands Action’

Today, over a hundred marched,  with fifteen arrested, as the Midwest Rising! Convergence took the streets of St. Louis to protest Bank of America and Peabody Coal.

The arrest action occurred in a downtown St. Louis intersection that connects Bank of America’s regional offices and Peabody’s world headquarters.

Peabody is the world’s largest coal company and operates massive mines in states like Wyoming and Montana. The coal goes to power plants in the U.S. and overseas markets. They are currently trying to build coal export terminals along the Washington coast to ship the coal to Asia.

Peabody has also recently taken a $61 million tax credit from the city of St. Louis, $2 million of that cash will be taken from the city’s schools.

Bank of America is the largest forecloser of homes in the nation and the largest financier of coal. Bank of America execs have taken over $35 million in bonuses and compensation even as the troubled financial institution took government bailouts.

Midwest Rising was a convergence for climate and economic justice that brought together a diverse coalition of groups fighting home foreclosures in cities like Chicago, St. Louis and Pittsburgh, communications workers on strike against Verizon Wireless, local labor organizers, Appalachian activists fighting mountaintop removal and climate justice activists from around the world.

In the morning, Midwest Rising activists also organized four decentralized actions at the corporate headquarters of Arch Coal and Monsanto, a Verizon Wireless store and the St. Louis Board of Education. By mid-morning, the Appalachian-Arch Coal contingent joined the striking communications workers at the Verizon store singing “solidarity forever” and telling the story of the new Battle of Blair Mountain.

Corporate America attempted to disrupt Midwest Rising as one company contacted the conference center trying to get the venue canceled, another pressured the transportation company to not deliver activists downtown in rented buses for Monday’s rally and they assembled a small army of police and private security to protect the Peabody and Bank of America buildings. There were also heavy police presences at Arch and Monsanto.

At one point a Rising Tide activist confronted a St. Louis police officer, who followed them into a coffee shop, and asked if he worked for “Peabody or the City of St. Louis. To which the officer replied “Peabody. And you. But they pay me more.”

Continue reading ‘Fifteen Arrested Taking Action Against Banks and Big Coal in St. Louis’

(Cross posted from www.peacefuluprising.org)

Watching Tim speak in the courtroom, watching him utter words that would be echoed and transported across oceans, seeing him in all his candor and vulnerability, I realized that it’s the most powerful I’ve ever seen him. As he earnestly looked the judge straight in the eye asking him to join him — to join us — I simply could not ignore the eery yet deeply moving sensation that this statement would be one for the history books.

“This is what hope looks like… This is what patriotism looks like… This is what love looks like.”
-Tim DeChristopher. July 26th 2011. Salt Lake City Federal Courthouse (Read full statement here)

On that day, in that courtroom, his invitation fell on deaf ears. Judge Benson did not open up his heart to Tim’s plea and instead chose to respond with the inflexible “rule of law,” the systemic stance that an empowered citizen effectively challenging the status-quo should be contained and silenced.

In those initial nauseating and destabilizing moments, I simply could not process the judge’s words. 24 months of federal incarceration? To be taken into custody forthwith by US Marshals? Chained up like a dangerous criminal? All after making it crystal clear that the prison sentence was the result of Tim’s outspoken political views?

Crushed by the daunting realization that there would be no final good-bye, no last hug, I rushed down the courthouse steps, dizzy and in shock. Despite my personal trauma, the world needed to know, needed to hear Peaceful Uprising’s outrage and our call for a peaceful, directed, and sustained response. Continue reading ‘This is what LOVE looks like’

Reclaim Power Southeast Action Camp

August 18-22 – Western North Carolina

Day of Action August 22, Location TBA

www.reclaimpowersoutheast.org

People working for justice, peace and a sustainable future in the Southeast are coming together for a long weekend of workshops, trainings, strategizing, and direct action! Our region faces a range of threats from coal mining and nuclear waste and rising sea levels to racist anti-immigrant laws and the military industrial complex. It’s time to come together and reclaim our power.

We will train and build skills to take effective action on social justice and peace as well as energy and climate justice campaigns active in our region. We will work together to hone “tried and true” tactics — and maybe dream up new ones to try! On Monday we will put our new skills into practice with an exciting day of action (location TBA)

The camp will be hosted on a beautiful site with a swimming pond almost on the state line between the Carolinas, a short 40 minutes South of Asheville. Camping at the site or accommodations in town are available. See Housing information here.

Workshops will include: community organizing, anti-oppression, nonviolent direct action 101, debunking false solutions to climate change, blockades, sustainable living systems, action climbing, media, disaster response, street medic training, fighting nukes and coal, and much more.  Program Schedule is under construction — and available here.

ACTION MEDIC TRAINING — A submersion program — participants will be part of camp life, but take a separate “track” of trainings focused expressly on becoming qualified to serve your community as a medic during non-violent direct actions. For more info and to register into this program — please inquire: info@reclaimpowersoutheast.org

All ages and skill levels welcome. Come for renewal — or come for your first activist training and dive in. We welcome both expertise and also new ideas and perspectives to freshen the stream of action. Everyone has something to share that others can learn from!

www.reclaimpowersoutheast.org

Last week, I wrote about the action camps planned this month that will be challenging the root causes of climate change, i.e. the fossil fuel industry, in the Midwest, Southeast and Pacific Northwest.

But August is already sizzling with small groups of environmental and Indigenous rights minded people stepping up and putting their bodies on the line to protect those places most near and dear to their hearts.

Last Thursday, in New Orleans about 100 people rallied at BP’s Regional Command Center to protest the oil giant’s continued lack of accountability in cleaning up one of the worst corporate disasters in U.S. history- the Gulf Oil Spill. As the event’s call to action put it “The Oil is Still Here and so are We,” and Louisiana residents are mobilizing to fight back against the poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico by BP.

Three were arrested staging at sit-in at the front entrance of the office during the rally. Cherri Foytlin, a Louisiana resident, an oil worker’s wife, a mother of six and one of the arrested said “They’ve told us we can’t cross this line or we’ll be arrested. Well they crossed the line a long time ago when 11 men died and they sprayed poisons into our water and made cleanup workers sick. Now fishermen can’t put food on the table and people are still sick. We’ve had enough. It’s time for us to cross the line now.”

Last year, BP spilled billions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and has created an environmental and public health crisis throughout the Gulf States. For their part, the BP Support Network (aka the complicit politicians in both parties) seem to have the company’s back as the tax payers are footing the bill for any cleanup efforts and British Petroleum continues to operate in the Gulf.

Meanwhile in Northern Arizona, Native Americans are struggling to defend San Francisco Peaks, sacred to 13 area Native American Nations, from the Snowbowl Ski Resort. The Snowbowl Ski Resort is already destroying the sacred mountain with the clear cutting of grandmother trees, as a pipeline is put in to bring sewage water to the ski resort for snowmaking. Native American medicine men gather healing plants and conduct ceremonies on San Francisco Peaks. The healing herbs would be contaminated by sewage water snow. Continue reading ‘Thus Far and No Further: Gulf Coast and Arizona Activists Fight Back’

Cross-posted from the RAN Understory

It’s going to be some hot business this summer, and we ain’t talkin about the triple digit heat wave hitting much of the country. There is a rebellious spirit sweeping the U.S.A. as people are fighting back against the fossil fuel industry from coast to coast.

We all know about the big tar sands to-do happening in Washington D.C. at the end of August, but did you know about the various grassroots action camps targeting coal, corporations and other issues in various parts of the country? These camps will be turning up the street heat on King Coal.

Midwest Rising! Convergence for Climate and Economic Justice, St. Louis, MO (Aug. 11-15): Rising Tide North America, Climate Action-St. Louis, a number of Midwestern economic justice and environmental justice groups have organized Midwest Rising!, a convergence of the climate and economic justice movements in the heart of King Coal’s backyard. Arch Coal, Patriot Coal and the world’s largest coal company, Peabody Energy, are headquartered there. And St. Louis is also an area hit hard by the foreclosure crisis, which has mobilized groups like Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) to launch campaigns against Wall Street’s big banks. We’re looking forward to this historic convergence and can’t wait to see what happens next.

Localize This! Action Camp, Vashon Island, WA (Aug 14-21): On beautiful Vashon Island, off the coast of Seattle, the Backbone Campaign is calling on trouble-makers from all over the Pacific Northwest to come together to build skills for our re-emerging anti-corporate movement. The camp will focus on trainings in the areas of campaigning, media skills,climbing and non-violent direct action. The Pacific Northwest coast is a region of growing importance in the national coal debate as coal exports are emerging as a vital issue in towns like Bellingham, WA and Longview, WA. RAN is fully engaged in the coal exports fight and will be at Localize This! giving trainings and issue briefings. Continue reading ‘Cure Your Summertime Blues At Coal Action Camp’

Right now concerned students and community members in Bellingham, Washington are working to stop one of the most deadly new fossil fuel projects in the world: a coal export terminal that would send tens of millions of tons of coal brought in by train to global export markets.  To build their group and strengthen of the movement they seek to create, these passionate activists are raising funds to send a delegation to this month’s Localize This! Action Camp.  But they need our help: with twelve days to go before the fundraising deadline, the group has set a goal of raising $1,200.  If you can pitch in, please visit their fundraising web page here.

Why donate to this effort, when so many worthy causes are out there?  The answer, quite simply, is that the fight against coal exports is one of the most important in the climate movement.  If even one proposed coal export terminal like the one moving forward in Bellingham goes through, it will be a disaster for the climate, facilitating construction of some of the largest coal plants in the world and displacing renewable energy investments in developing countries.

But this tragedy doesn’t have to happen.  Members of communities targeted by coal export proposals are already organizing to stop export terminals from being built and re-claim power over the energy future of their communities.  So far these efforts have been very successful in shifting the debate around coal and turning coal export terminals into a sticky issue for politicians.  Now these activists need our help bringing their movement to the next level.

Though there are now several proposals to build coal export terminals in both Washington and Oregon, the one in Bellingham has progressed further than any other toward applying for permits it needs to move forward.  If we can defeat this project, it will send a positive message all up and down the West Coast.  The work of organizers in Bellingham is thus a critical piece of the worldwide effort to reclaim community power from the coal industry.

I can’t think of a better cause to give money to right now.  If you’re able, please consider donating to help Bellingham activists grow the movement for a cleaner future in Washington.