crossposted from the Earth First! Newswire

By Red Emma

Greenwashing—[a compound word modeled on "whitewash"] a form of spin in which green PR or green marketing is deceptively used to promote the perception that a company’s policies or products are environmentally friendly.

John Muir must be rolling over in his grave.

The organization he founded in 1892, the Sierra Club, America’s oldest and largest environmental group, have been in cahoots with the worst of the worst corporations in recent years. They’ve been paid tens of millions of dollars by the fossil fuel industry, tyrannical billionaire mayors and Wall Street in exchange for cleaning (and greening) up their public images.  Not only have they acted as a green public relations firm for the bastions of wealth and power, but have also sold out frontline communities most impacted by extractive industry.

Corporations rule our world with an unyielding iron fist. They poison and literally explode local communities with fracking and mountaintop removal. They profit off of dirty extractive industry with multi-billion investments. They empower a police state to repress democratic people’s movements drawing a line in the sand against Corporate America.  But they also insidiously mitigate the power of grassroots resistance movements with a complicit non-profit industrial complex. Most environmental non-profits actively serve as a buffer zone between our people’s movements seeking real change and a corporate state hell bent on sucking every last bit out of the planet and its people before the impending ecological collapse.

In recent years, there has been an expanding critique of the big greens. Corporate executives and the super wealthy occupy the donor rolls and boards of many green non-profits. Organizations like Environmental Defense and Natural Resources Defense Council have actively partnered with the fossil fuel industry in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a front group that helped stop climate legislation in 2010. A 2010 expose in The Nation by Johann Hari revealed that Big Oil made large donations for decades to organizations like Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy to negate bad press over human rights and environmental abuses. Essentially, the big institutions of the environmental movement have been bought and sold.

Sadly, the Sierra Club which boasts a democratic governance system and a healthy grassroots base of local chapters have become part of the corporate world’s equation for control. They’ve partnered with, and been funded by, natural gas corporations to promote gas as a “bridge fuel.” They’ve taken large donations from New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg even as he’s attacked labor unions and Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and released his racist police force to harass and demonize the Muslim community. They’ve even been business partners with the worst of the worst Wall Street banks, Bank of America, in greenwashing schemes to repair the bank’s damaged public image to the environmental community.

“Natural” gas flaring

Greening Natural Gas

In an attempt to stem scandal, the Club’s executive director Michael Brune revealed in Feb. 2012 to Time that from 2007 to 2010 they had taken over $25 million in anonymous donations from the natural gas industry. The industry is most known for the environmentally destructive extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Fracking’s methods of extraction from deep gas shale include the burning of diesel fuel and polluting ground water with toxic chemicals.

From 2007 to 2010, while local chapters in states like New York and Pennsylvania were fighting these gas companies, former Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope developed a cozy relationship with Chesapeake Energy, a leading gas company. Pope, in fact, toured the country with CEO Aubrey McClendon promoting natural gas as a “bridge fuel” because it burns cleaner than oil or coal. Local Sierra activists were outraged that Pope publicly sold them out to the fracking industry.

While Pope partnered with gas companies, a grassroots revolt against fracking began from the Marcellus Shale in the Northeastern United States to the Barnett Shale in Texas to the mountain states. Organizers are fighting it in the permitting hearings and legislatures, municipalities are banning it from their city limits and civil disobedience at corporate offices and drilling sites are growing in frequency. Furthermore, Josh Fox’s Academy Award winning film, Gasland, has sparked a national conversation about fracking that has backed the environmental non-profit complex into a corner.

But Pope’s response to criticism from local groups did little to address the concerns of people living with fracking: “Will the 20% of the membership that happens to live in places where drilling is happening be unhappy? I’m sure that’s true.”

Carl Pope, former Sierra Club executive director

Late in 2011, Carl Pope stepped down from the Sierra Club board citing disagreements with the direction that Brune, former director of Rainforest Action Network, was taking the Club. To Brune’s credit, he ended the relationship quickly after assuming leadership and rejected another $33 million from the frackers, But as an institution they have been compromised on this important issue and seen as very out of step with the grassroots on this issue.

New York’s Big Green Darling

The fracking industries aren’t the only ones with a cozy relationship with the Sierra Club. Last June, New York City’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg had his philanthropies donate $50 million to the Sierra Club’s coal campaign. Another corporate donation negotiated by Carl Pope has turned Bloomberg into the darling of the liberal green establishment.

But as Bloomberg seeks to stop climate change, he wages war on New York’s working people, Muslims and Occupy Wall Street (OWS.)

Empowered by nation-wide right wing attacks trying to roll back one hundred years of social progress, Bloomberg has worked to shrink government on the backs of the city’s working class and unions. Through his entire reign as “King of New York,” Bloomberg has fought to privatize or “reform” labor rights including pensions, wages and health care. In January 2012, Bloomberg in his annual state of the city address took aim at the teachers’ union by seeking to bypass their right to collectively bargain for employee protection, wages and bonuses. He further spreads lies and misinformation claiming that labor unions “hijacked” Occupy Wall Street in attempts to create wedges between labor and grassroots radicals.

His shock troops in the New York Police Dept. (NYPD) have long violated the rights of New York’s Muslim community through surveillance, infiltration and harassment. They’ve just recently admitted to screening an Islamophobic film, featuring NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, to 1,500 officers. As the Muslim community seeks Kelly’s resignation, Bloomberg responded that Kelly “probably visits more mosques” than many Muslims in New York. (Sorry Mike, undercover operations don’t count.)

NYC Mayor Bloomberg

Bloomberg and the NYPD have also become the latest line of defense between the Masters of the Financial Universe on Wall Street and people’s movements challenging Corporate America. Since the beginning of Occupy Wall Street’s occupation at Zucotti Park, Bloomberg has directed numerous attacks using beatings, pepper spray and unwarranted arrests. On Oct. 1, they arrested over 700 on a peaceful march across the Brooklyn Bridge. They target independent and corporate journalists reporting on police abuses through intimidation and arrests.  As liberal actor Alec Baldwin tweeted: “Bloomberg’s NY is no place for the 1^st amendment. Bloomberg serves Wall Street, now and forever. And Wall Street cannot handle free speech.”

While climate change is an urgent issue, so is repression of worker and radical democratic movements, as well as racist attacks on Muslims. The Sierra Club is seen has a progressive force by many liberals in the US, yet greenwashing right wing politicians for big bucks doesn’t seem too progressive or productive.

The Wrong Kind of Affinity

“Banks hold the purse strings for the fossil fuel industry and have tremendous influence in determining whether we continue to destroy our climate and our communities, or whether we start to fund the future with a green new deal that creates a clean energy future.”  —Michael Brune, Sierra Club Executive Director

Despite publicly touting their role in shutting down hundreds of coal fired power plants, the Sierra Club continues a long standing financial relationship with the largest funder of coal in the US—Bank of America.

The Sierra Club greenwashes Bank of America through an “affinity schemes.” An affinity scheme is a crafty public relations scheme where environmental organizations have their members get green branded credit cards through Bank of America. With every purchase, they make a donation to a good cause, a small profit for Bank of America and a public image coup for a bank under fire from everything to foreclosures to mountaintop removal to massive employee layoffs. The Sierra Club is far from alone in this scam; Credo Mobile/Working Assets, Defenders of Wildlife, The Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Foundation and The Wilderness Society all have Bank of America affinity schemes.

According to Rainforest Action Network, Bank of America has the biggest portfolio of coal projects that harm public health and destroy the climate. In 2009-2010, the coal industry received $3.9 billion in underwriting and corporate loans from Bank of America.  It is involved in every step of the coal cycle. It regularly underwrites billions to the industry, including hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Arch Coal and Peabody Energy—the two biggest coal mining companies in the country. They also underwrite billions every year to coal-heavy utility corporations, such as Southern Company and Edison International. They are also the largest forecloser of homes in US and have laid-off tens of thousands of employees in recent years.

BOA lobby in San Fran occupied in Nov 2011 protest, 95 arrested as bank is shut down for day

For over a decade, Bank of America has worked to green their image through putting recycling in their offices and branches, building LEED certified buildings and has even gone as far to make false promises around climate and extraction investments to get pesky environmentalists off their backs. By far, their biggest greenwashing investment is the billions of dollars they spend supporting the charitable causes of the non-profit industrial complex. Meanwhile their coal financing portfolio makes them the biggest funder of coal in the US. The Club’s tough talk on the coal industry and growing anti-corporate rhetoric coupled with their affinity for Bank of America stinks of rank hypocrisy.

Mistakenly, many see organizations like the Sierra Club as the left flank of the environmental movement, but their collusion with Wall Street and the extraction industry dispels that myth. As author Naomi Klein so aptly observed at the end of Copenhagen climate talks, “A particular model of dealing with climate change is dying.” While the grassroots environmental and climate movements increasingly rise up against the one-percent, the environmental non-profit complex follows the direction of corporate donors. Climate impacted communities have long viewed big green groups as another buffer between corporations and the frontlines.

The failures of this “particular model” as exemplified by NGOs like the Sierra Club who has grown all too cozy with corporations and the political establishment has undermined our democracy, our frontline communities and efforts to fight Wall Street. It’s time for the environmental left to realize where the lines are drawn in the coming years.

Red Emma is a spirit as old as the mountains, hills and forests of North America. She fought for liberation in Bacon’s Rebellion and King Phillip’s War, rose up with Nat Turner, stood with the martyrs at Haymarket, loved Sacco and Vanzetti, threw bricks at Starbucks windows in Seattle and has been camped out at Zucotti Park and Oscar Grant Plaza since September.

Never has there been a more dire time for defense of the planet. Increase your abilities to defend the Earth through learning the skills of climbing. We will offer a variety of trainings for forest defense and urban actions suitable for all skill levels from beginner to advanced.

Workshops include: Basic Climbing and Anchoring, Traverses, Tree to Tree Transfers, Basic Structure Rigging and Haul Systems, Tripods, Bipods, and Monopods, Advanced Structure Rigging, Large Scale Banner Hanging, and Basic Rescue and Training Set Ups.

To attend the camp contact:

efclimbers@gmail.com

www.efclimbers.net

About the climbers guild

The Earth First! Climbers Guild exists to enable direct action climbing and rigging trainers to communicate with each other to be able to set up training events and continue to produce guides on climbing and rigging as well as standardize the training process to create a safer and more effective environment in EF! direct action situations.

To become a Guild trainer you must be intimately familiar with all aspects of safety and rope work that are presented in the guild guides. Furthermore, to train others under the name of the Earth First! Climbers Guild, the steps as outlined in the guides must be followed. This is to insure a standardization of safe climbing practices.

The Guild will work to maintain a diverse membership and will implement codes of conduct at all events. Guild events will be geared toward the empowerment of all individuals who have a desire to learn.

Guild members will make a commitment to never be under the influence of any drug while training, teaching, or engaging in any climbing activities that are a part of an action or larger campaign. As trainers and skilled climbers, guild members have a responsibility to set the best possible example for those individuals learning from us. It is never acceptable to use any substance that could potentially impair judgment while climbing.

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

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, 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.

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.

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

On May 5 activists with Katuah Earth First! managed to sneak a banner intoDuke Energy’s annual shareholder meeting in Charlotte, NC. Just as the question and comment session was wrapping up, the activists unfurled a large banner reading, “Carbon Free, Nuclear Free” in an act of protest against Duke’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels and nukes.

To the activists surprise, they were not bothered by security and were able to eventually leave the building without arrest, where they joined a crowd of about 50 protesters demanding that Duke rapidly shift to sustainable energy sources.

Duke is apparently suffering some setbacks for both its planned nuclear and coal plants. The nuclear disaster in Japan has helped to derail legislation in NC that would have made it easier for Duke to finance its nuke plants. And in Indiana Duke is facing mounting costs to finish its Edwardsport coal plant. Duke is also being investigated for “undue influence” (ahem, bribery) of politicians in Indiana. The scandal has already cost 3 Duke executives there jobs.

Eco-activists weren’t the only ones out protesting Duke. Protestors with the conservative group FreedomWorks turned out to oppose Duke’s $10 million contribution to host the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte in 2012. Well, there is one thing we can agree on with the FreedomWorks folks. We don’t want those spineless, corporate ass-kissing Democrats throwing their party in our state either!

Residents from Gulf Coast, Appalachia and interior West join students and
climate justice activists in calling for more action on extractive industry.

For Immediate Release

Contact: Scott Parkin; on site mobile- 415-235-0596;
Henia Belalia; on site mobile- 510-529-8927
Email— extraction@risingtidenorthamerica.org

Photos available at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

6:40pm (EST) UPDATE: Police are reporting 21 people have been arrested,
including youth and adults from across the country. Residents of Utah,
Wyoming, Texas, Vermont, Georgia, Washington DC and California were among
those arrested while occupying the Department of Interior offices.

Washington D.C.— Over a thousand climate activists marched from Lafayette
Park to the Department of the Interior’s headquarters in Washington D.C.
today. Reclaim Power coincided with the end of Powershift, a mass youth
climate conference, and came only 2 days before the anniversary of the BP
Gulf Oil Disaster. As many as 300 protesters ran inside the headquarters
in a Wisconsin-style occupation calling for the abolition of offshore oil
drilling, coal mining and tar sands extraction. In an act of civil
disobedience, young and old alike occupied the lobby for over an hour,
smiling and singing protest songs.

The Dept. of Interior has oversight over two agencies, the Bureau of Ocean
Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) and the Office of
Surface Mining (OSM), which are responsible for the BP Oil Spill,
mountaintop removal coal mining and tar sands oil drilling in southern
Utah. Furthermore, the Dept. of Interior just opened up over 7,000 acres
of land to industry for coal extraction in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

“Our demonstration today is to show that Wyoming might be small in
population but mighty in heart,” said Kevin Uransky, a resident from
Wyoming’s coalfields and member of High Country Rising Tide participating
in the sit-in.  “We don’t want to just stand by and allow big corporations
to destroy our homes, our way of life, and some of last open, beautiful,
and undeveloped terrain left in the United States.  We want to show that
Wyoming has a voice not to be drowned out by those of more represented
states, we have a voice, we have an opinion, and we want to be heard.”

Reclaim Power is being led by residents of residents of the Gulf Coast,
Appalachia and the interior West – regions directly impacted by heinous
oil, gas and coal extractive industries. Participants are calling for the
Obama Administration and the federal agency to phase out harmful mining
and drilling practices and facilitate transitions to sustainable local
energy systems.

“The Dept. of Interior has been allowing the killing of my community and
Appalachia’s mountains by the coal industry for decades,” said Junior Walk
from Boone County, West Virginia. “King Coal has poisoned Appalachia with
toxic water, toxic air and toxic waste. It’s time for real action, not
merely political posturing. I commend these fiery activists taking risks
and making change for our communities and the climate.”

“For all practical purposes, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast function as a
third world resource colony within the US.  For a hundred years, our
people and ecosystems have been sacrificed to provide cheap energy and big
profits,” said Devin Martin, a native Cajun from southern Louisiana.  “We
pay for the hidden costs of oil and gas with our health and our lives
through air pollution, oil spills, and a completely corrupted state
government.  We already lose a football field of coastal marsh every 38
minutes, and now rising sea levels from climate change will put my home,
including New Orleans, under water permanently.”

Reclaim Power also seeks to highlight the ruthless manner in which
extractive industries are allowed to treat workers and the communities
they operate in. Obama’s Dept. of Interior allows the fossil fuel industry
to run amok over ecosystems, communities, workers and local economies.
Last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster killed 11 workers and spilled over
4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The results have
devastated local economies, fisheries and wetlands. Mountaintop removal is
a radical form of coal mining in which up to 800 feet, sometimes more, of
densely forested mountaintops are literally blown up to reach thin coal
seams. Already, over 500 mountains and 2,000 miles of streams have been
lost due to this devastating mining practice. It has been recently
discovered that oil companies in southern Utah greatly expanded the acres
of land to be developed for tar sands extraction from 60 to over 30,000.
The 758 million tons of coal to be extracted from the four competitive
leases in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin will be the equivalent of 300 new
coal-fired power plants.

Today’s march and sit-in are a preview to Rising Tide North America’s “Day
of Action Against Extraction” happening April 20th, on the anniversary of
the BP Oil Spill. The day of action will feature protests by Gulf Coast
residents fighting offshore drilling, Appalachians resisting mountaintop
removal coal mining, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York residents opposing
natural gas hydrofracking, Canadians fighting tar sands mining in Alberta,
as well as other community groups engaged in fights against extractive
industries. Protests are also planned for the UK, New Zealand, and
Australia.

Demands from today’s Reclaim Power action and the April 20th Day of Action
Against Extraction include:

* An immediate phase out of fossil fuel extraction and a just
transition to truly sustainable forms of energy
* Community control over natural resources
* Recognizing the sovereignty of indigenous nations and their right to
control resources on their lands.
* Reparations from both state and corporate entities that have
profited from extraction in order to fund ecological restoration, full
health coverage, and sustainable livelihoods in impacted communities.

For more information please visit www.extractionaction.net

####

Rising Tide North America is an all volunteer climate justice network with
over 50 chapters and local contacts that works to confront the root causes
of climate change.

For immediate release

March 21, 2011

Contact: Rae Breaux 818-271-0386

extraction@risingtidenorthamerica.org

www.extractionaction.net

Groups to mark Gulf Oil Spill anniversary with direct action against fossil fuel extraction.

On April 20^th dozens of environmental, climate, and social justice groups will target government and corporate operations with aggressive protests and civil disobedience in an International Day of Direct Action Against Extraction being organized by Rising Tide North America. The protests will commemorate the 1 year anniversary of BP’s Gulf Oil Disaster by demanding an end to the environmental destruction and climate destabilization created by fossil fuel and other extractive industries.

“The Gulf Oil Disaster was the worst manifestation of the disasters that are created by extractive industries on a daily basis.” Said, Rae Breaux of Rising Tide North America. “Communities around the world are terrorized by corporate and state ventures to extract fossil fuels. On top of poisoning our water and polluting our air, extractive industries are at the root of our climate crisis. If we have any hope of averting the worst affects of climate change we must leave fossil fuels in the ground.”

The day of action will feature protests by Gulf Coast residents fighting offshore drilling, Appalachians resisting mountaintop removal coal mining, Pennsylvania and New York residents opposing natural gas hydrofracking, Canadians fighting tar sands mining in Alberta, as well as other community groups engaged in fights against extractive industries. Protests are also planned for the UK, New Zealand, and Australia.

The day of action also seeks to highlight the ruthless manner in which extractive industries treat workers and the communities they operate in. “These companies come into our communities to make millions off of our natural resources and leave behind nothing but poverty and deadly working conditions.  Said, Matt Wilkerson of Rising Tide North America. The 11 workers who died on BP’s oil rig and the 29 who perished in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine were killed by the same thing; corporate greed. These deaths are not accidents. They are the direct result of these companies cutting corners in pursuit of profit.”

The day of action will see protests aimed at disrupting business at work sites and offices in order to get the message across. “Our political leaders are those who profit from the status quo, and the only way they will ever stand up to their corporate masters is if we make it absolutely impossible to continue on the path we’re on.  Our job is to force our political leaders into a choice between ending the war against the living or waging it openly by filling the jails with people fighting for a livable future.” Said Tim DeChristopher of Peaceful Uprising who is facing 10 years in jail for disrupting oil and gas auctions in Utah in 2008.

Community groups are encouraged to “join the fray” by organizing an action on April 20. For more information please visit www.extractionaction.net

The day of action demands:

-An immediate phase out of fossil fuel extraction and a just transition to truly sustainable forms of energy

-Community control over natural resources

-Recognizing the sovereignty of indigenous nations and their right to control resources on their lands.

-Reparations from both state and corporate entities that have profited from extraction in order to fund ecological restoration, full health coverage, and sustainable livelihoods in impacted communities.

Rising Tide North America is an all volunteer climate justice network with over 50 chapters and local contacts that works to confront the root causes of climate change.

Take Action for the Earth and our Communities April 20.

1 year anniversary of the BP Oil Spill

Communities around the world are under attack from extractive industries that poison our families, kill our loved ones on the job, and destroy the ecosystems we cherish. The BP oil spill was unfortunately just one of an endless string of disasters born of an economic system that must endlessly consume the Earth’s  resources.

Extraction is the act of taking without giving anything back. Extraction takes workers lives so  corporations can make a few more bucks. Extraction takes clean water and air and gives us blackened oceans and a climate in chaos. Extraction takes the natural wealth of communities and ecosystems and leaves behind poverty and ecological wastelands.

For a stable climate, clean air and water, we must stop the extraction of fossil fuels and other “resources.”  From the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast, people are fighting back against the extractiveindustries  that have declared war on our planet. Rising Tide is calling for a day of direct action against extraction on the 1 year anniversary of the BP oil spill.

On April 20th take it to the point of production.  Shut down a well site, occupy a mine, take over an office, blockade a bank. Nobody’s community should be a sacrifice  zone.

For climate justice and a livable planet,

Rising Tide North America

www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/extraction

Communities around the world are under attack from extractive industries that poison our families, kill our loved ones on the job, and destroy the ecosystems we cherish. The BP oil spill was unfortunately just one of an endless string of disasters born of an economic system that must endlessly consume the Earth’s  resources.

Extraction is the act of taking without giving anything back. Extraction takes workers lives so  corporations can make a few more bucks. Extraction takes clean water and air and gives us blackened oceans and a climate in chaos. Extraction takes the natural wealth of communities and ecosystems and leaves behind poverty and ecological wastelands.

For a stable climate, clean air and water, we must stop the extraction of fossil fuels and other “resources.”  From the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast, people are fighting back against the extractiveindustries  that have declared war on our planet. Rising Tide is calling for a day of direct action against extraction on the 1 year anniversary of the BP oil spill.

On April 20th take it to the point of production.  Shut down a well site, occupy a mine, take over an office, blockade a bank. Nobody’s community should be a sacrifice  zone.

For climate justice and a livable planet,

Rising Tide North America

[click for printable poster]

JOIN THE CHAIN REACTION

www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/extraction