It's Getting Hot In Here

Things are getting rowdy and the street heat is turning up. This morning, TransCanada got a wake up call from Boston area students and climate activists. Over 100 marched on the company’s Westborough, MA offices with 26 being arrested for sitting in. The same group organized a lock down in TransCanada’s office back in January.

Here’s their press release:

Over 100 Youth Risk Arrest, Escalating Fight Against Keystone XL Pipeline

Students hold “Funeral for Our Future” in act of civil disobedience at TransCanada Corporation’s Westborough, MA Office

Westborough, MA – On Monday morning, over 100 students and community members marched into TransCanada’s Westborough office and held a funeral mourning the loss of their future at the hands of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would transport the tar sands that climate scientists say will lock us into irreversible global warming. More than 25 protesters were arrested for refusing to leave the office in an act of civil disobedience.

Carrying a coffin emblazoned with the words “Our Future,” the protesters held flowers and sang an elegy as they marched in procession. Massachusetts Methodist clergy members and a group of mothers holding photographs of their children joined the youth in protest.

The action marked a sharp escalation of the protests in New England against the Keystone XL pipeline. In January, eight students locked and glued themselves at the same TransCanada office. Nationwide, the pipeline has already prompted civil disobedience outside the White House, direct blockades of construction, and the largest climate rally in US history. Today’s action kicks off a week of solidarity actions being called for by our allies at the Tar Sands Blockade. During the week of March 16th-24th protestors from across the country will target the offices of TransCanada and its investors. Continue reading ‘Over 100 Youth March, 26 Arrested Escalating Fight Against Keystone XL Pipeline’

Tar Sands Blockade tree sit

During the 1980′s, religious, peace and human rights activists organized against Ronald Reagan’s not-so-secret wars in Central American countries like El Salvador and Nicaragua.Reagan’s policies killed hundreds of thousands of Central Americans, funded death squads and threatened invasion of Nicaragua to throw out the Sandinista government.

In response, this mass movement, known as the Central America solidarity movement, came up with the “Pledge of Resistance” to Reagan’s cold war adventures down south. The Pledge mobilized thousands to organize take action. Through the 80′s and early 90′s, the Central American solidarity movement non-violently confronted Reagan’s policies from the heartland to the Beltway.

Now we’re faced with another crisis of epic proportions. The Keystone XL Pipeline represents both a political and scientific tipping point for the climate crisis. Climatologist James Hanson has called the building of Keystone XL “game over” for the climate.

Despite lofty rhetoric from Obama on climate during his state of the union, the State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement (released last Friday afternoon) appears to be on track for pipeline approval. Another indicator of coming approval is mainstream media outlets and pundits lining up behind the President and the pipeline. It appears that the environmental movement is now being pitted against the political establishment.

In response today, a number of groups, including CREDO Mobile, Rainforest Action Network, 350.0rg, the Other 98%, BOLD Nebraska and Oil Change International, have put out a call for individuals to take a pledge of resistance to Keystone XL Pipeline’s approval.

The call to action says:

“It is time for us to pledge to resist. That is, we are asking you to commit – should it be necessary to stop Keystone XL — to engage in serious, dignified, peaceful civil disobedience that could get you arrested.” Continue reading ‘Take the Pledge of Resistance to the Keystone XL Pipeline’

Cross-posted from the Understory

Does the Tar Sands Blockade (TSB) have a crystal ball we didn’t know about?

Yesterday in Tyler County, TX, a pipeline operated by Sunoco Logistics sprung a leak and spilled 20,000 gallons (or 550 barrels) of oil into local East Texas waterways. Deep East Texas is known for its creeks and lakes, freshwater eco-systems and aquifers that provide water to the eastern part of the state, including mega-cities Dallas and Houston. But oil companies treat these forests and waterways as collateral damage.

Quality control requires that oil companies use “leak detection systems.” Those systems reported nothing until local residents began to report that oil was in the water. (Ummm… so, how do you not detect a 20,000 gallons oil leak?)

Sunoco’s spill is merely a prologue for leaks and spills that might come once the southern leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline is completed.

The site of the spill is not far from a Tar Sands Blockade (TSB) action in Diboll, TX in January.  It’s only a few hour away from TSB’s tree blockade that prevented construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline for 85 days.

The Keystone XL itself will cross major waterways such as the Neches, Red, Angelina and Sabine rivers as well as the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, which provides drinking water for more than ten million Texans. The pipeline route will run near the Big Thicket National Wildlife Preserve in southeast Texas. Big Thicket is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the country and is full of bogs, lagoons, plants, trees and a variety of wildlife including the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. Continue reading ‘Texas Oil Spill Hits Home for Tar Sands Activists’

Filmmaker Garrett Graham has made a new video about the Tar Sands Blockade. It details the campaign that brought together an unusual coalition of Texas landowners and radical environmentalists from around the country.

It’s Appalachia Spring (Break)! Anti-extraction actions camps and actions are happening everywhere.

Here’s two more in March.

From Mountain Justice Spring Break:

Since 2007, Mountain Justice Spring Break has been offering students and young people an exciting, fun, low-cost alternative spring break in Appalachia. Join the front lines of resistance in Appalachia to get a deeper understanding of the importance of divestment!

Mountain Justice Spring Break is a chance to learn more about how extractive industries like coal, hydro-fracking for natural gas and nuclear energy have sucked billions of dollars in resources from the land, while leaving behind environmental and social problems and a ravaged land.

At Mountain Justice Spring Break you will:

• Learn about the dirty, destructive, dangerous life-cycles of coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy.
• Stand in solidarity with the communities in Virginia, West Virginia, SW Pennsylvania, and beyond facing the ongoing destruction of coal mining, hydraulic fracturing, and nuclear energy!
• See mountaintop removal coal mining and natural gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing up close!
• Take direct action to end the reign of King Coal, Count Frack, and Viceroy Uranium!
• Mountain Justice Spring Break (MJSB) will bring together coalfield residents, college students, environmentalists and concerned citizens.  You dont have to be an expert about coal mining or fracking or Appalachia – our program will teach you the intricacies of resource extraction and you will leave with a better understanding of why Appalachia is a rich land with poor people.

From March 2-10, MJSB will be in the historic old mining town of Appalachia, Virginia, in the far western corner of the state of Virginia, in an area that is being heavily impacted by mountaintop removal mining.

We will spend a week cultivating the skills and visions needed to build a sustainable energy future in Appalachia. Through education, community service, speakers, hiking, music, poetry, direct action and more, you will learn from and stand with Appalachian communities in the struggle to maintain our land and culture. Mountain Justice Spring Break will also offer a variety of community service projects, Appalachian music and dancing. Continue reading ‘Double Appalachian Spring Break! March 2-10 & March 10-17′

Cross-posted from RAN’s Understory

This morning, Bank of America campus recruiters at the University of California (UC) at Berkeley who were working to recruit students into the bank’s internship program got a reality check about the Bank of America’s involvement in the financing of the coal industry.

Early in the morning, about half a dozen UC students staged interventions into Bank of America’s recruitment interviews at the UC Career Center — and raised concerns about the bank’s involvement with the coal sector. The student interventions stopped the recruitment interviews as Bank of America staff heard about the impacts of the bank’s investment portfolio.

A few moments later, about 20 more students and activists joined them at the UC Career Center. The second wave further confronted the Career Center and Bank of America’s recruitment staff with questions about the bank’s policies on coal, climate change, and greenwashing. Outside the Career Center, students and activists rallied to call out the bank’s destructive investment practices as potential recruits entered the building.

Bank of America is one of the top funders of the coal industry, both in the mining and coal-burning utility sectors.  Between 2010 and 2011, it pumped $6.8 billion into the U.S. coal industry, the single largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Continue reading ‘UC Students Give Bank of America Recruiters a Reality Check’

CREVE COEUR, MO —  Seven protesters affiliated with the RAMPS campaign (Radical Action for Mountain Peoples’ Survival), MORE (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment) and Mountain Justice are locked down to a 500-pound small potted tree in Arch Coal’s third-floor headquarters while a larger group is in the lobby performing a song and dance.  Additionally, a helium balloon banner with the message “John Eaves Your Coal Company Kills”, directed at the Arch Coal CEO was released in the Arch Coal headquarters.

“We’re here to halt Arch’s operations for as long as we can. These coal corporations do not answer to communities, they only consume them.  We’re here to resist their unchecked power,” explained Margaret Fetzer, one of the protestors.

Arch Coal, the second largest coal company in the U.S., operates strip mines in Appalachia and in other U.S. coal basins. Strip mining is an acutely destructive and toxic method of mining coal, and resource extraction disproportionately impacts marginalized communities.

“From the Battle of Blair Mountain to the current fight with the Patriot pensions, the people of central Appalachia have been fighting against the coal companies for the past 125 years. The struggle continues today as we take action to hold Arch Coal and other coal companies accountable for the damage that they do to people and communities in Appalachia and around the world. Coal mining disproportionately impacts indigenous peoples, and we stand in solidarity with disenfranchised people everywhere,”  Dustin Steele of Mingo County, W.Va. said.  Steele was one of the people locked in Arch’s office.

Mingo County is representative of the public health crisis faced by communities overburdened by strip mining.  A recent study of life expectancies placed Mingo County in the bottom 1 percent out of 3,147 counties nationwide.(1)

Arch’s strip mines not only poison communities, but also seek to erase the legacy of resistance to the coal companies in Appalachia. Arch’s Adkins Fork Surface Mine is threatening to blast away Blair Mountain—the site of the second largest uprising in U.S. history and a milestone in the long-standing struggle between Appalachians and the coal companies.(2)

The devastation of Arch’s strip mines plague regions beyond Appalachia.  Arch’s operation in the Powder River Basin is the “single largest coal mining complex in the world.(3)”  Producing 15 percent of the U.S. coal supply, Arch is a major culprit of the climate crisis.

NASA scientist James Hansen describes the burning of coal as a leading cause global climate change.(4)  The Midwest region faces serious public health impacts from climate change due to “increased heat wave intensity and frequency, degraded air quality, and reduced water quality(5),” according to recently published data from the National Climate Assessment.

Dept. of Interior, April 2011. via Shadia Fayne Wood

Cross-Posted from Counterpunch

“The climate movement needs to have one hell of a comeback.”

–Naomi Klein

It doesn’t get much more courageous than this.

This morning the Tar Sands Blockade launched another bold action (one of the boldest yet) with a lockdown inside a mile long piece of the Keystone XL pipeline. Locked to two concrete barrels, the team includes anti-mountaintop removal activist Glen Collins, who said:

“This fight in East Texas against tar sands exploitation is one and the same as our fight in the hollers of West Virginia. Dirty energy extraction doesn’t just threaten my home; it threatens the collective future of the planet.”

Police have threatened to dogs and tear gas on the activists.

This action comes less than a week after two climate justice activists with the Tar Sands Blockade launched a hunger strike with a blockade at the Valero Refinery in Houston.

Follow the live blog for updates here.

Check out the press release:

Two People Barricade Themselves Inside Keystone XL Pipe To Halt Construction

Using Completely Unprecedented Technique, Blockaders Barricade Unburied Segment of Pipe in Solidarity with Anti-Extraction Struggles Across North America

*WINONA, TX – MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2012 7:30 AM –* Several protesters with Tar Sands Blockade sealed themselves inside a section of pipe destined for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to stop construction of the dangerous project. Using a blockading technique never implemented before, Matt
Almonte and Glen Collins locked themselves between two barrels of concrete weighing over six hundred pounds each. Located twenty-five feet into a pipe
segment waiting to be laid in the ground, the outer barrel is barricading the pipe’s opening and neither barrel can be moved without risking serious
injury to the blockaders.

The barricaded section of the pipeline passes through a residential neighborhood in Winona, TX. If TransCanada moves ahead with the trenching and burying of this particular section of pipe, it would run less than a hundred feet from neighboring homes. Tar sands pipelines threaten East Texas communities with their highly toxic contents, which pose a greater risk to human health than conventional crude oil. TransCanada’s existing tar sands pipeline, Keystone XL’s predecessor, has an atrocious safety record, leaking twelve times in its first year of operation.

“TransCanada didn’t bother to ask the people of this neighborhood if they wanted to have millions of gallons of poisonous tar sands pumped through their backyards,” said Almonte, one of the protesters now inside the pipeline. “This multinational corporation has bullied landowners and expropriated homes to fatten its bottom line.”

Recently, over 40 communities worldwide planned actions with Tar Sands Blockade during a week of resistance against extreme energy extraction and
its direct connection to the climate crisis. A growing global movement is rising up against the abuses of the fossil fuel industry and its increasingly desperate pursuit of dangerous extraction methods.

“I’m barricading this pipe with Tar Sands Blockade today to say loud and clear to the extraction industry that our communities and the resources we depend on for survival are not collateral damage,” said Collins, another blockader inside the pipe and an organizer with Radical Action for Mountain Peoples Survival (RAMPS) and Mountain Justice, grassroots campaigns in Appalachia working to stop mountaintop removal coal mining. Continue reading ‘BREAKING: Two People Barricade Themselves Inside Keystone XL Pipe To Halt Construction’

Cross-posted from the Understory

“This dusty old dust is a-gettin’ my home,  And I got to be driftin’ along.”

-Woody Guthrie, “So Long, It’s Been Good To Know Yuh”

This past weekend I watched Ken Burns’ new PBS documentary, “The Dust Bowl,” a great, insightful documentary drawing parallels to the dust bowl of the 1930’s and today’s environmental and climate crisis.

And of course it’s sponsored by Bank of America.

As a former history teacher, I can appreciate a new telling of environmental history before our movement even began.  But as an organizer targeting the root causes of climate change and the banks that fund them, I have to wonder what is going on?

The PBS documentary, which aired this month, chronicles America’s worst man-made ecological disaster. A deadly combination of the frenzied wheat boom of the “Great Plow-Up,” followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s, wrecked America’s heartland.

The disaster was completely man made. During the 1910’s and 1920’s, the “Great Plow Up” had transformed millions of acres of natural grassland into wheat fields. With the Great Depression, farmers responded to falling wheat prices first with tearing up more land for bumper crops, and then many simply abandoned their fields.

When the drought of the 1930’s engulfed America’s breadbasket, there were no natural defenses to prevent the region from turning into a virtual “dust bowl.” Dust storms became commonplace. Static electricity disabled vehicles and could knock a man to the ground with a mere handshake. 850 million tons of top soil blew away in 1935. Dirt and dust blew as far away as New York City and Washington D.C. Incidentally, the dust bowl had “deniers” who said the phenomenon was “God’s will” or part of the natural cycle. (Sound familiar?)

The parallels drawn between the dust bowl and climate change in the film are stark. Markets and investors drove agricultural development, which led to the ecological crisis of the 1930’s. Big profits and fossil fuel prices today drive everything from tar sands development to coal exports, leading us to growing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Watching “The Dust Bowl” is a constant reminder to me of the extreme weather (hurricanes, drought, wildfires, etc.,) fueled by climate change, which we’ve been seeing more and more of over recent years. Furthermore, the poverty of communities in the 1930s dust bowl and the poverty of communities in today’s extraction zones were eerily familiar. Continue reading ‘America’s Worst Ecological Disaster, Brought To You By Bank of America’