dc rising tide is the Washington DC local group for the Rising Tide North America (RTNA) collective.
more information from the RTNA website:
Rising Tide is an international network born out of the conviction that corporate-friendly and state-sponsored “solutions” to climate change will not save us. As a matter of survival, we must decrease our dependence on the industries and institutions that are destroying the planet and work toward community autonomy and sustainable living.
Who is Rising Tide?
Rising Tide is a grassroots network of groups and individuals who take direct action to confront the roots causes of climate change and promote local, community-based solutions to the climate crisis. Rising Tide was formed in the Netherlands in 2000 to bring a more radical voice to the COP6 (UN Conference of the Parties) climate talks that attempted (unsuccessfully, largely due to the efforts of the US delegation) to salvage what of substance was left of the Kyoto Protocol. Employing popular education and direct action to address the root causes of climate change with a focus on climate justice, Rising Tide now spans three continents.
Rising Tide North America’s strategy is based on a no-compromise approach of stopping the extraction of more fossil fuels and preventing the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure. Equally important, we must phase out our current fossil fuel use and make a just transition to sustainable ways of living. What this means in terms of local organizing depends on the specific conditions unique to each town and bioregion. Rising Tide’s tactics are diverse and creative, taking a bottom-up approach to connecting the dots between oil, war, capitalism, coal, and the destabilization of the global climate.
Changes will be made by people, not institutions. For this movement to succeed, local communities need to take initiative and make this global struggle relevant to their towns and bioregions. We need to start thinking strategically about how to spark a nationwide uprising against the fossil fuel industry that not only disrupts business as usual, but inspires widespread resistance.
Practical solutions exist; it’s time we start using them and making them more widely accessible. We must dismantle the systems of oppression that permeate our culture and ourselves, and work toward real solidarity across lines of race, class, gender and sexual orientation. When we begin to build a culture of mutual aid and community autonomy, we demonstrate that we don’t need the government, and certainly not giant corporations, to survive. We just need a livable planet.
Climate Justice
As we have witnessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the people most affected by climate change are the same people who have been exploited and oppressed throughout the history of civilization – those outside the dominant race and class. On a global level, the regions expected to be hit the hardest by severe droughts, storms and rising sea levels are generally places with the least fossil fuel infrastructure – in other words, the people least responsible for creating climate chaos.
The potential for environmental racism on a scale we’ve not yet seen is downright scary; we got a taste of the future in New Orleans, where environmental refugees attempting to flee a drowning city by crossing the Crescent City bridge to the un-flooded and affluent suburb of Gretna were turned back by gunshots by the remnants of the suburb’s police force. Such an environmental future cannot be allowed to pass; it’s high time we step up our efforts to build real relationships with poor people and people of color who stand the most to lose from climate change.
RTNA aims to build strong links with those who are already being affected by climate change, and to ally ourselves with environmental justice groups fighting pollution from refineries, power plants and coal processing facilities.
RTNA pamphlet: Intro to RTNA
