BREAKING: Activists Staging Sit-in at Dept. of Interior Demanding Phase Out of Fossil Fuels
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 upon request.
Washington D.C.—Hundreds of climate activists marched to the Department of the Interior’s headquarters today, with twenty people committing civil disobedience inside, calling for the abolition of offshore oil drilling, coal mining and tar sands extraction. Reclaim Power led hundreds from Lafayette Park to the agency’s headquarters in Washington D.C. the same day after Powershift, a mass youth climate conference, ended and 2 days before the one year anniversary of the BP Gulf Oil Disaster.
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 administration allows oil and coal to make millions from the natural resources in our communities and leave behind nothing but misery,” said Ben Kessler of Rising Tide North Texas, a participant in the sit-in. “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. Obama and his Dept. of Interior are complicit in this.”
“It’s called “public land,” not “industry land” and in Utah public land is most valuable exactly the way it is,” said Ashley Anderson, co-founder of climate group Peaceful Uprising and a student at the University of Utah. “The Dept. of Interior will not be permitted to sacrifice public land to an outdated deadly industry. Residents in Utah intend to keep the carbon in its public lands in the ground. We warn the Dept. of Interior: dirty energy is the public’s enemy, and a friend of our enemy is our enemy.”
Obama’s Dept. of Interior allows the fossil fuel industry to run amok on eco-systems, 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, 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 exaggerated 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 in two days on April 20th, 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.
Reclaim Power’s and the April 20th’s Day of Action against Extraction demands include:
For more information please visit www.extractionaction.net
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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.
Climate Reality Tour: Report back. Look ahead| Time | Thursday, March 24 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm |
|---|---|
| Location | Jam Jar 1719 Lamont Washington, DC |
| Created By | |
| More Info | SAVE the DATE! * Potluck * Music * Report Back * Look Ahead * It's been three months since the UN Climate Summit ended in Cancun, and since the end of the Climate Reality Tour. Please join us for a multimedia potluck debrief of our adventure. We're excited to share videos of inspiring organizers, photos of the gorgeous bike trail, and the insights gleaned on this 9 week movement-building climate justice odyssey. We'll then cast our glance forward to the climate justice movement-building opportunities of the spring: Powershift and the March on Blair Mountain. Then we'll be graced by music from the Sligo Creek Stompers! * For those of you not in DC, we'll be posting all the final photos and videos shortly, and a summary of our report back for all to see. We hope to see you there! James + Jamie For more info, see: http://climaterealitytour. http://www.friendsofblairm |
Downstairs at St. Stephen’s Church
1525 Newton Street NW
Washington, DC
Spend an evening with author Kolya Abramsky, as he maps out a global class struggle for energy autonomy, independence, and a better world, against the fossil fools of the capitalist energy economy.
$5 at the door. Cosponsored by Dream City Collective, AK Press, and DC Rising Tide.
As the world’s energy system faces a period of unprecedented change, a global struggle over who controls the sector—and for what purposes—is intensifying. The question of “green capitalism” is now unavoidable, for capitalist planners and anti-capitalist struggles alike. From all sides we hear that it’s time to save the planet in order to save the economy, but in reality what lies before us is the next round of global class struggle with energy at the center, as the key means of production and subsistence.
There are no easy answers in this battle for control of the world’s energy system. Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution is not a book of sound bites. It unpacks the seemingly innocent terms “energy sector” and “energy system” by situating the current energy crisis, peak oil, and the transition to a post-petrol future within a historical understanding of the global, social, economic, political, financial, military, and ecological relations of which energy and technology are parts. The authors probe the systemic relationships between energy production and consumption and the worldwide division of labor on which capitalism itself is based?its conflicts and hierarchies, its crisis and class struggles.
Kolya Abramsky is a former visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Science, Technology and Society, in Graz, Austria, where he received the Manfred-Heindler Award for Energy and Climate Change Research, and in 2006 was coordinator of the Danish-based World Wind Energy Institute, an international effort in non-commercial renewable energy education, involving different renewable energy centers from around the world.
A blurb about the book:
"Gas flaring in Nigeria, wind farms in Schleswig-Holstein, mountain top removal in Appalachia, tar sands in Alberta, geothermal energy in Iceland, the toxic cycle of uranium, the slaughter in the coal-mines of China, the transgenic soya monocultures, the 'caliph' of oil in Iraq, jatropha production in Tanzania, exploration in the Tehuantepec winds: every power under the sun is here except horse-power, and everywhere on earth—China, Europe, North America, the Mideast, Africa, India, and Latin America.
Kolya Abramsky has composed, a symphonic compendium of five sections, fourteen parts, sixty chapters by forty-six individual authors and eighteen organizational authors in nearly seven hundred pages all arranged with intelligence and point. There are no technofixes. Neither 'clean' energy nor 'green' capitalism will preserve our lands, rivers, oceans, health, and lives. Neither governments nor corporations nor 'the market' can bring us out of the nether world they themselves have created. Mother Earth calls to the grass-roots for entirely new social relations, human and less hellish. This sober and serious book heeds that call."—Peter Linebaugh, author of The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All
Activists disrupted the annual general meeting of criminal corporation Massey Energy this morning in Richmond, VA. Two of the group were arrested as they demanded an end to Massey’s reckless disregard for human life, community health, and the environment. As shareholders entered their meeting in the main ballroom of the sheik Jefferson Hotel, activists occupied the adjacent rotunda, chanting loudly and draping a massive banner over the ornate mezzanine railings. The 10’ x 10’ hand-painted banner read, “Massey – Stop Putting Profits Over People!”
“Coal mining is dangerous. It’s dangerous for workers, dangerous for surrounding communities, and dangerous for the future of our planet. It’s time we move off of our dependency on coal and transition to a just, safe, clean energy future.” said Kate Rooth of DC Rising Tide, one of those who disrupted the meeting. “Massey Energy is notorious not only for putting their bottom dollar over people’s safety, but for driving people out their communities and poisoning their drinking water.”
Protesters loudly read an open letter to Massey (below) demanding they cease mountaintop removal coal mining, a practice that is destroying central Appalachian communities. A similar open letter was tendered by two activists who yesterday were assigned an outrageous $100,000 bail after non-violently blocking the driveway to Massey’s regional HQ in Boone County, WV.
As activists disrupted events inside, several hundred unionists and environmentalists rallied in the rain outside – albeit separately – to demand accountability for Massey’s despicable record of dangerous mine conditions, and its devastating social and ecological impact. Rally-goers pointed to the recent explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, WV that killed 29 miners, and its mountaintop removal operations throughout Appalachia in their indictment of Massey’s corporate greed.
The activists arrested today in Richmond, Kate Finneran and Oscar Ramirez, remain in custody as Massey Energy continues jeopardizing workers’ lives and blasting apart mountaintops and communities throughout Appalachia.
Slide Show:
New Press Release:
[VIEW PHOTOS of arrests, banner on Flickr*]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcrt/sets/72157623962766237/
Join us Sunday March 7th for a panel discussion by
former union coal miners from the United Mine Workers
of America! Come hear them discuss the strikes they
took part in and their current work to stop Mountain
Top Removal, the destruction of environment, community,
economy, and culture of Appalachia by blowing off
mountaintops to extract coal.
** When?
Sunday, March 7, 2010
5:30pm - 8:30pm
** Where?
St. Stephen's Church (downstairs)
1525 Newton Street NW
Washington, DC
The movement to stop Mountain Top Removal in
Appalachia has been growing for years, in part
thanks to former Union miners who have stepped
into leadership roles throughout the country. While
locally the history of the Union and its militant
struggles is common knowledge, few people outside
of the "hollows" of Appalachia know these stories.
The panel will cover everything from the "wildcat strikes"
to what the United Mine Workers of America meant for
people's daily lives. Panelists will also talk about the
Pittston Strike, a strike which lasted 11 months, covered
3 states, led to thousands of arrests and included a mass
occupation of the Moss 3 Prep Plant, a mining facility in
the area. Finally, the panel will look at how their involvement
in the UMWA affects their role in the current movement to
end Mountain Top Removal.
Cosponsored by:
DC Radical Space Collective
the RRENEW Collective
DC Rainforest Action Network
DC Rising Tide
bringing the ruckus against climate chaos and corporate resource wars from stolen Native American land to Iraq and Afghanistan
8.5x11" b&w flyer
11x17" poster
quarter sheets
>> Who?
. You, your fly crew, and your dancing shoes
. mad rowdy young people and our allies
. DC Students for a Democratic Society & DC Rising Tide
in alliance with the Peaceable Assembly Campaign
>> What?
funkadelic youth & student-powered mobile street party
bringing down the corporate lobbying machine
>> When?
Friday January 29th, noontime
>> Where?
Lafayette Park
Washington, DC
>> Why?
Last month, Fossil Hawks celebrated two great victories: the US-led failure of the Copenhagen climate summit and Obama's escalation of the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thanks to their aggressive lobbying, the world's worst CO2 emitters, companies like Shell and Exxon, are free from new international pollution regulations and fixing to reap huge profits from Obama's expanding resource wars in the strategic oil and natural gas-rich war zones of the Middle East and Central Asia.
The importance of challenging the violence and treachery of corporate power is becoming increasingly clear to the Climate and Anti-War Movements. If we want to turn the tide of climate chaos and corporate resource imperialism, then 2010 must be a year of unprecedented cooperation between our movements in creative resistance against the Fossil Hawks.
With the US military's ranking as the world's #1 gas guzzler (oil consumer & user), buying from the top polluting transnationals, the problem runs deep. The annual CO2 output of the Iraq War is greater than 139 (60%) of the world's countries. It gets worse, but much of the toxic output from the War on Terror is hard to put a number on. We know that US bombs release heavy doses of other greenhouse gases, and pollutants like depleted uranium (DU) are in regular use. There is a long history of US military-industrial eco-devastation: trench warfare gases in WWI, nukes in WWII, agent orange in Vietnam, DU in Gulf War I, and it'll keep coming 'til we bring them down.
>> Fossil Hawks, WTF?
Fossil Hawks are the war-making corporate climate criminals and the politicians who serve them. They are the mining companies, energy companies, weapons manufacturers, military logistics companies, and mercenaries who profit from resource wars and lobby to sabotage US and UN environmental regulation. Many are at the top of the 122 companies responsible for 80% of global CO2 output. They are diversified corporations and lobbies invested in war and environmental exploitation.
* Exxon is expanding natural gas operations using Halliburton's "fracking" process, poisoning North American aquifers while selling jet fuel to US forces bombing Afghanistan until it's "stable" enough for pipelines moving Caspian natural gas.
* Shell simultaneously profits from Iraqi oilfields and from the fuel US tanks burn to protect them while clear-cutting for tar sands in Alberta and lobbying for "Clean Coal" technology in DC.
* Caterpillar sells the same monstrous gas-guzzling D-9 bulldozers to Massey Coal for mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia that US tax dollars buy for Israeli Military demolition of Palestinian homes.
Posted Nov 30th, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 30, 2009
Contacts: Lacy MacAuley, (202) 445-4692, lacy@massey-media.com
Nadine Bloch, (202) 412-7611, nbloch@igc.org
Morgan Goodwin, (413) 884-5240, morgan.goodwin@gmail.com
Feisty unpermitted march blocks traffic, marks the tenth anniversary of the WTO shutdown in Seattle, demands “Corporations out of Copenhagen” one week prior to the UN climate summit
Washington DC – Climate justice activists this morning marched through downtown Washington DC to visit climate polluters and the K Street lobbyists who represent them, joining thousands more in cities across the country for actions marking the November 30th Mobilization for Climate Justice. The march occurred just one week before the beginning of international climate negotiations in Copenhagen and marked the tenth anniversary of the historic day when activists converged in Seattle to non-violently shut down the meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
[Click to view PHOTOS of today’s climate justice march in Washington DC]
“Oil companies, lobbyists, and banks are driving climate change and using their influence to prevent us from taking swift action to stop climate change. They are accelerating us off of a climate change cliff by promoting business as usual. They’ll just save themselves with their golden parachutes, leaving the rest of the world in free fall,” said organizer Lacy MacAuley, “We are calling for ‘Corporations out of Copenhagen,’ asking businesses and their lobbyists to step aside and let us create meaningful solutions to climate change, solutions that place people before profit.” Continue Reading »
Published by Indymedia, Washington DC
On the morning of June 18th, Lisa Ramsden and Jeanne Kirshon of Rising Tide DC were arrested in W VA while taking action against a mountaintop removal coal mine. They were arrested with 12 others after entering a Massey Energy MTR mine site near twilight, Western Virginia.
posted by Adrian in Freedom from Oil, RAN General on June 19th, 2009
Today, RAN took the fight against dirty Tar Sands oil to Washington.
(activist being escorted out of the conference after deploying banner. activist is also a member of dc rising tide)
April 20 300 people took to the streets of Charlotte, NC to demand that Duke Energy stop the construction of the 800 mw Cliffside coal plant in Rutherford County, NC. After rousing speeches from coalfield residents and local church leaders the crowd marched to Duke Energy’s headquarters. Shouts of “No new coal!” and “Cancel Cliffside” echoed off the skyscrapers of the nations second largest financial center, as the crowd wound its way through the lunch hour traffic.
For updates check out www.stopcliffside.org
DC Rising Tide disrupt and denounce coal conference
March 26, 2009
Washington, DC. – Local activists with DC Rising Tide and their allies interrupted a coal industry conference today to denounce coal-to-liquids as a corporate scam that would continue the destructive path of the fossil fuel industry.
“ We have had enough of corporations trying to keep us hooked on polluting fossil fuels. They seek to profit from climate change and the destruction of Appalachia.” said Amanda Duzak of Rising Tide.
Activists stood in the audience and loudly presented speeches to refute the statements of coal and oil executives from Chevron, World Coal Institute, World Petroleum Council and Consol Energy. The advocates of clean energy called for an end to the use of fossil fuels and for adoption of clean, renewable, community-based energy sources. Protesters deployed banners in the conference to highlight that “Coal kills” and “Coal takes lives” and we need “Renewable energy now.”
“Pound for pound coal produces more CO2 than almost any other form of energy production. If we’re serious about tackling climate change, we absolutely must stop mining and burning coal. Coal to liquids technology is a step in the wrong direction for our air, water and climate.” said Michael Weber of Rising Tide
The activists explained that even if the unproven, expensive, and dangerous carbon capture and storage techniques were in place, coal-to-liquids technology, which would convert coal to oil for transportation, would generate twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as oil. It would also lead to an increase in coal mining that destroys rivers and mountains and threatens community health.
“Its time to stop investing in false solutions. We are facing a climate crisis. It is time to stand up and fight for a sustainable future.” said Emma Cassidy of DC Rising Tide.
Rising Tide DC is a grassroots group of activists working towards climate justice by debunking false solutions and advocating a community-based, clean energy future.
activists hang banner at "world coal to liquids conference." banner reads "coal takes lives. renewable energy now"
activist escorted out after interrupting the conference
activist stands on chair in protest as part of the "people's filibuster" during the world coal to liquids conference
activists post action. all activists were asked to leave the conference, but no arrests were made.
