Photo Credit: Tar Sands Action (video still)

On Sunday, November 6th the Tar Sands Action will return to Washington D.C. for a massive rally that sends an unmistakable message to the President.

The following is a statement and call to action issued by a diverse group of movement leaders about this momentous action:

Exactly one year before the next presidential election, we want to encircle the whole White House to ask President Obama to reject Keystone XL and live up to his promise to free us from the tyranny of oil. In doing so, we want to remind him of the power of the movement that he rode to the White House in 2008. This is bigger than any one person – President or no – and we will carry on, with or without him.

We’ve never tried something this ambitious before, and we don’t know if there are the thousands of people that it will take to encircle the White House. But if we can pull it off, it will be an unmistakable message. Also, we’re not expecting any arrests at this action, which means that anyone and everyone is able to participate.

Bill McKibben had this message to share about the Nov. 6th event:

November 6th will be a crucial moment for everyone hoping to stop Keystone  XL. We don’t have very much time – the President will make a decision about the pipeline in  December – so it’s critical that we make this action as large as  possible. If the President sees that our movement has the strength to do something as ambitious as encircle the White House, he’ll know there  will be real consequences for not living up to his promises. We hope that exactly one year from the next election, he would take that as a sign he needs to change course and start living up to the high expectations he set in 2008.

TAKE ACTION

Join the sit-in this Monday, October 26!

Update: Monday Sept 26 – over 180 people were arrested for trespassing on Parliament Hill this morning including Maude Barlow, national chairperson at the Council of Canadians, Dave Coles, President of the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers union and CEP Executive Assistant, Fred Wilson, Graham Saul of Climate Action Network and Mikisew Cree George Poitras. Check here for photos: CEP’s flickr photostream and Council of Canadians photostream
 Thank you everyone!

On Monday, Sept 26 hundreds will gather in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, to protest the building of the Keystone XL pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.

On the heels of the massive Tar Sands Action at the White House at the end of August, the invitation to mirror the DC action was issued by the Council of Canadians, Greenpeace Canada and the Indigenous Environment Network with a long list of expert, celebrity, organization and activist endorsements. While we in the US work to show President Obama that he has the support to stand up to the oil and gas industry and say no to the pipeline (he’s scheduled to approve the application this year), our Canadian and First Nations friends will be pressuring Prime Minister Harper to stop this massive increase in tar sands exploitation.

In August, I posted a blog with a link to a short film I helped put together called The Oil Up There. It’s worth encouraging you and others to watch it again – and remind ourselves why an expansion of the tar sands is a disaster for both people and the planet.

Daily from August 20 – September 3, hundreds of people joined the Tar Sands Action in Washington DC, where more than 1200 people were arrested at the White House in what is being called the largest act of civil disobedience in defense of the environment in US history.

The DC days of action were colourful and moving and folks from all across the continent stepped up. It’s been noted that a photo of the arrest of NASA scientist James Hansen sums up the dire and immediate situation if Keystone XL goes ahead. In 1988 he testified on climate change to congressional committees about global warming and the need to take action to limit climate change. Twenty-three years later that message needs to be heard louder than ever.

This week the Canadian Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP) held a briefing with Members of Parliament, calling for a reversal of the Keystone XL permit and raised questions about the apparently expired certificate approval held by TransCanada Keystone Pipeline CP Ltd, and whether President Obama thus has the ability to approve an international pipeline with an expired certificate and required National Energy Board (NEB) approval. In a letter to the NEB dated September 23, they note:

“Condition #22 to that Certificate stipulated that:
Unless the Board otherwise directs prior to 11 March 2011, this Certificate shall expire on 11 March 2011 unless construction in respect of the Project has commenced by that date.
Our understanding is that the Board made no direction prior to March 11, 2011, and that no construction in respect of the Project had commenced by that date. Accordingly, OC-56 expired on March 11, 2011, and there is no current approval that would allow TCPL to proceed further with the Keystone XL pipeline.“

Stay tuned.

To my friends in Canada, I wish I could be there with you on Monday, and thank you/meegwetch!

For those of you in Canada, visit the Ottawa Tar Sands Action web page to find out how you can get involved. Read Council of Canadians campaigner, Andrea Harden-Donahue’s, thoughts before the protest, here.

 In the U.S., the actions against the Tar Sands have not slowed. According to 350.org, the State Department is holding a number of public hearings on the proposed pipeline, and community members are being asked to attend the meetings and testify.

Get involved from wherever you are and STOP KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE.

President Barack Obama will decide as early as September whether to approve a $7-billion, 1,700-mile long pipeline called Keystone XL to transport up to 900,000 barrels a day of tar sands crude from northern Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast of Texas.

The Alberta tar sands is well known as the largest and most destructive industrial project in human history – causing massive environmental damage to the natural eco-system, killing resident and visiting animal and bird species, irrevocably polluting water and poisoning land and communities downstream of the Athabasca River and trampling on treaty and Indigenous rights in northern Alberta.

In 2008 I traveled with a group of fellow Canadians to the tar sands to understand the impact of bad government policy, corporate malfeasance and US oil addiction at this ‘ground zero’. We created this short video to convey the scope of the project and raise the alarm.

It’s astounding to think that what our small delegation saw in 2008 has continued to expand and wreak more havoc on people and planet. Approval of the Keystone XL would dramatically increase the strain on the tar sands and is a climate and pollution horror beyond description.

THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW!

From August 20th to September 3rd, thousands of North Americans – including Danny Glover, and NASA’s Dr. James Hansen – will be at the White House, day after day, demanding Obama reject Keystone XL. Many protesters will engage in peaceful civil disobedience, day after day to make their voices heard.

Twenty-eight organizational leaders including Global Exchange’s Founding Director Kirsten Moller, have endorsed the days of action and we want YOU to participate.

 

Tour participants eat a healthy breakfast in the shade.

Tour participants eat a healthy breakfast in the shade.

The following guest post is Part I in a series written by Rachel Jackson who is one of the participants on Global Exchange’s ‘Radical Oklahoma’ Reality Tour trip happening now.

Radical Oklahoma – Red State Reality Tour

Tenkiller-Lake-1

Lake Tenkiller, near Gore, OK.

On Sunday, after a quick round up in Tulsa of our tour guests and a mad supermarket dash for breakfast supplies, we headed to Lake Tenkiller State Park.

On the way we crossed the boundary between Muscogee Creek Country into Cherokee Country, where the lake is located. We arrived in time for dinner at Soda Steve’s, a local establishment that makes it own root beer and cream soda. 

This morning on Day 2, we woke up in a leisurely fashion to sunrise over Lake Tenkiller and enjoyed a picnic breakfast at a table outside our cabin. We got on the road mid-morning and took the back roads scenic route across OK Highway 9 west toward Sasakwa.

Our goal was to tour the countryside around the site of the Green Corn Rebellion. Our trip took us out of Cherokee territory, through Muscogee Creek Country, and into the Seminole Nation – three of the five tribes removed from the southeastern United States into Indian Territory during the 1830’s removal era. The federal government assigned these tribes (the first among many more) a new, and much smaller, land base that these nations still claim today.

Remains of the old city hall in Sasakwa. Some Green Corn rebels may have been detained here.

Remains of the old city hall in Sasakwa. Some Green Corn rebels may have been detained here.

The Green Corn Rebellion was an armed insurrection that occurred in early August 1917. Occurring in reaction to the World War I Conscription Act, its goal was to protest the draft of the poor to fight in “a rich man’s war.” The rebels involved were members and sympathizers with the Working Class Union, a loosely affiliated branch of the Industrial Workers of the World that organized African American, Native American, and white tenant farmers, sharecroppers, miners, and oil field workers who saw class concerns as a unifying force. 

In the days prior to rebellion, the rebels committed numerous acts of sabotage such as dynamiting railroad trestles and cutting telegraph lines to halt the mechanisms of capitalism that were driving U.S. involvement in the war. Though the story is complicated, the plan was to continue such acts of sabotage all the way to Washington, D.C., meeting up with other rebels across the country along the way. 

Lone-Dove-Tombstones3

Lone Dove Cemetery, just north of Sasakwa – a supposed site of internment for several Green Corn Rebels.

The rebels, however, never made it out of the area. They were stopped by posses made up of their neighbors and community members. Knowing they couldn’t shoot men they knew (they were prepared to shoot nameless National Guardsmen), the rebels laid down their arms and gave themselves up for arrest. According to historic records, all in all 458 men were arrested, many of whom went on to serve significant sentences. The key leaders of the WCU were sentenced to ten years in Leavenworth federal penitentiary.

While the Green Corn rebels were suppressed through accusations of disloyalty and syndicalism, so was the rebellion. That is, few Oklahomans know of it because official narratives of state history do not account for it. It’s hard not to wonder how Oklahoma might be different if this story were publicly acknowledged, or perhaps even heralded, as a collective expression of conscientious objection to unbridled greed and war. 

What might a roadside historical marker say about these rebels, impoverished workers in the Oklahoma countryside, who emboldened each other to take a stand?

XL-Pipeline-Path

The Keystone XL Pipeline construction path, crossing OK Highway 270, outside of Holdenville, OK.

Rachel Jackson who is one of the “Radical Oklahoma Reality Tour trips happening now, is a PhD Candidate and Dissertation Fellow at the University of Oklahoma in the Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Program, Department of English. She researches and theorizes the impact of suppressed local histories of resistance on Oklahoma’s current political identity.

Take-ActionTAKE ACTION!