Earlier this month, during the opening session of the 2013 Utah Energy Development Summit, two activists with Utah Tar Sands Resistance took to the stage in order to present Utah Gov. Gary Herbert — the host of the summit — with a very special award: Polluter of the Year. After commandeering the microphone, the presenters…
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As the sun began to set in Diboll, Texas, on Jan. 3, a precarious scene was unfolding. Two Tar Sands Blockaders were perched 60 feet off the ground in a leafless forest that was just days away from being cleared to make way for the Keystone XL pipeline. The action, which echoed the revolutionary call…
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This spring, Montanans will have a chance to follow up on the largest climate-related act of civil disobedience in Montana history, which saw 23 arrests over five days, as hundreds gathered at the State Capitol in opposition to Big Coal. A subgroup of the protesters — myself included — are now taking our case to…
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Members of Peaceful Uprising and Utah Tar Sands Resistance rallied outside the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Salt Lake City on Monday, as part of a week of solidarity actions with the Tar Sands Blockade in East Texas. Several of us visited the blockade in October for a mass action, and because we’re working…
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“CLOSED. Happy Thanksgiving,” read a handwritten plywood sign propped against a makeshift tire barrier outside a work site for the Keystone XL pipeline in rural East Texas. For those who had come to protest and engage in civil disobedience against the pipeline’s construction, the message made clear that their visit was expected. It was still…
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“You’re at Middle Earth,” said a figure clad in full camo, with only eyes peering out between a hat and mask. “Your mission is to distract. Stay with your group, keep moving and make a lot of noise.” Soon, about 50 masked figures leaped out of the woods into the clear-cut, whooping, hollering and howling….
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“System Shutdown,” read the screen above the Times Square subway entrance on Sunday afternoon. A gray sky had consumed the sun, and periodic gusts of wind rattled the traffic signs. Meanwhile, the supermarkets were jammed with shopping carts packed full of canned goods and toilet paper, in preparation for the impending “frankenstorm” as meteorologists had…
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A hard rain was falling on Monday night as Occupy the Pipeline activists spread out along New York’s Hudson River Park, in front of the site where workers in orange day-glow vests have been laboring around the clock on the New Jersey-New York Expansion Project. Known colloquially by the name of its builder, Spectra Energy,…
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Larry Gibson, the Keeper of the Mountains, was struck dead by a heart attack on Sunday at Kayford Mountain, his ancestral home in the heart of coal country West Virginia. He was a leader of the fight against Mountaintop Removal (MTR), one of the most destructive and polluting extraction processes ever invented. Larry was a…
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Last week, a new front opened in the struggle against tar sands mining in the U.S. If you didn’t know that tar sands mining is in the works on this side of the border in the first place, you’re not alone. Most people don’t realize that tar sands extraction, which has caused tremendous pollution and…
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