Calendar
Wednesday to Sunday, April 2 to 6: Mammoet Megaload Meetings
Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and allies are postponing plans from tomorrow, Wednesday, March 26, until next week, April 2 to 6, to meet and offer presentations, as described in the March 20 WIRT newsletter, about the proposed Highway 95/200 Mammoet megaloads [1]. We are working hard to confront these monsters, but the Coeur d’Alene Idaho Transportation Department office did not respond to our public records request by Monday, as required by Idaho law. WIRT is rescheduling our Plummer and Sandpoint convergences and adding Coeur d’Alene and Moscow training sessions during next week and weekend, and will send a full report/announcement about the situation soon.
Tribal & Climate Activists Gathering about Mammoet Megaloads
* Wednesday, April 3, 5:30 to 7:30 pm: East Bonner County – Sandpoint Library Room 103-4, 1407 Cedar Street, Sandpoint, Idaho
* Friday, April 4, 5:30 to 7:30 pm: Benewah Wellness Center Room B, 1100 A Street, Plummer, Idaho
Direct Action Training Sessions for Keystone XL Pipeline/Mammoet Megaloads
* Saturday, April 5, 12 noon to 4 pm: Coeur d’Alene Library Community Room, 702 East Front Avenue, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
* Sunday, April 6, 12 noon to 4 pm: The Attic, up the back stairs of 314 East Second Street, Moscow, Idaho
The Palouse Region CCL is officially started now, following a great opening meeting last Saturday with front page coverage in the Daily News on Monday! (One of the first items to discuss will be the best time for everyone to meet.) The following is from an email from Rob Briggs and Pat Rathmann last Thursday:
We will have our first regular meeting on Monday April 7 at 7:00 pm in the sanctuary (up stairs) of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse, 420 E 2nd St, Moscow, ID.
The agenda for the meeting will include listening to the national Citizen’s Climate Lobby conference call. These calls are invariably upbeat and informative and provide concrete actions that we can take to move the campaign for effective federal climate legislation forward.
Additionally, we will be taking initial steps to organize into interest groups to tackle various educational, outreach, and lobbying activities. We’re hoping to establish multiple interest groups that feel empowered to act, and then use the monthly meetings simply for coordination and sharing successes.
There is a wide variety of productive roles you can play in CCL. These range from reliably reading local newspapers, to serving as behind-the-scenes climate science advisor, tabling, giving presentations, writing letters to the editor, and meeting with Senators and House members. There are important roles for all skill sets and comfort levels.
As Bill Barron mentioned several times on Saturday, CCL likes things to run on time. We’re hoping to run our chapter meetings in a disciplined and effective way that is respectful of everyone’s time. CCL suggests that monthly meetings run for two hours. We rather like the idea of finishing early and retiring to some gathering place to socialize and strategize informally. CCL provides great opportunities for us to innovate locally, share nationally, and thereby attach a big multiplier to our creative efforts.
On April 3rd in Boise, journalist and Idaho Magazine managing editor Steve Bunk will launch his new book “Goliath Staggered.” The book “follows the rise, growth, and triumph of the people’s movement to prevent major oil companies from transforming Highway 12’s federally protected Wild and Scenic River corridor through northern Idaho into a high-and-wide industrial thoroughfare.”
Book signing party: Moscow: April 23rd, 7 p.m., at BookPeople, 521 S. Main, 208-882-2669. Event sponsors: Friends of the Clearwater and Wild Idaho Rising Tide.
Please find attached a draft agenda for our meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) at 5:30 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse (downstairs), 420 E 2nd St, Moscow. We will be serving pizza early during the meeting.
If you can listen to the national CCL call in advance of the meeting here, that will be helpful but is not essential. I found Jay Butera’s story particularly inspiring.
For each month’s call, CCL prepares an action sheet here for the month. Writing members of congress is the top action this month, and I will bring materials so that we can generate letters and postcards to our members of congress during the meeting (time permitting).
Please try to arrive promptly. We will need to finish before 7:00 pm, as many of us will be participating in the planning session (7 pm in Fiske Room, 1912 Center) for community activities to complement the Years of Living Dangerously series showing at the Kenworthy.
You are invited to join local groups for the 5th and final ‘Tar Sands Healing Walk’, June 28-29 in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Inspired to heal the people and places devastated by tar sands development, the Tar Sands Healing Walk is not a rally, march, or protest, but a respectful acknowledgment of suffering due to unhealthy energy addictions. We will walk in solidarity with the First Nations (Native Americans) of Canada in this walk. A planning meeting will be held at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, May 27 at Maialina Pizzeria, 602 S Main St, Moscow. Following this, we will walk to the Kenworthy for the free showing of ‘Years of Living Dangerously’. Sponsored by Wild Idaho Rising Tide and Palouse Environmental Sustainability Coalition. For more information about the Healing Walk, visit http://www.healingwalk.org/ and contact Pat Fuerst, 509-339-5213, epfuerst@frontier.com.
The meeting will be held in the Hecht Room of the Neill Public Library at 210 N. Grand Ave, in Pullman from 5:30 to 7:00 pm, Wednesday, June 11. Pizza will be served.
Come to the Moscow Crude Awakening Oil Train Tour Show with Dana Lyons, and learn about the proposed and ongoing oil trains that the oil industry plans to send through Northwest towns for export through the Salish Sea. Explore how our region is organizing to stop these oil trains and how you can help, while enjoying some great tunes and a lovely Solstice gathering! Please join Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists, friends, family, and allies at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse, 420 East Second Street in Moscow, Idaho, at 7 pm on Monday, June 23, for an inspiring concert and an informative talk by Dana Lyons, with potluck snacks, beer, and wine. Show hosts suggest $10 to $20 donations for fundraising admission, but will not turn anyone away for lack of funds. For further information about the oil train issue and this tour event, visit WIRT website and facebook pages at WildIdahoRisingTide.org and Facebook.com/WildIdaho.RisingTide or contact WIRT at wild.idaho.rising.tide@gmail.com or 208-301-8039.
The Crude Awakening Oil Train Tour is making stops in Port Angeles, Everett, Vancouver, and Olympia, Washington, on June 6, 7, 12, and 14, and in Portland, Oregon, on June 13. Dana and Matt will offer an upcoming show sponsored by Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper (208-597-7188, LakePendOreilleWaterkeeper.org) at 7 pm on Tuesday, June 24, at Farmin Park on Oak Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues in Sandpoint, Idaho. Spokane Riverkeeper (bart@cforjustice.org) will also host a performance at 7 pm on Wednesday, June 25, on the Saranac Building roof at 35 West Main Avenue in Spokane, Washington. Missoula and Helena, Montana, comrades have scheduled tentative shows respectively on Thursday and Monday, June 26 and 30. To find out more about ForestEthics campaigns, eco-performer Dana Lyons and his music and merchandise, and Crude Awakening Oil Train Tour updates, browse the following website links.
ForestEthics
http://www.forestethics.org/
Dana Lyons
https://www.youtube.com/user/
https://www.facebook.com/
The next meeting of the CCL-Palouse will be from 5:30-7:00 p.m. on July 16. We will meet at Bucer’s (back room) at 201 S. Main Street in Moscow. Bucer’s offers a variety of snacks for sale if you want to eat. Many of you will probably continue on to the 7 PM meeting of the YLD group at the One World Cafe in Moscow. (Spanning the length and cultural spectrum of Main Street, eh?)
The meeting will follow the National Call on Saturday July 12 at 1pm by Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, climate change evangelist. (More about this on the CCL website.)
Our big success of the month is that the Idaho Democrats Convention approved a platform that included this statement: “For the sake of future generations, we are committed to taking proactive measures to prevent and mitigate the effects of climate change.” While the subject was not addressed in the platform draft that was presented at the beginning of the convention, CCL-P urged Latah County delegates to introduce a plank on Climate Change. Nancy Nelson carried the ball, and after some discussion (e.g. “climate disruption” vs. “climate change”) at the Platform Committee Hearings , this final wording passed with no objection from the convention delegates.
The Palouse Chapter of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby will meet from 5:30-7 p.m. on Wednesday August 6 at the Daily Grind on Main Street in Pullman. The Grind has a variety of beverages, sandwiches and pastries if you would like to eat there.
We will send the agenda and July’s minutes with our next reminder, but the focus of the meeting will be a Power Point presentation from the national office on climate change. Members, please come with tough–even adversarial–questions so we can hone our skills at giving presentations to local organizations.
The next national call is on Saturday, August 2 at 10 a.m. Retired general Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander will discuss the impact of climate change on national security. To listen to the call go to http://citizensclimatelobby.org and on the opening page, scroll down to National Call. If you are registered, you can listen live, or the call will be available as an MP3 by about 1 p.m. that day under the button “Listen to the August Call.” We hope you can listen to this prior to the August 6 meeting.
Fight or Flight Northern Rockies Tour stop and direct action training workshop co-sponsored by The Bunny Alliance, Earth First! Journal, Resistance Ecology, and WIRT at the Attic, up the back stairs of 314 East Second Street in Moscow
Please mark your calendar for the next Citizens’ Climate Lobby meeting to be held Wednesday, September 10, 5:30 – 7:00 pm at Café Artista at 3rd and Main St. in Moscow. Café Artista offers teas, coffees, croissants and muffins. (Sorry, we’re not permitted to provide pizza at this venue.)
This week’s national CCL call will feature Retired Naval Rear Admiral Len Hering talking about the impact that climate change is having on national security. A link to the recording of the call will be available by mid-day Saturday (9/6) here: [http://citizensclimatelobby.org/resources/monthly-conference-calls-and-actions/]. Past national calls have been highly informative, and I encourage everyone to listen to the call if they can.
We’ll again have a quick letter-writing activity as part of this month’s meeting. I like this quote from Former Congressman Billy Evans (D-Georgia):
“Legislators estimate that 10 letters from constituents represent the concerns of 10,000 citizens. Anybody who will take the time to write is voicing the fears and desires of thousands more.”
Hope to see you next Wednesday.
Rob Briggs
Co-Group Leader
Palouse Region Chapter, Citizens’ Climate Lobby
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eMail: palouseregion@citizensclimatelobby.org
Saturday, October 11, 11 am MDT: Global Frackdown, Boise Farmers Market at Eleventh and Front Streets, through Capital City Public Market, to the Idaho Capitol steps on Jefferson Street, Boise, Idaho
In conjunction with the third Global Frackdown worldwide day of action on October 11, concerned citizens and climate activists are staging another public demonstration calling for a ban on looming fracking and all toxic oil and gas practices in Idaho and around the Earth. WIRT, Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction (IRAGE), and other groups will march with protest signs, banners, and chants, through farmers markets to the Idaho Capitol and rally on its steps, to publicly oppose fracking and fossil fuels that poison people and the planet and to demand a future powered by clean, renewable energy.
Tuesday and Wednesday, October 14 and 15, 12 noon and 8:30 am: Statewide protests at 12 noon local time on Tuesday at Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) offices and state oil and gas lease auction resistance on 8:30 am MDT on Wednesday at IDL, 300 North Sixth Street, Suite 103, Boise, Idaho
Like June 2013 demonstrations across Idaho and April 2014 protests and occupation of a state oil and gas lease auction, IRAGE, WIRT, and allies are encouraging statewide, grassroots convergences at Idaho Department of Lands offices on Tuesday, October 14, and frontline displays of citizen disapproval at another state lands and minerals lease auction at the IDL office in Boise.
Tuesday and Wednesday, October 14 and 15, 12 noon and 8:30 am: Statewide protests at 12 noon local time on Tuesday at Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) offices and state oil and gas lease auction resistance on 8:30 am MDT on Wednesday at IDL, 300 North Sixth Street, Suite 103, Boise, Idaho
Like June 2013 demonstrations across Idaho and April 2014 protests and occupation of a state oil and gas lease auction, IRAGE, WIRT, and allies are encouraging statewide, grassroots convergences at Idaho Department of Lands offices on Tuesday, October 14, and frontline displays of citizen disapproval at another state lands and minerals lease auction at the IDL office in Boise.