Portland Activists Blockade Columbia River in Symbolic Protest Against Fossil Fuel Shipments

28th July 2013

In a day-long affair involv­ing hun­dreds of activists, the Port­land Ris­ing Tide and 350.org col­lab­o­ra­tion, Sum­mer Heat, went off yes­ter­day with­out a hitch.

Activists con­gre­gat­ed in the morn­ing at the Van­cou­ver Land­ing in Van­cou­ver, Wash­ing­ton, where the port author­i­ties recent­ly OKed a ter­mi­nal to ship hun­dreds of thou­sands of bar­rels of oil car­ried on trains from the Bakken Shale. 

Host­ing info ses­sions about free trade agree­ments, direct action, and infra­struc­ture resis­tance, the event car­ried a fes­tive air into the ear­ly after­noon. By 3pm, around 250 activists in more than 100 boats took to the riv­er for a sym­bol­ic block­ade and massed under the Colum­bia Bridge.

More activists gath­ered on the bridge, and three climbers repelled down with a long, trans­par­ent ban­ner that read, “Coal, Oil, Gas: None Shall Pass.”

“It went as well as I thought it could have,” stat­ed one Ris­ing Tide activist to EF! News. Although the FBI had been snoop­ing around in the weeks pri­or to the event, the crowd that came out to the protest showed that they will not be intim­i­dat­ed.

Police pres­ence was rel­a­tive­ly min­i­mal at the protest com­pared to oth­er Ris­ing Tide and Occu­py actions that have occurred. Nobody was arrest­ed, and the mes­sage was sent: Expect Resis­tance.

Sum­mer Heat was only a high point in what has been a long, hard, and in many ways suc­cess­ful strug­gle, which has seen three three pro­posed coal ter­mi­nals shut down so far.  Today, Port­land Ris­ing Tide looks invig­o­rat­ed, con­fi­dent, and more ded­i­cat­ed than ever to the mis­sion of stop­ping cli­mate change.