Call for Solidarity Actions Against Oil Trains

19th May 2014. Maine Earth First!/350 Maine call for Sol­i­dar­i­ty Actions Sur­round­ing Supe­ri­or Court Hear­ing in Fracked Bakken Crude Oil Train Case

On May 22nd two of three peo­ple who block­ad­ed rail­road tracks in Auburn last August, Doug Bowen and Jessie Dowl­ing of Maine Earth First!, will have a hear­ing at the Androscog­gin Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court.

Last August, mem­bers of 350Maine and Maine Earth First! con­duct­ed a sit-in on the Pan Am rail­road tracks in the cen­ter of Auburn to call atten­tion to the ongo­ing dan­gers posed by the trans­porta­tion of Bakken crude oil by rail.

This was 7 weeks after a train­load of the same oil explod­ed in Lac Megan­tic, killing 47. Doug Bowen and Jessie Dowl­ing will face charges for this direct action and will present evi­dence for a com­pet­ing harms defense – that com­mit­ting a small­er harm was meant to pre­vent a larg­er one.

There have been at least 6 oth­er major train derail­ments involv­ing Bakken crude oil since Lac-Megan­tic. This train block­ade was one of two block­ades Maine Earth First! And 350 Maine took part in last sum­mer.

Trains run­ning through Maine car­ry crude from the Bakken oil fields of North Dako­ta, where it is “fracked” or extract­ed by blast­ing a high pres­sure tox­ic cock­tail deep into the ground to release oil from shale rock, pol­lut­ing air and water in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

With hydraulic frac­tur­ing or “frack­ing” tech­nol­o­gy, oil that has long been impos­si­ble to extract is now the source of an explo­sive oil boom in the Mid­west. With­out enough pipelines to trans­port the Mid­west crude to dis­tant refiner­ies, there has been a surge in the use of trains. Inspec­tions of tracks are infre­quent due to lack of resources to over­see them and a lack of con­cern for local com­mu­ni­ties by giant corporations/government.

There have been many train derail­ments through-out the con­ti­nent over the last year and a half oth­er than Lac Megan­tic, includ­ing a 106-car-long oil train in Cas­sel­ton, North Dako­ta which caused sev­en oil cars to explode and also caused an evac­u­a­tion of 2,400 peo­ple, A CN freight train car­ry­ing crude oil in New Brunswick in Jan­u­ary,

A 120-car Nor­folk South­ern train car­ry­ing heavy Cana­di­an crude oil which derailed and spilled in west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia also in Jan­u­ary, and a CSX train that explod­ed in Lynch­burg, Vir­ginia car­ry­ing Bakken Crude Oil on May first, only to name a few.

In Jan­u­ary the U.S. Depart­ment of Transportation’s Pipeline and Haz­ardous Mate­ri­als Safe­ty Admin­is­tra­tion issued a Safe­ty Alert con­clud­ing Bakken crude is more flam­ma­ble than heav­ier oils. Hence the term “bomb trains.”

We are ask­ing indi­vid­u­als and groups to take part in a day of action to bring atten­tion to fracked oil, frack­ing in gen­er­al (if you can tie in into your cam­paigns), unsafe trains car­ry­ing fos­sil fuels (Bakken Crude or oth­er­wise), and/or any oth­er con­nec­tions you can make in your com­mu­ni­ty.

Pos­si­ble tar­gets: Irv­ing Oil, a cor­po­ra­tion that receives oil from the Bakken Crude fields, and the cor­po­ra­tion that was sup­posed to be the recip­i­ent of the oil that explod­ed in Lac Mac­gan­tic Cor­po­ra­tions involved in frack­ing in the North Dako­ta Bakken Shale: http://www.ugcenter.com/operators/Bakken/all Cen­tral Maine and Que­bec Rail­road if you are in Maine (or join us at the cour­t­house!) Places in your com­mu­ni­ty where trains are rolling through with crude oil or oth­er dan­ger­ous extreme ener­gy sub­stances.

Here is an exam­ple in Mon­tana: http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2014/04/13/seven-arrests-in-montana-coal-train-protest/

Ports that are an end point of dan­ger­ous trains. Here is one exam­ple in Wash­ing­ton: http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2014/02/15/crude-oil-terminal-planned-in-nw-portland/

Please keep us updat­ed on any sol­i­dar­i­ty actions you take!

For more infor­ma­tion, inter­views, or to tell us about your action con­tact Chris­tine: blackbean@riseup.net, or 207.505.5114