Category: Global

After spend­ing hours in the cold rain, Alyssa Symons-Bélanger, Jes­si­ca Lam­bert and a third woman were removed from the fence they chained them­selves to at Enbridge’s head­quar­ters on Hen­ri-Bouras­sa East.

She attached her­self to a chain-link fence with a heavy chain around her waist and a bicy­cle lock around her neck.

“I know that today I stand with these peo­ple, and these peo­ple stand with me also in oppo­si­tion of Enbridge’s Line 9,” she said.

The group of pro­test­ers, who accord­ing to Symons-Bélanger are not part of a larg­er orga­ni­za­tion, issued a news release Tues­day morn­ing say­ing they were look­ing to dis­rupt Suncor’s refin­ery oper­a­tions.

Enbridge trans­ports the crude oil to Mon­tre­al via pipeline, where refiner­ies like Sun­cor process it.

Symons-Bélanger said she is against Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline rever­sal for a vari­ety of rea­sons, includ­ing safe­ty con­cerns and improp­er com­pen­sa­tion for peo­ple whose land is touched by the pipeline.

She was a mem­ber of the group of pro­test­ers who walked for 34 days from Cacouna, Que., to Kane­sa­take in the spring.

Sep­tem­ber 18th, 2014

Clatskanie, OR—Climate jus­tice activists, local Clatskanie farm­ers, and oil train oppo­nents from all over Colum­bia Coun­ty are blockad­ing the tracks that lead to Port West­ward on the Colum­bia Riv­er. The block­ade con­sists of a 20-foot-high tri­pod of steel poles, its apex occu­pied by 27-year-old Port­land Ris­ing Tide activist Sun­ny Glover.

Any train move­ment would risk her life, as would any attempt to remove her from the struc­ture. A ban­ner sus­pend­ed from the tri­pod reads: “Oil trains fuel cli­mate chaos.” She has vowed to stay as long as she is able. Mass­a­chu­setts-based Glob­al Part­ners ships oil by rail from the frack­ing fields of the Bakken Shale to the block­ad­ed facil­i­ty.

From there, it is loaded onto ocean­go­ing ves­sels bound for West Coast refiner­ies. The facil­i­ty was con­struct­ed with pub­lic clean ener­gy loans and tax cred­its to man­u­fac­ture ethanol in 2008. The own­ers declared bank­rupt­cy almost imme­di­ate­ly, and in a twist of sav­age irony, it became a crude oil ter­mi­nal.

“Fos­sil fuels are cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly destruc­tive,” Glover said. “Extrac­tion rav­ages land, water, and the health of local com­mu­ni­ties – trans­port results in dead­ly explo­sions, tox­ic spills and dust – and as they are burned, the Earth is forced ever deep­er into immense cli­mate insta­bil­i­ty. Fos­sil fuel pro­duc­tion is vio­lence, and on an incred­i­bly vast scale.”

Dozens are join­ing Glover on the tracks.

The increase in US oil pro­duc­tion in recent years, and the con­se­quent rise in oil train traf­fic, has out­raged a diver­si­ty of groups and com­mu­ni­ties. Ris­ing Tide activists, hop­ing to deter the most severe effects of cli­mate change, are demand­ing a rapid dis­man­tling of fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture through­out the region and the world.

Res­i­dents of areas effect­ed by oil train traf­fic are hor­ri­fied by the propen­si­ty of Bakken crude trains to derail in fiery explosions—a May, 2014 emer­gency order by the US Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion describes the trains as an “immi­nent haz­ard.”

Res­i­dents of the patch­work of farms, dikes, and water­ways north of Clatskanie are fight­ing to pro­tect agri­cul­tur­al land and salmon habi­tat from indus­tri­al­iza­tion.

“When the crude oil trains began rolling through Colum­bia Coun­ty, we had no pri­or warning—not from DEQ, not from the Port of St. Helens, not from the coun­ty, and not from the State of Ore­gon,” said Nan­cy Whit­ney.

“With the close prox­im­i­ty of our towns, and par­tic­u­lar­ly our schools, and con­sid­er­ing the track record of crude oil derail­ments, my fear is that the poten­tial dev­as­ta­tion from leak­age or explo­sion could be astronomical—and it will hap­pen unless these trains are stopped.”

This is the fifth oil train block­ade in the Pacif­ic North­west since June.

“This is only the begin­ning,” said Noah Hochman. “We will con­tin­ue to block­ade until it is finan­cial­ly, logis­ti­cal­ly, and polit­i­cal­ly unten­able for oil trains to threat­en cli­mate and com­mu­ni­ties.”

Update:

Police Risk Protester’s Life to End 9‑Hour Oil Train Blockade

Yes­ter­day after­noon, cli­mate jus­tice group Port­land Ris­ing Tide and allies from Colum­bia Coun­ty erect­ed a 20-foot-tall tri­pod of steel poles to block­ade the Port West­ward oil ter­mi­nal. Dozens of police, work­ing at night under flood­lights, were mobi­lized to remove 27-year-old Sun­ny Glover from the tripod’s apex. After an ini­tial attempt to remove her with a buck­et truck—which she foiled by lock­ing her neck to one of the tripod’s poles—the police resort­ed to far more dras­tic and per­ilous mea­sures.

In a sur­re­al scene, the amassed law enforce­ment offi­cers began using a cir­cu­lar saw to cut through the tripod’s legs in approx­i­mate­ly foot-long incre­ments, grad­u­al­ly low­er­ing the struc­ture to the ground amidst a show­er of sparks from the saw. Glover’s neck remained locked to a pole the entire time. Each pre­car­i­ous cut threat­ened to top­ple the struc­ture. About 40 pro­test­ers shout­ed words of encour­age­ment from a near­by road until she was arrest­ed and dri­ven from the scene around 11:30pm.

“The courage my friend Sun­ny exhib­it­ed tonight was tremen­dous,” Scott Schroder said. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, she lives in a world of ter­ri­fy­ing sce­nar­ios. She can either have her life jeop­ar­dized by the police or by cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change and explod­ing oil trains. She chose to resist because she under­stands acqui­es­cence is the greater per­il.”

The ter­mi­nal, oper­at­ed by Mass­a­chu­setts-based Glob­al Part­ners, has been con­tro­ver­sial since its incep­tion. At the protest today were res­i­dents of the Colum­bia Coun­ty towns of St. Helens, Scap­poose, and Clatskanie, whose homes and busi­ness­es are with­in the blast zone should an oil train derail and explode. Ris­ing Tide activists are demand­ing a rapid phase-out of fos­sil fuels in order to avert a cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe that would be felt for mil­len­nia.

Pro­test­ers were crit­i­cal of the tremen­dous mobi­liza­tion of pub­lic resources to dis­man­tle the blockade—there were approx­i­mate­ly 40 com­bined fire, police, and med­ical per­son­nel on site—saying it amount­ed to essen­tial­ly anoth­er sub­sidy for the fos­sil fuel indus­try.

“Tax­pay­ers have already giv­en Glob­al Part­ners mil­lions of dol­lars in clean ener­gy con­struc­tion sub­si­dies, when we thought their facil­i­ty was going to be an ethanol plant,” said David Osborn. “Now the pub­lic is hand­ing over thou­sands more to keep the train tracks free of peo­ple out­raged by their bait-and-switch.”

This sum­mer, Ris­ing Tide col­lec­tives have block­ad­ed oil train facil­i­ties in Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon five times. The groups say they are work­ing toward mass mobi­liza­tions that will sig­nif­i­cant­ly impede the abil­i­ty of oil to be trans­port­ed by rail in the Pacif­ic North­west.

“We will be back,” Schroder said. “Over and over again. And we’re bring­ing more peo­ple every time.”

PHOTOS, VIDEO, AUDIO: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8Tw30qC0uQib2xlLXk0cERaeVk&usp=sharing_eil

09/18 ACTION PRESS RELEASE: https://drive.google.com/?usp=folder&authuser=0#folders/0B8Tw30qC0uQib2xlLXk0cERaeVk

BACKGROUND ON OREGON OIL TRAINS AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS:http://portlandrisingtide.org/oil-trains-oregon-bakken-shale-uinta-basin-climate-crisis/