I wanted to let people know about this call to action: On the night of August 26th and the morning of August 27th where Highway 95 and Interstate 90 meet, there will be a nonviolent protest of a massive ExxonMobil strip-mining machine being shipped through eastern Washington/north Idaho. Protestors will stand in solidarity with the 162 DC arrestees, challenge the global climate-wrecking project and the new assault on Native American land and farm water supply.



To put it simply, the Keystone XL pipe is the Deepwater Horizon of the Great Plains and a line in the sand for Obama.


As White House Tar Sands arrests pass 160 in three days, an emergency Northwest call to action has been issued for Friday night August 26th & pre-dawn Saturday August 27th, to nonviolently challenge the largest megaload of Tar Sands strip-mining machinery ever scheduled to be sent through this region.

The gigantic Canadian Tar Sands strip-mine project, and the planned ExxonMobil pipeline across the Lakota Sioux nation's Oglala Aquifer in America's Great Plains breadbasket, represent what eminent NASA scientist James Hansen has recently called the "game over" tipping-point for 21st century climate catastrophe.

Lori Fischer, the co-director for Nebraska Environmental Action Coalition and a member of Nebraska Farmers Union, traveled with five other Nebraskans and was arrested this morning. She said before her arrest:  “If the government is going to refuse to step up to the responsibility to defend a livable future, I believe that creates a moral imperative for me and many others. This is a crucial issue for Nebraskans to speak up loudly about. Our land, water, and the future of our children are at stake. I feel our leaders need to take seriously their responsibility to pass on a healthy and just world to the next generation, I am going to Washington remind them.”

Among those planning to risk arrest is actress Tantoo Cardinal, an iconic Cree actress who appeared in Dances with Wolves, Legends of the Fall, Smoke Signalsand more. Cardinal, who was born in Ft. McMurray, Alberta, the capitol of the tar sands, was made made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2009.  She will risk arrest to stop the destruction of her homeland and push President Obama to help shut down the tar sands by denying a permit for the Keystone XL

Coeur d'Alene action Friday night August 26th

Like the many hundreds of concerned people - from conservationists to farmers and students to physicians - who gather to risk arrest at the gates of the White House, the Northwest's ad-hoc Tar Sands Emergency Action Responders (TEAR) demand, in solidarity with the White House sit-ins, that President Obama turn down ExxonMobil's disasterous Keystone XL pipeline permit, as we in the Columbia watershed take nonviolent direct action to challenge the shipment of land, water, air and life-destroying strip-mine equipment to the besieged Athabasca River valley of Alberta.

Concerned Northwest residents plan to gather at sometime between 10:00 pm Friday August 26th  and 5:00 am Saturday August 27th, on or near Highway 95 and Interstate 90 - the shipment times and route for ExxonMobil's stripmine convoy - in the Coeur d'Alene area of north Idaho, just east of Spokane, Washington.  They plan to witness, protest and possibly form a nonviolent blockade of the highway to challenge the shipment. 

"This is the Deepwater Horizon of the Great Plains.  The future of our children, of the American heartland, of indigenous land rights, of global climate stability, and the Creator's natural balance of life on the Earth are now hanging in the balance" said Peter Lumsdaine, a concerned eastern Washington father and public interest educator who is now coordinating the Northwest emergency action.  "The corporate stripmining barons of ExxonMobil and their tar sands XL pipeline threaten America's breadbasket, the Great Plains water supplies, the Lakota Sioux homeland and other First Nations - as well as the planet's impoverished majority, who stand at the cross-hairs of climate destabilization - with catastrophe in the years ahead." said Lumsdaine, who has previously done jail and prison time for resistance to destructive technologies.  "From the Boston Tea Party and Little Big Horn to the Birmingham sit-ins and Egypt's Tahrir Square, power rest in the hands of the people.  For the people of the Earth, facing down the robotic future of Wall Street's petro-chemical oil barons and the 21st century techno-corporate Matrix  ...  the future is now."  

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