A plan to build a 1,770-mile pipeline, the Keystone XL - to transport crude oil wrenched from tar sands in Canada to refineries in Texas - has galvanized climate change activists and inspired two weeks of civil disobedience at the White House. The arrest of 1,253 people was the largest such action in decades and signals a new chapter in the effort to rally public support for federal measures to deal with climate change.
Following the White House sit-in arrests (which included members of the Atlantic Chapter), the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, along with seven other Nobel Peace Prize winners, wrote to President Obama asking him to block the pipeline.
Leading environmental writer/educator Bill McKibben and other activists are planning followup actions, described in a letter excerpted below. It begins by noting how the White House sit-in has inspired others:
- "At President Obama's first public speech since the sit-ins ended, a hardy bunch of University of Richmond students unfurled a huge banner demanding that the president veto the pipeline - followed by similar actions in Columbus, Ohio, Raleigh, North Carolina, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wilmington, Delaware and many others."
- "Meeting on the Rosebud Sioux reservation recently, Native tribal leaders from both sides of the border and private land owners from South Dakota and Nebraska signed a 'Mother Earth Accord' opposing Keystone XL and the tar sands. These are the people who started this fight; and they're being joined by everyone right down to Nebraska Cornhusker football fans who booed lustily when a Keystone ad showed up on the Jumbotron at a recent game. The next day the university ended their sponsorship deal with Trans-Canada Pipeline."
- "Canadian activists by the hundreds are risking arrest on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and brave protesters are trying to block shipments of heavy equipment to Alberta from Idaho and Montana - these are remarkable signs of continent-wide protest."
- "And on the not-so-good-side: huge wildfires driven by the worst drought in Texas' history have destroyed towns and killed good people; the biggest rainfalls ever recorded have done similar damage in New Jersey, New York, and Vermont".
Needed: creativity and bodies
"So - there's real momentum for action, and real need. We have less than 90 days to convince the president not to approve the pipeline. So here's the thing: we need your help again. We need you to keep using your creativity and bodies as a part of this struggle -to fight this fight even though there's no guarantee of victory.
"Here's the plan, in three stages:
(1) Most important of all: On Sunday, November 6, we will return to Washington. Exactly one year before the election, we want to encircle the whole White House in an act of solemn protest. We need to remind President Obama of the power of the movement that he rode to the White House in 2008. This issue is much bigger than any individual person, president or not, and that we will carry on, with or without him.
" We're not certain this is the right plan. We don't know if there are the thousands of people that it will take to encircle the White House - we've never tried something this ambitious before. And we worry that it's too earnest and idealistic - that maybe we should be going back to jail. But unlike last time, this time we're working from a position of strength, and we can firmly but peacefully remind the president that we were the real power behind his campaign. We're not expecting any arrests at this action, but we are expecting to send an unmistakable, unavoidable message.
To join the action on the 6th, sign up at http://www.tarsandsaction .org/sign-up.
"(2) But we have to start building momentum now with action in our communities...Starting on October 8, we'll begin a rolling series of actions at key Obama campaign offices around the country. We want these to be a bit bigger and more serious than what's come before, so we'll be doing training and providing materials to folks in those communities. We need to make sure that the message gets through to headquarters that people remember the promises from the 2008 campaign and want them kept.
" (3) We need to keep showing up at the president's public appearances -just like what's already been happening on campus after campus, town after town. (We especially like the chant that goes: 'Yes We Can... Stop the Pipeline.'). Our organizing team is tracking the president's every appearance to look for opportunities to act. If the president is coming to your neighborhood, we need you to get his attention. (We'll help you do that.)
" We've already shown we have the courage and the fortitude for civil disobedience. Now we need to mix it up and show a different side of the campaign. Many of us were sincerely moved by Barack Obama's campaign for president. We're not yet ready to concede that his promises were simply the empty talk of politicians. We're not going to be cynics until we absolutely have no choice.
" It will be a beautiful and brave sight, the White House enclosed by the kind of people that put President Obama there. Since he's said he'll make up his mind by the end of the year, now's the time. We know it's hard to get to Washington, but if you can: this is the moment."
The call to followup action is signed by: Tim DeChristopher, inmate, Federal Correctional Institution, Herlong, California (see "I'm a Patriot.." article); Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network; Courtney Hight and Maura Cowley, Energy Action Coalition; Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska; Bill McKibben, tarsandsaction.org; Gus Speth, former chair, Presidentís Council on Environmental Quality; Becky Tarbotton, Rainforest Action Network; and Lennox Yearwood, Hip Hop Caucus.