Statement of Ken Ward at his Arraignment on Charges of Burglary, Criminal Trespass, Sabotage and Assemblages of Saboteurs 

October 20, 2016 in Mt. Vernon, WA 

I have been charged by the Prosecuting Attorney for Skagit County, Washington with four crimes - burglary, criminal trespass, sabotage and assemblages of saboteurs - for my action last Tuesday, closing a safety valve on the TransMountain pipeline and blocking the flow of Canadian tar sands oil from Alberta to the Anacortes refineries. 

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Watch Jay O'Hara and Afrin Sopariwala discussing the #SHUTITDOWN action on today's episode of Democracy Now! Transcript and full episode audio and video are available here.

DemocracyNow! Show Notes:

Ten climate activists were arrested Tuesday for attempting to shut down all tar sands oil coming into the United States from Canada by manually turning off pipelines in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and Washington state. The group, which calls itself Climate Direct Action, includes five activists and five other supporters and videographers. They posted pictures and videos online that showed them cutting chains and turning the manual safety valves to stop the flow through the pipelines. The activists issued a statement on Tuesday saying the action was in support of the call for International Days of Prayer and Action for Standing Rock. They also called on President Obama to “use emergency powers to keep the pipelines closed and mobilize for the extraordinary shift away from fossil fuels now required to avert catastrophe." While all 10 activists remain in jail, we speak Jay O’Hara, co-founder of the Climate Disobedience Center, and Afrin Sopariwala, a member of Climate Direct Action and a part of Women of Color Speak Out, a climate justice collective.

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: http://democracynow.org

The following press release is for the Tuesday, October 11, 2016 #ShutItDown action and is cross posted at shutitdown.today/press.

PRESS RELEASE: To avert climate catastrophe, activists shut down 5 pipelines bringing Tar Sands Oil into the U.S, in Solidarity with Standing Rock

Press Contact: Afrin Sopariwala 408.598.7656 [email protected]

August 31, 2015 - SPOKANE, WA – Today, a group of Spokane citizens occupied railroad tracks at ​2302 E. Trent in protest of fossil fuel trains​. The direct action was carried out in defense of the health of people and nature locally and across the planet due to the growing impacts of climate change. The burning of fossil fuels is the leading cause of global climate change.

This text emerges out of the experience of organizing against climate catastrophe over the years, in a variety of forms but often focusing on direct action—e.g. blockades and other forms of direct intervention in, and disruption of, the economic machine that is killing everything. Initially, it is presented as a response to debates about an ostensible conflict between organizing actions that are symbolically meaningful and broadly accessible vs. organizing actions that are maximally disruptive, and therefore sometimes both more difficult and more secretive. 

Clergy from many traditions in Boston blocking construction of fracked gas pipeline: American Baptist, Buddhist, Episcopal, Hindu, Jewish, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and Unitarian Universalist. 

This morning 16 interfaith Clergy sat down on the edge of the trench being dug by Spectra Energy in West Roxbury, Massachusetts and halted construction on the lateral fracked gas pipeline being constructed in the city of Boston. This action kicks off a new project - ClergyClimateAction.org - which is being supported by the Climate Disobedience Center.

We are pleased to welcome our first Fellow to the Climate Disobedience Center! 

I think Gary Braasch, climate change photographer and activist who died this week, had the worst job. Most of us pick and choose when to pay attention to the relentless fraying of the fabric of our world. Friends who are upbeat one day disappear and return days later, ashen, having wandered into reading the latest climate impact reports, but most of the time we can ignore this stuff, and even the scientists among us can hide within myopic datasets. Gary had no such luxury. As perhaps the world’s foremost climate impacts photographer, he spent his days capturing climate change impacts on forests, tundra, sea ice and the coral reef which claimed his life. He was a brave man, not least for refusing to turn his eye away.

For nearly three days, Chiara D’Angelo hung from the anchor chain of the Arctic Challenger, a support vessel for Royal Dutch Shell’s summer, 2015 arctic drilling expedition, docked in Bellingham, WA, supported for part of that time by Matt Fuller. For much of that time, Matt says, “We sang to the crew and the Coast Guard through a porthole.” Chiara says they sang “Sublime, Beyonce and John Denver” and chanted, “People gonna rise like the water. We're gonna calm this crisis down. I hear the voice of my great granddaughter. She's saying shut this drilling fleet down.”