Every day this week in marking the third anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the art collective Liberate Tate is giving a performance dramatizing the trial of BP. It’s entitled ‘All Rise’ and is all taking place at the Tate Modern in London.

It’s not unusual for artists and cultural events to reference contemporary news or disasters. The difference here is that this is a guerrilla performance, completely unsanctioned by Tate or by one of its sponsors: BP.

Each day this week at 3pm UK time (GMT+1), performers using specially constructed cameras will film themselves wandering Tate Modern whilst whispering selected transcripts of the proceedings from the New Orleans courtroom.

The live-streams of the different performers are available to watch online from around the world on the dedicated website  (where an archive allows future viewing).

The BP trial, which started this February, accuses the massive corporation of gross negligence by plaintiffs who did not take part in a separate settlement made by the oil giant last year.

At the trial’s opening, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Underhill said: “Not only was it within BP’s power to prevent the tragedy, it was its responsibility.”

As Paul Brady, one of the performers on Monday April 22, underlined: “It’s not only BP that’s on trial for the devastation it has caused to Gulf Coast communities and ecosystems, it’s also Tate and other cultural institutions that provide BP with the social legitimacy to continue operating with such destructive consequences.”

‘All Rise’ is a performance that brings the BP trial into Tate Modern because BP’s arts sponsorship cannot be separated from the irrevocable damage it does to communities, the environment, and the climate.

For example, BP’s first advertising campaign after the Gulf of Mexico disaster was in the summer of 2011 and used the corporation’s sponsorship of art in a multi-million dollar attempt to rehabilitate its brand. This was very deliberate. The value to BP of the arts establishment that supports the oil company by accepting its sponsorship money is clear: BP uses its involvement in arts and culture to project a “feel good” image of the company.

In doing so, BP buys the leverage it needs to gain acceptance from elites and influential publics to carry on plundering the planet, to proliferate human rights abuses, and to interfere in what should be democratic political processes.

What is so invidious is that public cultural institutions also fall into what BP has captured.

This is why Liberate Tate has vowed, since its founding in January 2010, “to take creative disobedience against Tate until it drops its oil company funding.” And to inspire others to join in doing so as well.

‘All Rise’ follows a performance by Liberate Tate last July when over 100 members of the art collective installed ‘The Gift’ — a 16.5 metre wind turbine blade – in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern.

On the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2011, Liberate Tate poured oil over a naked man lying in the middle of Tate Britain in a work called ‘Human Cost’.

This week as we whisper extracts from the court transcripts — damning reports, objections, evidence, accountability, and risk throughout the BP sponsored Tate gallery spaces — we insistently ask: How much more environmental, societal, and climate damage does BP need to do for Tate to forego its sponsor? When will Tate put their sponsor on the stand?

The good news is that the public call for Tate to stop its relationship with BP is growing. Thousands of Tate members and visitors have voiced their objection that through its support of sponsor BP, Tate is forcing environmentally and climate-conscious gallery goers into an uncomfortable position of complicity with the oil company, one of the most environment-destroying corporations on the planet.

When our public cultural institutions have a formal relationship with corporations engaged in socially and ecologically destructive activities, exhibitions and galleries become part of the creation of climate chaos through the construction of a social licence to operate for oil companies.

Our practice involves illuminating this process at the culture wellhead through interventions and artworks created in Tate galleries.

We situate our interventions in the growing wave of desire for citizens to reclaim public space: a gallery should be a place to enjoy great art, not a site where an art museum associates visitors in the ecological destruction and criminal acts of its corporate partners.

About the Author

Glen Tarman is an artist, activist and advocacy director based in London. Glen is a founding member of the art collective Liberate Tate.  Liberate Tate explores the role of creative intervention in social change and aims to free art from the grips of the oil industry.

For more information on Liberate Tate, see http://liberatetate.wordpress.com/. Liberate Tate can also be found on Twitter: @liberatetate

This apology consisting of less than 140 characters does not seem to cover the immeasurable scope of how the oil spill has impacted—and will continue to impact—this Arkansas community. Even Exxon’s own Cleanup Operations Progress page on their website has almost two dozen bullet points detailing the devastating range of this disaster.

And it appears Exxon is getting a little defensive. After other environmental organizations and activists jumped in to add their reaction to the mess, Exxon wrote a series of seemingly over-reactive tweets.

The real kicker? They all seem to center around this notion of “telling the truth”:

The list goes on and on. Check it out for yourself at Exxon’s Twitter account: @exxonmobil

We all know the real truth: our people and planet are the ones who are paying for these oil spills, and no amount of PR spin can change this gravely sad, undeniable fact.

Really, the Arkansas oil spill is an enormous wake-up call we cannot ignore—foreshadowing a huge battle in our midst. As pressure ramps up in the Keystone XL debate, we cannot stand silently on the sidelines. Whether it’s getting in on the social media conversation on Facebook or Twitter, educating your friends and family about what these pipelines really mean for America, and/or getting out there in the streets and resisting—we need you to be heard. The short and long-term future depend on it.

And that’s the honest truth. Without the spin machine.

The Reagan years represented a dangerous time in global history. Along with the nuclear arms race that eventually bankrupted the already faltering Soviet Union and took the world to the edge of nuclear war, the Reagan Administration provided aid and comfort to numerous brutal dictators and right-wing governments from sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East to Central America. Ronald Reagan’s secret wars in places like Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador killed hundreds of thousands in a bloody campaign to end or contain communist influence.

Reagan’s legacy tells us that his political skills as the “great communicator” created a popular united front behind his conservative policies in the United States, but history reflects something very different. During the 1980s, a militant mass non-violent movement, known as the Central American Solidarity Movement, emerged to challenge Reagan’s covert wars in Central America. A critical strategy that the movement developed was the “Pledge of Resistance.” The Pledge of Resistance became an organizing tool that brought together a coalition of peace, religious, feminist and anti-nuclear activists and organizations to actively resist Reagan’s Central American policies.

As the Reagan Administration and its political allies began to escalate its not-so-secret wars in Central America, the Pledge of Resistance began escalations of their own. From 1984 into the early 1990s, the Central American Pledge of Resistance organized thousands into civil disobedience actions, both large and small, in protest of possible invasion of Nicaragua, the funding of the contras and support of death squad governments in El Salvador and other parts of Central America.

Now, we are faced with even more dangerous times.

During the 80’s, these madmen waged secret wars and funded death squads to eradicate other political ideologies, but today we are faced with an insane system based on fossil fuel exploitation shifting the composition of the planet itself for short term profit for a small elite minority. The results of oil, gas and coal extraction and combustion are heading the world further and further down the path of catastrophic climate change. Oil companies in Canada are extracting tar sands oil from an area the size of Florida. Coal companies use mountaintop removal coal mining to destroy over 500 Appalachian Mountains, bury thousands of miles of streams and rivers with mining debris and poison countless communities with air and water pollution.

The latest battle has been around the Keystone XL Pipeline which would run oil from the Alberta tar sands to the Gulf Coast. It would flow billions of gallons of oil in what climatologist James Hanson has called “the fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet.” Canadian oil giant, TransCanada has lobbied the U.S. government, spending millions on lobbyists and election year donations to grease palms for it’s dirty project. A few weeks ago, the State Department released a long awaited Environmental Impact Statement which said that the Keystone XL Pipeline would have little or no impact on the environment and climate. It turns out that the report was written by a TransCanada subcontractor.

For the past two years, environmental and climate activists have waged hard fought campaigns against the pipeline. In August, 2011 over 1200 were arrested sitting in at the White House demanding Obama reject it. Since July 2012, the Tar Sands Blockade has led actions against the southern leg of the pipeline (approved early last year by Obama) that runs from Cushing, OK to Houston, TX. The rebellious energy of the blockade has led to dozens of arrests, an 85 day tree-sit and a harsh backlash by TransCanada, Texas law enforcement and courts. Last month, tens of thousands marched in Washington D.C. in the largest climate rally in history.

Now a coalition of groups have called for another Pledge of Resistance, this time to the Keystone XL Pipeline. CREDO, Rainforest Action Network, 350.org, Hip Hop Caucus, Oil Change and others have put out the Pledge and have had over 50,000 sign up to resist the pipeline. Big plans and big movements are in the works.

When Reagan’s presidency ended in January 1989, he had failed to overthrow the Nicaraguan government either by U.S. invasion or through contra military action. The Pledge of Resistance held the line against Reagan’s interventions. While he attempted to bring to full bear the force of the U.S. government and military against the people of Central America (and many died as a result), the Pledge contributed to the thwarting of his ultimate goals. But now we’re faced with nothing less than melting permafrost, rising sea levels and extreme weather.

It’s now time to escalate outside the Beltway and even beyond the pipeline route.

Will you take the Pledge?

Yesterday in Tyler County, TX, a pipeline operated by Sunoco Logistics sprung a leak and spilled 20,000 gallons (or 550 barrels) of oil into local East Texas waterways. Deep East Texas is known for its creeks and lakes, freshwater eco-systems and aquifers that provide water to the eastern part of the state, including mega-cities Dallas and Houston. But oil companies treat these forests and waterways as collateral damage.

Quality control requires that oil companies use “leak detection systems.” Those systems reported nothing until local residents began to report that oil was in the water. (Ummm… so, how do you not detect a 20,000 gallons oil leak?)

Sunoco’s spill is merely a prologue for leaks and spills that might come once the southern leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline is completed.

The site of the spill is not far from a Tar Sands Blockade (TSB) action in Diboll, TX in January.  It’s only a few hour away from TSB’s tree blockade that prevented construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline for 85 days.

The Keystone XL itself will cross major waterways such as the Neches, Red, Angelina and Sabine rivers as well as the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, which provides drinking water for more than ten million Texans. The pipeline route will run near the Big Thicket National Wildlife Preserve in southeast Texas. Big Thicket is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the country and is full of bogs, lagoons, plants, trees and a variety of wildlife including the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.

In a sense, local Texas landowners and environmentalists that began blockading the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline foretold this story. TSB continues to tell a story trying to stop environmental disasters like this with grassroots organizing and spectacular direct actions as their message delivery devices. The courts and cops, owned by companies like TransCanada, throw everything at them to stop the campaign and now local communities and eco-systems are paying the price.

Last month, a Tar Sands Blockader locked himself inside an oil and gas industry conference in Houston and decried the lackluster construction and maintenance of these pipelines.

While local pipelines continue to poison communities and eco-systems, TransCanada continues to move forward with its massive Keystone XL Pipeline.

This only begs the question “when will the next Texas oil spill happen?”

“Now that we have seen what the Tar Sands in Alberta looks like, this is not about the pipeline going through our farm. This is about Alberta, about the world. ”

This week tens of thousands of people have arrived in Washington D.C. to defend the climate and demonstrate their opposition to the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline in what has become the largest rally on climate change in U.S. history.

What’s the issue?

The pipeline is a 1700-mile, $7-billion project that would bring 700,000 barrels of carbon-heavy tar sands oil every day from the Athabasca Tar Sands in Canada to the Gulf Coast for global export. Far from bringing America energy security, as its proponents claim, the KXL pipeline undermines action on climate change and keeps America hooked on dirty oil.

Why protest now?

In 2012 extreme weather pushed climate change back onto the U.S. political agenda. In his inauguration speech, President Obama promised to “respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations”. He repeated this sentiment again last week in the State of the Union address. It’s good to hear strong language on climate from the President, but it’s strong action that will make a differecet for our children and future generations. And the KXL pipeline is the first test for Obama’s new climate strategy.

The pipeline is not only a climate issue. Its proposed route slices right through Middle America, from the Canadian border down to the Texas coast. This raises many concerns about pipeline safety and land-use. Among the crowds in DC are contingents from the states that are most directly impacted, including land-owners who are opposed to the pipeline coming through their properties.

I asked several of these folks why they had traveled all the way to D.C. to speak out. Each had their own powerful answer, and all made the clear connection between the issues in their own backyards and the urgency of stopping the pipeline for all of our futures.

“I’m here today because my family farm lies on the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline. It was homesteaded in 1864, we have huge pride in that farm. But now that we have seen what the Tar Sands in Alberta looks like, this is not about the pipeline going through our farm. This is about Alberta, about the world. I have kids and if I don’t stand up for this, their lives will be hugely affected. That’s why I’m doing everything I can, rattling every chain.” – Jenni Harrington, Nebraska

“Tar Sands mining is the most ecologically destructive project on this continent. Stopping KXL is a necessary condition, not only for life in my region, but for life on this planet itself.” – Grace Cagle, Texas

“I’m here to support communities who will be impacted by this toxic pipeline and to challenge the President to take definitive action in protection of our future.” – Cherri Foyntlin, Louisiana

Not everyone could make it to a climate protest today, but we can all speak out on this critical issue. Please stand with these brave communities and take action by adding your voice to the masses who are urging President Obama to reject the Keystone pipeline.

Banks emit greenhouse gases to power their offices and branches, but they also finance the emissions of other companies through their loans, investments, and other financial services. Our best estimates indicate that these “financed emissions” dwarf a bank’s emissions from other sources, yet banks currently lack the tools to measure this critical but overlooked component of a bank’s greenhouse gas footprint.

Time is Running out to Reduce Bank Carbon Footprints

In a report released by Rainforest Action Network’s Energy and Finance Program today, “Bankrolling Climate Disruption: The Impacts of the Banking Sector’s Financed Emissions” (PDF), we analyze the consequences of financed emissions for the climate and the risks they pose for banks.

Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have begun to disrupt the global climate, triggering extreme weather events around the globe in recent years. To address this growing climate crisis, the global economy must rapidly transition to low-carbon energy sources. This transition poses major challenges for the banking sector, which will need to shift its financing from fossil fuel-based power sources to low-carbon energy infrastructure.

To date, major global banks have been moving in the wrong direction on climate. A report by the BankTrack network of NGOs (PDF) found that the world’s 93 largest banks’ financial commitments to coal mining and coal-fired power generation nearly doubled between 2005 and 2010. Unfortunately, time is running out for banks to decarbonize their financing portfolios. By the end of the decade, locked-in emissions from new infrastructure will make it impossible to limit atmospheric CO₂ concentrations below the critical threshold of 450 parts per million, making catastrophic climate change inevitable.

In addition to putting the global climate at risk, a bank’s financed emissions also expose it to reputational risks from an increasingly climate-aware public. Over the long term, banks that fail to measure and reduce their financed emissions will face financial risks from their financing relationships with coal-fired utilities, oil and gas producers, and other companies that face an uncertain future in a carbon-constrained economy.

New Tools for Measuring Financed Emissions

Fortunately, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol has developed new guidelines for calculating financed emissions that provide key tools for banks to measure their financed emissions footprints. And public sector institutions such as the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation have already led the way for their private sector counterparts by setting targets to reduce emissions from their financing portfolios.

Major U.S. banks have taken some positive steps on climate change, such as committing over $100 billion in loans and investments to environmentally beneficial projects over the next decade. However, banks have not actually measured the net greenhouse gas impacts achieved by these commitments. To differentiate themselves from their peers and demonstrate that these green financing is having an impact, banks must measure the bottom-line climate outcomes of both their environmental lending initiatives and their broader financing portfolio.

Next Steps for Banks

RAN’s report recommends that banks participate in an upcoming multi-stakeholder initiative coordinated by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to finalize tools for banks to measure the climate impacts of their financing activities. In addition to participating, banks should also set aggressive reduction targets for their financed emissions to align with the 450 ppm greenhouse gas stabilization target.

Could banks put these recommendations into practice quickly enough to make a difference for the climate? Let’s hope so. The report’s recommended financed emissions reduction trajectory for banks represents the minimum reductions necessary to align banks with an emissions trajectory that will stay within the world’s dwindling budget of carbon that can safely be emitted through mid-century.

As Bill McKibben, the Carbon Tracker Initiative, and others have noted, this global carbon budget leaves precious little room for error if the world is to avert catastrophic climate change, making it incumbent on banks to address their financed emissions as soon as possible.

This morning, in defiance of police and TransCanada’s lawsuits, over 50 people marched onto the easement to resupply the tree blockade with fresh food and water.

Follow tarsandsblockade.org for updates.

Here’s the press release:

Over 50 Enter Tar Sands Blockade Tree Village in Defiance of Police and Legal Repression to Defend Tree-Sitters

Risking arrest, lawsuits protesters rally for massive tree blockade after expansion of TransCanada’s overreaching SLAPP suit

WINNSBORO, TEXAS – MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2012 – Following a weekend of nonviolent civil disobedience training in North Texas by Tar Sands Blockade, many dozens of protesters and supporters are rallying today at the site of the largest and longest tree sit in Texas history to stage the largest walk-on site protest and civil disobedience in the history of Keystone XL pipeline construction. Several individuals are defending the tree sitters and the trees by locking themselves to construction equipment being used in proximity to the forest blockade. Solidarity actions are also taking place in Washington DC, Boston, Austin and New York City.

Altogether more than 50 blockaders are risking arrest to stop Keystone XL construction and bring attention to TransCanada’s repression of journalists attempting to cover the blockaders’ side of the story. They are joined by dozens of supporters who are rallying on public property with colorful banners and signs alongside the easement’s closest highway crossing. A massive media team is in tow to document the day of action and any possible police repression.

As the Winnsboro tree blockade enters its fourth week, the blockaders are resupplying their friends in the trees with fresh food, water, and cameras to further document their protest despite the threat of a newly-expanded Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) by TransCanada and egregious criminal overcharges by local law enforcement. Due to the SLAPP suits’ outrageous claims, the tree sitters have by-and-large felt too threatened to safely reveal their identities, despite their protest being nonviolent. That the defiant walk-on protest is the largest yet attempted in the history of protests surrounding Keystone XL construction sends a clear signal that the blockaders will not be deterred by SLAPP suits and other legal threats to limit their civil liberties.

“Three weeks is a long time to be sitting in a tree. The training I got this weekend has me ready to rise up and join the sitters in defending Texas homes from the toxic tar sands,” shared Glenn Hobbit, 28. “They’re saying we might get sued or worse, but stopping this pipeline is too important.”

Last week, the multinational corporation opened a civil suit in which it named 19 individual defendants, 3 organizations, and 6 anonymous tree sitters for a total of 28 defendants seeking an injunction, declaratory relief, and damages. All the named defendants are former arrestees of Tar Sands Blockade actions with the exception of media spokesperson Ron Seifert, who has yet been arrested in connection with a protest, and area landowner Eleanor Fairchild, who acted independently with activist and actor Daryl Hannah. Hannah was not named in the suit.

Tar Sands Blockade is a coalition of Texas and Oklahoma landowners and climate justice organizers using peaceful and sustained civil disobedience to stop the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

“In reality, Tar Sands Blockade is not trespassing on TransCanada’s property. Many of TransCanada’s easement contracts were brokered through fraud and intimidation, and their entire legal foundation is being challenged in the courts for those reasons,” explained Ron Seifert, Tar Sands Blockade spokesperson. “If anything TransCanada is trespassing on the property of landowners who never wanted anything to do with their dangerous tar sands pipeline.”

via TarSandsBlockade.org

Rainforest Action Network is excited to have led this call to support the Tar Sands Blockade. Not only is stopping the expansion of fossil fuels infrastructure of the utmost priority, but the harsh repression of environmental activists from both TransCanada and law enforcement needs to be called out again and again. We stand with the Tar Sands Blockade and people fighting environmental destruction and human rights repressions everywhere.Dear Friends,

Dear Friends

As we write, our friends with the Tar Sands Blockade are blocking construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline in the woods of Texas. For the past six months they have built a movement of climate activists, rural landowners, Texans, Oklahomans and people from all over the country to fiercely resist it. For two weeks, they have captured the imagination of the world with a daring tree-sit and bold ground actions near Winnsboro, TX that have delayed TransCanada’s operations.

TransCanada has responded by allowing its employees to operate their heavy machines with reckless disregard for the safety of protestors and tree-sitters. Police have responded with brutal means such as pepper-spray and Tasers against peaceful protestors. Prosecutors have responded with elevated charges.

It is clear what is at stake. NASA’s leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen has called the Keystone XL pipeline, “a fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet.” If all the carbon stored in the Canadian tar sands is released into Earth’s atmosphere it will mean “game over” for the planet.

In 2011, we saw the Tar Sands Action galvanize environmental and social justice communities in an unprecedented show of unity during the sit-ins in front of the White House. Every day, members of Indigenous communities, faith communities, labor communities, anti-mountaintop removal movements, anti-fracking movements and many more stepped forward and put their bodies on the line in solidarity. In the year since, we have witnessed people from the Lakota nation in South Dakota and from Moscow, Idaho putting their bodies in roads and highways blocking large transport trucks carrying oil refining equipment to develop further tar sands extraction. Now, the Tar Sands Blockade has taken the next logical step confronting climate change.

If we are determined to prevent the pursuit of extreme energy from destroying our communities, natural systems and climate, then peaceful, yet confrontational, protests like the Tar Sands Blockade are necessary actions for change.

Let us be clear: there is not an inch of daylight between us and those blocking construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas. We stand with them as we’ve stood with those fighting mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, those defending old growth forests in Cascadia and those challenging nuclear power across this country.

We stand in solidarity with those who stand up for us all.

Sincerely,

Alliance for Appalachia

Alliance of Community Trainers (ACT)

Center for Biological Diversity

Climate Ground Zero

Communities for a Better Environment

Community to Community

CREDO Action

Council of Canadians

Earthworks

Energy Action Coalition

Friends of the Earth U.S.

Forest Ethics

Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives

Global Exchange

Global Justice Ecology Project

Grassroots Global Justice

Greenpeace Canada

Greenpeace U.S.A.

Indigenous Environmental Network

Missourians for Empowerment and Reform (MORE)

Mountain Justice

Movement Generation

Movement Strategy Center

Occupy the Pipeline

Oil Change International

Peaceful Uprising

Platform

Radical Action for Mountain Peoples’ Survival (RAMPS)

Rainforest Action Network

Rising Tide North America

Ruckus Society

Sierra Club

smartMeme Strategy & Training Project

Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards

UK Tar Sands Network

350.org

Call TransCanada's CEO and tell him we stand with the brutalized Tar Sands Blockade activists. Click image to jump to a sample call script.

Yesterday, we learned that Texas police applied sustained chokeholds, violent arm-twisting, pepper spray, and multiple uses of tasers to move two peaceful protesters—all at the behest of TransCanada employees.

On Monday, eight brave people climbed trees on private land in Texas to block construction of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline and protect their homes. On Tuesday, two peaceful protesters with the Tar Sands Blockade, Shannon Beebe and Benjamin Franklin, locked themselves to Transcanada’s machinery in support of the tree-sit, delaying work on the pipeline for most of the day.

Here’s how our allies on the ground in Texas described what happened to Shannon and Benjamin (warning: it’s pretty horrifying):

The most physically aggressive was the ranking officer, a Lieutenant with the Wood County Sheriff Department under the observation of TransCanada employees. He twisted and contorted the tube that [Shannon] Bebe and Franklin had locked their arms into, cutting off circulation to their hands and cutting abrasions into their hands and forearms.

Franklin and Bebe then describe pepper spray as the most painful part of their ordeal. Police sprayed into their lockdown tube, and the chemicals burned their already-open wounds.

Fortunately they were able to make it through their mutual torture by intimating personal reassurances to each other. Franklin and Bebe say they were able to endure the pain knowing that they were in it together. Despite the immense pain our brave blockaders remained locked to the machinery for several hours—determined to stop this toxic tar sands pipeline.

After the pepper spray didn’t work the police again conferred with TransCanada employees before sending someone back to the police car to bring a taser. Franklin and Bebe were each tased for one second. Then Franklin was tased for 5 entire seconds. He described the pain as immense and almost physically unbearable.

Afterwards, John, the senior TransCanada supervisor, openly congratulated the aggressive Sheriffs Department Lieutenant on a “job well done.” To which the Lieutenant replied: “if this happens again we’ll just skip to using pepper spray and tasing in the first 10 minutes.”

Will you help us send a message to show that Shannon and Benjamin are not alone? Call TransCanada CEO Ross Girling to let him know that we won’t stand for Big Oil instigating police brutality against peaceful protesters. Here’s his number: 1.800.661.3805 (click here to jump to a sample call script).

At the beginning of September, tar sands oil giant TransCanada started construction on the 485-mile southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will send billions of gallons of crude oil from Cushing, OK to Port Arthur, TX. After using every political and legal avenue to attempt to stop this dirty oil pipeline from devastating their homes, Texas landowners, environmentalists and average folks took to the trees to block Transcanada’s pipeline construction. Forming the “Tar Sands Blockade,” these brave people are using non-violent civil disobedience to stop this pipeline from destroying their land and watershed as well as our climate. Shannon and Benjamin’s treatment has shaken all of them, and they need our support now more than ever.

Thankfully, Shannon and Benjamin are ok, but their treatment was beyond abhorrent. Every one of us has taken a stand against the Keystone XL pipeline. We need to stand with Texans today who are still fighting this pipeline as it threatens to snake across their lands and dislocate their homes.

For brutality of this scale, a simple email to the CEO just wont cut it. Please take a few minutes today to call TransCanada CEO Ross Girling and let him know that his company’s urging of police brutality against peaceful protesters will not be tolerated… and neither will his tar sands pipeline. Here’s how:

1. Call 1.800.661.3805 (free call from anywhere in North America).

2. If someone answers the phone, ask to speak to Ross Girling (it’s highly unlikely they will put you through). Whether your call is answered by voicemail or a real person, be polite and respectful, but above all make sure you state how seriously you’re taking TransCanada’s encouragement of police brutality against peaceful protesters.

Here’s a sample call script:

Hello, my name is ____{name}____ and I’m calling today to tell Ross Girling that I think it’s absolutely reprehensible that TransCanada is urging police brutality against peaceful protesters.

On September 25th, police used brutal tactics like chokeholds, pepper-spray and tasers on two peaceful protesters occupying TransCanada contstruction equipment in Texas–at the behest of TransCanada employees on the scene.

I am outraged at these acts and TransCanada’s participation in them. I demand that your employees cease participating in these activities immediately.

Thank you for your time.

3. After you call, click the button below to report how it went. It’s important we get an accurate count of how many folks made a call, and what TransCanada’s response is.

In the past two months, the Tar Sands Blockade has brought new energy to the campaign to stop the Keystone pipeline. TransCanada knows we’re a threat to its plans to wreck the planet for profit—and that’s exactly why we must keep the pressure up. We WILL stop the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all, thanks to you and everything you do.

Originally posted by the Tar Sands Blockade

Eight people climbed 80 feet into trees in the path of Keystone XL construction and pledged not to come down until the pipeline is stopped for good. Construction cannot proceed until tree-sitters descend and TransCanada clear-cuts through hundreds of trees to make way for the toxic tar sands pipeline.

The blockade is carefully organized to ensure that everyone sitting in the trees can remain safe as long as TransCanada does not attempt to continue clear-cutting the trees. These ardent advocates of landowner’s rights and climate justice have the safety equipment and food supplies to last indefinitely. Help spread this breaking story  on Facebook and Twitter.

“Today I climbed a tree in the path of Keystone XL to demand TransCanada stop construction of this dirty and dangerous pipeline. This pipeline is a disaster for everyone it touches, from the cancer tar sands extraction is causing indigenous communities, to the water poisoned by inevitable tar sands spills, to the landowners whose land has been seized, and to everyone that will be affected by climate change,” said Mary Washington, one of the Tar Sands Blockade members sitting in a tree.

Show your support for Mary and our seven other blockaders with a generous donation to help keep them supplied with food and water.

It’s not easy to see our friends disappear up a tree, exposed to the elements, and not know when we will see them again. But knowing what this pipeline is doing to our neighbors and the planet, we are more resolved than ever to keep fighting this pipeline by whatever means we can.

This blockade is a continuation of an unprecedented summer of actions against fossil fuel infrastructure across America, from Montana to Ohio to New York. As a record heat wave baked the country, Americans stood up in unheard of numbers to oppose fossil fuels that are contributing to climate change. Join this growing movement when you sign up now to join one of our upcoming actions. If you were thinking about coming to Texas, now is the time!

“Climate change killed half a billion trees in Texas last year—and if TransCanada cuts these down, than the dirty oil they send down the pipeline will trigger yet more out-of-control warming,” said climate activist Bill McKibben, who helped lead huge protests in Washington, DC against the pipeline last fall.

Tar Sands Blockade has already successfully shut down Keystone XL construction for about two-and-a-half days in Livingston, Saltillo, and Winnsboro.

Watch the action-packed video from our recent actions and sign up to join us.

“Today’s bold action by these eight brave people demonstrates their resolve to stop this dirty and dangerous pipeline. They understand the severity of the threat and that taking action is less risky than doing nothing,” said Ron Seifert, a spokesperson with Tar Sands Blockade. “We are defending our homes, our communities clean drinking water, our land rights, and a stable, livable climate.”

Three landowner advocates have locked themselves to a massive wood chipper and a skidder, both used in clear cutting trees in the path of the toxic pipeline. Tar Sands Blockade has again delayed construction on a segment of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Today’s action marks the third time that blockaders have halted construction in recent weeks.

Tar Sand Blockade again halts construction on the toxic Keystone XL pipeline in its sustained campaign of civil disobedience

Four blockaders total entered a construction yard risking arrest. Texas-born blockaders have united with neighbors from other states to support rural and neighboring communities threatened by the toxic pipeline’s diluted bitumen slurry.

Doug Grant, 65, from San Francisco, CA, says, “Having worked for years for Exxon, I know how enticing it is to want to develop the Alberta Tar Sands, but it’s just wrong; wrong for the folks who live near the surface mines and toxic ponds, wrong for the landowners who are coerced under duress into contracts or taken to court to have their homes stolen from them, and just wrong for the climate.”

“As a mother and step-grandmother, I want to be able to tell my children that I did something when the time came,” explains Amarillo-born R.C. Saldaña-Flores, 36. “I’m willing to take risks today to raise awareness of this horrible situation—even if that means being away from my children in jail for a day.”

Kentucky-based solar installation expert and author of the forthcoming book The Pipeline and the Paradigm: Keystone XL and the Rise of Global Consciousness, Sam Avery, 63, suggests that sometimes you must create an obstruction in order to facilitate necessary discussion. “I don’t believe it’s too late. We have time,” he says. “We simply must continue to stand with landowners who are having their homes and farms ruined. We must continue to press for dialogue amongst all people victimized by TransCanada’s ruthless harm. Civil disobedience allows for that space to develop.”

Tar Sands Blockade is a coalition of Texas and Oklahoma landowners and climate organizers using peaceful and sustained civil disobedience to stop the construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

“People from all walks of life are banding together to defend their homes in the face of TransCanada’s fraudulent bullying,” suggests Ron Seifert, a spokesperson for the Tar Sands Blockade. “Their Keystone XL pipeline serves no legitimate public interest, and people are waking up to the fact that this multinational corporation is stealing land and poisoning water supplies illegitimately. For that reason, we are proactively defending homes through nonviolent civil disobedience.”

One thing is clear from the recent victories that stopped Keystone XL construction for the entire day in both Saltillo and Livingston, Texas: people power works.

Sign up now to join one of Tar Sands Blockade’s upcoming actions.

You can also stay up to date with TSB on Facebook and Twitter.

The blockaders have been locked down for several hours now, the work site is closed, and TransCanada has sent 20 workers home.

Now we’re hearing reports that police have left the scene with the blockade intact!

via Tar Sands Blockade

Dontcha wanna join the Tar Sands Blockade?

Landowner advocates lock selves to feller buncher machines in KXL easement’s path of destruction!

SALTILLO, TEXAS – September 5, 2012, 7AM – Three landowner advocates and climate justice organizers have locked themselves to feller buncher machines used for clearing large trees in the path of the Keystone XL pipeline. Today’s action has halted work on a segment of TransCanada’s illegitimate pipeline outside of Saltillo, TX. As promised, Tar Sands Blockade’s rolling campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience pushes forward.

Five blockaders total are currently risking arrest to stop work on this segment of the Keystone XL pipeline. Contractors discovered their presence early in the work day, and work at the site was called off shortly thereafter. Texas-born blockaders have united with neighbors from other states to support rural and neighboring communities threatened by the toxic pipeline’s diluted bitumen slurry.

Tar Sands Blockade’s landowner solidarity actions hit home with 22 year old Houston-born blockader, Sarah Reid. “This pipeline affects me, my friends and my family directly. The toxic contents threaten the water we drink, the air we breathe.” Reid, who traces her Texan ancestry back to Obedience Smith, the first female settler to own land in Texas, continues, “Out in East Texas, the landowners I’ve met are honest, hard working people who have been taken advantage of by TransCanada. They’re people who just want to protect themselves and their families.”

The sense that legal means have failed to curb the landowner abuse inherent in the current eminent domain process is palpable. Gary Lynn Stuard, 54, of Dallas is no longer willing to wait for regulatory reform or judicial intervention: “We have exhausted all of the traditional avenues, and it’s not enough. It’s unjust that a multinational company can seize people’s property by proclaiming themselves a “common carrier” – that’s eminent domain abuse. It’s theft, and these peoples’ homes and land shouldn’t be ruined while decisions on what to do are put off.”

Mikey Lowe, 24, traveled from California to raise awareness of the tar sands carrier’s deception. “I feel that eminent domain has really gone too far. I really want to show [the world] what’s going on,” he shared.

Former Quinlan resident, Beverly Luff, 23, is primarily motivated by the threat that tar sands surface mining and extraction pose to the future of a livable climate. “The more people ignore it, the worse it will get. There’s only one planet, and we can’t afford to let dirty business interests cheat to win in East Texas or elsewhere.”

Tar Sands Blockade is a coalition of Texas and Oklahoma landowners and climate organizers using peaceful and sustained civil disobedience to stop the construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Today’s action comes on the heels of last week’s outside of Livingston, TX in which seven blockaders were arrested when four locked themselves to a truck delivering pipe segments to a Keystone XL construction site. Their successful nonviolent action stopped activity in the pipeyard for the day. In response, TransCanada claimed its pipeline was not to carry anything other than “crude oil,” which is factually inaccurate at best.

“TransCanada commits fraud when it lies about the substances in its toxic tar sands slurry pipeline,” explains Tar Sands Blockade spokesperson Ron Seifert. “East Texans have been documenting TransCanada’s deceit for over four years now. Rural and neighboring families have been treated as nothing more than collateral damage by industry, political and regulatory leaders on all sides of the aisle. The truth is TransCanada will do or say anything to ram this pipeline through, regardless of who gets hurt along the way.”

Reposted from the Tar Sands Blockade. 

**2:22pm: Heard from blockaders in Polk County jail. Every one is safe and being processed.

**1:15pm–Final blockader arrested. 7 brave people shut down #KeystoneXL construction for the day! Dissembled pipe truck still blocking the entrance of the pipeyard.

** 1:10PM – Police are dismantling truck axle. One blockader is holding tight! The 3 others have been arrested. 1 of 6 arrested so far is a journalist.

**11:20AM — 4 Blockaders Have Been Arrested!

**10:00AM — 4 Blockaders Have Locked Themselves to a Pipe-carrying Truck In Livingston, TX, bringing construction on the Keystone XL pipeline to a stop!!

Just minutes ago, four landowner advocates and climate justice organizers have locked themselves to the underside of a massive truck carrying 36″ pipe intended for Keystone XL construction. The truck is parked, idled at the entrance of the pipeyard, rendering construction activity impossible. Seven blockaders total are onsite risking arrest. We will be getting photos and video throughout the day, but check out our testimonial video below of some of today’s blockade participants.

Blockaders from the Red River valley to the Gulf Coast are uniting to realize their collective vision of a world without toxic tar sands pipelines being forced through the homes of families who don’t want them. Today’s message is clear: The people are rising up to defend their homes.

This act of peaceful civil disobedience comes in the wake of a recent court decision condoning TransCanada’s use of eminent domain for private gain. Last week Lamar County Judge Bill Harris ruled in a shockingly abbreviated fifteen-word summary judgment that Texas farmer Julia Trigg Crawford cannot challenge TransCanada’s claim that it is entitled to a piece of her home. The underwhelming ruling was emailed to Ms. Crawford’s attorney late in the evening of August 15 from the Judge’s iPhone.

**Live Blog: Visit this page throughout the day for breaking updates on actions happening in the region.

The arrogant disregard levied at landowners like Julia Trigg Crawford for simply not consenting to have a tar sands pipeline permanently bisect their homes is what motivated Houston businessman Ray Torgerson to take action with the Blockade. “The fact that this corporation can check a box on a form and steal someone’s land is insulting,” Ray says. “We are here to defend our homes and stand with landowners like Julia.”

Further emblematic of the disrespect small town families like the Crawfords have faced throughout Keystone XL legal proceedings, Ms. Crawford received first notice of the ruling from a reporter seeking comment who had been blind carbon copied on the County Judge’s email ruling.

“It was heartbreaking to hear a generational family farm like the Crawford’s can be taken away by a multinational corporation,” exclaims blockader Audrey Steiner, a linguistic anthropologist from Austin. “I’m here to change the direction our country is taking.”

Crawford’s challenge to TransCanada’s “common carrier” status was supported by a recent Texas Supreme Court case, Texas Rice Land Partners v. Denbury Green Pipeline, but Judge Harris clearly ignored what should have been a precedent-setting ruling.

As appeals wind through the legal system, pipeline construction continues.

The concerns of the blockaders today go well beyond TransCanada’s appalling contempt for property rights. As Tammie Carson, a lifelong Texan living in Arlington explains, “I’m doing this for my grandchildren. I’m outraged that multinational corporations like TransCanada are wrecking our climate. The planet isn’t theirs to destroy, and I’m willing to take a risk to protect my grandchildren’s future.”

Denny Hook, a retired Methodist minister from Gainesville, Texas describes himself as “An environmentalist that happens to be a minister.” In taking action today, Hook hopes to inspire more people to join the movement. “Things are so dire that if all of us don’t rise up we won’t make it. This pipeline is the difference between Earth on the edge and Earth over the edge.”

In the face of this waking nightmare, blockaders have little choice but to act out of conscience. We simply have no time left to wait for the legislative to catch up with the judicial. We won’t allow our homes and our futures to slip through regulatory loopholes!

Tar Sands Blockade is a coalition of Texas and Oklahoma landowners and climate organizers using peaceful and sustained civil disobedience to stop the construction of Keystone XL.

“The blockade is an expression of people who have spent years using every available avenue afforded to them, and nothing has worked,” explains Tar Sands Blockade spokesperson Ron Seifert. “The urgency of this crisis is galvanizing supporters who understand that doing nothing involves a greater risk than taking action.”

San Pablo

San Pablo, about 2 hours upriver by canoe from Cofan Dureno, is a Secoya community—though they’ve recently voted to re-adopt their traditional name, Sia’Copai, so I should say it’s a Sia’Copai community.

Here’s what it looks like to ride in a canoe down the Aguarico with the ClearWater crew and the Engineers Without Borders team from San Jose State University:

The Sia’Copai had a road built through their community fairly recently. Mitch said that when he first visited San Pablo, they didn’t have the road, and their whole lifestyle was built around the river. Now that the road has gone in, they are a motorcycle community. Everyone has a motorcycle.

Like Cofan Dureno, San Pablo received ClearWater systems as part of the pilot project. While the systems have made a huge difference in many people’s lives in San Pablo, proper maintenance has been more of an issue for them than it has for the Cofan, which points up one of the challenges we face as we try to roll out ClearWater to the remaining communities that need it.

Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch and Jason Graham of the San Jose State University chapter of Engineers Without Borders inspect the filters in a ClearWater system in San Pablo.

We visited the house of Javier Piaguaje, who received one of the ClearWater systems. He lives with his father and two sisters, as well as two pet monkeys, a tortoise, and a cockatiel. They’re all very pleased with the clean, potable water they’re getting from their system.

Javier Piaguaje shows the Engineers Without Borders team his ClearWater system.

Javier took us out to the community water system, which stopped functioning years ago. No one is sure why. There’s a newer, smaller system that was installed just a few years ago, which functions better than the community systems in Rumipamba and Cofan Dureno—that is, when there’s gas to run the pump. When there isn’t gas, the people of the village have to get their water from the river, which is contaminated. And even when it is working, the community system isn’t piped out to people’s homes, so they have to walk from all points of the community to this central point to get water. In other words, a sustainable supply of resources is still an issue preventing the people of San Pablo from getting enough clean water.

At this point, my camera died, so while I went back to recharge it, the engineers went off to speak with a couple more community members about how their ClearWater systems are working out. I took the opportunity to sneak in a quick swim in the river. Unlike in Dureno, the riverside here was all sand, no rocks. It was such fine, soft sand that you could sink all the way up to your knee on any given step. But the water was cold and felt delicious after the sweaty, insect-harried afternoon I’d had.

Turned out to be just the right time of day to photograph the river, too:

Dinner that night was in the house of Marcelo, the vice president of the community. His wife and kids could not have been more hospitable as the nine of us took over their small living room and front porch.

The crew sits on the front porch and in the front room of Marcelo's house eating dinner.

Cofan Dureno day 2

After breakfast (white rice and yucca—again!) the women of the community laid out their finest wares for us. There was an amazing amount of beadwork on display—all of the beads being seeds that they dye different colors. It was the kind of stuff some crunchy hippie store in the US would sell you for $30-50, but the Cofan were selling for $1, or $3, some times $5, never more than $10 a piece. I overpaid as much as possible.

A few of my favorite pieces. I forgot to get any pictures of the Cofan women selling the jewelry, as I was entranced by the all the gorgeous beadwork on sale.

We spent the rest of the day touring more ClearWater systems. For everyone who has donated to ClearWater or supported the project in any way, here’s a video just for you. This is what it’s all about:

Here is a shot of RAN’s Ginger Cassady getting some water from one of the systems:

The tank on the left is the filtering tank, the one on the right is the storage tank. The water falls on the corrugated roof of the house, collects in gutters, and is then piped into the filtering tank.

We also spent some time that day looking at the community’s water system, built by PetroEcuador. Again, we saw a water system installed by an outside entity who provided no follow-up in terms of maintenance or repairs, and a community ill-equipped to do those maintenance and repairs for themselves. Gonzalo, one of the village’s ClearWater tecnicos (technicians), told us pretty much the same story that we heard in Rumipamba: the chemicals for treating the water ran out, and one of the pumps has stopped working but there are no parts to fix it.

Gonzalo explains the community water system to the Engineers Without Borders team.

This only further convinced the Engineers Without Borders team that devising a plan to fix these systems, as well as to provide the resources and know-how to the community to do proper maintenance on an ongoing basis, might be part of the solution to the water crisis they are facing. But there are still a lot of problems that come with the community water systems that would need to be worked out, not the least of which is the enormous amounts of money it would cost to fix and then maintain the systems on an ongoing basis. In the opinion of our engineer team, the rainwater catchment systems are still the most sustainable and effective solution.

Paul Friedlander (right, in dark hat), one of the engineers on the delegation, discusses what it would take to get the community water system back up and running properly.

The ClearWater systems we saw were all in good working order and much appreciated by the community members who had received them. But they’re heading into the dry summer months, and the Cofan, like the Quechua of Rumipamba, said they usually don’t get enough rain during the summer to keep their systems full. All the more need, it would seem, for some type of communal system to make up the shortfall.

At the end of a long, hot, sweaty Amazon day, it was incredibly refreshing to jump into the Aguarico river and wash off. I don’t think a swim has ever felt so good.

We were also fortunate enough to get to hear Marina sing. Marina says she is the last Cofan woman who knows the tribe’s traditional songs. She was a little shy of my camera, but her song is nonetheless absolutely gorgeous. I think it’s made even more pretty by the birds and insects you can hear chirping in the background.

It was our last night in Cofan Dureno, and I was sad to go because the warmth and humor of the Cofan was nothing short of amazing. Emergildo Criollo is an elder of the community, and was also one of our main guides for our whole trip. His passion and dedication, along with his humility and quickness to laugh, were truly inspiring. His community is still being ravaged by oil extraction after the oil companies first appeared 50 years ago, yet he is one of the gentlest and friendliest people you could ever meet.

Emergildo has a “champions page” on the ClearWater site. Go here to read more about the work he is doing with ClearWater and how you can support him.

Cofan Dureno

Before heading to the Cofan community of Dureno, Donald Moncayo took us to Auguarico 4. This was a well site that was built by Texaco and operated solely by Texaco for about 8 years. PetroEcuador never pulled even one single gallon of oil out of this well site.

This is the proverbial smoking gun, the key evidence that deflates every defense Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001, has ever tried to make to avoid paying for its toxic mess in Ecuador.

PetroEcuador has begun to use this well as a re-injection site, shooting its toxic drilling waste back into the Earth rather than dumping it in open, unlined pits like Texaco did. Donald opened the spigot at the wellhead and poured out some formation water so that we could see what it looked like—in this case, it was oily black and reeking of petroleum, though he said it’s not always so dark in color.

Donald Moncayo and ClearWater's Mitch Anderson at the Aguarico 4 well site.

Next, Donald took us to the pit that Texaco was dumping this formation water into while the company was operating the well. Though the rainforest has grown over it, there are spots where crude-black oil waste is still perfectly visible, staining the vegetation and seeping to this day into the forest floor.

Donald stands in the open, unlined pit where Texaco dumped its toxic formation waters while operating the Aguarico 4 well.

The “goose-neck” pipe is still there, too, and still draining excess water off of the open storage pond.

Donald's foot rests on the gooseneck pipe that drains the overflow from the waste pit into the nearby rainforest.

Walk down the hillside and you can see where the pipe discharges the toxin-laced runoff down into a wetland area.

The barrel of the "smoking gun"--this pipe was deliberately designed by Texaco to drain toxic oil waste into the Amazon rainforest.

A view of the rainforest the pipe was designed by Texaco to empty into.

In the documentary Crude, Chevron’s lawyers can be seen claiming that this water is safe to drink. Donald jumped in with his rubber boots on and used a stick to stir up the bottom, much like the workers at Guillermo Grefa’s house did with their hoses. Then Donald swiped his rubber-gloved hand across the top of the water, and sure enough: it was completely black when he held it up to show us.

Donald agitates the mud at the bottom of the swampy wetlands. You can see the oily sheen already forming on the surface of the water.

Donald shows us his blackened hand after skimming it across the surface of the water.

After the Ecuadoreans living with this pollution and their lawyers started challenging Chevron’s lawyers to take a sip of this water they claimed was perfectly safe, the lawyers wised up and started bringing bottles of water so that when challenged to drink it, they could say, “Oh, no thanks, we brought our own.”

Later that day, we arrived at Cofan Dureno after a 3-hour canoe ride. We dropped our bags in the coliseo—a giant concrete slab with soccer goals at either end and a roof covering it. There were kids playing soccer—young kids, none older than 8 probably—and many of us immediately jumped in and played an impromptu game of soccer with them. It was the first of many games we would play with these kids. They were incredibly fun to be around. (And amazingly cute and shy.)

View of the river from the canoe.

Cofan leader Emergildo Criollo (middle) and Mitch Anderson (right) with one of the community's tecnicos--the technicians who work on the ClearWater systems--named Gonzalo. We sat with them in the coliseo and learned the history of the Cofan people prior to touring their village.

That afternoon and evening we walked around to a few of the ClearWater systems that have been installed in the community. One woman, Lucia, told us that before her system went in, she had stomach problems and diarrhea all the time. Now, those problems have mostly gone away. She’s still not 100% healthy, but doing much better thanks to this source of clean water readily available outside her house.

Lucia (left) outside her house, while Emergildo and Gonzalo show us her ClearWater unit. The tank on the left is the filtration system, the tank on the right is the holding tank.

One of our guides, Mitch Anderson (who spearheaded the ClearWater project after leaving Amazon Watch), took us by the house of a woman named Florienda, who wasn’t home at the time. Florienda told Mitch that her ClearWater system has made her feel like she had some kind of security in the world for the first time since her husband died.

We slept that night in another open-aired, covered concrete slab that was the community’s meeting spot before the coliseo got built. Now it appears to be used as a school, as there were Cofan-to-Spanish translation posters hanging around the sides.

All I can say about that night is: Everyone should spend a night in a hammock out in the open in the rainforest at some point in their life. The sounds of the rainforest wildlife, the cool rainforest air, the rain gently falling on the corrugated roof over our heads, and gently swaying all night long led to the best night of sleep I got the whole trip.

Reminiscent of its reckless operations around the world, Chevron continues to rake in billions in profits each year, while wrecking havoc on the planet, our climate and our communities. From the Niger Delta to Angola and from offshore in Brazil to the oil soaked rainforests of Ecuador; Chevron leaves a toxic trail as its legacy wherever it operates.

What’s worse, Chevron does not come clean about its culpability and understates the true cost of its operations. In a prepared statement about last night’s fires, Chevron clarified that “all employees were safely accounted for and there are no injuries.” Yet at least one Chevron staff received medical treatment and local area hospitals reported treating nearly 400 people for breathing problems and other issues.  To top things off, the company also absolved any responsibility for notifying communities facing imminent danger and delayed in reporting the incident by as much as an hour.

In Richmond, the Communities for a Better Environment are organizing, both by turning out for a forum tonight to ask tough questions of Chevron representatives and as an ongoing campaign for improved public health and corporate responsibility.

The fires came in the heat of an historic summer for climate change, filled with unprecedented blistering temperatures and erratic storm activity, and a determined resistance to a future of climate chaos. During these hot months, inspiring actions have burst from communities concerned with big fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.

The Summer of Solidarity: Direct Action Against Extraction launched in Appalachia last week will continue throughout the next month, with Coal Export Actions in Montana next week and along the Keystone Pipeline in Texas. To participate in these actions and to push forward the transition to cleaner, renewable energy, sign up to receive RAN’s alerts.

We spent one night in Coca, at the Hotel Auca, before embarking out into the Indigenous villages of Cofan Dureno and San Pablo in the Amazon.

“Auca” is apparently a racist name for the Huaorani. It’s another tribe’s word for “savage”, and the white men who built the hotel were so amused by the fact that another tribe referred to the Huaorani that way that they gave the hotel that name.

We returned to the Quechua community of Rumipamba for a second day to see the ongoing clean up effort behind Guillermo Grefa’s house (read about our first day in Rumipamba here). The word “tragic” leaps to mind immediately—after two years of cleanup, they’ve still only cleaned about 40 square meters of land.

Even more tragic, here’s how the cleanup works: Two workers put on rubber waders, gas masks, and gloves, walk out into the water, and use high-pressure hoses to stir up the mud at the bottom of the pond. This causes the oil that has settled there to rise back to the surface. Then workers on the shore skim the oil off the top and drop it in buckets which then get emptied into barrels, which PetroEcuador eventually comes and hauls away. None of the workers on the shore wear gas masks.

Workers use high-pressure hoses to stir up mud on bottom of pond, causing the oil to float to the top. You can see the black ring of oil all around the workers.

A worker hands a giant clump of mud and oil to another worker. Note the one on the right is not wearing a gas mask.

Even though the oil spill behind Guillermo Grefa's house happened about 30 years ago, plenty of oil still readily floats to the top of the pond seconds after the workers start spraying the hoses.

Workers on the shore skim the oil off the surface of the pond, then dump it into these buckets.

These Quechua people may be cleaning their land—slowly if not altogether surely—but it’s hard to imagine that they’re making themselves any healthier in the process.

After Guillermo’s house, we toured the community water system built by the local Orellana municipal government, which isn’t functioning properly. Some people still get water from it, but they don’t have the chemicals to treat it properly—those ran out a few months after the system was built, and the government doesn’t provide the community with any more. The system uses gravity to get the water out to the community, but due to poor design it doesn’t reach everyone. Guillermo, for instance, doesn’t even live that far from the system, but he only gets a little bit of water from it, not nearly enough for him and his family during the dry summer months.

The engineer team, along with the president of the Quechua community (left) and ClearWater's Mitch Anderson (right) tour the community water system.

Because the community water system no longer provides clean water to most people, many families are drinking from wells they’ve drilled themselves, which have never been tested for contamination, or from surface water sources known to be contaminated by oil. The community members lack the expertise and the resources to fix the community water system, and perhaps were never terribly motivated to fix it because it never reached all the houses in the community anyway. Still, the Engineers Without Borders team (from the San Jose State University chapter) felt that fixing the community water system might be a good part of the solution to the lack of clean water, along with rainwater catchment systems.

We climbed to the top of the water towers. It was a nice view, unless you were facing in the direction where you could see smoke from gas flares in the distance, or the drilling rig soaring above the forest canopy.

The day before, Guillermo had told us that his rainwater catchment system (not a ClearWater system, but built by a previous effort to bring rainwater catchment systems to communities suffering the impacts of Texaco’s oil pollution), was mostly working well, except in summer months when there wasn’t enough rain to keep it filled. Also, even though the system was only put in a few years ago and has several years of life left, the wooden framework it was built on is already starting to succumb to the harsh rainforest environment, pretty much melting away under the relentless assault of rain, humidity, and heat. The community water system might help meet this summer shortfall, but there’s still the problem of the wooden structure’s short lifespan.

The EWB team inquired about the availability of concrete, which could be used for the structures instead of wood, and also said that a “first flush” system would be needed, since there was gas flaring in the area and they were concerned that particulate matter could be settling onto the house’s roof. A first flush system, they explained, would cause the first bit of rainwater passing across the roof not to go into the catchment system’s storage tank, thereby flushing any toxic particulate matter off the roof before collection of rainwater begins.

After Rumpamba, we did one of the famous “Toxitours” as led by Donald Moncayo. When I first met Donald at the airport in Coca, I told him “He visto a muchos photos de ti”—“I’ve seen many photos of you.” When he reacted with some surprise to this, I told him, “Pues, tu eres famoso!”

Donald got a good laugh out of being told he was famous—and, as I would discover, laughter is something that comes very easily to Donald and many of the other residents of the oil-ravaged Ecuadorean Amazon.

But it was actually true: I have seen many pictures of Donald, because he is somewhat famous. The number of journalists, researchers, scientists, and other folks who have taken a Toxitour probably cannot be counted. He has been written about in numerous publications, and photographed and videotaped, I’d guess, as much as any celebrity.

Much like when I first witnessed the oil pollution at Guillermo Grefa’s house, it was an entirely new, authentically moving experience to see the Toxitour for myself. Chevron lawyers have claimed that Donald goes out the night before a Toxitour and buries the oil he then digs up for his audience. This is absurd, of course. Donald took us out by the Sacha Sur separation station within the Sacha oil field. Right across the street is an old drill site, and Donald only had to dig down a few feet with his augur before the mud took on a distinct petroleum odor. When he hit a rock or something else that wouldn’t allow him to go any further, he moved over a couple feet and again was pulling up petroleum-smelling mud after just a few feet.

Donald Moncayo with his augur. He only had to drill down a few feet before the mud started smelling like oil.

Donald then took us down a short jungle trail to the bank of a small creek. There was oil plainly visible on the top of the water. Donald picked up a shovelful of mud from the creek’s bank and it was all oily black. He told us that this was one of the creeks that Texaco deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into, and that he had had “the pleasure” of trekking some 800 meters down the creek to witness the extent of the damage.

Donald with a shovelful of mud he dug from the creek's bottom. It's clearly all oily black.

While walking back to our van, we noticed some poles sticking out of the ground in what was otherwise jungle. Donald told us that those used to be the stilts that Maria Garrafolo’s house sat on. You might have seen her in the movie Crude—she’s the woman taking her teenage daughter into the city to be treated for cancer. It’s probably no wonder her daughter had such a severe illness at such a young age—she literally grew up in the flickering shadows cast by the three gas flares at the separation station next door. PetroEcuador has since moved Maria Garrafolo and her daughter, and the jungle has reclaimed the site her house once stood on.

Two wooden posts still stand to mark the spot where Maria Garrafolo's house once stood.

The gas flares of Sacha Sur.

So, now we’d seen the problem: extensive oil contamination and insufficient supply of clean drinking water. We still had a little bit of Toxitour left, but we would soon see the solution: ClearWater.

But for the people here in Ecuador living with the massive oil pollution deliberately dumped here by by American oil company Texaco from 1962 to 1992, the concept of environmental justice is never abstract. For them, it’s a matter of survival, a day-to-day struggle to stay alive and keep their children healthy.

Guilermo Grefa of the Quechua community Rumipamba in Ecuador shows the team of engineers the current water catchment system he is using. All of the natural water sources in his community are contaminated by oil.

After two decades of putting up a heroic fight, the Ecuadoreans who have been living with Texaco’s oil pollution for decades have yet to see a dime for cleanup of their land and water. Earlier this year, we worked with these Ecuadoreans—as well as Amazon Watch, Groundwork Opportunities, and Saving an Angel Foundation—to launch ClearWater, a project that aims to deliver clean, drinkable water to the people of the Ecuadorean Amazon.

The pilot project provided rainwater catchment systems to two communities, but now we need to roll ClearWater out to dozens more. I’m down here with a team from the San Jose State University chapter of Engineers Without Borders to examine the oil contamination in the area and the existing water catchment systems so that they can use their engineering expertise to help figure out how best to provide clean drinking water to all the communities that need it.

Our first stop was the house of Guillermo Grefa in the Quechua community of Rumipamba. Guillermo’s house was the site of a massive oil spill in the 80s when a Texaco pipeline ruptured. To this day, oil pipelines still run by and underneath his house—which is nothing out of the ordinary for this area, sadly, since you have to drive along miles and miles of oil pipelines to get here.

Oil pipelines run directly under Guillermo Grefa's house.

Paul Friedlander, one of the engineers here with us, says that even though he’d read about the oil pollution down here, he was not prepared for what we’ve seen so far. “It’s one thing to see pictures of the contamination, but to actually see it at the location, and hear the people talking about it, and the effect on their lives, really brings it home,” he says. “It’s heartbreaking to see.”

I’ve worked on this campaign for nearly two years and even I wasn’t prepared for what I saw at Guillermo’s house—oil still sits on top of the pond behind the house to this day, 30 years after the spill. Ecuador’s state-run oil company, PetroEcuador, which was a non-operating partner with Texaco at the time of the spill, is paying several locals to clean up the mess behind Guillermo’s house. In all this time, they’ve still only managed to clean up about 40 square meters.

Oil is still plainly visible on the surface of the pond behind Guillermo Grefa's house, even 30 years after a Texaco pipeline burst and caused a massive oil spill.

Seeing this pollution firsthand, and the resolve of the people living with it, also brings home just how important the ClearWater project is.

Instead, the governments of the world are handing $1 trillion to the fossil fuels industry every year. Oil companies are some of the richest in the world. The oil industry made record profits last year. So why on Earth are we spending $1 trillion to subsidize the oil industry’s dirty, destructive business instead of spending that money on clean, safe renewable energy and other things that would make our world more peaceful and our society more sustainable?

World leaders are meeting in Rio right now, and we’re taking part in a Twitter storm to call on them to #EndFossilFuelSubsidies. We want to make this hashtag a trending topic worldwide.

It’s as simple as clicking on the hashtag — #EndFossilFuelSubsidies — and retweeting anything you see there. Or tweeting this post. Or tweeting this awesome video starring Seasunz and J. Bless from Earth Amplified and featuring Stic.Man from Dead Prez.

The folks over at Oil Change International put together this infographic based on their research that revealed the governments of the world might be spending even more than $1 trillion per year to subsidize the dirty oil industry. They write: “But what makes it even worse is that governments aren’t willing to own up to the fact that this is the case. That’s a lot of money to be wasting and hiding, and it could be put to better use for education, hunger, poverty, renewable energy, and many many other far-more valid uses.”

Click to enlarge.