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Angeles Chapter at Wilmington, CA (Los Angeles) |
Saturday May 17: 5000 Americans gathered in numbers large & small across America in 100 communities and 43 states, to say No to KXL, No to ALL dirty fuels. 20 events were in FL, part of the 5th annual Hands Across the Sand.
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Rocky Mountain Chapter on steps of CO State Capitol |
As 5000 had rallied in Washington D.C. 3 weeks earlier to urge the president to reject the Keystone XL, last Saturday people turned out in their own communities. Stands were taken against their local threat from Big Oil’s unprecedented assault on America: offshore drilling, seismic testing, dangerous tar sands pipelines, fracking, exporting liquid natural gas, or shipping crude by rail through our hometowns.
This National Day of Action
against dirty fuels was organized with help from Surfriders, Gulf Restoration
Network, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Oceana, Center for Biological
Diversity, Bold Nebraska and 350.org local activists. But it was Sierra Club
staff and volunteers that led the way, doing the lion’s share of organizing on
the national and local level, with Our Wild America staff engaged wherever they
could.
Nationally our small but determined team of National Online Organizer Brian Dockstader, FL Senior Organizing Manager Frank Jackalone, FL Regional Organizing Representative Phil Compton, Sierra Club Foundation Board member Marc Weiss, Our Wild America Communications staff Virginia Cramer and D.C. Beyond Oil interns Alison Bressler, Furman University and Zabrina Arnovitz, Kent State University.
We reached out to every chapter leader and staff, sent convios to all recent activists, and merged with Hands Across the Sand. Hands is an annual grassroots stand against offshore drilling that started in 2010 when the nation joined gulf coast residents as the impact was being felt of the world’s biggest environmental disaster, the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout. Since then, as utilities have begun to move beyond coal, Big Oil has used new extraction technology to expand from drilling in the gulf to an unprecedented assault on every region of America.
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Missouri Chapter Draws the Line On Tar Sands In Kansas City |
We reached out to every chapter leader and staff, sent convios to all recent activists, and merged with Hands Across the Sand. Hands is an annual grassroots stand against offshore drilling that started in 2010 when the nation joined gulf coast residents as the impact was being felt of the world’s biggest environmental disaster, the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout. Since then, as utilities have begun to move beyond coal, Big Oil has used new extraction technology to expand from drilling in the gulf to an unprecedented assault on every region of America.
Our goal: keep up the drumbeat of opposition to KXL that has succeeded in delaying approval, as well as stand against the myriad of Big Oil's local and regional threats now confronting Americans everywhere.
Chapters/Groups
who led in organizing events with local allies:
*Wilmington (Los Angeles), CA: Angeles
Chapter; Ventura (San Diego), CA: Los
Padres Chapter; *Denver, CO: Rocky Mountain Chapter
& Staff Matt Reed; Glenwood Springs, CO: Roaring
Fork Group, Rocky Mountain Chapter; Milford, CT:
Connecticut Chapter; Wilmington DE: Delaware Chapter
& Chapter staff Stephanie Herron; *St. Pete Beach, FL: Florida
Chapter, Suncoast Group; Wichita KS: Kansas &
Oklahoma Chapters; Des Moines IA and Council
Bluffs, IA / Omaha, NE: Iowa Chapter; *East Chicago, IN: Illinois
Chapter, Chicago Group & Hoosier Chapter, NW IN Group; *Portland, ME: Maine
Chapter; *Minneapolis – St. Paul, MN:
North Star Chapter; Kansas City, MO: Missouri
Chapter; Fargo, ND: Dacotah Chapter; Albuquerque & Santa Fe, NM:
Rio Grande Chapter; Greenville, Columbia, Myrtle
Beach, and Charleston, SC: South Carolina Chapter; Memphis, TN: Tennessee Chapter,
Chickasaw Group; Houston, TX: Lone
Star Chapter, Houston Group
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Illinois & Hoosier Chapter stand at site of tar sands refinery that spilled oil into Lake Michigan recently |
Anchorage, Alaska: Lindsey
Hejduk; Santa Barbara, CA: Michael
Thornton; Naples, FL: Alexis Meyer; Kailua, Hawaii: Caitlin
Pomerantz; Trenton, NJ: Nicole Dallara; Virginia Beach, VA: Eileen Levandoski; *Seattle, WA: Graham Taylor
*=Flagship events with especially high turnout and regional
significance.
Several events, such as East Chicago and Wilmington (LA), CA, had
a strong Environmental Justice angle, as they were held on low income minority
communities that are now the site of drilling and tar sands refineries that
ravage local air and water quality. Houston’s event was held at Texas Southern
University as part of a regional EJ conference attended by many local Sierrans,
and the ranchers and tribes of the Cowboy Indian Alliance joined Bold Nebraska
at events centered on the threat of the Keystone XL pipeline to the nation’s
heartland.
A few highlights:
Hands were joined across the sands of 20 Florida beaches,
and 7 in California, with turnouts of 200 or more at St. Pete Beach and Indian
Rocks Beach in Tampa Bay, Miami Beach, and Kailua, Hawaii. Other coastal states
focused on the imminent threat of seismic testing to hundreds of thousands of
whales and dolphins, a sacrifice to discover new sites for drilling off the
Atlantic coast, were Georgia, South & North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware,
New Jersey, joined by gulf states Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Inland events focused more upon the central theme of
rejecting the KXL pipeline. America’s largest event was in Omaha, where 231
faced the Missouri River to join hands across the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge
between Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa. North Star Chapter members joined
hands across the Mississippi River on a bridge linking Minneapolis and St. Paul
with allies 350 MN & OFA Climate Change to stand against the Alberta
Clipper tar sands pipeline. Illinois
Chapter activists and 350 allies joined
our NW IN Group to rally at the site of the BP tar sands refinery that a
few weeks earlier had dumped oil into Chicago’s water supply, Lake Michigan.
And Rocky Mountain Chapter leaders stood on the steps of the Colorado State
House to stand for local control of fracking and drilling in their state.
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Suncoast Group, FL Chapter Join Hands on St. Pete Beach against oil and for green transit choices. |
Days after an oil pipeline rupture put a Los Angeles
neighborhood waist deep in oil, the Angeles Chapter worked with other members
of the SoCal Climate Action Coalition 350.org. to organize a bi-lingual
community workshop in a largely Hispanic community already beset by poor air
quality from drilling and fracking, now facing a new threat of tar sand oil
being shipped out of the port at Wilmington via a new pipeline through this
community under siege by Big Oil. A similar threat up the coast in the San
Francisco Bay area, where the Valero Benicia Refinery has proposed to begin
transporting crude oil by rail tanker cars, was met by a Refinery Corridor
Healing Walk at the port town of Martinez, the 2nd in a series of such
events. Across the nation in Portland,
Maine, the threat of tar sands oil being shipped out through this harbor turned
out 100 on a rainy day to speak up for protecting Maine’s pristine lakes,
rivers and bays.
Down in Florida
where anti-drilling activists held their 5th annual Hands Across the Sand
events, the focus expanded from offshore drilling to a call for moving
America’s most oil dependent state beyond oil through investing in the cleaner
transit options it so sorely lacks. 200 gathered on America’s most popular
beach destination, St. Pete Beach, to link dirty fuels to a call for support of
America’s biggest transit referendum
this year, Greenlight Pinellas, the most powerful thing that can be done to
reduce the region’s demand for the oil that continues to threaten the state’s
beach tourism based economy.
All over America, in practically every state, Sierrans
rallied with their neighbors to call for freedom from the tyranny of fossil
fuels that now threaten our lakes, rivers and beaches, our water and air, and
to protect the world from rising sea levels and the impact of rising
temperatures. The momentum against Big
Oil has turned in our favor, at the same time Oil’s reach widens to attack us
all. Saturday, Sierra Club members stood up to Big Oil. Let’s keep up the
fight!
Sample of the local media nationwide:
Omaha, NE:
Omaha World Herald: Group
gathers on bridge to protest Keystone XL Pipeline
InsideClimateNews: Group Gathers on Iowa-Nebraska Bridge to Protest Keystone XL
Pipeline
Lake Worth Beach, FL:
The Palm Beach Post: Protesters join hands at Lake Worth rally to preserve Florida
beaches
The Palm Beach Post: Hands Across the Sand in Lake Worth
East Chicago, IL:
Post-Tribune: Protesters rally in Marktown against BP
MARTINEZ (San Francisco Bay), CA: Martinez News-Gazette: Healing Walk
to ‘Connect the Dots’ through Martinez
Santa Barbara, CA:Noozhawk/Water Guardians: Water Guardians Holds ‘Hands Across The Sand’ Rally for Clean Energy
Portland, ME:
Portland Press Herald: About 60 people gather in Portland to protest Keystone XL
pipeline
Ocean Springs, MS:
Miami Beach, FL:
Examiner.com: Hands Across the Sand Miami Beach, May 17, 2014
CultureDesigners.com: It's
High Noon in Miami, Baby!
Miami Herald: Hands Across the Sand
Examiner.com: Hands across the sand Miami Beach May17
Broward-Palm Beach NewTimes: Hands Across the Sand 2014: Global Shout-Out for Clean Energy
TheDay.com: The environmental bagman
Pensacola Beach, FL:
Pensacola News Journal: Drawing a line in the sand to protest oil drilling
Tampa Bay, FL:
Tampa Bay Times: Video: Hands Across the Sand
St. Petersburg Tribune: ‘Hands Across the Sand’ links to Pinellas’ transit vote
Naples, FL:
Naples News: Photo Galleries » Hands Across the Sand 2014
Denver, CO:
KDVR, Fox31 Denver: Video: Protesters rally against Keystone XL pipeline
Derby, CT:
New Haven Register: Derby officials cheer success of town’s first ‘Ecofest’