Cascadia Rising Tide is active in Eugene, Portland and Olympia, with contacts in British Columbia, California and elsewhere in the west. Our focuses include grassroots education and organizing resistance to Liquefied Natural Gas, regional highway expansions and forest destruction. We also work with local movements against giant hydro-electric dams and the sustainability movement.
Please contact us at anytime at cascadia-AT-risingtidenorthamerica-DOT-org and join our email list for updates!
Posted Jun 14th, 2009
“Twelve Lanes? That’s Insane!” chanted 70 Portlanders as they rallied at Mississippi Avenue, just south of Mason Avenue Sunday evening. The rally was accompanied by a mobile bike-carted sound system, live musicians, and a huge banner unfurled from the roof of a nearby construction site reading “More Lanes=More Cars=More Climate Change. No CRC!” The protest followed a “Pedalpalooza” bike ride earlier in the afternoon – organized by Portland Rising Tide which toured areas of North Portland impacted by the current Columbia River Crossing (CRC) proposal, talking to neighborhood activists opposed to the project.
“Building a bridge of such obese proportions in a city that prides itself for its environmental leadership is deeply hypocritical,” said Sarah Goforth. “If our city truly aims to create sustainable transportation options to reduce car traffic, then building a super-sized mega-bridge will only impede these efforts.” Continue Reading »
Posted Jun 8th, 2009
Pedalpalooza has traditionally been a place for people to celebrate Portland’s thriving bike culture. Portland Rising Tide decided to celebrate this culture by hosting a ride to inform and empower folks to resist our region’s biggest threat to bicycles and the people that love them.
WHEN: Sunday June 14th
WHERE: meet at the South end of Peninsula Park (650 N. Ainsworth)
WHEN: 3pm, ride leave promptly at 3:30 pm
The Columbia River Crossing (CRC) is a $4+ billion dollar proposed freeway expansion project along a five mile stretch of Interstate 5 between North Portland and Vancouver, WA. As conceived, the project will:
· Increase global warming pollution
· Harm people’s health, predominately those in low income neighborhoods
· Undermine our region’s vision of a sustainable economy.
· Leave us unprepared for the future, while draining $4 billion of our limited public resources.
· Create a faster corridor for Free Trade to ship products from the exploited Global South to privileged countries such as the U.S. and Canada.
The ride will stop at a number of places that may be affected by the CRC to inform folks about related environmental justice issues, about how this project ties into the Global Free Trade infrastructure plans, and how we can stop it. All while dancin’ and groovin’ to fun music throughout the ride. The ride will end at a secret action, but don’t worry it will be a fun, low-risk space for the whole family.
Download a flyer!
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/cascadia/Flyer.pdf
Download handbills!
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/cascadia/Quartersheets.pdf
Posted Nov 12th, 2008
Leonardo Cerda is an Ecuadorian youth climate, energy and sustainability activist studying International Relations and Political Sciences at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. He’s also starting up organizing Marea Creciente / Rising Tide and a Climate Camp there!
Leo’s been involved in resistance movements against the oil industry in Ecuador since he was fourteen years old. He and others in his community starting doing workshops around the Amazon at that time, in different indigenous villages, discussing the causes and the future consequences of the oil industry, it’s relationship to climate change and the many other devastating consequences to people and the environment. Continue Reading »
Posted Oct 28th, 2008
Northwest Caravan To Support The Struggle For Survival On The Front Lines Of Resistance at Big Mountain, Black Mesa, AZ. 2008
Indigenous nations are disproportionately targeted by fossil fuel extraction & environmental devastation and Black Mesa is no exception. At this moment Peabody Coal Co. is planning to seize tribal lands and massively expand dirty coal strip-mining operations. In 30 years of controversial operation, Peabody’s Black Mesa Mine has been the source of an estimated 325 million tons of CO2 that have been discharged into the atmosphere.* If expansion plans are permitted, it would exacerbate already devastating environmental and cultural impacts on local communities and significantly add fuel to the fire of the current climate chaos we face globally. Coal from the Black Mesa mine could contribute an additional 290 million tons of CO2 to the global warming crisis!*
Institutional racism has fueled neglect and abandonment of public needs such as water, maintenance of roads, health care, and schools. Daily life for Big Mountain residents hasn’t changed too much over the years, except that more of them have become elderly and now struggle with daily chores. Due to lack of local job opportunities and federal strangulation on Indian self-sufficiency, extended families are forced to live many miles away to earn incomes and have all the social amenities which include choices in mandatory American education. It is increasingly difficult for families to come back to visit their relatives in these remote areas due to the unmaintained roads and the rising cost of transportation. Continue Reading »
Posted Aug 12th, 2008
From July 28 – Aug. 4th over 400 people gathered on a pesticide-free farm in Coburg, Oregon to learn, share, organize and network. Workshops and keynotes covered issues from the I-5 bridge expansion (Columbia River Crossing) to growing vegtables year-around. The week highlighted fossil fuel development projects throughout the West, and then created a space for people to learn the skills needed to fight them.
The phrase direct action has been invoked in many ways for many movements. Often, in the climate movement it is used to describe non-violent civil disobedience that directly confront and seek to physically halt fossil fuel development projects, such as lock-downs to equipment and road blockades. At this year’s West Coast Convergence for Climate Action, we spoke of direct action as not only taking action against dirty fossil fuel projects, but also taking action for community solutions and sustainability!
The week led up to a day of civil disobedience on Monday, which consisted of two major acts of disruption, street theater and rallies. It was awesome to learn about the details of proposed dirty energy projects, then hear the personal stories from impacted communities fighting them, and then finally organize and take action in the efforts to stop them. Continue Reading »
Posted Jul 9th, 2008
The controversy over the I-5 expansion project known as the Columbia River Crossing took a theatrical turn on Wednesday, as politically charged street performance took center stage outside a packed city hall. Meeting attendees were greeted with a fake check point just past an area marked off by “Global Warming Crime Scene” tape.
Decked out in a Men-in-Black style uniform marked with the insignia of the “Oil Enforcement Agency”, an actress known as Agent Burns was busily preparing a ticket for a bemused member of the Portland Business Alliance on his way to the meeting. “This is your final warning sir, if you’re intent on testifying in favor of the bridge, we’re going to have to write you up for abuse of a foreign fossil fuel,” chided the agent.
[Hi-resolution images after the jump!]
Posted Jul 7th, 2008
Press Advisory
Continue Reading »
Posted Apr 1st, 2008
Portland, OR – With a bouquet of heart shaped balloons, a group of Portland-area climate activists calling themselves the “Greenwash Guerrillas” presented a highly experimental new business model to passersby in downtown Portland on Tuesday. Drawing their inspiration from so-called carbon neutral companies like Portland’s Climate Trust, the activists claim to be launching a new company called “Cheat Neutral.”
Posted Feb 4th, 2008
This Spring, two womyn from the Portland Animal Defense League, Rising Tide North America and Stumptown Earth First! will be on tour up and down the west coast with an interactive and engaging presentation. We’ll be offering a two hour presentation on radical eco-feminism and environmental ethics. Eco-feminism is the social movement that regards the oppression of women and nature as interconnected. It is one of the few movements and analyses that actually connects two movements. Radical ecofeminist theorists have extended their analyses to consider the interconnections between sexism, the domination of nature (including animals), and also racism and social inequalities. Consequently it is now better understood as a movement working against the interconnected oppressions of gender, race, class and nature. Continue Reading »
Posted Jan 23rd, 2008
Cascadia Rising Tide joined forces with Stumptown Earth First! to hold an action and rally at the downtown Portland office of NW Natural (local gas utility), for their involvement in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) related pipelines, which threaten to clear-cut strips of forest throughout Oregon for new fossil fuel infrastructure.
Piling dozens of trees on NW Natural’s downtown office entryway, activists with Stumptown Earth First! and Cascadia Rising Tide, sent a message to the LNG-invested gas company: “There’s nothing Green about Clear-cuts, No new pipelines”. Continue Reading »
Posted Nov 18th, 2007
National Day of Action Against Coal Report
Cascadia Rising Tide
Contact: stephanie@RisingTideNorthAmerica.org
From: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/11/369033.shtml
Cascadia Rising Tide Hosted an Anti-Coal Dance Party In Downtown Portland for the National Day of Action Against Coal On November 17th, local climate activists participated in a National Day of Action against coal by calling on Bank of America to stop funding the leading cause of global warming in the United States: coal.
“Coal has got to go if we’re going to solve the climate crisis,” said Elliot Cheifetz of Cascadia Rising Tide. “Citi and Bank of America talk a good game about environmental responsibility, but they’re
contributing billions of dollars to the single worst thing we could be doing.”
Approximately 30 people came out to get down and funky while hanging banners, convincing customers to cancel their accounts, and educate passer-bys about these atrocities. They held a dance party/rally to oppose the funding and building of new coal-fired power plants, and to raise awareness about the extremely destructive effects of the coal industry which include: Continue Reading »
Posted Aug 28th, 2007
Posted Apr 11th, 2007
Many hearty greetings from Cascadia Rising Tide and the Beehive Design Collective!
Together we will expound upon the interrelated ecological and social crises threatening the hemisphere, making links between global economic structures, militarization, and resource and energy consumption, while also highlighting grassroots resistance struggles and what YOU can do to participate in active change.
We hope you’ll join us for an interactive, multi-media, combined presentation that celebrates fossil fuel resistance from around the globe AND embarks on a visual tour of the Beehive Collective’s Graphic Trilogy about corporate globalization in the Americas (FEATURING a behind-the-scenes look at the long-anticipated MESOAMERICA RESISTE graphic, currently on the cusp of completion!)
