Tar Sands Peoples' Movement Assembly @ USSF
June 23rd, 2010
Co-hosted with our partners: Indigenous Environmental Network, Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace Canada, Forest Ethics, Council of Canadians, and Sierra Club Environmental Justice Program
Wednesday, June 23
1:00-5:30pm
Location: Cobo Hall W2-70
Check out all of Ruckus's Program Plans during the U.S. Social Forum here!
Join community leaders from the local Detroit fight against the Marathon
tar sands refinery and frontline impacted First Nations from Alberta and
American Indian communities in Montana, Oklahoma, North Dakota and
Minnesota impacted by tar sands pipe line and refinery infrastructure.
The tar sands represent the last gasps of a dying industry, the death
cries of a global oil addiction that has taken us to the brink of
rational thinking and pushed our planet to the edge. The cost of the
tarsands to land, air, forests, downstream communities, workers and the
climate is unparalleled. The right to a safe, healthy and sustainable
environment is essential for all.
Front line Community Leaders with the support of the Indigenous
Environmental Network, Rainforest Action Network, The Ruckus Society,
Greenpeace Canada, Forest Ethics, Council of Canadians and Sierra Club
Environmental Justice Program will provide a PMA session on a diversity
of base building, Non violent direct action, financial campaign, lobby
campaign, markets campaign and popular education tactics being utilized
in one of the largest emerging social movements in North America rising
to fight the largest development in the history of Mankind known as
Canada’s TarSands.
The purpose of this session to share and learn about how to plug into
this struggle, with intervention points in almost every corner of North
America manifesting in the form of pipelines, refineries, rail, trucking
and shipping lanes and extraction taking place in the beating heart of
the tar sands in northern Alberta. We will discuss the dozens if not
hundreds of grassroots communities of color, Indigenous communities
disproportionately impacted by this project and what steps are being
taken to foster solidarity amongst front line indigenous communities,
fence line communities of color, rural and urban communities across
North America and internationally in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and
the UK to Shut down the tar sands.
Our organizations are calling for a stop to the tar sands and a
transition to the clean energy economy of the 21st century. For the sake
of people and the planet, we must stop this project and start building
green jobs across this country.