I'm very sorry not to have been doing a better job the last couple of days keeping people posted on developments in the tar sands campaign, and very happy to see that others have been doing a better job than I have. Basically, tons of good news:
1) Just came from the church where we're doing trainings: looks like 78 people ready to get arrested tomorrow, which would be the biggest day yet, and get us close to 400 people overall. This is the biggest civil disobedience in the environmental movement in a generation--and it continues to be driven by older people as well as young, and by people from across the country. Not "radicals." In fact, if anything we're conservatives, conspiring to keep the world something like we found it. Radicals work for oil companies and want to change the atmosphere.
2) We're finally breaking through to the mainstream media. Had an excellent time on MSNBC tonight with Chris Hayes filling in for Lawrence O'Donnell. Someone more technically savvy than me will have to figure out how to put the clip up on line! But clearly he had understood the message, right down to the crucial fact that President Obama can take care of this problem all by himself.
Bill's interview tonight: (little ad first i can't remove - pdnc)
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3) As beachbabe noted in the update to a diary yesterday, the ceo's of all the big green groups united (which is wild in itself--from the corporate friendly EDF to the anti-corporate Rainforest Action Network) on an incredibly strong message, telling the President they "expect nothing less" than a veto of the pipeline, and adding that there is not "an inch of daylight" between their views and those of the protesters.
4) And word just arrived from Canada that they've announced their own civil disobedience for Sept. 26 on Parliament Hill, and hope to make it the biggest in the history of their country's environmental movement. So things are spreading!
Anyway, so many thanks. And here's the important thing: It's not too late to sign up and come. You'll likely spend a few hours at the police station and pay a hundred dollar fine (and find out what it's like to have your hands cuffed behind your back). In return, you'll get the chance to show our president that there's deep support for him doing the right thing! Just go to tarsandsaction.org
New kossack Ben Gotschall is en route to DC with a stop the pipeline bus tour. He wrote a diary today about his bus tour. Listen to him and others discuss why they are going to DC to be arrested: