We stand in solidarity with #IdleNoMore

“Today, and every day, Peaceful Uprising stands in solidarity with tar sands resisters everywhere–in East Texas with the Tar Sands Blockade; in Massachusetts with the 8 students who locked down in the offices of TransCanada, the corporation responsible for ‘game over’ tar sands mining in Alberta; and now the time has come to answer the call of indigenous resisters, who have too often been marginalized.

Watch the speech:

Response to Dirty Herbert from william ratchild nevins on Vimeo.

From Canada, we hear your call  for united action.   And we offer our whole-hearted support to the Idle No More movement.  We pledge to take a stand with you, honoring your Indigenous leadership, and fighting by your side to demand Indigenous sovereignty and to protect Mother Earth.  Our paths are intertwined; our loyalties lie with our collective future, and our shared commitment to climate justice.  In Solidarity – we shall be Idle No More!”

PUenergyINM1

Yesterday, our beloved community member, Joan Gregory, spoke these words on behalf of Peaceful Uprising, as we took part in the Clean Energy Now! rally in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Joan continued:

“My name is Joan Gregory, and I speak here today as a mother with hopes and dreams for a livable future here on this Earth, our only home.   And I speak as a member of Peaceful Uprising, working for climate justice, defending a livable future.

Like you, I have spoken at hearings, signed petitions, and taken action, asking, requesting, demanding that the state of Utah and the United States develop and implement aggressive renewable energy strategies that would assure a sustainable future for us all and protection of the land that we love.

But today, Governor Herbert’s Energy Summit is once again FULL of business as usual and worse!  Coal, oil, oil shale and tar sands!!!   Apparently, the state of Utah has no real plan to assure a livable, sustainable future for me and MY children!  Our land, water and air are under assault by the fossil fuel industry ready and eager to drill, mine, and extract every last ounce of fossil fuel; our land, our water, and the very air we breathe destroyed and polluted with sufficient CO2 to threaten the very existence of life.

No Tar Sands

We cannot continue to sit idly by and watch glaciers the size of Manhattan collapse and disappear before our very eyes; or allow the first tar sands mine in the United States to begin operations here in the Book Cliffs of Eastern Utah!  It’s time to SPEAK OUT, TIME to speak the TRUTH.  Climate change is happening; it is happening NOW.  It is our problem to solve , our responsibility, not something we should leave to our children or grandchildren to have to deal with sometime in the distant future, it is happening to us now.  The clean air, land, and water we rely on for life itself are in peril, and so are we.

Leave the fossil fuels in the ground, Governor Herbert, especially the unconventional ones!   Pull the plug on tar sands and oil shale development NOW.   Move Utah’s economy away from destructive fossil fuels that poison our air, destroy our wild lands, and threaten our very existence.  It’s time to fast track significant renewable energy solutions.

Utah could be a model for resilient transition … we could lead a paradigm shift away from a fossil fuel based economy to one based on resilient communities and renewable wind, solar, and geothermal energy sources.  We KNOW how to do this – roadmaps like HEAL’s eUtah plan, Transition Salt Lake, and Peaceful Uprising’s Communities of Resilient Resistance, are ready to put into action.   But we must act now.

Idle No More

Creating a livable future based on sustainable renewable energy and community resilience may be difficult, but it is NOT impossible, and it could even be fun. We already know how to do this! Yes, it will take hard work, tenacity, resilience, resourcefulness, determination, community, and creativity – but these are all the core values that Utah was built on!! All resources that are in high supply in Utah.

have what it takes to make a renewable energy future inevitable, instead of impossible. Let’s get this done. Let’s make what might seem to others an impossible task, the inevitable resultof the hard work and determination of the industrious and resilient people of Utah.

And if you are out there in the cold today wondering how the heck are we going to intervene in the destructive plans that are being made inside that Salt Palace? That answer lies deep inside each of us. We must first believe that this is possible. And, then mindfully work together and support one another. We know how to do that, too. For you never know what might happen on a winter’s day in Salt Lake City. Someone just might get fed up, take bold and courageous action, create beautiful trouble, and that action could intervene in time and space, could open up a crack in the universe to allow a cultural and economic paradigm shift to slip in and take hold. May our work together, create that paradigm shift, that transformation in enough time to make a difference for us all.”