Story and photos by Pete Shaw Over 800 people packed themselves into the Abridge ballroom of the Ambridge Event Center on NE Martin Luther King Boulevard on Thursday December 6th for the last of three Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) hearings prior to DEQ determining whether it will issue a draft permit to Ambre…
Tag: coal trains
Speaking Power to Truth: Brian Gard and Ambre Energy
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By Mike Losier The Pacific Northwest coal export debates are providing a subtle reintroduction to Brian Gard, a familiar Oregon quasi-political engine, formerly of the notorious ad agency Gard & Gerber. Now president of PR firm Gard Communications, he currently serves as one of the spokespersons for Ambre Energy’s Morrow-Pacific Project, an export proposal…
Citizens Demand Their Government Stand Up To Coal
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Story and photos by Pete Shaw A boisterous crowd of over 100 people descended on the Northwest Headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers on August 28 to demand an environmental and public health impact study for all four possible export coal terminal sites, as well as planned routes for the trains and barges that…
A Competitive Race to the Lowest Wages
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Story and photos by Pete Shaw “Protecting a competitive race to the lowest wages is crucial,” said Tom Chamberlain, President of the Oregon AFL-CIO. After a confused pause, Chamberlain restated himself, replacing “protecting” with “preventing.” It was a slightly awkward moment at this strange gathering billed as a “Listening Session on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)”.…
Community Continues to Speak Out Against Coal Trains
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Story and photos by Pete Shaw The Lombard Overpass of the railroad cut that bisects St. John’s – from the Willamette River to the Columbia Slough – was the site of an August 18 demonstration, with over 75 activists protesting and educating people about the proposed transportation of coal through Oregon and Washington. With faces…
Hey Portland, Let’s Give Nature Some Rights and Create A Movement in the Process
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[A]t bottom, it seems, it all comes down to a simple but profound truth: that as long as ecological governance remains in the grip of essentially unregulated (liberal or neoliberal) capitalism—a regime responsible for much if not most of the plunder and theft of our ecological wealth in the last, roughly 150 years—there never will…
Irreformable Corruption, Rebellious Cities, Commerce, and Coal Trains
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By Nicholas Caleb Through a process of losing confidence that has spanned my twenties, I’ve finally given up on national politics and find it incapable of being reformed through existing institutional reform mechanisms (except maybe a constitutional amendment coming from a state driven convention; different can of worms for a different post). The lack of…
