Tar Sands Week of Action

Women's ENews correspondent Melinda Tuhus posted an excellent feature story about women working to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. A short excerpt:

WASHINGTON (WOMENSENEWS)--Melina Laboucan Massimo is a Lubicon Cree from northern Alberta, Canada, who wants people to understand the magnitude of tar sands mining devastation to her community.

One single site of tar sands extraction near where she lives is the size of Washington, D.C., she said. "So think of your city being completely scraped out, and that's what's happening to our homeland."

She and other women gathered at a restaurant here on the evening of the largest environmental demonstration in U.S. history, on Feb. 17, to tell their stories of opposing TransCanada Corporation's Keystone XL pipeline project, which would bring hundreds of thousands of barrels a day of tar sands from northern Alberta across the entire U.S. mid-section to the Texas Gulf Coast for refining and export.

Massimo discussed ancient forests that have been chopped down to create a moonscape.

"The boreal forest is an ancient forest," Massimo told the gathering. "It's pristine; it's beautiful. A lot of our medicines are there; a lot of wildlife. It's such a beautiful area they call it the Lungs of the Earth. There are already 2,600 oil and gas wells taking up 70 percent of our territory."

This week is Stop Tar Sands Week of Action. More than 50 organizations and 30 planned actions are involved -- including one yesterday in Oklahoma City.