On Friday, July 16, members of Sunrise Movement Santa Barbara, SBCAN, 350SB, Democratic Socialists SB, and local churches joined the Fearless Grandmothers in Goleta to rally in front of banks and deliver letters urging the banks to stop funding fossil fuel pipelines. The event was part of national week of actions to draw attention to Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota, where indigenous people are fighting to stop the pipeline which threatens their treaty lands, their water and their wild rice fields. Enbridge, a Canadian company, is paying Minnesota law enforcement to forcibly protect Enbridge’s incursion into the headwaters of the Mississippi through territory where tribes have not given consent.
On Saturday, July 17, a group of Fearless Grandmothers traveled to Ventura to lend support to a community call to stop the expansion of a SoCal Gas plant in their neighborhood. We joined the #StopSoCalGas rally and march through the neighborhood to the gas plant and saw firsthand the danger that it presents. It is directly across the street from a public school and a Boys and Girls Club. It should be shut down, not expanded!
We heard heartbreaking stories from people across Southern California whose health and safety has been compromised by gas leaks and accidental emissions.
The climate crisis demands that we move away from fossil energy as quickly as possible and build local solar and wind power with batteries, energy systems that are less vulnerable to grid failure in emergencies. We know what needs to be done, we just need to get it done.