For Immediate Release: Hundreds of protesters disrupt business at 13 PSE facilities on Thursday
This afternoon, people up and down Western Washington gathered outside 13 different PSE offices to demand that the company stop pushing fracked gas, abandon its Tacoma LNG plans, shut down the dirty Colstrip coal power plant in Montana (the dirtiest in the US), and move immediately to 100% renewable energy.
Puyallup tribal members led the protest at PSE’s Tacoma office at noon, and later headed to the main Bellevue PSE office at 4pm, where Sa’anich member Paul Cheoketen Wagner led the group in prayerful drumming and singing, speakers, and the delivery of official letters and petitions signed by over 1500 WA residents.
The thirteen protests were organized by a coalition of groups across Western Washington in solidarity with the Puyallup Water Warriors and other community members who have been fighting the LNG facility. “Jobs are important,” says Puyallup tribal member Dakota W. Case. “But not those jobs. The kind of jobs we need are renewable energy jobs if we’re going to move forward as the human race to actually live in harmony and have a sustainable future.”
Puyallup tribal member Anna Bean agrees. ““This is not just a fight for the indigenous of this area, but our entire community, as far as clean air, soil and wildlife…The project affects all aspects of this community.”
In recent weeks, PSE has been in an all-out PR offensive to greenwash the LNG project, taking out full-page ads in the Tacoma Weekly, and airing deceptive ads on KNKX public radio about the benefits of LNG. The coalition involved in today’s protests is determined to make the public aware of LNG’s dangers, and to keep the projects from moving forward. Several of the offices visited were shut down preemptively. “We’re customers,” said one protester. “It’s not right they don’t want to hear what we have to say.”
“No more excuses or ‘bridge’ fuels,” says 350 Seattle’s Jess Wallach. “With the recent hurricanes and wildfires, we’ve seen what’s at stake. We have to seize this moment to move decisively to clean energy–not let ourselves get locked into decades of fossil fuel use. Today was just the beginning–PSE will see a lot more like this if they don’t start moving quickly to renewables.”
The protests were held in North Seattle, Tacoma, Poulsbo, Ellensburg, Kent, Bellingham, Whidbey Island, Vashon, Olympia, Bellevue, Bremerton, Wenatchee, and Chehalis.
