 All right, everybody. Hi, I'm Ann. I'm with Stand Out Earth. You are in the right place for the changing the game webcast about Tesoro Savage today. And welcome to all of our participants by the Zoom system and also by Facebook Live. I'm Ann with Stand Out Earth, and I am now going to introduce our facilitator. Alex Rahmal is our Executive Oil Field Director with Stand Out Earth. And throughout his career, Alex has worked to build local communities' power to build a sustainable future. And we're very happy to have him facilitating today. And Alex, I'm going to turn it over to you and close down my webcam and let you introduce the speakers on the topic and get us going. Great. Thanks, Ann. Thanks for doing all of the logistical work and all of the organizing and managing all of this. And thanks, everyone, for joining us today. This is, I think, going to be a really exciting discussion. It's partially exciting because we get to talk about this huge victory against big oil. And I think especially these days, all of us can benefit from having our spirits lifted, hearing about our friends and allies and movement successes. But I'm also really excited to focus on, I think, a particular feature of this victory, which is the amazing coalition building work that was done. So joining us today to talk about the Tesoro Savage victory and maybe raise your hand or wink or something else to let folks know who we are. Today is Paul Womley, who's the former executive director of the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, CRIPFIC. And he's now the executive director of the Native American Youth and Family Center, NIA. Paul helps CRIPFIC advance its mission of ensuring a unified voice in the overall management of the fisheries resources and as managers to protect reserved treaty rights through the exercise of the inherent sovereign powers of the tribes. Julie Carter is policy analyst also with CRIPFIC. Julie provides legal support and analysis and policy direction to all departments within the organization as well as to the policy, legal, and technical staff of CRIPFIC's four tribal members. Cajun Kleybaugh is the president of the Wong Shor and Warehouse Union Local Four in Vancouver, Washington. Cajun also serves on the Local Four's Political Action Committee. And he was chair, excuse me, he was vice president of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO between 2004 and 2008. And Kedger's a third generation Wong Shor man. Guisario Serita is an organizer with One America. Guisario has led rallies across Washington State to inform elected officials about the issues that affect the immigrant and refugee community. And he's helped to build power within those communities by getting everyday members involved in politics. And Jasmine Zimmerstucky is a senior organizer with the Columbia River Keeper. Jasmine works to support community members all along the Columbia River. Her role is to inform and engage residents in Washington and Oregon on coal export and oil terminals that will transform the Columbia River into a dirty energy corridor. She serves as co-director of the Powerpass Coal Coalition and is working with a network of organizations and activists to form a new fracked gas coalition. So as a observer of the Tesoro's Habit-Fi, I was continuously struck by the breadth and range of organizations working to stop this oil train project. And the organizers and members of that coalition including these folks today really do deserve to be applauded. I think almost every campaign I've ever been involved in has at some point had someone say something to the effect of, oh, let's go get Blank to join us. And while there's obviously some problematic issues with that approach, I really do believe that the instinct that we can be stronger and stay together is the right one. But coalition building is hard work. It's time-consuming, it's easy to stumble, to be inattentive, to make mistakes. So when we see an example like this of it being done well, I think it's valuable to explore what worked and also to learn what can be done better next time. So I'm gonna start off with just a very quick review here at the beginning of the webcast of the project. I don't really wanna get too deep into the weeds. This really isn't a conversation about policy and law. It's really about how we work together. But just so that we're all sort of on the same page about a few of the basics. Folks should know that the Tesoro's Habit-Fi project was first proposed five years ago as a joint venture between the Tesoro Oil Company and Savage Logistics. They planned to build a facility that would have bought 360,000 barrels a day to Vancouver, Washington by train. That's plus or minus four or five, 100 car long oil trains every single day would easily have been North America's largest oil train facility. Those trains would have passed through dozens of communities all along the rail route where they would then have been loaded onto barges on the Columbia River with the intent to bring fracked shale oil and tar sands to destinations all in the Pacific. The proposed property of the project is owned by the ports of Vancouver, which is a public agency that leases the land that had leased the land to the project proponents. And just in terms of policy-wise, under Washington State law, this project is so big that it was routed through a special process, a multi-agency council called the Energy Facility Siting Evaluation Council, or FSEC, which was charged with conducting an environmental impact statement and then making a recommendation for certification for the governor. So the Pacific Northwest has really not been a stranger to these kinds of massive energy export projects. A few years before this project was proposed, there was a series of coal export terminals that was brought forward and a broad range of organizations was formed sort of a backbone of opposition throughout the region called the Power Passed Coal Coalition. So when these oil train projects and including this one started popping up on Washington's coast and along the Columbia River, many of these same partners formed to stand up to oil coalition. And that regional coalition and its members worked together with frontline groups and impacted communities to build this large diverse and vocal-set, vocal and regional opposition to the project. They turned out crowds at every stage of the public process. They urged the most comprehensive, possible environmental review. Some members joined as interveners in the legal process. They asked the governor to deny the key permits and they urged the court to cancel the lease. And they won at just about every stage of the fight. The environmental review was extensive. It identified multiple significant and unmitigatable impacts. The Energy Facility Siting Evaluation Council unanimously recommended that the governor deny the project and last month he did so. And then simultaneously there was another strategy and two members of the Vancouver Port Commission were elected largely based on their opposition to this project. The second of those won last November. He took office in January and almost immediately with a new formed majority they exercised their authority to begin canceling the oil company's lease. So by next month, the company will no longer have access to the site which means that functionally, even if the governor's decision were to be appealed and even if that appeal were to result in a being overturned, the company's lease will already have expired. Which to me is sort of this beautiful and almost artistic victory. And I really believe that the breadth of the coalition that was opposing this project, it was inspiring. And it was foundational to the success of that opposition. So I'm excited to hear from those, some of those members who are with us today so that they can tell us what worked and supports folks across the country, across the US and Canada with us today who are working to build similar kinds of coalitions. So we're gonna I think start off with a little bit of a, just sort of a round table discussion. Love to hear from each of you tell us a little bit about why the Tesoro Savage fight was important to your nation or community, your organization and fill us in on the role that you play in this fight. And feel free to jump in, otherwise I'll call on you. I guess I'll go first then, since nobody's jumping up. Thanks, Paul. Well, if this proposal were to go through all of these trains would have traveled through the Columbia of the Gorge where four tribes have treaty Indian fishing rights that were reserved with the federal government in 1855. And there are a number of reasons why that's disturbing. The first an obvious one is what if there was a major catastrophe oil spill and explosion that would have impacted not only the fishermen who live and reside on the river but also could destroy our salmon runs. So we're obviously very concerned about that. We'd already even seen one explosion occur just a few years ago in a city called Mosier. And while the opponent was trying to argue that about the percentage or likelihood that there might be an explosion or a spill the reality is we already saw one. So the eventuality was for certain. We also fish and live right on the river and there's not much room between a cliff, a highway and a railroad in the river. So we have to cross these railroad tracks every day to get to our fishing sites. And if we increase the number of trains by 10 or more a day it's gonna increase likelihood that we would have even more loss of life. We already endured that on a daily basis increasing the train traffic would have been very disturbing. And so when I was executive director of the Columbia River and Tribal Fish Commission of course I took my job very seriously but also as a citizen of the accommodation who fishes in that area I have a very vested interest in making sure that my family is safe and that our fish runs are sustained well into the future. Thank you. Thanks. Maybe I should follow up. This is for Paul. I'm a policy analyst lawyer here at CripFake and basically I support what our commissioners direct me to. And so I'm gonna step back a couple, maybe a decade where we got into this fight and that was Broward with Landing. It was an LNG proposal. It was an LNG export eventually import proposal for Broward with Landing down in Oregon. And it was Chinook Habitat. And that was the first time that our member tribes said, hey, we are really concerned about this development on the river that's going to directly affect our treaty fishing resources, our fish. And so I started exploring that and I brought back the information to our commissioners and they were like, no way, we can't have this. This is not the way to go on the river. And so that started a CripFake starting to, I mean, we started joining forces with some of the environmental groups particularly with the Columbia River Keeper and that's where that coalition started. Tribes are a little suspicious of environmental groups. They tend to be white guys, nimbies and not really interested in respecting tribal sovereignty and tribal interests. So it was a little bit at first a work in progress, but we learned that there were important issues that we had in common. And that jump started us into, hey, we need to work together and look at all this other development that's going on in the Columbia basin and along the river and that segwayed into the coal energy transport and then the crude. And eventually to sorrow fell into our laps and as a lawyer, I put on my lawyer hat, we joined with Earth Justice and the other groups to oppose that. So it was just sort of a matter of our history working to oppose these projects that we eventually ended up in to sorrow. And I can't say it as good as Paul did that these projects will affect and the livelihood of the people we work for. Jasmine, can I call on you since Columbia River Keeper was brought up? Great, I'm Jasmine Zimmerstucky with Columbia River Keeper and our organization got involved because we are out in communities along the Columbia working to protect the communities who live alongside the Columbia, but also the river itself and the water quality with the goal of restoring salmon habitat and restoring our salmon runs. The Columbia is a really unique resource. It's a working river in that it supports ports and those jobs associated with them, but it also supports the fishing community, commercial fishermen, tribal fishermen and a really robust sport fishing community all come to the Columbia River for the salmon resources. So everyone has a little bit of skin in the game when it comes to protecting the Columbia. We as an organization, we're one of the founding members of the Stand Up to Oil Coalition, which is the coalition that kind of formed as the backbone to the fight against the DeSauro Savage Oil Terminal. It wasn't the only fight that the coalition took on. We were actually flooded with oil terminal proposals, not only on the Columbia and multiple spots on the Columbia up in Grace Harbor and throughout the region. And so we all came together with a broad geography of organizations with different missions to stop these proposals. So there were groups from Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, folks from a health, professional background, faith leaders, the labor community, emergency responders and all coming together to work in solidarity with tribal nations to identify the best strategy to defeat these oil terminal proposals. Thanks, Jasmine. Kasariya, wanna jump in? Yeah, sure. I think this fight was important for nationally because it was one of the largest oil terminal in the country. So, but besides that, I knew about this program because one American member who's living closer to the railroads, his name is Marcio Carrasco. He, I visit him one day at his home and then he was talking to me and explained to me about this issue that he was worried about he was living closer to the railroad. And then I didn't know much about this trouble but then I talked to more people and I found out that there is a large of immigrant communities living closer to in the fruit valley area. So, I talked with my supervisor and then as one America's that we fight for the rights of immigrant people in Washington state. So we jump into the fight. And yeah, we did a lot of work. We were knocking doors, talking with the community, educating them about the issue and then organizing community forums where we invite all these people and then we try to explain how this problem it would affect them on the future. So yeah, it was a lot of work but also I got a lot of support of members here in my community in Vancouver also from I can mention Dan Spanky, one of the really good people. And then all people around him that really bring me a lot of support on that. Yeah. Thanks. Kedry, you wanna jump in? Yeah. So my local was actually in the midst of a lockout from United Green Corporation the time the proposed oil terminal came up. So we were pretty much already in fight mode before and with our employers. As soon as we heard about the proposed oil terminal we brought it up at the membership meeting and some guys got up and voiced their concerns saying, hey, you know, we already see that these guys can't get their product from point A to point B without some kind of derailment or explosion or spill. And now they wanna bring this many trains to our port. On a monthly basis, we deal with derailments at the port. It's just part of doing business for the most part. And those are derailments that don't get recorded. So we knew that as far as rail safety, what BNSF was telling everybody about these rail cars was, you know, not true at all. And anyway, at the union meeting, somebody made a motion to oppose the oil terminal and it passed unanimously. Little while later, I'm guessing within a week we had a port permission meeting and I was president at the time and it was my job to, you know, voice the local's position on the oil terminal. And I got up and told them that we absolutely 100% opposed this oil terminal. Some of the other reasons we wanted to oppose the terminal was, you know, we have a small strip of land that we worked about a mile long, about quarter to half mile wide. And, you know, beyond that, we don't, that's our work area. And they wanted to take part of that away, you know, land that creates good paying jobs for our community and they were going to clog it up with an oil terminal. And so those were all reasons, another good reason that we were opposing it was, you know, any kind of spill on the river puts us completely out of business. So, you know, safety concerns and knowing that Tesoro is not a company that's responsible. Great, thank you. So maybe just kind of digging in a little bit deeper. Looking back to the early stages of the campaign, what were some of the most important things that from your perspectives sort of needed to be changed in terms of bringing in new allies or partners or changes to the political landscape in order to be able to stop this project? And just sort of thinking about our audience, are those relationships or landscapes ones that you think are mirrored in other places facing similar fights? I'll go ahead and speak on that if that's all right. Sure. So, you know, being a union member, I've been in the union now for 23 years. You know, being a union member, you always hear it. You know, anytime there's any kind of problems it's like let's blame the environmentalists, right? All the environmentalists want to stop this project. You know, and when you get to talking to your members one-on-one or in a group or whatever and you say, you know, what exactly is it the environmentalists are doing that's so horrible, right? I mean, you talk to guys in my local and say, hey, you know, you're a hunter, right? You're a fisherman. You want a good clean place to go and catch fish that you can eat, right? I think when you break it down and you put all the stigma aside from being environmentalists or union thug or, you know, whatever, however you're classified and you start talking and you realize you got a lot more in common than you have a part, at least these groups. And, you know, I think that in my union, you know, it's not a paid position being an officer like myself being president. You know, I work every day. I go down to our grade and I'm a waiter and that's where I make my living. You know, there's a lot of unions out there that have paid reps. They just hire them off the street with no, they have no familiarity with the union that they're representing. So, you know, for us, we all know each other. We're able to talk to each other. And, you know, that's a big thing for us. But as far as reaching out to other groups, it's just making sure that you understand we're not that different. We can all work together and on a cause that we believe is important to us. And, you know, it's all about putting the, I don't know, putting the divisions aside and getting to work. Paul, did I see you raising a hand there? Well, you know, I was really struck by the last few comments and totally agree with them. And, well, I spent most of my life fighting for tribal rights. I don't necessarily consider myself an environmentalist, but I have a lot of environmentalist feelings. And sometimes it's hard for us to also reach across to people that sometimes appear to us to be the other side. And once we find out, like we all have in this campaign and other campaigns, that we're all just people at its core, I think it helps. It helps us to form these coalitions that cross lines like this and make a big difference. Because when the issue becomes one that is really an attack on our community, not one of environmentalists or conservative people or people who just want jobs, when it looks like a whole community is being attacked, we all come together. And I think that's really what was so powerful in this campaign and this movement was because all sides are willing to do what it takes to form those lasting bonds, that trust and that friendship to do the right thing together and protect our communities. Thank you. I just want to go on top of what Paul said. What was really effective in the Tesaro case was working together with private interests. There was a development down in Vancouver. They're developing the waterfront. And those are typically people, they're developers and they're typically people that we may not have a coalition with on some of these issues. But they don't want that because they want to develop the community there on the waterfront. And they didn't want those crude trains going by their new development. And so that to me was a very powerful connection that, hey, we are in this together. And while our arguments in front of FSEC were significantly different at the end of the day it all works to come together for success. And from a coalition perspective, I know that from the very beginning it was clear that there were so many people who had, whose livelihoods would be at stake at this project were to be built. It wasn't just the environmentalists who would lose. It was so many more people. And so really basic things like choosing the name that many of us operated under, the stand up to oil coalition allowed for folks don't come from an inherently environmental background or even inherently anti-oil background to say we are going to stand up together to this one project. So that was, it was very clear from the very beginning that the broadest, we're fighting the oil industry. We had to be as broad as possible in our opposition. We couldn't silo ourselves as environmentalists and fishermen and hunters and union. We all had to come together. And fortunately there were two really parallel tracks we could put our campaign on. One was focusing on the Port of Vancouver and supporting the Vancouver community in ending the lease that the port offered to Zoro Savage and then the other was focusing on Governor Inslee and the role that he played with the FSEC process. So we had two very clear tracks to direct people on with locally and throughout the region. I guess I'd love to hear more about what you think made the coalition lasting and successful. In particular, as we discussed a little bit, there was a series of different fights, both coal and oil. And Jasmine, you're now working on the Fract Gas Coalition as well. So there's a future in front of us also. We'd love to just kind of hear some of the, some of the lessons learned in the experiences about really what helped move from one issue to the next. And this is a five year on fight. So what helps sustain that coalition energy. I can start with a little bit. So for me, the goal of fossil fuel companies, they really know what they're doing and they come in, they target communities with glossy messaging, PR, the in and date, people oftentimes folks fighting these projects, they feel very overwhelmed or flooded with these pro oil messages. That's a traditional playbook for the industry. And I think that the goal of the coalition is to support community members who want to fight back to elevate that local leadership while also providing an opportunity for people throughout the region to also join in the opposition. And as Paul mentioned, tribal fishermen hundreds of miles away would be negatively impacted by this project. So how can their voices be included in the local fight or fishermen at the estuary? So I think the goal is kind of like synergistic of like elevating local voices and finding ways for the regional community to also explain why this is a bigger issue than just the Port of Vancouver. Go ahead, Paul. Thank you, I totally agree with that. And I think one of the challenges we had was the folks on the other side, the people making a proposal were trying really hard to make this only an argument about the site itself and not how it would affect the broader area. And so it was really difficult for us to broaden that scope of what the proposal really meant. And obviously the tribal fishery was something that was very interesting to us as a tool for broadening that scope. But some of the other ones that I thought were interesting were their inability to really prove they could do an effective cleanup. And the technology for a river like the Columbia River was a challenge for them because of the size of the waves. They couldn't prove they could actually do a cleanup. So I thought that was interesting. Another thing that I thought was maybe more of an opportunity was there was an election in the middle of this too and it became a big issue for those seats at the port. And this became like the defining issue in who got elected in that position. So I thought that was really interesting but certainly there's challenges in every campaign. And I enjoy the conversation where you look back and try to do lessons learned. But I always think that's a challenge when the proponent's trying to make it just about that site and only that site. And we were successful in broadening the scope of that proposal. Thank you. Julia, you'd mentioned sort of a initial suspicion I think was the word you used about environmental groups and traditional sort of EMB tactics. Thinking about this coalition lasting over a course of five years. Can you just talk a little bit about how that proceeded in your experience? And overcoming initial concerns but also presumably some ongoing issues and sort of how that was handled and what was done well and what could be done better in the future? Sure. I was sort of expecting Paul to take this on. You know, definitely this is an issue when environmental groups want to work with tribes. It's tough because like I said, there is this suspicion by most tribal communities to environmental groups. There's this vision that the tribes are, the crying Indian from the old commercials and that they're gonna jump on every environmental issue out there. And that's not true. Tribes, especially tribes I work for have their own economic development that they are considering and interested in. And sometimes they may be interested in natural gas and not, you know, but then willing to fight on coal. So there's some things that groups need to respect that sovereignty and respect that the tribes need to have their own government and economy and be okay with that. And then meet them at their level and say, okay, we respect you as a sovereign nation and but we want to develop a coalition on this issue and really listen to the stories, listen to the elders speak and, you know, don't, you know, speak out of turn. I've learned to shut up a little bit and listen. And I just want to give a high five to call out to Columbia Riverkeeper because they've been fantastic with associating with the tribes in this basin. They've been very respectful and very interested in working with the tribes and helping the tribes with the issues, but not being the white knight that comes in to save the day. Does that make sense? And so the coalition that we started at Bradwood, fighting Bradwood LNG really built upon itself and has lasted to this day and it's been really wonderful in that sense. And I think the tribes are respectful of the fact that Columbia Riverkeeper has a lot of resources and can get grassroots, you know, going. So I guess I'll just leave it with that. I mean, the tribes can be great allies, but just understand that you're not going to see eye to eye on every issue and be okay with that and respect that. I don't know, Paul, do you want to say anything? Yeah, I guess I could. I just want to thank you, Julie. I think that was really well said. And I really wish I could stay on this a little bit longer. I need to get going here pretty soon. And I don't know if that was announced earlier, but I enjoy everybody's participation on this website. I do have just a few closing comments. When I worked with Julie at the Fish Commission and also the Columbia Riverkeeper who I adore, one of the things that came painfully obvious was these permits for fossil fuel transportation along the Columbia River are numerous and they're coming at us consistently. It's going to be a real challenge for a sustained amount of time. These are not going to end. While this was a successful campaign, we can't keep reinventing them each time, especially with this kind of a sustained fight we're going to have to take over time. And so I just want to close by thanking everybody for all your really hard work and this hard-won victory, it's real. I'm so happy for everybody's campaign together and the relationships we built. And we really did good work together. And I especially want to thank the Riverkeeper and Julie at the Fish Commission. Thank you very much. Paul, thanks for fitting us into, it sounds like a busy day. We really appreciate you making time to join us. And just for folks in the audience, Paul has to leave us, but the rest of us are going to continue with the panel discussion and we'll be opening it up to questions and comments from the audience in just a couple of minutes here. If I could, a couple of sort of follow-up questions. One, we talked a little bit about sort of the inherent challenges in, thank you Paul. We did talk a little bit about some of the inherent challenges in forming coalitions that where the different parties have sometimes very different interests and different topics to bring up in front of FSEC, et cetera. Did any of you observe the companies trying to split the coalition, trying to identify those wedge issues or those barriers and try and drive a wedge there? Well, I can say from a longshore standpoint, being in the union, the company very quickly got on board with like the building trades and they were attempting to shame the longshore union. And I can't speak for the firefighters union because they were opposed to it also, but shame us trying to say, an injury to one's, an injury to all, what's going on, that's your motto, how come you're not with us? And the simple fact is, we're not willing to pair up with the devil for anything. I mean, it's, we were able to turn it around and say, look at how horrible this company is. Every union that works around to sorrel has got problems with to sorrel. You can tell that the company was really trying to use the other unions to get us to try and change our position. Same with the port, the port would come to us and ask us to back off, basically, in not so many words, but we stood strong and we sure are glad we did. I think another time when to sorrel tried to sort of split the community was, and how we countered that was with the Vancouver 101 organization. So Vancouver 101 was 101 businesses in Vancouver who were opposed to the oil terminal and they self, they worked in parallel tracks with the standup to oil coalition to elevate the voices of the business community, the existing business community of Vancouver to explain that they didn't want this facility. So that was something that was an effort that was supported and flourished at the time of the standup to oil coalition, but was not necessarily under the exact umbrella. And it really did help challenge that narrative that there's a inherent, you know, all businesses that are lining up behind this oil terminal idea. Kedron and Chris, I wonder if the two of you in particular could respond to a question about sort of prioritization of this particular fight among the other things that are on your plates as organizations, both one America and the long assurance local. To what extent, can you just talk a little bit about sort of how this issue is prioritized, it's long-term, it's risk and some of the other things in front of you are immediate and perhaps feel more urgent day-to-day. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about how that decision-making happened within your organizations. I think this is, it was a really important fight that we really got into it because personally, at the beginning, I have these kind of questions from other people. I mean, why you are fighting for this campaign or training terminal when we have this issue with immigration and then I was confused. Beginning then, then I realized and I got this strong idea that we have to fight for something that lasts longer because if people stay here in the United States on the future, they got, like for example, they got the permits and everything, but then if the country is destroyed, so it will be the same thing because as an experience and I have seen in other places, other countries how things happen, they always use states like a kind of trampoline to use, put the product and take it away to other countries and always the people who are living in those places always at the end of five or 10 years, they stayed in the same situation or worse situation always. So I'm thinking more about the kids, the future, because I had my kids and they are growing on this city and I'm thinking on them, maybe on the future, they could have the same air that we are getting right now. Oh yeah, so I think that's why we try to work for the environment. Yeah. And does that logic easily make sense to most of the folks you're working with? Is that a new case to make or do you feel like you had to defend those decisions? I think we gotta work more on that and then try to educate more the community, try to do organize more events where we can talk more about it. Sometimes people can understand because they think that if you got this something good for one, two or three years and then they see it that we need to support this, but no, I think we need to think on future things like, okay, here is Tesora and he's offering a good prosperity for Vancouver for five years and then we don't have to believe this thing. We need to think prosperity for maybe a long term, 50, 20 years on the future. And then people we need to start changing this kind of mentality and try to work for what is best for everyone. Yeah, I think we need to work more on that. Okay, so as far as prioritizing this fight over others, I don't know that we actually did prioritize over other fights we were in, but we fight every fight with all we have when we're in it. What we saw is during our lockout, I keep coming back to that. We were locked out by one of our employers at the Port of Vancouver when this all was, when this fight began with the oil terminal and we weren't getting a lot of support from the community or labor. There were unions that were crossing our picket line, which we as long as we would never do. And we were getting pretty much beat up in the press so anyway, when the oil terminal came along and we saw that we had to fight that to save our working area and preserve our safety or what's left of it down on the docks, we jumped into that fight. And I'm not sure we really knew what to expect. I don't even think we thought that far ahead. When we came out against the oil terminal at the Port Commission meeting, Brett and who else was there at the Port Commission meeting from River Keepers, Jasmine? Oh, Brett. Yeah, it was Dan and Brett. Sorry, Dan and Brett were there. And luckily we got to oppose the oil terminal before they spoke. So I think we took a little wind out of their sails but afterwards they came up and introduced themselves and that was really the start of a wonderful, wonderful relationship. And since then, it's broadened. And we saw the value in the fight from our standpoint but we got to learn the value in the fight from everyone else's standpoint. And I think what we gained, kind of going back to what made this coalition lasting and successful is we got to meet a whole lot of groups that we didn't know anything about. And now we know a lot about them. And our union has a really big, has a huge history standing up for social causes. And so it makes sense to partner with people that are worried about immigration reform and all this and the environment. And I'll tell you right now what our local took away from this fight and the coalition is that we've got a lot. And I mean, a lot of militant support in the environmental community, people who are worried about immigration and deportation. I mean, basically if you're a group that's getting hammered by the current leadership of this country, I think we should all be on the same page. Another thing my local saw was these groups coming out and supporting us when we needed it. If we had a rally, they were there. And we eventually won our fight with the grain corporation. And thanks to everybody else out there, we won our fight with the port and the oil terminal. That's great. Thank you. I don't know if you all do twinko fingers to signify that you agree. That stands internal culture that I'm now making external. But I find myself wanting to stick to the agreement with so much that everyone's saying here. Let me ask just a little bit about sort of the sort of internal dynamics. How did really sort of decision making among and between groups working on this fight? How did you identify key approaches, public comment periods for the environmental impact statement working on the port commission to end the lease, et cetera? Little bit of question about sort of how decision making happened to prioritize one strategy over another. And I'm curious sort of how that decision making process can be continued forward to other fights in the region or it could be exported to other communities with similar challenges? Just real quick, I'll say from the Longshore Union standpoint, the decision making was pretty easy. You only had to pass one test. That was, is it gonna really upset the people who have a different view than ours on this oil terminal? You're gonna make a mad eight, count us in. We're there. That's a good decision. So the standup to oil coalition, and I also want Julie to talk about the legal side of this because that was extensive and highly coordinated and phenomenal. The standup, so basically there were two parallel tracks to defeat this oil terminal. One is getting Governor Inslee to deny the project when FSEC made the recommendation. And the other was to convince the port commissioners to revoke or not renew the lease. And because the coalition was so broad, we could pursue both of those full speed ahead. There were different tactics that different coalition members could take on. Kajar mentioned that he's part of the Political Action Committee for ILWU and then Glucerio in one America has a political branch that can engage more in the electoral side of campaigns. Some groups like Riverkeeper, we can't, but we can sure turn out a bunch of people to a rally. And so everyone had a different piece of the pie that they were responsible for. And then the executive committee of the standup to oil coalition, which was made up of 13 organizations, met weekly to make sure that we were including all of these different voices and all of the pieces that people offered to bring to the table. And that everyone was, you know, all the ideas were being valued and being incorporated into a plan so that the everything that happened was complimentary to the other activities going on. So it did take a lot of coordination. And I think that in the moment, those can be kind of frustrating conversations, but in hindsight, you don't regret taking time to understand, you know, why people care about this issue and what they wanna do to stop it. Yeah, I think as Yasmin mentioned, so she made clearly that we had this battle and then we think we had like this strategy with the governor and the FSEC, but also with the poor commissioners who were important part on this battle because they were the people who at the end took the decision of denying the poor, the leasing of the poor. So we knew about that. So before those elected officials were in place. So as one America, we got like an arm, it's like the political arm of organization. So it allows us to participate in politics at the end. So we decided to interview the candidates last year when they run for the poor commissioner. And actually, so we see with them and then we ask questions related to the values of the organization. And yeah, so we decided to support the candidate Don Orange who won last year. And I think it was a key because on January 9th, so he took a decision with the other poor commissioners. And then I in the oil terminal. So I think it's a big win on that by the side. And I feel like proud because we did a lot of work on that. We were knocking doors and working hard with the immigrant communities. And yeah, so I think it's something that I feel proud. Yeah. So thank you guys for doing that. We weren't involved in that election, but it was really fun to watch that. I was so excited for you guys. Our process was a lot different. And I'd say it was kind of three prongs. I work with our member tribes and their governments. So they, each tribe has its own staff. And I know that they were meeting government to government with State of Washington and with others on these issues. So I would just feed information to staff and policymakers at each of the tribes. Meanwhile, I was trying to stay connected with River Keeper through Dan Sears and Brad, just making sure that I was hearing what was going on. Dan would actually give me updates constantly, which I'm so thankful for. He'd tell me if I needed to go to a meeting or if I needed policy people at certain meetings. That was so useful and so helpful because there's no way I could have handled that by myself. But he would just give me the summary, you know? And so, okay, this is what we need some people on. And then there was a legal part. And so it was an amazing group of attorneys. All of us on this side of the V were getting together all the time. We were, you know, the Earth Justice, I definitely would give them a shout out that Earth Justice attorneys were rock stars. And they were great to be on that schedule. And, you know, so we, so there's those three prongs and all of that just came together and worked out really successful. It was also great that there was an oil train that spilled in Mosier. We're really appreciative of that. That was the day I was filing exhibits for EBSAC. And it just so happened that this train and our guys actually our enforcement people were out there. And so that helped a lot. But anyway, that's essentially what we did for organizing. Thank you. So I was at this stage in the conversation was planning initially to do sort of another round, Robin, and asked about a more general question, but we're starting to get a few, I think really interesting details, specific questions. Dwell from what I'm interested in and get to what our audience is focused on. And I will just pause for a second and encourage other folks listening in to send in questions through the chat feature or through the question and answer feature. If you don't ask these panelists other questions. So the first question gotten is, maybe several of you can talk to this, which organization initiated the coalition? I don't know, Jasmine, if you want to talk a little bit about sort of the genesis from the power pass coal and stand up to oil. Sure. So prior to the flood of oil terminal proposals in the Pacific Northwest, we had the flood of coal export terminals. And for those projects around 11 environmental groups and health groups came together and formed the power pass coal coalition. For stand up to oil, the playbook was similar, although a few more outreach was needed because the oil trains touched a different pieces of the community. And then for the gas coalition that we're working on, the goal is to be even more broad with extending the invitation for the initial round of strategy and messaging and coordination to get more grassroots environmental groups, tribal nations or tribal activists engaged with a very onset to make sure that those voices are part of every decision-making level. So I think there are currently 13 members of the stand up to oil executive committee and it doesn't, maybe I'll have you to follow up with people if they want the list of all those organizations. What are those initial conversations look like between say environmental organizations that have been part of the power pass coal fight and the one America or between the stand up to oil which has been many of those organizations were part of the power pass coal coalition which was on a different side of the coal issue than the longshoremen. How do those initial conversations play out? How do those bridges get built in the first place? I think a jam into the fight and by the time these coalitions were in place, but yeah, so I got introduced it to Laura Stevens and then I don't remember the name, but it was a Sierra person from the Sierra Club and then later I met that down from Columbia River Keepers and we start like having a meeting and a small coffee in downtown Vancouver, knowing each other and talking about what was the plan for each of us to do on the future. So that's how we're sitting in a place and start planning for what to do. And then it's how we start and then later on I meet more peoples from other groups, organizations and that's how we start creating relationships and make it the coalition stronger. But yeah, so I think it's like you meet the people by the time you are in. How did that work with the Longshoremen and Warehouse Union, Kejer? What was those initial conversations? You know, the conversations we have are basically monthly at our union meetings and as far as the officers that were involved, we were working at the direction of the members and the motion that was made in past was to do everything we could to make sure this oil terminal didn't get built. So as far as working with environmental or really anybody else, it wasn't hard at all. Matter of fact, people think that all of Longshore is in favor of coal, that's not true. We have many locals in Washington and Oregon and California and each local can set their own path and the Longshore local in Longview, you know, they set their path to support the coal terminal up there. Local 401 on record is supposing coal export will be river. Just another, it would just be another bulk facility in the river that takes up a lot of space and doesn't create a lot of jobs. So anyhow, you know, I can't think of any problems that we really had with any groups in the coalition. And I think working with them and signing on to what they support was not a hard thing for us to do. And when you passed that resolution, had you already begun outreach and discussions with other members of the coalition or was that really the very first step? Now that motion, that motion probably came after meeting with some of the coalitions and I'm just gonna, I'll just show you how little I know. Jasmine is local for in that coalition that power. You know, is it, I don't even know. You're talking about executive boards and stuff, I don't know, does Jared go to those? No, no. So basically, I don't know, we're just good dogs. We get told where to show up and, you know, kind of what we're gonna be talking about and we're able to add our two cents and supporting the group. And other than that, we don't really worry about the direction because we don't believe that they're gonna go in a direction that we would have a problem with. Yeah, I think anyone who's fighting these major energy projects, and there's probably folks on this conference webinar who know it takes, you know, an all hands on deck approach and the role that, you know, the core members of the coalition tried to play was making sure that every single time there was an opportunity to speak out or to participate that people who wanted to knew about it and they knew how to do it, that it didn't take, you know, Cajer, you know, not going down to the grain elevator to figure out that there was an FSEC adjudication here and, you know, Dan or I could call him and say, this is what's happening. And for an environmental group perspective, like we had to be really aware that people were coming to this fight from very different motivation than us. And that was okay. And we could make room for everyone and we could expand our, we could learn, this is a learning moment for us, not a leading moment. And every time we sort of had that approach to how can we make this bigger, how can we include more people as opposed to how can we bring people into our viewpoint? It's more, how can we incorporate other people's viewpoints into this campaign? Thanks. Follow-up question on that one, I'm jumping around here a bit and I'm sorry. Follow-up question on that one, Jasmine. If, can you talk a little bit more about sort of those communications channels and how you set those, how you set those up and how those were made most effective? Mm-hmm. Sure. And so the way that the coalition kind of divvied up the work is various groups kind of took on various pieces of the organizing, you know, and to make it as streamlined as possible. You know, we knew that Dan Sears, for example, like, you know, he communicated with Julie. Julie didn't get, you know, nine, 10, 15 emails or phone calls telling her about one thing. It was one person. So making sure that there were sort of clear organizers to connect with all of the folks who are interested in fighting the project was really important. It was clear that not everyone was gonna get on, you know, we're gonna have a hundred people on a conference call once a week telling everyone, you know, what was happening this week. We had to have, you know, one-on-one relationships so that the communication channels would be open. Any additions on what was effective or worked? Or we can jump to another question about the jobs frame and messaging from the opposition. Question is, how strong was that dynamic? And did the coalition attempt to counter focus on the coalition's messaging strengths? So you talked a little bit about this already with regards to the Vancouver 101. Anything to... I just, you know, part of our legal case as well as some of our, you know, public push was about, it's not just about jobs at the site. You know, Paul discussed how they wanted to make it the site because it's just permitting the site. But we really, you know, the livelihood of all the people I work for are impacted by this. And it's, you know, it's a billion dollar industry if you consider all of the mitigation that's going on. You know, for example, so we tried as much as we could in both our public speaking and legal case to bring up the numbers of how much is going in to save the salmon resources and how much is impacting sovereign nations. So we tried to twist the jobs narrative in our favor. I think, you know, as far as jobs framing, it was, I don't think we had to counter it. You know, they weren't gonna, they obviously weren't gonna create the amount of jobs that they said they were gonna create. There's just no way. We know that facilities like that, at least Longshore knows facilities like that run on a skeleton crew. They wanna hire as few people as they can so they can up their profits. You know, as far as jobs framing, it was real easy for Longshore to counter that. It's, you know, our message from the beginning was the risk far outweighs the reward. You know, if you've got one oil spill it shuts down the entire river for however long and, you know, we're not gonna be open back up until they clean it up. And we see how long it takes them to clean this stuff up. You know, it was real easy and we would have benefited from the terminal coming in. You know, Longshore would have. Would have given our Portmore money to buy new equipment. They would have had money to do infrastructure projects which need to be done. But, you know, what's the point in doing that if you're gonna bring a company in that it pretty much put everybody out of business? So it was easy for us, you know, the jobs. It wasn't gonna bring the jobs. It was gonna cost more jobs than it was gonna create. And that was a fact. And, you know, when you're dealing with the fact it makes talking about it real easy. Do you think that you were successful in making that argument, making those cases stick then in the media and the public discourse during the political campaigns? Yeah, I think that when we, you know, and we're talking about, you know, how this project would benefit us but we're not willing to let it come in here without a fight. You know, I don't know what better argument you could make than that if you've got somebody who would benefit say that they don't want it. I don't think we ever took a beating in the media for that for sure. And like I said, it was real easy to, you know, we could give examples at our own elevator that are at our port where the elevator did an expansion. And of course they're doing their press conferences talking about how it's gonna create, you know, 20 new full-time positions. And as soon as that expansion was done it ended up in a net loss of, I believe, 12 jobs. So, you know, a couple of personal stories or views to come from to tell people that, you know, don't believe what you're hearing. I think we try, well, we try US2 no speak much about the jobs and all these points because they were using all this information for propaganda, bad propaganda for us and then good for them. And yeah, it was because by the time I was attacking the people at the doors, they told me about that, but they're creating jobs and then we're gonna have more money and good pay. And then, but yeah, so it was that time when we had to do these conversations with the people and explain them why a long-term it would only benefit for people and for our communities because as experience I have living in other countries and I have seen how companies go and then make the people lose the right of the mountains and the trees and then they go for five years and then they cut the trees and then they go away and the communities always stayed poor and poor. And it was the case here. So people's, when they offer something good, we think, okay, we are gonna have prosperity but it will be used for a short time, not a long time. So it was an example that we could use to take to the community. And I also think, just kind of real quick, we were so effective at framing that too to the point where Tesoro was saying under deposition, well, oil spills create jobs too, right? So if you've got the company saying that, you got them beating on the run. So I think, Anne, it is going to queue up a question from an audience member for us. Well, she's setting that up. Can someone quickly let us know what are the railroad companies that were involved in this project? Burlington Northern Santa Fe has the main line into Vancouver, Washington. There are two tracks that go along the Columbia River. The northern side, the Washington side is Burlington Northern Santa Fe. The southern side is Union Pacific and that's where the town of Mosier, Oregon is located that had the oil train derailment and fire that Julie referenced earlier that really catalyzed or I think brought home a lot of the concerns we've been seeing all across the country on oil trains. All of a sudden it happened in our community and where people were recreating fishing, living, going to school. Anne, have we got the technology figured out too? Yes, Roz, if you want to ask your question on camera, I'm sending you a little request and if you'd rather not do that then we can ask on your behalf. So Roz, Isaac, we'll start video later. Okay, let's go to the question Alex that came in the Q and A from Paula B and I will see if I can elevate Paula here. It might be that people would rather we ask on their behalf but just in case, let's try to unmute Paula too. Can we hear you? Okay. I'm gonna ask on Paula's behalf. Paula's question is how did you, you've talked about messaging a little bit. How did you develop consistent messaging? I think among the different members of this coalition. Well, from a coalition standpoint, it required a lot of listening to the various organizations, travel nations, community groups who were voicing their concerns or opposition to the project. So the first step in developing the messaging was a lot of listening. And then the second step is incorporating that into a nice little messaging guide that gets reiterated every single time you do a public presentation, every single time you do a press release, every single time you write an article, you make sure that you mention the things that the people who are fighting the terminal care about, the impacts to the Fruit Valley neighborhood, the impacts to the safety impacts to tribal fishermen, the impacts to the longshoremen and the concerns of first responders. So really developing that messaging guide that we used as part of the coalition came from a lot of listening to what people were saying. And there were comms people, organization have comms staff who help with this. I don't wanna say it just appeared out of nowhere and wasn't in any way professionally crafted. It certainly was. From our perspective, on messages, I just feedback what my tribal elders and the people I work for, what their message is. So there's no crafting necessarily. It's usually from the heart. It's the people that are on the river and experiencing things and this is what they experience. I do as a sort of a facilitator in between two worlds, I would listen to riverkeepers message and say, and then present that to their commissioners and say this is where the environmental groups are and this is where the developer group is and hopefully our message is aligned, but as I work for sovereign nations, so the message is not so crafted perhaps as riverkeepers is. Did it ever come up that it was out of alignment? It strikes me that to some extent, different voices getting to similar ends is valuable. I mean, a lot of people this sort of different trains of logic. Does that make sense? Is that your experience or? Well, in the legal case, it actually, it lined up just fine. I mean, we had, you know, the city of Washu-Gul, C-Spo-Can, Clark County. I mean, Clark County wasn't necessarily opposed to the project, but they have, you know, property there, you know, a jail right next to there and they had some issues there. And so it was very focused on that, but I think that was really, you know, okay, their siloed issues worked with ours just fine. I don't know, it seemed like it was really, it flowed very well. And, you know, we worked together with the developers and their interests and focus to develop, you know, develop that property. And so I think that we all, our justice attorneys were really good about sort of spearheading all of this. In terms of the legal case, it actually flowed really well because we all had to file our own briefs and everybody had their focus, C-Spo-Can, you know, it was way far away, but their issues were just as important. I mean, and I think what was really for the legal case, and this is an interesting adjudication because FSEC's a little different than your usual court cases. There's a little bit more latitude for arguments, but I think having it so expansive, having Washougal, having C-Spo-Can, having Clark County was actually very powerful in the end because the council members, you know, they were sitting there, they recognized that there were so many different interests up there and, you know, all of us were opposed because of different reasons. It just compounded it at the end. That makes sense. So we have a couple of other questions that have come in, but maybe I can blend them together and ask each of you to speak in turn sort of thinking about other similar fights and maybe for folks up North working on the Ken and Morgan pipeline fights or for other similar fights around the region. How do you see, what lessons would you suggest to be learned here that it would be valuable for those other challenges to corporate power? I can speak for, because as I mentioned before, so we have this fight with immigration, but also we did, we jump into this fight with the oil terminal. I think what I learned is that the unity, when people really get united, we can accomplish really big and strong things. I think it's something that I learned and then all the support that we had from other, from the different groups and other different organizations and people, I had the chance to meet really good peoples that I really appreciate, beautiful people. Like I can mention Joel and all these peoples that I met in Seattle by the time I was there and Laura Stevens and just me. And yeah, so I had the chance to meet and peoples that I never met before in my life, the way they team, the way they see the nature, the way they think about the tree, the weather, the river. So I think it was a learning process for me also. And I really feel proud of that, to be with them. Yeah, thank you. So, you know, if you're in a fight and you're looking for support from somebody, you know, it's good that it's not one-sided. You know, if you come in and you want labor support, you know, then you need to be willing to support labor. If you've got, if you've got picket lines up, obviously you honor the picket lines. You know, maybe not just turn around and drive away or walk away from the picket line, stop and see what the issue is. Ask them how you can help. That's what happened with us and, you know, our local was very appreciative of the interest that was taken in our work and our workplace and, you know, it was nice feeling respected by some folks and, you know, you give what you get. So if the longshoremen can help anybody that have helped us, we'll do that. Yeah, I think definitely, oh, sorry. Go ahead. I think, I'm just real quick. I think you hit the nail on the head, Kigger. That's showing respect for the other groups and understanding that they have their own interests. You know, it's the same message as I gave earlier about the tribes, you know, being open to Spokane and Wachigal and everybody because my goodness, you know, the more interest, the more fights and even if their fight, their interests are different, the better. That's the only way we're gonna beat these guys because they're way too big and having more disparate interests, I think is actually a plus. Thank you. Yeah, and just a nod to the coordination and the communication that happens, the relationship building that it took to build a strong network of opposition and it isn't a small feat and it really does take a number of conference calls and lists serves and one-on-one conversations and emails and, you know, the work is not easy but it's always worth it in the end to make sure that everyone who wants a voice or wants to be represented is represented. And so I just, I can't nail that down anymore. The coordination, it takes time, it takes thought, it takes respect and learning and it's really critical. Yeah, that's well said. So just to wrap up our conversation today, I think there's one more person on the line. Don Sankey is a volunteer extraordinaire, one of the leaders on this fight from the ground in Vancouver. I think he's on the line and had just a couple of comments he wanted to add to our discussion. Are you there, Don? Yeah, I'm there, can you hear me? We can hear you. Thank you. I joined late, I'm sorry. In Vancouver, our first messaging was directed toward Governor Inslee because we know he cares great deal about global warming, climate change and so on. And so we had different messages depending on who we're targeting. And Riverkeeper called me in 2013 and said, what do we do next? And I said, well, how could Governor Inslee approve the oil terminal if the city of Vancouver were to oppose it? So I started a steady drum beat in the Colombian online comment section saying, if you think the oil terminal is a bad idea, how will the governor know unless you write them? If you think the oil terminal is a bad idea, how will the city council know unless you tell them? And after seven months of that, the city council passed a resolution opposing the oil terminal and it was based on rail safety concerns. And Inslee was smart and the F-Sec was smart not to focus on the rail safety concerns. They focused on earthquake and liquefaction zone issues at the tank farm down at the port because the rail issues could be, they could be appealed based on interstate commerce clause issues. And so the strength of that decision came about from that focusing on things other than rail. And if anybody had any questions about our campaign, I'm happy to answer. Thanks, Don. We'll make sure that folks can get in touch with you if there's additional follow up questions. We're running out of time here today and I just wanna say thank you again. Thanks, Don, for joining us and thank you to all of the panelists. Thanks for all of the work that you've all done over the last five years to beat this project, to stop big oil in their tracks. This is a great example of coalition building and thanks for sharing your stories with us today. And Wes Ann jumps in quickly and tells me there's something else I'm supposed to say at the end of the webinar. Gundra, call us wrapped up. I think you're good. Thanks to everybody for your time on this campaign and sharing your lessons with us today. And thanks to Alex for your work and leading the conversation and to our audiences here. And on Facebook and everybody behind the scenes with you all and with us making all this happen. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Hi, everyone. All right, all. And I just stopped the Facebook stream and I'm gonna shut us down here too. Thank you so much. Bye, everyone. Bye, K-Jero, bye, K-Jero. Bye. Bye, K-Jero, bye. Thanks again. Great work.