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Lindsay Meiman, US Communications Manager 350.org, lindsay@350.org, +1-347-460-9082
Hoda Baraka, Global Communications Manager 350.org, hoda@350.org, +1-347-453-6600
Starting today, a global wave of peaceful direct actions lasting for 12 days will take place across six continents targeting the world's most dangerous fossil fuel projects, under the banner of Break Free.
2015 was the hottest year ever recorded and the impacts of climate change are already hitting communities around the world. From rising sea levels to extreme storms, the need to act on climate change has never been more urgent. Added to that, the fossil fuel industry faces an unprecedented crisis -- from collapsing prices, massive divestments, a new global climate deal, and an ever-growing movement calling for change. The time has never been better for a just transition to a clean energy system.
To harness the moment, activists and concerned citizens committed to addressing climate change - from international groups to local communities to individual citizens - will unite to ensure that strong pressure is maintained to force energy providers, as well as local and national governments, to implement the policies and additional investments needed to completely break free from fossil fuels.
People worldwide are providing the much needed leadership by intensifying actions through peaceful civil disobedience on a global scale as so much remains to be done in order to lessen the effects of the climate crisis. This includes demanding governments move past the commitments made as part of the Paris agreement signed last month.
In order to address the current climate crisis and keep global warming below 1.5C, fossil fuel projects need to be shelved and existing infrastructure needs to be replaced now that renewable energy is more affordable and widespread than ever before. The only way to achieve this is by keeping coal, oil and gas in the ground and accelerating the just transition to 100% renewable energy. During Break Free people worldwide are rising up to make sure this is the case.
Actions taking place between 3-15 May include:
QUOTE SHEET:
"By backing campaigns and mass actions aimed at stopping the world's most dangerous fossil-fuel projects - from coal plants in Turkey and the Philippines, to mines in Germany and Australia, to fracking in Brazil and oil wells in Nigeria - Break Free hopes to eliminate the power and pollution of the fossil-fuel industry, and propel the world toward a sustainable future," May Boeve, Executive Director 350.org
"There's never been a bigger, more concerted wave of actions against the plans of the fossil fuel industry to overheat our earth--and for the just, fair, and sustainable world we can now envision. In the hottest year on record, we're determined to turn up the political heat on the planet's worst polluters," Bill McKibben, co-founder 350.org
"Communities on the front lines of climate change aren't waiting for governments to act. They are taking bold action, and the world needs to listen. The Paris agreement was only possible because millions of people spent years fighting for climate justice. Now that governments have committed to action, we must make sure they follow the science and deliver on their words. The only way to survive climate change is through a rapid just transition to 100% renewable energy, keeping oil, coal and gas in the ground," Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director of Greenpeace International
"Communities all over the Philippines are demanding that the government cancel all plans, permits and construction efforts for new coal power plants and coal mines in the Philippines, and to take decisive steps towards the phase out of existing ones. We need to take major steps in order to break free from fossil fuels and all harmful sources energy. A complete transition to renewable energy is not only possible, but urgent," Lidy Nacpil, Coordinator of the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) and Co-Coordinator of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice
"Breaking free from fossil fuels is a vote for life and for the planet. The Paris Agreement signed by world leaders ignored the fact that burning fossil fuels is the major culprit in global warming. In these actions the peoples of the world will insist that we must come clean of the fossil fuels addiction. In Nigeria we will in addition raise our voices to demand a clean up of the extreme pollution caused by oil companies operating in the Niger Delta," Nnimmo Bassey, Nigerian activist from the Health of Mother Earth Foundation
"We are currently at a crossroads in humanity where we must choose either to continue down a destructive path of extracting fossil fuels or transition to sustainable ways of living. What we need is ambitious renewable energy projects, not more tar sands pipelines. These pipelines don't have the support of local communities and the Indigenous nations they will impact. If we continue to build fossil fuel infrastructure, we are breaking our promise to do our part in Canada to stem a global climate crisis that is already being felt by communities all over the planet," Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Lubicon Cree First Nation, Greenpeace Canada Climate & Energy Campaigner and 350.org Board member
"The global climate justice movement is rising fast. But so are the oceans. So are global temperatures. This is a race against time. Our movement is stronger than ever, but to beat the odds, we have to grow stronger," Naomi Klein, award winning journalist/author
"People power in our cities, in our villages and on the frontlines of climate change have brought us to a point where we have a global climate deal - but we do not stop now, we need more action and faster. Civil society is set to rise up again, to fight for our societies to break free from fossil fuels, to propel them even faster towards a just future powered by 100% renewable energy," Wael Hmaidan, Director of Climate Action Network
"Fossil fuel plants cause extreme harm to local communities and ecosystems, they are also a danger to the country and the whole planet since they are a major contributor to climate change. It is immoral to burden future generations with the cost of mistaken energy choices made today. It is time to end the age of fossil fuels," Archbishop Ramon Arguelles, Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lipa in the Philippines.
"No government has a workable plan to protect a stable climate. Nature won't wait, and mass disobedience is the only tool proven to bring about rapid social change. Breaking free from fossil fuels and ensuring a just transition is going to be hard, but not doing so would have unthinkable consequences," Ahmed Gaya, Rising Tide Seattle, Break Free Pacific Northwest Action
"In my community, where my church has been for 65 years, the African American and Hispanic community has been overlooked for a long time as political forces worked to improve other areas of the city. These oil trains, carrying toxic and explosive oil, have been snuck into our community with little oversight and little public disclosure. Now is the time to turn the tables, and for us to stand together to say that this can't go on," Associate Pastor Marc Johnson, Greater St. John's C.O.G.I.C., Break Free Albany, NY Action
"We are marching in Los Angeles because the city is ground zero for neighborhood oil drilling. Fossil fuel extraction is happening in our backyards. Communities live next door to active oil drilling sites, exposing children and families to various health risks like headaches, nosebleeds, and respiratory problems including asthma. We are marching because this is an injustice not only to our climate, but to communities in Los Angeles and throughout the state of California, which disproportionately are low-income and communities of color," Monic Uriarte, STAND-LA, Break Free LA Action
"When the oil tides rolled in, back in 2010, coastal communities across the Gulf witnessed the devastating gambles taken to harvest fossil fuels off our shores and in our waters. We are on the front lines, witnessing the side effects of extreme extraction, ranging from rising sea levels to tainted waters to more violent and unpredictable weather. That's why we are calling on President Obama to refuse any new leases in his offshore drilling plan and protect the Alaskan Arctic and Gulf South waters, wildlife and ways of life. It is time we break free from fossil fuels and build the just transition to renewable and sustainable solutions," Monique Verdin, Citizen of the United Houma Nation; resident of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana; Interdisciplinary Artist; Break Free DC Action
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
"This is the news we've been waiting over three months for. Mahmoud must be released immediately and safely returned home to New York to be with me and our newborn baby, Deen," his wife, Noor Abdalla, said.
The Trump administration cannot detain or deport former Columbia University student and Palestinian solidarity advocate Mahmoud Khalil over the claim that he poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
"The court finds as a matter of fact that [Khalil's] career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled—and this adds up to irreparable harm," U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of New Jersey wrote in his preliminary injunction.
While judges have ordered the release of other noncitizen student protesters detained by the Trump administration, the ruling marks the first from a federal court to state that the administration cannot deport or detain noncitizens by arguing they pose a threat to foreign policy under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New York said in a statement.
"Today's ruling is a huge win for the Constitution and the rights of citizens and noncitizens alike."
"This is the news we've been waiting over three months for. Mahmoud must be released immediately and safely returned home to New York to be with me and our newborn baby, Deen," Noor Abdalla, Khalil's wife, said in response. "True justice would mean Mahmoud was never taken away from us in the first place, that no Palestinian father, from New York to Gaza, would have to endure the painful separation of prison walls like Mahmoud has."
Khalil, a green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, has been held in a detention facility in Louisiana since he was seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from his New York City home in early March, missing the birth of his son. He has not been charged with any crime.
Instead, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that Khalil's participation in student Palestine solidarity protests threatened U.S. foreign policy interests, citing Section 1227 of the U.S. Code.
Farbriarz determined late last month that Rubio's argument was "likely" unconstitutional, but stopped short of granting Khalil a preliminary injunction releasing him from detention. Since then, Khalil's legal team filed new evidence detailing the "irreparable harm" he has experienced due to his detention.
"We are relieved that the court documented what was obvious to the world, which is that the government's vindictive and unconstitutional arrest, detention, and attempted deportation of Mahmoud for his Palestinian activism is causing him and his family agonizing personal and professional harm," said Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights—one of the organizations involved in Khalil's defense. "We look forward to his reunion with his wife and newborn son, and for this remarkable, brilliant man to reclaim his life and his reputation."
Brett Max Kaufman, a member of Khalil's legal team and senior counsel in the ACLU's Center for Democracy, said: "Today's ruling is a huge win for the Constitution and the rights of citizens and noncitizens alike. No one should be imprisoned or deported for their political beliefs, and the three months that Mahmoud has spent in detention are an affront to the freedoms that this country is supposed to stand for."
Fellow legal team member Ramzi Kassem, the co-founder and director of CLEAR, said, "This vindicates what Mahmoud has maintained since day one—that the government cannot detain or deport him based on Rubio's say-so."
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said: "We welcome this ruling as yet another example of our nation's judicial system pushing back against the Trump administration's unconstitutional effort to silence all those who speak out against Israel's genocide in Gaza, and against our government's unconscionable complicity with that genocide. Mahmoud Khalil's unlawful and cruel detention deprived him of his liberty and of being with his wife when she gave birth to their first child. This government's war on First Amendment rights must be challenged by all Americans who value free speech and the Constitution."
Yet while Farbiarz's injunction offers hope to Khalil and his supporters, it does not yet guarantee Khalil's freedom. Farbiarz gave the administration until 9:30 am Friday morning to appeal the ruling, after which time it would take effect.
There is a potential opening for the administration to continue to fight Khalil's release.
As Farbiarz noted, the Trump administration also alleges that Khalil falsified his green card application by omitting his previous work at the Syria Office at the British Embassy in Beirut and with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. However, the judge argued that it was unlikely that this was the underlying cause for Khalil's detention.
"The evidence is that lawful permanent residents are virtually never detained pending removal for the sort of alleged omissions in a lawful-permanent-resident application that the petitioner is charged with here. And that strongly suggests that it is the secretary of state's determination that drives the petitioner's ongoing detention—not the other charge," Farbiaz wrote in granting the injunction.
Still, The New York Times reported that it was "not clear that [Khalil] would be released on Friday if the government were to argue that those allegations were, in fact, the reason for his detention."
Khalil's legal team and family vowed to keep working for his release.
"Today was the first step to justice, but we will not stop fighting until Mahmoud is home with his wife and child," Dratel & Lewis associate Amy Greer said.
Noor Abdalla concluded, "I will not rest until Mahmoud is free, and hope that he can be with us to experience his first Father's Day at home in New York with Deen in his arms."
"If these reckless rollbacks are allowed to stand they'll only fan the flames of extreme heat and wildfires, and they'll trigger more child deaths, more cancers, more lung diseases, and more heart attacks."
Advocates for public health and the planet denounced a Wednesday announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to decimate regulations on power plant pollution, calling the repeal effort a "completely reprehensible" assault on natural ecosystems and communities nationwide.
"EPA is proposing to repeal all 'greenhouse gas' emissions standards for the power sector under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act (CAA) and to repeal amendments to the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS)," the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed in a statement.
The move is a direct attack on Biden-era regulations aimed at curbing emissions of greenhouse gases and other toxic chemicals from coal-, oil-, and gas-fired power plants, which EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin claimed are inhibiting U.S. fossil fuel production and increasing energy costs.
Meanwhile, Moms Clean Air Force director Dominique Browning put out a statement slamming the announced repeals as "a reckless betrayal of EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment."
"Rolling back these protections is ugly and unpatriotic and would make our air filthy and toxic, piling on to this administration's ballooning record of flagrant disregard for protecting people's health," she said. "The proposed elimination of the carbon pollution standards is based on a fictitious and cynical claim by this administration that power plants are not a significant form of climate pollution. This is blatantly false."
"This is a cynical—and dangerous—attempt to stop the remarkable progress America has made in cleaning up climate and air pollution," Browning added. "It is also based on another falsehood: the energy emergency. There is no energy emergency. There is a climate emergency that is growing more severe."
Center for Biological Diversity environmental health attorney Ryan Maher also framed the administration's moves as dishonest.
"As Trump and his EPA continue to shovel dirty old coal down our throats, they're now adding more toxic heavy metals like mercury, lead, and arsenic to the mix," Maher said. "They had to fire hundreds of scientists to advance these destructive policies because they know the facts are indisputable. If these reckless rollbacks are allowed to stand they'll only fan the flames of extreme heat and wildfires, and they'll trigger more child deaths, more cancers, more lung diseases, and more heart attacks."
Similarly warning of the climate and health consequences of the repeals, Sierra Club climate policy director Patrick Drupp declared that "it's completely reprehensible that Donald Trump would seek to roll back these lifesaving standards and do more harm to the American people and our planet just to earn some brownie points with the fossil fuel industry."
"This administration is transparently trading American lives for campaign dollars and the support of fossil fuel companies, and Americans ought to be disgusted and outraged that their government has launched an assault on our health and our future," Drupp added, pledging that his group "will not stand by and let this corrupt administration destroy these critical, lifesaving guardrails."
Trump and Zeldin's long-feared rollbacks could be finalized by the end of this year, according toThe Washington Post. However, legal battles are expected. Julie McNamara from the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program said Wednesday that "these actions can, should, and will be challenged in court."
"These are astoundingly shameful proposals. It's galling to watch the U.S. government so thoroughly debase itself as it sacrifices the public good to boost the bottom line of fossil fuel executives," she said, highlighting the global impacts of the repeals.
McNamara warned that "there's no meaningful path to meet U.S. climate goals without addressing carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants—and there's no meaningful path to meet global climate goals without the United States."
Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, shared some specifics: "Power plants are the largest industrial source of carbon emissions, spewing more than 1.5 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually."
"The EPA claims this pollution is insignificant—but try telling that to the people who will experience more storms, heatwaves, hospitalizations, and asthma attacks because of this repeal," he said. "What's more, the EPA is trying to repeal toxic air pollution standards for the nation's dirtiest coal plants, allowing the worst actors to keep poisoning the air."
"Ignoring the immense harm to public health from power plant pollution is a clear violation of the law," he concluded. "Our lawyers will be watching closely, and if the EPA finalizes a slapdash effort to repeal those rules, we'll see them in court."
"Sen. Jim Justice says people 'might get upset' about SNAP cuts," said a government watchdog that's fought against the bill. "No kidding."
Anti-poverty campaigners and rights advocates have warned for months that the Republican Party's proposed cuts to federal nutrition assistance that tens of millions of Americans rely on would harm families as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs and the economies of cities and states across the nation—and on Wednesday one GOP senator appeared to have finally gotten the message.
Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) toldPolitico that if the Senate approves—or tries to "one-up"—the House's $300 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which President Donald Trump has endorsed, it could cost the party its congressional majority.
"If we don't watch out, people are going to get hurt, people are going to be upset. It's going to be the No. 1 thing on the nightly news all over the place," Justice, who served as West Virginia's governor for eight years before winning his Senate seat last year, told Politico.
The government watchdog Accountable.US rejected Justice's attempt to "dodge the blame" for a proposal his party has been aggressively pushing since Trump took office.
Justice is now one of several Republican governors-turned-senators who have warned against the SNAP provision in the party’s budget reconciliation bill, which would require states to pay 75% of the program's administrative costs and 5-25% of the program's total food aid costs, with states that have higher payment error rates forced to pay more.
Justice's constituents are likely to be disproportionately impacted by the SNAP cuts, with 16% of West Virginians relying on SNAP in 2024. The national average is 12%, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 3.2 million adults, including 800,000 who have school-aged children, could lose their SNAP benefits as a result of what Democratic senators have slammed as the "Big, Beautiful Betrayal."
The sweeping bill also threatens the health coverage of an estimated 13.7 million Americans with cuts to Medicaid and the end of Affordable Care Act tax credits, while the richest households and corporations would benefit from an extension of the GOP's 2017 tax cuts.
Republican lawmakers including Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have said they will not vote for a package with cuts to Medicaid.
"Sen. Justice is the latest of many congressional Republicans to voice concern over extreme, draconian cuts to critical programs like SNAP and Medicaid," said Tony Carrk, executive director of the government watchdog Accountable.US. "And there's no question that the budget scam is concerning. Between slashing SNAP benefits for more than 3 million Americans and gutting healthcare for nearly 16 million Americans, this bill will make millions of people poorer, hungrier, and sicker while driving up our national debt."
The Senate Agriculture Committee was examining how to scale back the SNAP cost-sharing proposal on Wednesday, with committee Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) planning to have bill text finalized by the end of the week.