worldwide news: Oil-soaked zombies will be descending on London?s Car Free Festival

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Oil-soaked zombies will be descending on London?s Car Free Festival

From a similar event, held elsewhere

A media release from Climate Justice London:

On Saturday, June 18th at 3pm locals will gather downtown to have fake oil poured on themselves, before they walk down Dundas street together, as a pack of ?oil?-soaked zombies. This performance will be part of Stop Tar Sands Day, an international day of action that Londoners will be bringing out to the Car Free Festival. In the afternoon, locals will have the fake oil doused on themselves at Climate Justice London?s table at the Festival; this table should be located just east of Clarence, on Dundas.

The Climate Justice group is calling this outing a ?Tar Sands Undead Walk.? At their table on Dundas street, the group will have a pool that will serve as a symbol of tailings ponds in Alberta, which hold waste from tar sands operations. This ?Turtle Island? pool at the downtown Festival this Saturday will collect some of the ?oil? that is drizzled and smeared on locals, at 3pm.

?The oil-soaked zombies will be walking to raise awareness about the many impacts from tar sands operations ? from Alberta, to Ontario, and beyond. This tar sands sludge is being pumped into Sarnia-Lambton, and ? if the Enbridge Trailbreaker project proceeds ? very dirty tar sands bitumen could be pumped through a pipeline that already crosses the Thames River, just north of London. In Alberta, toxic tailings ponds have been leaking into the Athabasca river, each and every day. The residents of the area also are threatened by pipeline spills. In one incident this spring, millions of litres of tar sands crude and diluent spilled into the territory of the Lubicon Cree,? said Toban Black, a member of the Climate Justice group.

Stop Tar Sands Day is the largest ever international demonstration regarding tar sands issues. At least 50 actions are expected in Canada, USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. As with the previous Stop Tar Sands Day during 2010, this year?s day of action is, first and foremost, about spreading awareness about the impacts that come with tar sands extraction. Some Londoners have decided that the Car Free Festival is a suitable place to raise these issues.

?Being car free helps us to be tar sands free. In the meantime, we are becoming more and more dependent on dirtier and more expensive fossil fuel sources ? such as Alberta?s tar sands. Relative to conventional oil, tar sands crude has far more intense climate impacts, and the extraction of tar sands drains and pollutes immense amounts of fresh water, which we just can?t spare. There are many clean and sustainable alternatives that we should be turning towards, for the sake of a much better future,? said Cortney Dakin, another member of the group.

Before the zombie walk, fake oil also may be dumped on stuffed animals at the group?s table at the Car Free Festival ? if anyone brings any of those.

Throughout the day, the Climate Justice group also will be tabling with information about environmental and social justice issues.

Climate Justice London has been focusing on tar sands issues since 2009. The group mainly has been calling for banks to divest from tar sands extraction. This Climate Justice group also has been tied to a series of local bicycling events which are known as ?critical mass? bike rallies.