Blockadia Rising: Voices of the Tar Sands Blockade from Garrett Graham on Vimeo.

"Blockadia Rising: Voices of the Tar Sands Blockade" is an hour-long documentary film written and directed by Garrett Graham in collaboration with the Tar Sands Blockade and features exclusive video footage shot by the blockaders themselves during the course of over six months of sustained resistance.

In 2012, Texas landowners and environmental activists came together to organize resistance against a dangerous pipeline being built by a Canadian corporation to bring tar sands oil from Alberta Canada to refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. This hazardous project continues despite unprecedented opposition from indigenous communities, local farmers and even global environmental movements. From this struggle, a community of resistance was born that has attracted volunteers from around the continent who have successfully defied this multi-million dollar corporation with the power of non-violent direct action.

The film is meant to be both a celebration of the blockades' achievements and a primer for those interested in joining the campaign. It explains the dangers of tar sands extraction and the risks to public health posed by the pipeline as well as the strategy of non-violent direct action that has been delaying the pipeline so far.

The story takes place in the backwoods of East Texas where the pipeline crosses farmlands and homesteads as well as aquifers and old growth forests. You will hear the voices of the blockaders who are risking their lives to stop this pipeline. In the Texas heat, they have locked themselves to heavy machinery, and braved the elements by living in trees. Hear these courageous folks in their own words.

Blockadia Rising is just the opening chapter in this ongoing movement to stop this pipeline and halt the extraction of the Canadian tar sands, but the blockaders see themselves as a part of a larger struggle against the consequences of run-away climate-change caused by unchecked extraction of natural resources by industry at the expense of both human and non-human communities. This film speaks to all movements for environmental and social justice and showcases direct action techniques that have never been attempted before.

Blockadia Rising: Voices from the tar Sands Blockade (2013) was written, edited and narrated by Garrett Graham, an active participant of the Tar Sands Blockade who continues to support their efforts. This film is dedicated to them, and everyone fighting for environmental and social justice.

The Campaign: tarsandsblockade.org
The Filmmaker: garrettgrahamonline.wordpress.com

[Via Garrett Graham]

By Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica

President Obama has directed the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence as part of his legislative package on gun control. The CDC hasn't pursued this kind of research since 1996 when the National Rifle Association lobbied Congress to cut funding for it, arguing that the studies were politicized and being used to promote gun control. We've interviewed Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who led the agency's gun violence research in the nineties when he was the director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

We talked to Rosenberg about the work the agency was doing before funding was cut and how it's relevant to today's gun control debate. Here's an edited transcript.

There's been coverage recently about how Congress cut funding for gun violence research, but not much about what the agency was actually researching and what it was finding. You were in charge of that. Tell us a little bit about what the CDC was doing back then.

There were basically four questions that we were trying to answer. The first question is what is the problem? Who were the victims? Who was killed? Who were injured? Where did they happen? Under what circumstances? When? What times of the year? What times of the day? What was the relationship to other events? How did they happen? What were the weapons that were used? What was the relationship between the people involved? What was the motive or the setting in which they happened?

The second question is what are the causes? What are the things that increase one's risk of being shot? What are the things that decrease one's risk of being shot?

The third question we were trying to answer is what works to prevent these? What kinds of policies, what kinds of interventions, what kinds of police practices or medical practices or education and school practices actually might prevent some of these shootings? We're not just looking at mass shootings, but also looking at the bulk of the homicides that occur every year and the suicides, which account for a majority of all gun deaths.

Then the last question is how do you do it? Once you have a program or policy that has been proven to work in one place, how do you spread it? How do you actually put it in place?

So what were you were able to find before funding got cut off?

One of the critical studies that we supported was looking at the question of whether having a firearm in your home protects you or puts you at increased risk. This was a very important question because people who want to sell more guns say that having a gun in your home is the way to protect your family.

What the research showed was not only did having a firearm in your home not protect you, but it hugely increased the risk that someone in your family would die from a firearm homicide. It increased the risk almost 300 percent, almost three times as high.

It also showed that the risk that someone in your home would commit suicide went up. It went up five-fold if you had a gun in the home. These are huge, huge risks, and to just put that in perspective, we look at a risk that someone might get a heart attack or that they might get a certain type of cancer, and if that risk might be 20 percent greater, that may be enough to ban a certain drug or a certain product.

But in this case, we're talking about a risk not 20 percent, not 100 percent, not 200 percent, but almost 300 percent or 500 percent. These are huge, huge risks.

I understand there was also an effort to collect data on gun violence through something called the Firearm Injury Surveillance System. What did that involve?

We were collecting information to answer the question of who, what, where, when, and how did shootings occur?

We were finding that most homicides occur between people who know each other, people who are acquaintances or might be doing business together or might be living together. They're not stranger-on-stranger shootings. They're not mostly home intrusions.

We also found that there were a lot of firearm suicides, and in fact most firearm deaths are suicides. There were a lot of young people who were impulsive who were using guns to commit suicide.

So if you were able to continue this work, what kind of data do you think would be available today?

I think we'd know much more information about what sorts of weapons are used in what sorts of firearm deaths and injuries.

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