Every Generation Needs A Revolution

The title of this post is the number one quote that comes to mind when I think of Powershift 2011. I don't think truer words exist when it comes to the alternative energy movement. More importantly, I think revolution is the only way to describe the unbelieveable uprising that has to occur amongst my generation. A revolution that should already be under way is still fighting to gain power, attention, credibility, and voice. Powershift was an amazing experience for me because it wasn't just reading about issues in a book or writing a research paper for class, it was real action. Some say Powershift isn't enough, and I understand that...but I say, it's a start. I am the optimist that believes something is better than nothing. Quite frankly, I was inspired and overwhlemed to see 10,00 other like minded students gathered in one location, fighting for soemthing we all believe in so deeply. Some days it feels like I am surrounded only by the naysayers who think of climate change as an insignificant hippie concern. Powershift was filled with people who refused to accept that label and instead, chose to fight for something bigger and better. Words cannot express how much I appreciate that. Walking away from Powershift, I felt ready to take on those naysayers and begin to build a stronger voice on Loyola's campus and in Chicago, fighting for the protection of this planet and humanity. Never in my life have I been so sure of what I should be doing and where I should be going. Needless to say, it is a pretty powerful feeling. This is what democracy looks like!

Why Going to Jail for Climate Justice is More than a Responsibility: A Closer Look at Our Movement’s Tactics

Cross-posted from WeArePowerShift.org where I posted this earlier today:

Washington, D.C., for better or worse, always feels like a losing battle. I am educated enough to know that our politics are polluted by corporate money. I have lobbied enough to know that even congressional allies will say the political climate “isn’t right” for climate legislation. I have even been arrested enough to know that 100 people committing civil disobedience in front of the White House isn’t enough to move leaders on a moral issue. So what gives?

Though I am often discouraged by my time in D.C., I still made the trek to Power Shift 2011 if only to meet with other youth equally confused about the direction of our movement. It is clear to me, at least on the national political stage, that we are not winning. The EPA is under attack, climate legislation is off the agenda until 2013, and mountaintop removal mining is still legal in the U.S. court of law. So we have a lot to reflect on as a movement. This time I went to Power Shift not with any definitive strategies or answers, but with many questions about what’s next for young people willing to dedicate their lives to confronting the climate crisis. The main question that guided me throughout the weekend was this: In the face of all these challenges, how can I be most effective?

I spent some time in the Clean Economy Track, where I have a personal connection with Grand Aspirations, a youth-led organization that is building the clean economy from the ground up. I am one of three Chicago Program Leaders for the Summer of Solutions, a Grand Aspirations leadership-training program running in 15 cities this summer. Solution-based work like this is a major component of my answer to the question of how to be most effective. We need to draw the line in the sand as a movement and say “no” to the polluters, but we also need to offer our society the “yeses” that build the clean and just future we are demanding. The Summer of Solutions is just one of several summer programs that are offering those “yeses”.

Still, there is a need to say “no”. If the Summer of Solutions and other programs like it were to end U.S. consumption of fossil fuels today, we would still have the problem of dirty energy exports, which are growing in volume from U.S. extractors. Even this is an ideal situation. The fact of the matter is we continue to burn coal, natural gas, gasoline, and diesel fuels in power plants and vehicles all around this country and in alarming quantities. And everywhere these fuels burn, there are communities absorbing the negative effects of toxic pollution.

So, before our solution-based organizing gets to the point of displacing these dirty energy sources, there is a need for communities and solidarity organizers to stand up to the pollution wrought by the fossil fuel industry. If we don’t say “no” now, we accept the exploitation of people and whole communities in exchange for convenience and profit. Is this a world we would be proud to leave our grandchildren?

Not satisfied solely by solution-based work, I returned to Chicago to take action against two of the oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants in the United States. On April 20^th, as a part of Rising Tide North America’s Day of Action Against Extraction, I joined five other Chicagoans in unfurling a banner on top of a coal pile at the Crawford Generation Station in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. We carried a message penned by the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, which read “Close Chicago’s Toxic Coal Plants”. A rally of local residents and allies took place on the street side of the fence where another banner reading, “Si al pueblo, No al carbon”, was prominently displayed. The English translation of the latter reads, “Yes to the people, no to coal.”

Six of us went to jail that day to draw attention to a local injustice. We have put the company on notice and after packing the lobby of City Hall for a hearing on the issue the next day, it is clear that we won’t back down. But what is next for our movement? Will we continue to push our tactics and speak LOUDER until we are heard? Or will we allow ourselves to be silenced by the corporate pollution of our politics and the fear of going to jail for speaking the truth?

This post is intentionally left open ended for greater discussion. What are the tactics that will allow us to win? We can’t raise billions of dollars to influence Capitol Hill, so how do we level the playing field? I think our movement needs to take a close look in the mirror and consider how we respond to a political process mired in inequitable access and influence.

So I ask, in the face of all these challenges, how will YOU be most effective?

Show me what democracy looks like!

There is a sense of something one gets from walking amongst a crowd of young strangers, all crowned in green hardhats, and all chanting for environmental justice to the quizzical looks of stranded on-lookers. Is it a sense of pride? Of community? Of success? For me, it was a sense of action. Last Monday's march against big business at Power Shift fanned a spark inside my nature-loving soul that had been yearning for new life! The passion of the protestors, the contagions of the chants, and the energy of excitement that filled Washington DC that afternoon infected me like a bug that I am willing to incubate. Being only a freshman, a mere novice student of the Earth, attending a rally as big as that threw me into a world on an entirely different level, and I loved every second of it! There is NOTHING more invigorating and hopeful than witnessing a movement of the youth, fighting for a brighter future, and even as a part of it, I still felt like just a tiny figure in the bigger picture of climate justice reform. Coming back from an experience like that strengthened my ideals, and made me want to take more action to further green my life. I couldn't wait to get home and just talk about how critical this movement is for our generation, to teach others about what I had learned at Power Shift. To those who challenge me, who say things like "it can't be done" and "no one is listening," I say to look around, and witness democracy in motion. Being apart of Monday's march proved to me that it is the people who hold the power of change, not the government or the businesses. It is only if we scream our hearts out, chant as one until someone hears us, that our world can be saved. Truly, this is what democracy looks like.

The week after.

After I've had this last week to think about Powershift, about the protests and telling the government how they need to make business pay up and get us some clean energy, I have had a lot of thoughts. One of the speakers was very interesting, his name was Tim Dechristopher, and you can check out the actual speech on youtube. But he talked about how because of the reliance we have on coal, we are on our way to collapse. Both economically and ecologically, the United States is in big trouble. What happens historically in a collapse, like in Germany or in Darfur, the government doesn’t say “oh, sorry! this is our fault. we’ll figure it out”. Officials refused to give up power and made up lies. So instead, the public chooses a scapegoat. And that scapegoat isn’t going to be the government. It’s going to be gays or muslims or immigrants. His point was that we don’t just have to keep emissions low and use alternative energy. We don’t have to just preserve our earth, but we also have to preserve our humanity. We have to realize that just doing little things individually isn’t going to cut it anymore. He talked about how if we really care about this movement, we have to put aside our jobs and education and family. We have to take action and move beyond our words. I thought what Tim said was awesome. I agree that we have to force our government into a choice between fighting a war against the youth or closing down these unjust corporations. But how long will that take? What level of injustice do we need to see that. When will people stop passively opposing things, but accepting when they happen? Will it be too late when we finally decide to stop just making statements and taking action? Everyday we need people at these mountain top removal sites, costing the companies time and money. But we don’t have that. We don’t have enough people who are willing to do that. But we do have many people who are willing to spend their lives in congress, trying to change official's minds. I realized that both are critically important to make the change we want to see. We need the grassroots activists, doing radical changes through non-violent direct action. But we also need those who are willing to go to congress and tell them why the radicals are doing what they are doing and telling them exactly what we want to see. We all have a common goal, clean energy!! We just need to remember that when we seem divided by our means of achieving that goal.

Sunday Fun Day

Yesterday we spent time learning about solutions, today we spent time learning how to take action and fight for the cause. Power Shift contributes collectively in two major ways, lobbying and direct action. Everyone will partake tomorrow in one or the other and so today we learned how these ways work.

Becca went to lobby training. Lobbying is when a group tries to influence their viewpoint or position on an issue to politicians. Power Shift has 4 major issues we are lobbying for tomorrow, """""""". In order to make a good influence while lobbying tomorrow, we were given scripts and information to learn and practice. Within our states, we divided into groups and role played how the lobbying will go. We were able to learn how to handle objections from the staffers in congress and how to best get our point across. Hopefully, it will all have been worth it after tomorrow.

Breana went to non-violent direct action training.  Non-violent direct action involves protesting for an immediate change without using violence.  The training session discussed the costs, benefits, and principles of doing direct action so that all participants were aware of the reason they are taking this action.  Rising Tide plans on doing non-violent direct action during tomorrow's Day of Action.

Direct action protest during Power Shift

Decompressing and Uniting.

It is the end of first full day of workshops at Power Shift. With the spectrum of themes present in the workshops as well as the keynote speakers it has brought me to question the nature and unity of the solutions for which we are advocating. I have come to Power Shift with a more discerning eye of  what we are asking for as a movement. I question the true cohesion of the movement and hope to use this time as a place for discourse about the efficacy of the vision as well as the scope of the changes we desire.

Three very passionate and admirable people spoke as keynote speakers. They included Lisa Jackson, the current head of the EPA, Bill Mckibben, the founder of 350.org, and Tim DeChristopher, an activist who recently was convicted for disrupting a Bureau of Land Management drilling land auction by falsely procuring thousands of acres of land to save them from corporate energy interests.

Lisa Jackson gave an inspirational but limited speech emphasizing the accomplishments of the EPA and the support of the Obama administration. While emphasizing the EPA's responsiveness to the concerns of the public, her speech was interrupted by a number of Power Shift participants demanding an end to Hydrolic Natural Gas Fracturing. They began a chant "No Fracking Way!' which was picked up seemingly by the thousands of attendees in the audience. While Lisa Jackson acknowledged the protesters, she did not address their concerns or speak on the issue. Personally, while I acknowledge that her purpose for speaking at the conference was to promote the EPA as an ally, I did not feel that she did acknowledge the reciprocity of the relationship. While we should indeed celebrate the accomplishments of the EPA, they are also in a very precarious situation given the antagonism to the agency by the Congress. I felt it would have been helpful to acknowledge the current political climate and speak how a huge youth coalition can work alongside the EPA as an ally to their platform.

Bill McKibben spoke next and eloquently expressed the gravity of our situation and the necessity for a global commitment to reducing the carbon content of the atmosphere. He was the most well received of the three which was not surprising considering the creative and dynamic nature of the movement he created. he expressed frustration with the pace of our progress but remained largely positive. Overall, he promoted a solutions based approach that seemed to coincide with the wider continuum of environmentalism represented by the Power Shift participants,

The last speaker, Tim DeChristopher, was the most significant for me as well as the one that had the greatest disparity in reception of his remarks. He unequivocally called for a radical individual commitment to the cause. He said that in the current situation, the change required is not going to happen on a time frame that is convenient for us. It is not going to coincide with our plans for graduation or our internships. His actions demonstrated that a single committed individual has the ability to affect incredible change. His history was also significant because it created challenge to the current system rather than working within it, which was advocated for by the previous speakers.

To have all of these speakers in the same space, all with a common goal and widely differing opinions to the nature of advocacy defines the dilemma of the environmental movement.

Is the political system too broken to be a part of the solution?
What is our role as students? Is the consumption of resources and intake of knowledge a real contribution to finding  solution to climate change or are we called to more immediate and radical action?

I end this day in awe of the task of imagining this new reality. I currently believe the monumental nature of the task before us demands creativity and innovation beyond the limited scope of our legal system. Through challenging our current reality and deconstructing the systemic roots that created the climate crisis we can create solutions that are more fully representative of environmental justice. While sustainabilty has been the buzz word on university campuses around the nation we need to look past sustaining the status quo and reimagine a just future, viable for all of its living elements.

Coal is on its way OUT!