We’re back on the road again! Liz Veazey, Kim Teplitzsky and I just left the US Social Forum in Atlanta in our Prius to head up to a music festival and party to stop mountaintop removal in West Virginia. We left the Forum tuckered out by too many nights with too little sleep but fully alive and motivated by the energy and community that we had just been a part of.
All four days at the Social Forum I kept running into familiar faces who I’ve worked with over the past decade on various progressive initiatives. I saw my friends Ruby and Andrew Pearson who were at the 15 year alumni reunion for the Student Environmental Action Coalition in Chapel Hill in 2003. This morning bumped into Maureen Cane who was one of a handful of people who planned the first national day of action for clean energy campuses that same year.
I saw faces of people that I’d marched with in 2002 for global justice, people that I’d attended workshops on anti-racism and solidarity with years ago, and I’m pretty certain that I caught a glimpse of someone that I attended the Youth Climate Summit in the Hague in 2000 where 225 young people from the US and Africa lobbied delegates from the U.S., Australia, and other obstructionist countries to keep nuclear power and carbon trading out of the Kyoto Protocol. In all there were hundreds of organizations and thousands of inspiring people of all ages and backgrounds in Atlanta for one reason: to envision and work for a more just, sustainable, and peaceful United States of America.
During the forum I was moved nearly to tears by a workshop with coalfield activist Judy Bonds whose family has lived in West Virginia for 10 generations. The workshop covered the full life-cycle of coal from hazardous mountaintop removal strip mining to the end point when the burning of coal in power plants causes asthma and other health effects and is the world’s top contributor to global warming. Judy and the others told stories of the blasting of mountains, sludge dams, and coal silo that sit right above the Marshfork K-5 Elementary School in West Virginia. Toward the end of the workshop Judy spoke to a woman whose mother had protested coal with her some thirty years ago. All of us teared up a little when she talked about how she remembered holding up the same signs that they are holding up today to fight coal and protect the mountains and families. In the end we were all inspired by all of the strong efforts going on to fight mountaintop removal and defund coal mining and new power plants by pressuring Wall Street Banks.
The week was filled with panels, workshops, issue tents, ad-hoc organizing meetings, and action. One of the most memorable moments was a breakfast gathering in a diner near the Forum on Friday with about 20 coalfield activists, environmental justice leaders, students, campus organizers, and national youth climate leaders on an emerging No Coal initiative. Together we discussed our common visions and objectives for a new youth campaign to defund coal, empower communities, engage and educate the masses, and tip the balance of power to stop destructive coal mining and cut the rug out from under over 150 new proposed coal-fired power plants across the United States. This idea is still in its early stages.
In an era filled with so many global problems that can seem unsurmountable it is moments like these with people of conscience that we all need to rejuvenate our hearts and open our minds to the kind of bold vision that another world is possible and together we are giving it life.
The next stop in this journey for me is Power Shift 2007 on October 19th-22nd in Washington, DC: the first EVER U.S. youth summit on global warming that will bring together thousands of students and young people to fight for bold leadership and concerted action to avert a crisis and envision the sustainable future that we all want to live in. When we come together and put our thoughts and actions toward a common vision with all of us linked to one another, suddenly anything can seem possible.
