It\’s Getting Hot In Here

More Climate Action from your Friends Out West: Cascade Climate Network Spring Fling Planning Retreat Held April 4-6, 2008

By Camila Thorndike and Sarah Judkins

Over a weekend in early April, 25 youth gathered at Camp Collins in the Oregon woods to further plot the course of the Cascade Climate Network (CCN). Born in October 2007, the CCN is a youth network for climate change action that spans the Pacific Northwest. We are guided by the Cascade Climate Declaration, also framed last fall and now endorsed by 10 student governments representing 125,600 students in Washington and Oregon (most recently Reed College on 4/17) (sign the Declaration here!)

Twelve colleges and universities from both Oregon and Washington were represented at the Spring Fling by activists with a broad range of experience. Even with an entire weekend dedicated to each other, free time and open-space discussions went by the wayside as we bunkered down to hammer out the dirty details of making our vision a sustainable reality. As Nathan Jones of Oregon State University declared at the retreat’s opening, “the schedule is going to work for us” – and it had to work it’s tail off!

Created by youth for youth, the Cascade Climate Network is a web of communication and leadership that facilitates the effective collaboration of young activists, students, educational institutions, and organizations of all shapes and sizes across the Pacific Northwest. Six short months after its inception, the Cascade Climate Network proven its worth as an indispensable tool in the fight for climate change action. Working within its inclusive and equitable structure, we speak with a unified voice of greater breadth – and together we are being heard.

We began the weekend with updates from members on actions they had recently taken, which ranged from community-wide rallies against LNG, cross-country bicycling plans, and working with city officials to become a “cool city,” to working on creating revolving funds for sustainability projects on campus, campus wind-turbine plans, and photo petitions to halt further fossil fuel developments. The retreat fulfilled one of its main objectives, which was the “recharging” of the activist’s energy: that source of passion, that, like any battery, can be exhausted in what is often a hostile world. The intensely-packed days overflowed into late night discussions of the sort that inspire, rejuvenate and reaffirm the principles we hold dear and the drive we all posses to make them a reality.

The weekend consisted of numerous trainings on how to build the emerging youth climate movement, as well as the challenging task of defining the Cascade Climate Network and its future. All attendees expressed wholehearted support for the “horizontal” structure of the CCN, which enables individual empowerment within a non-hierarchal web of names and faces. Ours is a living organization, just as dynamic as the youth who comprise it. At the Spring Fling, we ensured the network’s continued dynamism and rewarding equity. All attendees contributed to its longevity with creative ideas that reflected their inspiring intelligence, dedication, and foresight.

One of the highlights of the Spring Fling was an “anti-oppression” training led by CCN-ers Jenny Bedell-Stiles and Monica Vaughan, both alumni of University of Oregon. The session was held in part to stress the importance of justice in the fight against environmental degradation and climate change. It consisted of an eye-opening activity that challenged us to critically consider what privileges and disadvantages have shaped each of us as leaders within the environmental and social movements, including gender, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and family background. The discussion that ensued was invaluable and moving, and created a space in which we could all become more fully human.
It may be stating the obvious, but more noteworthy than our accomplishments and organizational deliberations is the people who comprise the CCN. They are both those at Spring Fling as well as our friends whose energy and solidarity were constantly invoked and remembered.

“The CCN is an amazing group filed with amazing people,” says JP Kemmick, alumn of Pacific Lutheran University: “they are all working to make this earth a better place.”

We continue to grow as more committed, passionate, and positive youth are welcomed into the “bicycle wheel” or “nucleus” of the network, adding essential “spokes” or “electrons” to the hub/atom that has already done so much.

University of Washington’s Anastasia Schemkes reflected on the Spring Fling, saying “what I loved most is the people that were there. Everyone is super dedicated to getting things done and also really open. I made some great friends!”

Huge thanks go out to Oregon State’s Jesse Boudart; without his gourmet sustenance (!), our efforts for sustainability would have gone unfueled. Big hugs (and mad *sparkle fingers*) to all the hard working CCNers who drafted the weekend’s agenda, including Nathan Jones for creating a kick-ass schedule that worked for us. Also to Lacey Riddle and her selfless Environmental Studies department at the University of Portland, the Sierra Student Coalition and Global Exchange for their financial support, Camp Collins for their generosity and welcome, and Jesse Jenkins, University of Oregon alum, for his essential follow-up and website work.

We urge anyone working on climate change (or related) issues in our region to visit www.CascadeClimate.org.
Thanks to all who fight the good fight, we’ll see you in the trenches!