The sizzle from the Power Shift ’09 conference is still popping. So many people are asking what’s next. Well I’m not sure I have the go ahead to let y’all in, but I’m crazy and I’m gonna do it anyway.
The success of the Power Shift ’09 conference was unprecedented and in our tried, tested, and approved EAC fashion we are getting ready to roll out a NEW fresh and amazing campaign. The new campaign is gonna plug hundreds of groups together into a unified national effort to pass bold climate and energy policy in 2009. And its gonna be called….Power Shift ’09! If it ain’t broke…
CONTEXT: The House Energy and Commerce Committee (chaired by Henry Waxman) is drafting their climate bill as we speak (they are pulling Power Shift-esque all nighters). This bill will come out in May, and we need to make sure all house and senate members know where we stand, and that our network it prepared to stand up for our principles.
The bill will likely pass through the House and move up to the Senate (where we have an even tougher fight to win). Long story short, its time to step up the pressure!
SPRING/APRIL ACTIONS: The first major element of the new campaign is a push to “Get Some Face Time” with our elected officials over the April Congressional Recess (April 6-19th). This will be our first major action to continue the pressure we built at the conference and lobby day. This is our chance to keep the heat on AND set the tone of how we are merging local campaigns with national targets. This will also set the tone, helping our local groups create a strong relationship with their Members of Congress and set them up to own this campaign moving forward.
We have been working closely with our friends over at 1 Sky and have identified a great list of Congressional and Senate targets. But this is just a starting point. The following comes directly from an internal memo sent to the organizers nation-wide:
The Tools
1. Targeting Guide: 1Sky has provided us with a great guide to select our Congressional and Senate targets. This list is just a starting point. We need to consider local knowledge, our capacity, and we need to focus.
2. Campus to Congress Guide: This will help you see how campuses line up with Congressional Districts. We have two different resources to help find out the overlap between your campuses and congressman. One is organized by each EAC partner organization, the other by congressional district. Special thanks to SSC to pulling this massive project together
3. April Action Pack. This is our guide for engaging with your elected officials this April. Please share and get the word out to your leaders. (Download the April Action Pack)
4. I can tell you also, that there is gonna be a very robust web component to the campaign. Hundreds of groups from around the country are going to have the ability to register their actions in a centralized location (energyactioncoalition.org). People viewing this site are going to get a barrage of updates on actions occurring all across the country. Saying you were interested in getting involved but didn’t know anything was going on is no longer an option.
Different groups and actions will be highlighted often, and all the amazing media hits, photos, and reactions from the elected officials will also be centrally available. I am getting giddy typing about it.
Just thought y’all’d (I’ve been hanging around Jake too much) be curious about what’s coming up.
Plenty more to come.
Danny
EAC Online Organizer
Thanks for the “sneak peak” of what’s to come.
Don’t forget Focus the Nation though! Focus the Nation’s nationwide Town Hall on energy solutions, April 18th is an excellent platform to get your “face time” with electeds during the April Recess. Focus teams are already hard at work organizing town hall meetings with elected officials all across the country (in just about every Congressional district) and it’s not too late to start organizing one. Trust FtN Civic Engagement Director Alex Tinker has been working his butt off to secure participation of congress critters and can help you get your representatives or senators to your event. Focus the Nation’s nationwide Town Hall fits in perfectly with this next stage in the EAC Power Shift campaign. Check out the plan and the resources available at http://www.FocusTheNation.org
Is EAC resigned to just being lobbyists now? What happened to campus and community organizing? What about building grassroots power or movement building that wasn’t just about being a voting bloc and lobbying Congress?
Awesome to see Powershift taking things to the next step of the movement! We’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us – great to know these tools are out there.
Also, Jesse’s links weren’t working – so for anyone wanting to learn more about Focus the Nation, check out all the resources on our site:
http://focusthenation.org
What an exciting spring for the clean energy movement!
Energy Action is far from being just lobbyists. As one of the partner field staff, I can tell you that so much goes on behind the scenes as Energy Action plans its moves forward. Above all else, the focus is on increasing the grassroots capacity and potential of the youth climate movement. This include supporting the leadership development and organizing potential of individual campus groups, supporting the creation and development of state-wide youth networks, connecting youth organizations to each other and to other groups working on local/regional issues. This includes leading trainings on campaign planning, direct action, yes, lobbying, messaging. All of this work is movement building.
What Danny’s post represents is that Energy Action is now working to mobilize this massive grassroots base to influence federal policy. We have an opportunity this year of the likes that we haven’t seen in eight years, and potentially ever. Congress will be seriously considering a climate bill for the first time and we need use our grassroots potential to build support for a strong climate bill in our Representatives districts and in our states.
This is not saying that we should abandon all the local sustainability, coalition building, direct action work that we are doing. Not at all. What this post is saying is that we need to explicitly draw out the connection between the local organizing and movement building and our potential to make Congress pass strong national legislation.
So here’s an immediate issue that EAC and PS09 needs to deal with, ASAP: getting the message right.
Background: two days ago, I had a long talk with a Hill staffer who is very supportive of strong climate/clean energy legislation. He reported that he is very worried: he said that too many Democrats are infighting about tax vs. cap-and-trade; and – more ominously – that GOP opponents are lining up behind a cap-and-tax message.
I asked the him: what is the single most important thing that the Powershift/1Sky coalition can do right now? He thought for several seconds and then said: ‘Get 100% behind a clear message about cap-and-trade, and then have non-environmentalists engage their members of Congress with this message.’ And a trenchant analysis with the same diagnosis just appeared in the Times: http://tinyurl.com/begshs
This is urgent and begs a question: in a way that respects the diverse, varied leadership of EAC, is it possible to converge now on language that can be used to frame the legislation that we all support? It’s certainly tricky, in that some of the best language is tied to specific legislation: for example, for those who favor cap-and-dividend (www.capandividend.org), this is great policy AND an excellent frame. But if EAC can’t converge around cap-and-dividend or some other flavor of climate legislation, the climate movement risks the very real possibility that (a) climate legislation will not pass this year and (b) the opponents will get the upper hand using the dreaded ‘tax frame.’
Ideas?
I completely agree with Jon’s comment. The youth climate movement desperately needs specifics at this point. The principled approach has worked in the past, but now that legislation is coming to the table we need to make our positions abundantly clear.
I think it’s also important to note that not everybody in the movement is going to agree 100% of the time, but we can’t let this stop us from taking strong stands.