Co-written by Morgan Goodwin and Rob Price, members of the Avaaz Action Factory
A buzz accompanied the lunchtime rush at Longworth Cafeteria on Capitol Hill today as staffers and Reps looked at their watches and talked amongst themselves ready to witness an activist flash mob making a statement about the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). Flash mobs are Internet organized convergences of people for a pre-organized purpose.
Over 30 young activists converged on the cafeteria, cleverly wearing the suit-and-tie disguise that is customary there, and doing nothing out of the ordinary until at precisely 12:15 pm they froze like statues. Where groups of ‘mobbers’ stood close together, frozen, reaching for ketchup, adjusting glasses, adjusting a hair clip, paused mid-stride etc, the effect was striking. At the end of two minutes of stillness one member of the ‘mob’ yelled out tick, tick, tick, a catch cry of Tck Tck Tck a global campaign for urgent climate action run by the Global Humanitarian Forum and supported by a broad coalition of climate groups.
Following this signal, the flash mob raised its voice in unison, crying out “The world can’t wait any longer. The ACES bill must be stronger. Solve climate change now.” Instantly the group dispersed distributing playing cards (all aces) throughout the cafeteria with the message “The world needs better. Make ACES stronger. Strengthen and pass HR2454.”
‘Mobbers’ heard about the event through an anonymous craigslist post, twitter messages and email forwards from the original acesflashmob@gmail.com. The up and coming Flash Mob got coverage on Grist.org and rumor spread through staffers and Representatives through a number of listserves and groups giving them the heads up.
“I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I had to be here to find out. It was sent out to all these listserves and wasn’t sure if they were going to get arrested or something.” Said one anonymous staffer.
The initiator of the event is still unclear, althought the Avaaz Action Factory stepped up and organized over 100 ace cards and had about 15 people there. Avaaz.org is hosting 20 young people in DC (and another 15 in Berlin) to spend the summer organizing actions around the global climate negotiation process.
Editorializing, this action really got me thinking about public space and what our power is to be disruptive. There’s a lot of assumptions we make about what we can’t do in places like that, and we need to think a lot more creatively about how to get our voice across without big bucks but with savvy organizing and twitter.
Hey guys! I just want to say kudos on this action! Sounds like a creative way to leave a lasting message.
Had never occurred to me to disrupt Congress via the cafeterias – smart, and hopefully effective. what would this look like if instead of 30 it was 300, in the cafeterias on both the Senate and House sides?
Hey Guys!
Great job in DC, can’t wait to see what you guys do next…
Keep an eye out for us tomorrow in Germany.
-Blaine at the Action Factory in Berlin
Even if one’s goal is to strength it, it troubles me to see the term “Climate Justice” in the same sentence as the words “pass” and “ACES”
The ACES has nothing – and is not going to have anything – do to with climate justice. Period.
The bill’s entire focus is on carbon trading and the term climate justice was created in large part to to oppose false solutions to climate change, with carbon trading as a central focus of the critique.
The ACES isn’t just weak on the principles of climate justice (http://www.indiaresource.org/issues/energycc/2003/baliprinciples.html) it is diametrically opposed to them.
It is only be accurate to say “nix the bill for climate justice” or perhaps “make the bill stronger so it will be somewhat less dramatically opposed to the principles of climate justice.”
I’d suggest anything else is a bit of a misappropriation or greenwash of the ideas and principles of climate justice.
uuuuhhhmm
:-! (that was an awkward face)
I would have to agree completely with Cascadia Brian. I can’t believe that people are putting time into things like this instead of actually trying to solve the climate crisis. We need to be working on real solutions instead of compromising every time a politician mentions “climate change solutions”. I would urge everyone to stop wasting time on “actions” like this and putting effort into creating community solutions and stop waiting for politicians to come up with a “solution” that will do us more harm than good in the long run.
But in the end I don’t even know how to respond to this post. I think what this is saying is, we should do the exact opposite of anything that would create any actual change.