Tessa is a campus organizer for the Show Me Democracy campaign, and below is her account of the University of Oregon’s first Show Me Democracy Senate Field Office Visit! To join us in demanding comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation from our representatives NOW, click here, and be sure to get on our Climate Bill S.O.S. leaders call tonight (Thursday, March 4th) at 9pm EST/6pm PST.
written by Tessa Barker, UO Climate Justice League Show Me Democracy Campaign Coordinator
Students at the University of Oregon want a strong climate bill now! Support on campus for passing climate legislation that would cap carbon and help to create a clean energy economy has been growing throughout the school year. In November, we organized the regional Powershift West conference, drawing over 500 young leaders to the University of Oregon campus; in December, a delegation of UO students went to the International Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen. And now, despite the lack of true results from COP-15, student leaders are more determined than ever to pass a strong climate bill in the US before it’s too late, and we are ready to show our community what democracy really is.
On February 18th, students from the UO’s newly founded Climate Justice League and I rode our bikes to the courthouse for the first of many lobby days as part of the national Show Me Democracy Campaign. At the heart of this campaign to develop broad-based support for a strong climate bill is community outreach. From day one, students in our group have been working to build coalitions with members of the wider community, ranging from business leaders, to farmers, to faith-based groups. The goal is for representatives from each of these groups to eventually join us in lobbying our senators.
Students working on the local level of this campaign in Eugene, Oregon had been meeting and organizing for weeks leading up to our first lobby day. We held lobbying trainings, and discussed our policy principles: cutting carbon emissions, building a clean energy economy, and demonstrating global leadership on climate change issues. We even held mock lobby meetings, in which some of the student trainers pretended to be senators who were opposed to climate legislation, and who challenged us on almost every point we made.
Luckily, on the day of the actual lobby meeting, we ran into no such problems. Here in Oregon, we’re lucky to have senators (Senators Wyden and Merkley) who, for the most part, “see eye to eye” with us on issues of climate change and legislation. For our first meeting, we had a video conference with Senator Wyden’s staff in DC, while the second, with Senator Merkley’s aide was a more traditional lobby meeting. As a campaign leader, I found it incredibly inspiring to see students who weeks earlier had been completely new to the issue discussing the need for a cap on carbon, and weighing the pros and cons of different energy sources with the senator’s aide. It was also great to see that the aide had remembered some of us from a previous lobby meeting last fall – and proceeded to follow up with answers to the questions the students had asked months earlier.
Both meetings were quite successful – the senators and their aides valued the work we as students have been doing to gather support for a strong climate bill, and they encouraged us to keep it up. Students came away from the meetings feeling like they actually had a voice in the political process. Still, the campaign is far from over. Another lobby day is just around the corner, and as we told our senators, we will continue to keep coming back until a climate bill has been passed.
Nice post, Tessa. Way to work it, UO! That’s my alma mater making me proud.
Great work, Tessa! Yay for Show Me Democracy in Oregon!