It’s Getting Hot In Here

The Student Environmental Action Coalition is hosting a summer training camp at the Epworth Retreat Center in upstate New York sith July 26 – August 1. Take time this summer to increase your skills and sharpen your tools to be a more effective organizer on your campus!

As this generation continues to build our power through the Energy Action Coalition and the many groups SEAC partners with, SEACs grassroots, state, and national networks will be integral to a sustainable movement. Headwaters will empower you with the tools to organize your fellow youth for social and environmental justice!

Workshops include, but are not limited to:
- Uprooting environmental racism and injustice
- Campaign planning
- Power mapping
- Nonviolent direct action in social movements
- Anti-oppression and collective liberation
- Fundraising (grassroots and grant writing)
- Local food systems
- Media, including web 2.0 organizing
- Permaculture & sustainable design
- Leadership development.

Part of the week will be open for SEACers to self-organize workshops, projects, screen printing, stamp making, writing or zines. We love popular education and know that the best teachers are often our peers! Additionally, we’ll be doing a sustainability service project at the Epworth Center to leave it better than we found it.

Camping out is not required, but is encouraged. We’ll cook our own meals in the kitchens provided. SEAC is a participatory organization and those who take part in Headwaters can pitch in to help create an exciting week of learning, sharing and fun!

www.seac.org/headwaters

Yesterday, 125 youth from the Michigan Student Sustainability Coalition rallied for green jobs, clean and just energy, and accountability from our Department of Environmental Quality at a public hearing for permits to massively expand Consumers Energy’s Karn Weadock complex’s coal-fired plant by 800 mega watts. As the rally drew to a close and we entered the public hearing, a woman from Bay City shared with me why she joined us in opposition to the expansion. Her mother lives in one of nine homes across the mouth of the Saginaw River from the Karn Weadock complex and is in the midst of her 4th battle with cancer. Each of the nine families living on the row of beachfront homes is afflicted by cancer. It is not a coincidence.

In addition to the air pollution that escapes the smoke stacks day-in-and-day-out, the complex produces coal ash by the ton (as do all coal plants) and stores it in poorly regulated retention ponds. Coal ash contains high concentrations of beryllium, cadmium, chromium, nickel, selenium, arsenic, and mercury. For years, two of the Karn Weadock ponds have been leaching into the Saginaw Bay only a few football fields away from these nine homes and others.

When 125 students from nine schools across Michigan united at the public hearing in Bay City, we united for a properous and sustainable economy for all and the present conditions those who’s lives are endangered or cut short by coal’s toxic lifecycle.

We, however, were not the only constituency out in force yesterday.

Continue reading ‘Powering Past Coal in Michigan, Leaving No One Behind’

If the Capitol Climate Action, the string of civil disobediences in the Coal River Valley, and Mountain Justice Spring Break’s concluding march and die-in at TVA’s  headquarters are any indication, we are at the beginning of a new stage in our movement. This is an exciting and necessary development. If we are to build a movement that conveys the urgency of climate destabilization and current conditions in front line communities, we must physically stand in the path of the fossil fuel empire and the laws that justify it, just as readily as we lobby for its regulation and create innovative alternatives. This post is meant to spark dialogue about civil disobedience in our movement – what it is, its place in a greater strategy, and what it means for those of us who choose to engage in it.

Continue reading ‘Civil Disobedience for Climate Justice’

Too often, I ignore the little things – walking the walk – as I dedicate most of my waking energy to the meta-challenges of our time – climate justice and sustainability. Now and then, you can spot me holding a disposable coffee cup in my left hand as I passionately gesticulate with my right, attempting to convey the urgency of these problems and the promise of their solutions. It may seem petty, but this image is a vulnerability for our movement.

Just as those who seek to derail our movement exploit the ironic image of climate activists mobilizing during a March snowstorm, you can be sure that they will hit us with similar inanities. If they are resorting to these tactics, it means: A – We are strong enough to be perceived as a threat to their interests. B – Our message and vision of sustainability and prosperity is so compelling, that it cannot be substantially attacked. Our image, however, can be exploited.

Continue reading ‘Strategy Note on Image’

Around 1:30 today, just three days after the Power Shift Conference and Capitol Climate Action in Washington, DC, and less than a week after Raleigh County Circuit Judge John A. Hutchison granted Massey Energy’s Temporary Restraining Order against Mike Roselle and other members of Climate Ground Zero, a new group of protesters took action to bring a halt to mountaintop removal mining on Massey Energy’s Edwight mining site above Marsh Fork Elementary in Sundial, WV.

Building upon the momentum of the conference, the growing movement against mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining and the urgency of protecting the children at Marsh Fork Elementary from the pending danger of a massive dam failure of the Schumate sludge impoundment above the school, activists were once again arrested during a protest on the Edwight MTR site.  This time however, was different.

Continue reading ‘Five More Arrested in Civil Disobedience against Mountain Top Removal and Coal Slurry on Schumate Dam above Marsh Fork Elementary School’

Travel log- Day 1 of the Michigan Campus Wind Storm Tour

The Boss brought a crowd of Obama supporters, young and old, to Eastern Michigan University on Monday. Amidst the sea of Obama canvassers, pin and t-shirt venders, union members, the Michigan Power Vote campaign spread our truly hopeful message of green jobs and climate justice. We however, were not the only energy activists on the scene. After an hour of  wildly successful Power Voting, who should show up but the Trojan Horse of greenwash – American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

There we were, clad in green hard hats, having conversations about green jobs for a sustainable Michigan economy, reinventing our traditional leadership in manufacturing and industry from the polluting, unsustainable industries that have so destabalized the Michigan economy and damaged our job market, to a stable economy of skilled labor in the new energy economy. And then, farther down the line we hear “Free t-shirts! Come learn about clean coal – everyone is talking about it!” Yeah, everyone is talking about what an oxymoron and bad idea it is.

It was a conundrum. On one hand we had our clearly positive message to spread, pledges to get. On the other, the misinformation campaign had arrived, we couldn’t just ignore them and go on our happy green way. It wasn’t calculated or planned, but a synthesis emerged. I walked with the clean coal group, kindly telling each person hearing their message “This is an industry front group. Clean coal is a dangerous oxymoron, we need real renewable energy solutions, not the same old dirty energy with a new name.” It worked, no one took their shirts or hats. Behind me and the clean coal group came the power voters, gathering pledges left and right from the energized crowd, thanking us for taking a stand. Seeing that we weren’t going to allow this greenwash to go ahead as planned, they retreated to the event parking lot. Sorry clean coal canvassers, nothing personal, but as long as the Michigan Power Vote team is around, there is no getting away with greenwash.

We followed and formed a triangle around the clean coal group so as to ensure that all people passing them had first received a “No Coal” sticker, been alerted to the danger of the coal lobby’s new greenwashing, and heard the Power Vote platform. Following a brief debate on “clean” (dirty) coal vs. investment in immediate and long term renewable energy development infront of a small crowd of concert goers, the clean coal crew fled the scene. Using improvised, positive direct action tactics, we effectively derailed this prong of the coal industry’s misinformation campaign. Be prepared, you never know when they will show up.  

Lastly, a word to the wise. Next time you bring the youth climate movement to a big event, have a green jobs and clean energy fact sheet ready to distribute. The ACCCE had an effective “fact” sheet rife with half truths that used the messaging of protecting the environment and more jobs. As we know, coal is the sure fire way to acheive neither of these ends, but in the industry’s dieing gasps, this is what they are saying. Make a fact sheet with the real deal on it. Y’all know what to do.

peace from Michigan

Andrew

(Maryland. Y’all are going down.)

You may have heard this piece of wisdom in Econ 101. “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Someone is footing the bill.

The mass material affluence that characterizes much of American society is a testament to the power of our economic and political system. The cities we inhabit, the cars we drive, the gadgets we use, the ways we communicate, the food we eat, and the energy we consume are all products of its success.

But remember, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Someone is footing the bill.

Allow me to modify that statement. There is no such thing as a dollar menu. Transactions inflict costs on the real world that are not reflected in a market pricing system.

A friend of mine is particularly fond of McDonald’s Dollar menu, and makes a habit of ordering $1 cheeseburgers. The $1 he spends covers the costs McDonald’s has incurred – buying the ingredients, shipping, operational, and labor costs – and of course a slice of profit. However, those are only a fraction of his cheeseburger’s true cost. Enter the world of externalities.

The Economist defines an externality as “An economic side-effect. Externalities are costs or benefits arising from an economic activity that affects somebody other than the people engaged in the economic activity and are not reflected fully in prices.” (1) My friend’s dollar spent does not include the side-effects of cheeseburger consumption, such as longterm costs of carbon emitted by transport and methane toots of former cows. Entirely unconsidered is the irreversible loss of biodiversity from the conversion of rain forest to industrial soy-bean monocrops to feed the hamburgers-in-waiting of American factory farms (2). Humans and nonhumans alike bear the cost of our externalities.

Continue reading ‘Sustainable Justice’

Each person and idea I have encountered in the Youth Climate Movement has altered the lens through which I view the world. Preconceived notions of identity, privilege, value, power, love and what is good or right have been reshaped, strengthened and shattered.

Last August, I drove my parents’ Toyota Camry 500 miles to New Hampshire for the Sierra Student Coalitions summer leadership gathering – Shindig. Five days later I drove home with new friends, renewed inspiration, and new understandings. Among those I met was Ivan Stiefel. He’s the sort of human that radiates community. His is the energy that fills a room, and rather than sucking people to him, it floods the room with a shared joy. At Shindig, he and another climate justice leader, Timothy Denherder-Thomas, – for whom I also hold immense respect – co-led a training on community organizing and power. It was a brilliant combination of insight on the nature of power and the strength of communities and the tools with which to leverage power. The most empowering idea and tool I internalized can be represented in a simple diagram, and it looks like this:

Power is simply the ability to do. Perhaps this is an old hat to all you organizers out there.

It is interesting to think about these power dynamics in the abstract, but every day I experience each dynamic in some capacity. My experience as a participant in Sunday’s Freedom From Oil rally at the North American International Auto Show brought each of these power dynamics into sharp contrast and revealed the tangible connections between them. This is part 1 of my narrative, reflections, and analysis of a moment in the movement.

Continue reading ‘Power on the Streets of Detroit’

Climate change isn’t cool and the Michigan economy is cooling down too much. On the surface, these may seem like two disparate dots, but the Michigan Student Sustainability Coalition is connecting them. We are mobilizing to create an economy that empowers communities, works with natural forces, and has the power to lift people out of poverty.

In the third ever Michigan Student Sustainability Coalition Summit, 140 students from 13 campuses converged on East Lansing to join in the dialogue and actions to create a sustainable future in Michigan. Students came from as far away as the Upper Peninsula to present and participate in workshops and environmental, community-building service. The summit was the largest student-organized sustainability and climate-action gathering to happen in Michigan.

It kicked-off on Friday evening with the Mayor Singh of East Lansing calling for students to “go out and grab the power” and keep the heat on politicians at the local level. Omeyele Sowore, a longtime oil-activist from Nigeria, was the keynote speaker. He brought an inspirational message of the power that we, as students and future leaders, have to make change in our campuses and communities. As student leaders, we can catalyze the rectification of global injustices perpetrated by our society’s dependence on fossil fuels. The energy leaving Sowore’s talk carried over in full to Saturdays full agenda of workshops.

Continue reading ‘Students Take Sustainability in Michigan into their Own Hands’