***This was posted on behalf of Caroline Wooten, a student organizer with the Chicago Youth Climate Coalition and a student at the University of Chicago***
Over 50 Chicagoans gathered outside the Obama Campaign’s Chicago Headquarters last Friday demanding that the President prevent the construction of the Tar Sands Keystone XL Pipeline. The demonstrators, a colorful mix of students, families, and individuals from Occupy Chicago, came bearing a petition against the Tar Sands signed by over 700 Illinois residents.
Ana Ahmeti, a sophomore at DePaul University, spoke before the crowd, explaining the purpose of the visit, “In 2008, Obama told Americans that under his leadership, our generation would be the one to free America from the tyranny of oil. We are here today to remind the President of his promise.”
The demonstration, like many of the countless Tar Sands actions that have happened throughout the country since August, emphasized the role that youth played in Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. One banner, held by students from Loyola University, read “Can you give our generation the audacity to hope? Stop the Keystone XL.”
The action also drew links between opposing the pipeline and standing up to corporate power. “Big banks have taken our homes,” stated Ahmeti. “Big oil wants to take the only home we know.”
Although representatives from the Obama campaign refused to meet with the entire group, they did speak with three representatives who presented the petitions on behalf of the demonstrators.
Marissa Lieberman Klein, a student at the University of Chicago, and one of the individuals who delivered the petition, said that in speaking with the campaign representatives, the group emphasized the work that citizens are doing in Chicago to move the city beyond fossil fuels. She explained, “We told them that here in Chicago, a lot of us have been working to clean up or retire the two coal plants in the city. We’re taking efforts to make our city—also Obama’s city—cleaner and healthier. We want Obama to do the same thing for our nation.”





Speaking against Cape Wind, the Barnstable Land Trust says that “there is no other part of our community that offers more sweeping vistas, wildlife diversity, and a place of refuge from the steady march of development.” Yet, at the same time, it is our energy consumption here in Massachusetts that has driven coal, natural gas, and other energy development in other regions of the United States. And it is our consumption – the burning of fossil fuels to drive our single-passenger cars and heat our homes – that is setting the world up for rapid climate change. It seems that we, as Americans, are willing to reap the benefits of development as long as the side effects are ‘elsewhere.’ It is easier to ignore the consequences of our consumption than it is to acknowledge that these fossil fuel power plants are usually located in low-income, minority areas and that these people that are the least empowered to stop pollution in their community suffer the most. It is easier to conveniently forget that it is our energy consumption that is causing climate change that will lead to more droughts and extreme weather events, not only in poor countries where people depend on agriculture to sustain themselves, but here in the United States as well, than it is to take responsibility and act.
