It’s Getting Hot In Here

Today we marched through the streets of downtown Detroit towards the Cobo convention center where the North American International Auto Show is taking place. We were going to the heart of the auto industry to tell them loud and clear -with a bullhorn and banners in hand- that we are not going to be driving cars that drive our addiction to oil and global warming. We were more than 60 strong -including students from a half-dozen schools across Michigan and organizers for the Freedom from Oil campaign.

It was a high-energy affair with drumming, dancing and chanting -not to mention spray-painted coveralls and green hardhats. Too bad police stopped us a block away, opting to protect the automakers’ greenwash instead of young people’s voices for green jobs and green cars.  But that didn’t prevent us from reaching out to the public on the intersection with our message.

Check out some pics.

Continue reading ‘Michigan students demand green shift from automakers’

The EPA decision to deny California’s waiver for stricter auto emissions standards was very upsetting news. Those of us in the Global Exchange office were just burning with disappointment, and given the human rights implications of our dependence on oil, our gas-guzzling culture and global warming, we couldn’t let such unacceptable inaction slide without some noise.

So the very next day we went out and made some noise and we made a sight.

We are bewildered by such blatant irresponsibility, not only from the Bush Administration but also from the car companies –whose interests are frankly difficult to distinguish nowadays since it sounds like they share talking points. The EPA is supposed to protect people and the planet, not industry, and it’s definitely not a being a leader compared to students across the country who are transforming colleges into models of sustainable transportation in the face of our climate crisis. This is fuming the fight not just between Washington and Sacramento, but between those of us trying to protect our future and those trying to protect the auto industry.

This is what green-blue solidarity can look like. Early Tuesday morning the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Oakland Apollo Alliance, Urban Habitat along with concerned citizens and local groups rallied together in the name of green jobs, not jails. We joined about 150 people gathered outside the Oakland City Hall in support of the Green Jobs Corps, which would help create green-collar jobs in Oakland. The rally directly preceded the City Council meeting where the public works committee recommended that the council vote to increase funding from $100,000 to $250,000 to provide specialized job training and paid internships for people with barriers to employment and this work would make the city more energy efficient. Where is this money coming from? The city has $4.17 million from a lawsuit from the California energy crisis in 2000/2001 to be spent on energy efficiency projects; what we were there demanding is that this financial resource be channeled to those who were hurt most and need it most now –our impoverished youth who can become the backbone of the local green economy we all need to solve the climate crisis in a just way.
Continue reading ‘Green Jobs Now!’

This past weekend students converged from all over the state for the Cali Campus Climate Challenge Summit at UC Berkeley! California is the 12th largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world; we wanted to facilitate communication and collaboration between groups on different campuses to train and build a unified youth activist network. Organizers with Global Exchange, CalPIRG, Rainforest Action Network, California Student Sustainability Coalition, Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative and Environment California all worked together to make this happen! We had Michael Gelobter, the former executive director of Redefining Progress open it up and then had a full weekend of skills building workshops and shared information with each other about other sustainability efforts on campuses Continue reading ‘Cali Campus Climate Challenge Summit’

There was an emergency rally to clean-up a toxic oil spill at UC Berkeley yesterday. As part of a theatrical performance to protest the proposed $500M deal with British Petroleum (BP), organic molasses was spilled at the door of the administration office and students came with mops, buckets, rags, lab coats and masks to wash away this dirty dirty corporate deal. Cops were all over the place and arrested the graduate and freshman undergraduate students who spilled the “oil” and hung caution tape at the scene. Over 140 people were present to demand that the BP deal not be signed by the University, and to hear from distinguished faculty and student speakers who shared the bullhorn next to signs reading “contaminated” and “NO BP Deal: UC Berkeley is not for sale.” Cal is my alma mater and the last thing I want is Big Oil’s influence on this university.

StopBP-Berkeley is a diverse group of students concerned about corporate control of the public university, especially regarding biofuels. On February 1, 2007 the agreement was announced to establish an Energy Biofuels Institute in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. The 3 main objections to this agreement: a) the process was undemocratic and lacked transparency, b) efforts to address sustainability and justice come second to the focus on fossil fuels, and c) corporate interest is prioritized over scientific research for the public good.

Earlier in the week, StopBP-Berkeley held a Teach-In where over 100 students, faculty and community members attended to hear professors and an award-winning science writer express their concerns. (See Berkeley Daily Planet for more info regarding both the Teach-in and the action.)
Continue reading ‘Oil Spill at UC Berkeley, 2 Students Arrested’