Mass mobilization works.  And in 2012, it’s time to apply this lesson to what may be the biggest carbon bomb of them all: a proposal to export US coal from the Powder River Basin to the international market.

If you’re not familiar with coal export proposals, you can get the miserable truth about the issue here.  For now, suffice to say large-scale coal export projects seem to be an even bigger threat to the climate than the Keystone XL pipeline.  In states like Montana, both Republicans and Democrats in statewide office seem bent on blowing up this carbon bomb, and have ignored the protests of environmental groups.

Lobbying, petitioning, and talking about “green jobs” have all failed to stop mine-for-export proposals moving forward (though all these tactics have helped build the movement we’ll need to win).  I believe the only thing that can keep Montana and Wyoming coal in the ground is a mobilization that includes large-scale direct action.  It’s time to do here what Occupy Wall Street did in Zuccotti Park, and what the Tar Sands Action did on President Obama’s doorstep.  We must reclaim power over our communities, and chart the course ourselves to a cleaner, more just future.

This isn’t going to be easy.  There are no really large urban areas in the northern Intermountain West, making mass mobilizations difficult to organize.  However, there is a growing movement within these states to protect our communities from the coal industry.  We know we have the support of activists in the not-so-far-off Pacific Northwest proper, who are organizing to stop proposed coal terminals on the West Coast.  And with a livable planet hanging in the balance, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

In 2012, we can channel the power of mass mobilization into the places where it will be most effective, throwing off the stranglehold of fossil fuel industries over our communities while opening up space for clean energy and green jobs.  With direct action sweeping the country, and ever more people in the West waking up to the impacts of coal export proposals, there couldn’t be a better moment.

I know I’m excited.

If you had the chance to talk to Big Oil directly to its big oily face, what would you want to say?

I recently had such a chance at a commercial shoot run by the American Petroleum Institute, the major lobbying and public relations front for the oil industry (ie ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, TransCanada and just about every major oil company). Here’s what I had to say:

Through recorded audio, we got to expose API’s upcoming “Vote4Energy” campaign, which debuts January first on CNN during major political programs. Audio recordings from inside the Vote4Energy commercial shoot can be found on the Greenpeace website, and on Yahoo News. More can also be found at the Checks and Balances Project, where Deputy Director and youth climate leader Gabe Elsner has more recordings from inside the shoot.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is building off of its “Energy Citizens” astroturf campaign, exposed in 2009 in a leaked memo from CEO Jack Gerard to the heads of major oil companies, and launching the Vote4Energy campaign to try and claim that Americans support the oil industry’s agenda. You know, the poor, poor industry that gets billions in taxpayers dollars each year even though its the most profitable industry on Earth, and has to bus oil employees to its own staged rallies.

API is currently spending millions of its $200 million annual budget to push dirty energy projects onto the American people, particularly tar sands through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, fracking for ‘natural’ gas, and offshore drilling in the Arctic, to name a few. Anyone familiar with TransCanada’s reputation for pipeline leaks, the safety concerns and lack of oversight for gas fracking in the lower 48 states, and the implications of a BP-style offshore oil blowout in the frigid Arctic ocean recognizes the danger of the oil industry’s agenda.

Big Oil’s Christmas list does not fit with the desires of most Americans, no matter how hard they work to craft campaigns claiming otherwise. Sometimes, it is up to us to call them out face to face, and tell that story to others so they can recognize how dirty the petroleum industry really is. Tim DeChristopher is the shining example of that confrontational spirit, currently serving a two-year sentence for saving tens of thousands of acres of Utah land from oil and gas drilling by disrupting a Bush Administration auction that later proved to be illegal.

Climate change is only getting worse, and Big Oil, King Coal and other dirty interests are pulling out all the stops to squeeze every last dollar out of this planet while they still can. Their efforts are overwhelmingly funded, and often coordinated. Their business as usual has horrible implications for intensifying global warming and human rights abuses, so the idea that people like us want to spend 2012 voting in their interest is not only ridiculous, but dangerous.

Vote4Energy? More like Vote4BigOil. Don’t buy the lie, pay close attention, and vote for the future you really deserve.

Connor Gibson does research for Greenpeace. Here he is at the Tar Sands Protest back in August 2011.

Not so long ago, Americans witnessed the beginning of a mass democratic uprising. Thousands of average people, disgusted by greedy elites and corporate control of government, launched a movement that spread to almost every state in the nation. They did it to reject debt. They did it to fight foreclosures. They did it to topple a world where the 1 percent determined life for the other 99. And they did all of it against incredible odds, with a self-respect that stymied critics.

The year? 1877. The people? Dirt-poor farmers who would come to be known as Populists.

Now it’s 2011, and the People are stirring again. It’s been over two months since a few hundred dreamers pitched their tents in Zuccotti Park and stayed.

These people weren’t Populists, but they had the same complaints. They couldn’t make rent. They had no future. They lived in a nation with one price for the rich and another for the poor. And they knew that whatever anyone said that they didn’t have real democracy.

Okay, and so what? What do a bunch of century-dead farmers have to do with the Occupy movement? Well, quite a lot, actually.

You see, the Populists came within an inch of changing the entire corporate-capitalist system. They wanted a totally new world, and they had a plan to get it. But as you may have noticed, they didn’t. And now here we are, one hundred years later, occupying parks where fields once stood. We’re at a crucial phase in our movement, standing just now with the great Everything around us—everything to win or everything to lose. It’s our choice. And that’s good, because the choices we make next will echo, not just for scholars and bored kids in history class, but in the lives we do or don’t get to have. The good news is this: the Populists traveled in wagons and left us their wheels. We don’t have to reinvent them. We’re going in a new direction, but I have a feeling they can help us get there.

Occupy has done a lot of things right, and even more things beautifully. But strategy has not been our forte. That was okay at first, even good. We didn’t have one demand, because we wanted it all. So we let our anger grow, and our imagination with it. We were not partisan or monogamous to one creed. That ranging anger got 35,000 people on the Brooklyn Bridge after the Wall Street eviction, and hell if I’m not saying hallelujah. But winter is settling now, and cops are on the march. Each week we face new eviction orders, and wonder how to occupy limbo.

It’s time for a plan, then, some idea for going forward. This plan should in no way replace the rhizomatic-glorious, joyful-rip-roarious verve of the movement so far. It can occur in tandem. But we need a blueprint for the future, because strategy is the road resistance walks to freedom.

In that spirit, I sat down a few years ago and devoted myself to studying social movements of the past. I wanted to see what I could learn from them—where they went wrong, where they went right. I didn’t trust this exercise to random musings. No, like a good Type A kid, I made butcher paper lists of past movement features and mapped them onto current ones. I asked: What is the revolt of the guard for the climate movement? What’s the modern anti-corporate equivalent of the Boston Tea Party?

As I read, I learned a lot about the phases movements go through as they form, what common features they share, and what often breaks them apart.

I could name these phases myself, but it’s already been done. And no one has named them better than historian Lawrence Goodwyn, a thinking human if there ever was one and the author of The Populist Moment.

Goodwyn said that successful movements go through four stages:

1. First, the movement forms. This happens when people acknowledge oppression and defy it. They create physical and psychic spaces where they can cast off conventional modes of deferment, reject resignation and start acting with radical self-respect. This self-respect involves speaking with the tongue of truth, in the language of radical experience. Millions of people acting with self-respect become a body collective self-confidence, reordering what is politically possible.
2. Second, the movement recruits. It finds a way to attract masses of people while sharing its message of resistance. Radical recruitment is done systematically and strategically, and recruiters attract people in two ways: they promise tangible relief and provide a motive and blueprint for action.
3. Third, the movement educates. It articulates the ideology of the movement. It offers an analysis of power that liberates folks from past thinking patterns, renames what is possible, and unveils a plan to make the possible plausible. It names both the enemy in power and how to get power back. It’s a murder mystery: It gives folks a suspect, a motive, and a scheme for restoring justice.
4. Fourth, the movement politicizes. The movement politicizes when its alternative solutions run up against the powers that be. It admits that power must change for change to work, and it ousts old regimes through direct confrontations with power. Having created alternative economies, practices and paradigms, it creates an alternative political structure—laws, government, and process—to protect its brave new world.

Occupy Wall Street is by and large in phase one. Fair enough; it’s been only two months. Building a movement took the Populists ten or twenty years, so we could easily rest easily. But for most people I know, there is a deep, darkening sense that we do not have that kind of time. We’ve got to change it all, and we’ve got to do it before the ice caps melt, before that python, global finance, dies and squeezes its victims one last and lethal time. We are on the edge of history. We are urgency embodied.

And so we learn from that history. We must. We’ve got to get serious, and fast. We’ve got to make a plan. This plan has to give masses of Americans new paradigms, concrete alternatives, something to join, a way to join it, and a political insurgency to protect it. Along the way, we’ll have to keep a grip on the slippery soul of democracy, practicing consensus and conversation while developing a system of internal communication.

So I’m here to publish my lists. In what remains of this essay, I’ll chart a sample way forward. I’ll take you through each phase of movement building, and make suggestions and critiques. I’ll show how the Populists approached the stage; I’ll say what Occupy’s done well; I’ll dig into dangerous attitudes we should avoid; and I’ll offer suggestions for effective actions. Finally, I’ll close with questions we must answer as a movement whatever methods we decide to use.

But first, let me tell you where I’m coming from. I am not a pure -ism or -ist, but a mutt: part anarchist, part green, part interim socialist. This is no screed for a certain sect, or the fancy footwork of a shill tripping on a movement I don’t move to. This is an essay written by me, a complicated person who desperately wants a complicated movement to succeed in desperate times. Because I care, I critique. A movement is always a bag of new thinking, old thinking, dangerous and helpful ideas. In this mix I am a free agent. I tell the truth as an act of love. This truth-telling should not be confused with the snark of the bourgeois press, who use condescension as credentials and write dismissive missives to fall asleep at night. There is no snark here. I am no reporter, except in the basic sense: I report what I see, what I observe. Call me an embedded editor-anthropologist—someone who tries to understand the culture of a big idea, then challenges it to be bigger, bolder, more beautiful. And of course, I speak as an occupier, not for the occupation. My observations come from my limited experience and my limitless desire to experience more. It’s in that spirit I write today, straight from the hum of perpetual noticing.

So let’s begin.

In the late 19^th century, farmers everywhere lived on the brink of total poverty. All across the South and West, furnishing merchants gave them credit in exchange for exorbitant interest rates and the claims to their cotton harvest. These farmers were the ultimate throwaway people: poor, uneducated, desperate. And yet they built a mass insurgency movement that nearly transformed the agrarian system into a series of cooperatives. They did this by forming the Farmer’s Alliance, an institution that functioned on the state, county and local levels to benefit, radicalize and defend the poor. The Alliance experience let farmers use their own language to throw down on corporations, capitalism and false democracy. Within a few years, these same farmers were calling for a whole new economy based on new ideas that they had developed themselves. And for a movement that began with poor white southerners, they were astoundingly democratic, defying social censure to include Blacks, women, and immigrant workers in the movement. What’s more, the Alliance had style and knew how to occupy. When they called for mass education or decision-making camps, alarmed townspeople reported wagon trains stretching as far as the eye could see, festooned with signs, banners and evergreen boughs.

On my second day at Occupy DC/Freedom Plaza, I looked around me and thought, “Someone needs to do more outreach.” And then it hit me:  Someone else didn’t have to. I did. All I had to do was form a committee and decide a time to meet. So I did. It felt so good to act, to move instead of freezing in despair, to be a real human solving real problems. When I left the Plaza, I was a different person, too. I picked up trash instead of balking at the Entire Trash Problem. I spoke to homeless folks instead of retreating in overwhelm. I was that buzziest of activist buzzwords: I was empowered. And I had discussions, too. I talked to a woman who’d walked hundreds of miles to be with us. I talked to a kid who’d walked out of his movie theater job and never looked back. Some of those conversations were gorgeous, and some were the goddamned hardest, most frustrating talks I’ve ever had. Some had me waving my ego like a badge until finally, hours or weeks later, I’d drop it. I realized I was not nearly as democratic as I thought. But it was good to come alive, to see myself as I actually was: a human being amongst human beings, all capable of great goodness and great failure. And I knew this was what corporate reporters could not understand. They wanted our demands. But our first demand was simple. We wanted to come alive. We were there to be somewhere fully, maybe for the first time ever. The media wanted headlines, but we were starting from our toes. What they could not see was this: the dark, fungal growth of decomposing, of old things dying to nourish a new world.

Aesthetic Anarchism/Damn the Plan. I am all for mass democratic, non-hierarchical movements. I am in favor of taking down the system. I want to work from an outsider position of independence and autonomy. But I have noticed in many occupations a pernicious spirit of aesthetic anarchism. When I say aesthetic, I’m not talking about looks. I’m talking about image. I’m talking about when the form of an idea replaces its substance, or when the rituals of belief replace the point of believing. Aesthetic attitudes prevail when our motive is not to change power, but to be right, fashionable, or cool—a perfect -ism. And since aesthetic beliefs are more about approval than victory, aesthetic believers spend very little time thinking about what victory means or requires. Every movement has its aesthetics (think hippies) and that would be fine if they didn’t disrupt the entire point, which is to win. Because in order to win, you need a plan, and to plan you must consider an array of ideas, challenging conventional wisdom to get at effective action. Radicals say: 6,000 people lost their homes to banks today. Did we help them? What would it take to help them? Then they go from there, letting the need dictate the action. Aesthetic anarchists, however, are content to wait for the word from their chosen Sinai, saying, “If New York does it, we do, too,” or “so sayeth the man in punk-rock black.” They are inheritors of a received culture of ideas—a splinter culture, but a shallow one nonetheless. Their goals are purity and counter-cultural conformity, a strange form of leftist fundamentalism. One of the worst forms of aesthetic anarchism confuses having a plan with being The Man. Aesthetic anarchists equate all structure and strategy with fascism, defining ‘true’ actions as spontaneous and random. Similarly, they see radicalism in terms of approved actions rather than methods. But this Ivory Gutter Attitude gets us nowhere. So let’s be clear, then. Having a plan is not being The Man. It’s not selling out. It’s not fascist. Having a plan means deciding how to engage with power, and how to make power engage with you. Going forward, let’s do less Damning the Plan and more Damning the Man. Let’s decide what we want and create a plan to get there, choosing our actions to fit the problem, not the fashion. So far our movement’s a radical noun; let’s strategize to make it a radical verb.

• Practice democracy fairly. Hold ongoing teach-ins on racism, classism, and patriarchy developed by those most oppressed and supported by their allies.
• Practice democracy fully. Most of us weren’t taught how to make decisions together, so we need to learn. Invite professional facilitators to dotrainings on true consensus. Pinpoint places where democracy is breaking down and find solutions.
• Know your neighbor. Set up a storytelling tent by the info booth. Talk to people about why they are here, what they’re angry about, who they are, what solutions they have. Record the sessions and screen them for the camp at night.
• Heal. We’re all coming to this with emotion and history. Some of us are new, and impatient. Some of us are old, and can’t bear to fail again. A lot of infighting is the result of unspoken despair and disillusionment. The ‘real’ world silences those emotions, but Occupy is an opportunity for voice. Have a therapist or healer lead the group through grief work—for example, Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects.
• Strategize. Take Goodwyn’s four phases of movement building and brainstorm ways to make them flourish. Challenge cavalier assumptions about what does and doesn’t work. Merge this into a multi-day, consensus-based visioning session and come up with concrete goals and strategies for your local Occupy.

What inherited cultural assumptions am I bringing to the Occupy movement? How do dominant societal narratives on race, class, gender, resistance and revolution impair my organizing? How do fashionable resistance models inform my work, and do they help or harm? And finally: How bad is x problem, how long do we have to fix it, and what would it take to win?

The Populists did not confuse action with aimlessness; they were radicals with a plan. Being destitute, they understood the need to create economic alternatives that immediately relieved other poor people and brought them into broader struggle. They began by identifying their central problem: They needed credit to get farming supplies, but the furnishing merchant controlled credit and exploited them. So they created the Farmers Alliance Exchange, a cotton co-op that pooled resources to buy equipment, market the harvest, and sell in bulk to foreign and domestic buyers. This system allowed the farmers to depend less on the merchant for credit and to sell their crops at better prices. It also served as a powerful recruitment tool: the co-op attracted recruits and showed them through their own experience how and why the dominant economic system failed them. Two millions farmers joined in a matter of three years, forming thousands of sub-alliances—each with their own cotton buying agent and farmer-lecturer. The Alliance would eventually mobilize this massive and structured base to break up farming monopolies, push for a new financial system, and create a formidable third party. Participating in the co-ops gave average farmers a sense of dignity, greater economic independence, class consciousness, and experience solving complicated problems together.

My first day at Freedom Plaza, I lost my wallet. The weird thing is, it didn’t matter. The communal kitchen gave me breakfast, lunch and dinner. Concerned people offered money. The after-dinner dance party and discussion were way better than seeing a movie, and if I’d needed it, there were blankets, sleeping bags and tents for those without. That’s when I realized it: Right there in the capitol of capital, I was in a money-free zone, in a community that met both my physical and emotional needs. When I met an exile from Katrina-era New Orleans, I could invite him to the plaza. He got some pasta and a rousing discussion on the Fed; we heard from him on FEMA, poverty and homelessness. Occupy’s genius is combining what is normally separate. We were meeting our immediate needs while preparing for long-term resistance. We created alternatives that got people involved, then involved ourselves in creating alternatives.

The Rhizome Religion. Biologically, rhizomatic organisms send out roots underground that pop up as random shoots above. Each root, if cut in pieces, can regenerate the whole plant. Politically, a rhizomatic movement has no leader, no main branch, and can reproduce anywhere. The good thing about rhizomes is they’re essentially unstoppable (when was the last time you fought an aspen grove and won?). The problem is they’re random—bad for recruitment. Right now, Occupy may represent the 99 percent, but in reality we’re our least favorite number: the 1 percent. To really get people involved, we can’t ask people to come to us. We have to come to them. We have to diligently and deliberately reach out to those most affected by our rapacious financial system: people of color, the poor, immigrants and women. And we should do this by working with established community groups and individuals, radically listening to what folks really want and need. Some Occupies have done a great job reaching out to unions, community groups and regular folks, and the rest of us are trying. But by and large we’ve been practicing the rhizome religion, believing that good ideas will spread spontaneously and recruits will pop up accordingly. In ten years of organizing, though, I have learned one thing for certain: recruitment is not an accident. It takes planning and dogged determination. It takes humility and a high tolerance for discomfort. And it takes realizing that most people are busy trying to survive and need solutions that will tangibly improve their lives. There is magic to any movement, yes—that soul that makes it sing—but in organizing no rabbits pop out of hats. If you want to reach the people, you have to reach out, one hand in welcome and the other in offering. You do this door by door, neighborhood by neighborhood, church by church, until you’ve not just imagined the 99 percent: you’ve met them.

Occupy (your) neighborhoods! Find out where people in your Occupy live. Form neighborhood councils in those communities. Go door to door, meeting people you live by and asking them how the economy’s treating them. Talk to them to learn what skills, needs and interests they have. Ask what organizations are helping already, and talk to those folks, too. From these discussions, create a People’s Map of needs and assets for each neighborhood in the city. Form a spokescouncil of neighborhood representatives to discuss the map, then use this information to keep organizing those communities. Each neighborhood starts creating alternatives that meet their specific needs and the needs of the whole city, growing food, making clothing, or building shelters. Teams of emergency responders could fight foreclosures and feed the hungry. There could be neighborhood-level, worker-owned co-ops and health care clinics. We could disappear from the corporate economy and make wealth where we live.

What are the most pressing needs in my community? What tangible solution would address them? Do I know my neighbors, and if not, why not? What groups are already working on these problems, and what do they need from me? If the economy tanked tomorrow, what would my community need to survive? How can we start to meet those needs? What assets do people on my block have? What assets do I have?

Ironically, it was the failure of the cotton cooperative, the Populists’ economic alternative, that pushed them toward their radical ideology. As brilliant as it was, the co-op effort stalled on bare fact: they needed money to function, the farmers had none, and bankers had lots but hated co-ops. So try as they might—and they tried, raising thousands of dollars from penniless farmers and swaying small landowners to co-sign loans with landless tenants—farmers could not get the credit they needed. But instead of letting that daunt them, they let it move them from economic cooperation to social and political insurgency. They used the co-op failure to teach people about power. If bankers had power, and their power was political, no alternative would be safe until the People got enough power to change the law. This cold truth led to a fiery ideology: a whole new Treasury and currency system tied to a radical third party that called for land reform, socialization of major industry, and better conditions for millions of industrial laborers. But by far the most impressive thing about the ideology was the way the Populists spread it. In less than two short years, they democratically developed their power analysis and relevant solutions, trained 40,000 uneducated farmers to convey the message, then sent them fanning out across the South and West. These lecturers helped start thousands of new sub-alliances and cooperatives, radicalized rural America economically and politically, and paved the way for coalitions with labor, urban immigrants, and Black sharecroppers. They also formed the Reform Press Association, a massive network of radical agrarian presses that challenged the corporate political perspective and disseminated declarations and agreements.

At every Occupy I’ve been to, I’ve seen folks in the grip of democratic discussion. In one corner, a vet teaches military counter-recruitment tactics. A suited woman talks foreclosures and how to fight them. Paul-ites speak of fiat currency while a mohawked kid hands out ‘zines. After a whole lifetime of trusting experts, people are waking up to the value of their own experience. They are starting to believe in what they know. And they are sharing it with each other. They didn’t get us into this mess, but hell if they don’t believe we can get ourselves out. It’s like a light went on in one person’s head, and then another and another. All these problems, all these intractable problems we’ve suffered so long—well, they aren’t intractable! Capitalism is not inevitable. Poverty is not inevitable. In other words, they’re fallible. They can be fought, resisted. In that sense, Occupy is not an occupation, but a giant exercise in decolonization. It’s a battle to oust the false masters of our minds.

Raising Awareness, not Rising Up. For the last decade, I’ve had my awareness raised so many times my brain should have popped. And when each successive awareness-raising moment ended, a bunch of newly brain-pained people asked what to do next. The answer? Raise more awareness. Of course, Occupy has done much more than raise awareness—we have taken the streets and stayed despite rain, snow and fatigue. But our default stance on ideology is still quite liberal: people talk and their minds change; changed minds change society. More important is the thorny issue of demands. In the beginning, we had none, which was cunning. But the persistent refusal to create any highlights a mistake that democratic movements often make: that forming clear analyses and demands and agitating around them is necessarily presumptuous, invasive, and authoritarian. That’s not true, though. An ideology is, at its most basic level, a description of power and a plan for fighting it. An ideology sets goals and decides how to engage with the enemy. Ideologies can be developed democratically, with input from all affected parties. They flag common mistakes and build cohesion. They are the basis for radical demands. Without ideology, you can be highly aware but have no plan for political action. In other words, you’re easily co-opted. A rigorous ideology guards against co-optation by showing people why they’re acting and what they’re acting for. That’s why radical ideology must lead to radical recruitment. This process is not accidental and doesn’t remotely resemble awareness-raising. Raising awareness is a piecemeal act that does not provide people with an analysis for action. To illustrate the difference: a lot of people who opposed neoliberal nation-building voted for Barack Obama in 2008, despite the fact that he fully intended to continue the same. This occurred not because these people were stupid or needed one more teach-in on Afghanistan; it happened because the left did not offer clear reasons and means to do anything else. The Occupy movement needs demands, especially now that many Occupies are facing eviction. It needs to spread them systematically, giving everyone who is discontented a mandate and method for change. This is not presumptuous if we do it together. If we do it together, it’s called democracy. Let’s not raise awareness. That gives us grief but nothing to do. Let’s educate toward action. Let’s rise up.

This one’s going to be hard, but worth it. Let’s use our General Assemblies to develop an ideology, then federate to hammer out demands. Each occupation takes the next month to democratically develop their top three grievances and demands. (There are many consensus models available for developing ideas and solutions that go beyond the scope and format of a General Assembly.) After they’re done, they send two delegates to an Occupy convention, where we’d come up with a declaration (our grievances) and a new constitution (our demands and solutions). The process of coming up with these documents would itself be revolutionary and would deepen our understanding of each other and our fight, and the finished product could be used to educate, agitate and get started on a new world.

Who are our friends? Who are enemies? What do we want? What is the main obstacle that keeps us from getting it? How have we tried to fight that problem before? Did it work? Why or why not? What would it take to be successful? Even with diverse opinions, what are a few things we agree on? What solutions already exist, and what solutions do we need to invent? What is uniquely ours to give in the long fight against elitism? What are our weaknesses and how might they be exploited? What education do we need to act successfully? How do we get it to them? How do we come up with demands, and how will we disseminate them?

The Populists made every attempt to create a new world through non-cooperation—functioning as if the State didn’t exist. But the State did exist, and it combined with corporations to control everything the Populists needed: credit, land, a fair currency. The Populists realized they had no choice. In order to operate their co-ops and implement their new Treasury program, they had to change the law. And to change the law, they had to confront power. So radicals within the movement pushed a new plan. They urged the agrarian movement to form a political third party, a militant coalition of rural and urban workers that sought to transform the very foundations of government. The bulk of the movement responded in kind, and farmers met en masse in 1892 to fashion the Omaha Demands—the foundation of The People’s Party. These demands called for the abolition of national banks, reclamation of corporate land for use by the People, a graduated income tax and the prohibition of agricultural speculation. Populists once again mobilized their massive, educated and organized base to run third party and fusion candidates for every level of office in the land. In states like Kansas, they won straight tickets. Railroad magnates wrote letters to colleagues, invoking God to spare them a Populist legislature. In other states, the party did not fare as well. Rampant election fraud and vigilante action stymied campaigns in the South; two-party emotional appeals leveled the rest. Despite its real success, the People’s Party imploded for several reasons. First, it didn’t organize urban-rural coalitions soon enough. Second, Alliance members split over the politics, many preferring alternatives to confrontation. And third, the movement’s failure to create co-ops in key states led to lack of organization, recruitment and radical education. This, in turn, produced the shallow analysis and lack of self-respect that make movements ripe for accommodation. Within four years, the movement caved to the comfort of received culture and nominated William Jennings Bryan—a Democrat—as their presidential candidate. With that move, America lost one of the most inspiring democratic movements it has ever seen.

We’ve rejected the two-party system and refused to pander to politicians. Screaming fire couldn’t clear an Occupy faster than a Democratic operative, and that’s good. This time around, we’re insisting on autonomy first and demands second. This is the opposite of 2008, when so many auctioned off autonomy to buy futures in the grossly inflated hope and change market. But that bubble crashed, too, and promises are no longer worth what we’ve got to pay for them. Now we’re wiser. Now we’re the ones making promises—this time to ourselves.

The Complicity Complex. The politicization of the Populist movement appears to be a simple moral tale: the Populists got political and so got coopted. The solution is, of course, to not engage in conventional politics. But the real lesson is actually double-edged. Because it is just as true that the Populists failed because they didn’t engage enough, believing they could do radical economics without radical politics. In reality, though, noncooperation can’t work without transforming power at the level of government. The Populists didn’t fail because they got political; they failed because they didn’t organize enough before they did. This statement will be controversial to some Occupiers, many of whom reject conventional politics because the system has failed. And they’re right. The two-party capitalist system has failed. I am not advocating a return. But consider this: If we don’t confront political power directly—replace it, dismantle it, infiltrate it, whatever—then we actually depend more on it than if we did. Up until now, the Occupy movement has focused on reclaiming space, direct action, and noncooperation. But that doesn’t mean we’re politically independent; it simply means we depend on politics indirectly. That is being co-opted by default. As my friend likes to say: “You may not believe in the State, but the State believes in you.” You can ignore it and avoid it, and for some goals, that works. But any successful alternative will fail precisely by being successful unless it finds a way to confront and change the law. If, on the other hand, you say what you want and how you want it, then form an autonomous group to get it—and if what you want scares the powerful and improves material realities for millions of people—that’s independence. Now, there are lots of ways to build political power besides running for office, some of which I will list below. But we shouldn’t confuse a slicked-out politico pawning our movement with creating populist political force. Remember: radical change is not action-specific. Actions are radical when they challenge the balance of power. A strike could be totally symbolic if it’s not well-planned, while a legal strategy that questions the legal structure can be quite radical indeed. In other words,  an action is radical if it shifts power to the oppressed. The question should not be what appears most radical; the question should be what works most radically in a given situation. If, for example, your goal was ensuring food justice for millions of people, you could grow a vast network of gardens without anyone’s say-so. But if you are trying to stop a foreign war, there aren’t a lot of alternatives available. In the former case, you drop out. In the latter, you engage. This engagement can take the form of direct action. It can take the form of a third party. It can take the form of people’s laws. What it can’t do is confuse confrontation with complicity, or else it will fail. If we want to win, we must find a way to challenge political power without compromise.

• Delegates return from the national convention and use the demands and grievances to start an Occupy Party. This party wouldn’t join power, but confront it. It would exist to change the system, but also to recruit masses of people to the Occupy movement and get working for a new world. The candidates would not be leaders but conduits, wearing Everyone masks and refusing to reveal their identity. They could literally change with every debate, every interview, physically embodying the diversity they represent. Yard signs wouldn’t have names but manifestos: “I Am Everyone and I Want ______.” And the name on the ballot? The 99 percent.
• Engage in massive, coordinated direct action. Delegates at the Occupy convention could also decide priority targets for direct action, then organize local Occupies to coordinate simultaneous actions. With only a few thousand people well-organized people we could shut down, say, the banking system in the United States. We just need to pick a goal and get the numbers. (Direct action is an especially good tactic for people who don’t like to mess with electoral politics. But if it’s to be effective, it has to be massive and it has to be coordinated. Creative actions get publicity, raise awareness, intimidate the powerful, and make people feel empowered and important. Mass action stops the machine.)
• Create People’s Laws. This could be coordinated on a national level or done to suit each particular Occupy, but the idea’s the same. Come up with a law that dramatically shifts power (for example abolishing corporate personhood) and run it as a ballot initiative—a form of direct democracy. Use the ensuing organizing drive to educate and recruit people into the movement, then fight like hell to pass the law. Remember, though: This is municipal civil disobedience, so prepare to escalate in court.

You might not agree with my suggestions, but you’ve got to answer my questions. First, what kind of government do I want? (Because a government is, at its core, a decision-making process and body. Everyone has a government. They just have to say what kind it is.) For the Occupy movement, this will probably involve describing both an interim government and an ultimate government. What do we want while the current system exists, and what do we want when we’ve won? Then ask: Do I want to replace, transform, infiltrate or abolish the government? If I do not want to engage in conventional politics, then what is my plan for confronting existing power?

First, Goodwyn names four movement phases, but he also names a movement necessity: internal communication. Successful movements, no matter how far-flung and rhizomatic, find ways to communicate their ideas, their methods, their models and their plans. Movements that don’t do this form pockets of intensity or slump into irrelevance. The genius of the Occupy movement is leaderless, local autonomy, but that genius is also a pitfall if we can’t find a way to coordinate efforts. So far, individual Occupies can throw out ideas or even call for actions, but it’s very difficult to organize around something massive or share crucial information. In a leaderless movement, it can be difficult to know where to go to share or get a question answered. It is good to keep in mind that democratic movements often require more structure than hierarchical ones, since in hierarchies you ask the person in charge and in democracies you ask the structure itself—a committee whose membership is always in flux. This makes it more important than ever to identify a clear process of getting information, making decisions, and federating to make large decisions. The Populists had a system of sub-alliances that each had their own flavor and attitudes, but they coordinated through a system of trained lecturers and annual convergences. In between big events, they communicated through their own Reform Press Association, a collection of local, regional and national papers that communicated key ideas, agreements and perspectives to farmers all over the country.  Occupy Nashville has met this need by reviving the Revolutionary-era Committees of Correspondence, using these working groups to communicate throughout the state. Others have startedOccupy collaboration sites or suggested a kind of informational Pony Express where appointed people travel to share critical information. Whatever the solutions are, Occupy must create a centralized virtual and physical space to share and plan together or we will fight too much alone.

Second, as I finished this essay, the evictions started. One by one, Occupies faced police in riot gear solving ‘public health threats’ with tear gas and pepper spray. Some of us held our ground, some were routed but regrouped and reclaimed, and others are in limbo, wondering what to do next. There are signs at most evictions that say something simple and profound: You can’t evict an idea. That’s true, and the idea of an occupation is capable of outlasting a centralized physical occupation, going forward to occupy homes against foreclosure, occupy classrooms, occupy elections, whatever. But this is an uncomfortable stage because the magic of Occupy has been the centralized physical occupation, a place where so much more happens than the tasks at hand. As my friend bemoaned: “I don’t want us to go back indoors to meetings only ten people attend, only to go back out and find all the people who gathered once but then dispersed.” And that is a real concern. On the other hand, occupations can become mired in problems of self-defense, and the occupation itself can supersede the work that needs doing. We need to regroup our local Occupies and ask ourselves some serious questions. First, what are the pros and cons of a centralized, physical occupation? What are the most pressing needs in our community and are they met better by one occupation, many small and targeted occupations, or another route altogether? If our occupations went dark or indoors, would we lose a certain magic and swagger that we need? If yes, how can we best defend or reclaim an occupy space, and what skills do we need to do that? How can we get those skills, and how can we divvy up our energies to meet both the needs of the occupation and its purposes? What are our goals and how do we meet them in the style and spirit of the Occupy movement? And finally, how do we keep the magic alive? That last question might sound silly, but it’s the most important. Because the Occupy movement didn’t invent the grievances its making or the problems it’s fighting. Most of these problems have existed for decades or even centuries, and have been fought for just as long by devoted dissidents. What Occupy has brought to this mix is radical hope and the magic of gathered imagination, gathered rage, gathered force. It’s brought possibilities so fast and thick they feel like the new texture of reality. And that’s what we cannot afford to lose.

…………………..

Those are my lists. I’m done, and we’re just starting. I have only one brain, and this is just one way forward. Probably there are as many ways as hearts, and we’ll need every beating one. But there are two things for sure: All the ways are steep, and some of them are worth it. There’s another side to this mountain, and it’s lovely and shot with light. Like the bear, we’re going over to see what we can see. We’ll know when we arrive, because we’ve carried the idea of this place for lifetimes, centuries. Sometimes it’s whispered and sometimes, shouted. It’s been killed and resurrected, celebrated and spurned. It’s suffered with aplomb, and so it’s ragged-beautiful. Sometimes it seemed so far, and we were in the dark. And other times we were sure it was just around the corner, right up against our skin. Always it’s been a world we made with voices, heads, and hands.

This wagon train is long, and it doesn’t stop. It loses people, wheels—re-finds them. We die on the march, mostly, and often the point is marching. But there is always the mountain, and still the other side. We are pulling toward it, all of us. And we are pulled by one great question: What would it look like to win?

This is the question you must ask. You ask it for yourself, and for your children. You ask it alone, and we answer it together. But you must ask it, and not let anything get in the way of the answer—not your ego, not your assumptions, not your weary, tired heart.

Because democracy is not an idea, a monument or a building. Democracy is nothing short of being fully alive and defending the fully living.

So write your lists and make your map. Have a plan and damn The Man. Because populism isn’t dead, you see: it’s marching.

Originally published as a zine, which you can download and print (6 double-sided sheets folded into a 24 half-page booklet). Cross-post freely.

Note: yesterday a group of youth activists at the University of Montana (including myself) drafted a call for a weekend of action to protect communities from the coal exports industry.  Coal export projects may well be the largest single threat to the planet right now; and those of us in the heart of coal country need all the help we can get to win this fight. Please see below for the official call to action.

Call for a Weekend of Action to Stop Coal Exports

We, youth climate activists at the University of Montana, are calling for a regional weekend of action to protect the greater Northwest from coal exports.  The action will coincide with the weekend of Rocky Mountain Power Shift, February 17^th-19^th.  That weekend, hundreds of youth climate activists will converge on the University of Montana campus to exchange success stories, hear from movement leaders, learn from each other, and take action to promote solutions to climate change.

On Sunday, Feb 19^th, we will march through downtown Missoula to protest an increase in coal exports (this action is not officially endorsed by Power Shift in any way).  We will draw attention to key politicians and industries who are financing and pushing coal export proposals.

If we can show that people across the greater Northwest region are concerned about this issue, we will dramatically increase our chances of success.  We are asking you to organize an action in your community on the weekend of Feb 18^th, in solidarity with this region-wide effort.

If coal exports increase, it will further jeopardize the health of communities along the rail line, from eastern Montana to the West Coast.  Coal trains are a source of toxic coal dust and diesel fumes, noise pollution, and traffic congestion.  Energy companies plant to ship Montana coal to China and nearby countries, where it will be burned and contribute to climate change and global mercury pollution.

We appreciate any support you can give us in the fight against increased coal exports.  You can take action in your hometown by leading a march, rallying on a street corner, holding a teach-in, lobbying elected officials, or coming up with some other type of action….get creative!

Here in Montana, we are organizing in the heart of coal country.  However, this issue affects all of us.  To make progress toward the goal of stopping exports and protecting our communities, we need your help.  Let us know if you can hold an action the weekend of February 18^th, by filling out the form at this link.  Thanks for anything you can do, and let’s work together to bring about a cleaner, brighter future!

Blue Skies & Coal Don’t Mix Campaign at the University of Montana

The first stop along the march route was Safeway – a corporation using oil from the Canadian Tar Sands to fuel its vehicle fleets.  Unlike companies including Whole Foods and Bed Bath & Beyond, Safeway has not taken any significant steps to phase out tar sands oil – even after being pressed to do so by environmental groups like ForestEthics.  Since Safeway doesn’t seem to believe its customers care about the impact of the tar sands, we decided to prove them wrong by “returning” dozens of paper bags from Safeway, complete with a giant receipt of purchase.

Next we paid a visit to Bank of America, the biggest financier of coal in the United States.  In the Pacific Northwest, Bank of America is funding companies that are pushing coal export terminals and other destructive coal industry infrastructure.  Every B of A branch is essentially a climate crime scene; so in recognition of this fact, participants in the march strung caution tape and warning signs between the pillars at the Eugene branch.  A die-in outside the bank, some messages scrolled in chalk, and a bit of creative street theater rounded out the B of A action.

Our last stop was at the Eugene Democrats campaign office headquarters, where march participants pledged dozens of volunteer hours to fight for clean energy over the next year.  Calling on the Obama administration to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and harness the power youth activists ready to devote their time to a candidate who stands up for the climate, we joined with thousands of people across the country who are ready to see the President take the kind of bold stance that will re-energize his base for the 2012 elections.

It’s no coincidence that four days after thousands encircled the White House, and people across the country held smaller solidarity actions like the one in Eugene, the Obama administration took the first major step toward terminating the Keystone XL pipeline.  Yesterday the State Department announced it will re-assess the Keystone XL proposal, scrapping the original pipeline route and essentially sending the project back the drawing board.  This is a major blow that could well prove Keystone XL’s undoing.

If there was any doubt that strategically focused non-violent direct action produced change on a massive scale, the setback to Keystone XL should be enough to convince anyone.  Direct action has already prompted banks to begin the shift away from coal, stopped or slowed the trajectory of numerous fossil fuel projects – and now it has dealt a lethal blow to one of the biggest climate bombs on the planet.

Youth in the Pacific Northwest and across the country will continue to utilize direct action to confront direct action, in a tradition pioneered decades ago by leaders like Gandhi and King.  With the scrapping of the Keystone XL plan, our movement had one of its finest moments yet this week.  I anticipate many more such moments to come.

The Summer of Solutions is a program for young people who want to build just, sustainable economies in their communities.

We want to invite YOU to be one of those young people building those solutions. Apply here by October 22 to start a program in your community or to join an existing program leader team.

Running a program gives you the opportunity to create and support green economy projects that build power for people who currently don’t have as much access AND to empower young people from your community and beyond with the skills and strategies they need to do the same thing wherever they go next.

Past Summer of Solutions programs have:

• Built community gardens and farms on vacant lots
• Taught neighbors how to use bikes as an effective form of transit
• Run summer camps for children to help them learn about healthy eating and growing their own food
• Founded and partnered with energy businesses to create a community-based clean energy system
• Created community spaces, from mini-golf courses in the coal fields of West Virginia to a playground in Detroit, MI
• Designed and organized for green manufacturing at a closing car factory in Saint Paul, MN

You can read more about these and other stories at the Summer of Solutions blog. To learn more about the values, principles, and strategies of the program, check out the statement on our website.

Leading a program is a challenging, broadening experience that will help you grow your skills in organizing communities, innovating new solutions, planning with flexibility, telling your story, and raising the resources to support it all. Past program leaders have said about the experience:

• “Our program was a transformative and sometimes overwhelming experience that made several leaders and participants challenge their own destiny. The gratitude expressed by the groups we were working with, the fun we had together, and the bonds we formed will last a lifetime.” – Summer of Solutions/Build It Up West Virginia program leader team
• “This work fits my beliefs and passions so perfectly. I have learned so much from trying and failing and retrying to grow into this role and this movement. The people I’ve befriended through Grand Aspirations and activism are an incredible source of strength. Hey, we’re family.”– Jen Roach, Hartford Summer of Solutions
• “Leading a Summer of Solutions program was one of the most challenging and yet exhilarating experiences I’ve ever had in my life. I would highly recommend the experience to anyone who has ever wanted to start their own organization to create positive change—this summer certainly had as much excitement as any start-up I’ve ever worked with.” — Lisa Curtis, Oakland Summer of Solutions
• “Participating in and then leading a Summer of Solutions program has been the literally the most transformational experience of my life. It has helped me to grow into becoming the person I want to be. This summer I felt like I was learning so quickly that I felt confident doing things that just the week before would have been totally beyond my skill-set.” — Elana Bulman, Twin Cities Summer of Solutions

If you want to start a new program, you can start something totally from scratch or partner with an existing organization (or something in between). Programs can be hosted either within Grand Aspirations, which runs Summer of Solutions nationally, or as part of a local organization. You can use the summer to start new projects or expand existing ones. You can bring together young people in your community and from outside your community to work together towards common goals. To see all the things program leaders accomplish, please check out the 2012 Program Guidelines.

If you want to join an existing program in Hartford, CT; the Twin Cities, MN; Oakland, CA; or Portland, OR, you can check out what those teams are looking for in new program leaders on their pages. These teams have more experience and direction already but are open to new ideas and innovation as well.

The deadline to apply is October 22.

However you choose to engage as a program leader, Grand Aspirations will support you! Each planning team has a Program Supporter who is an experienced program leader. Your Program Supporter will talk through challenges and connect you with the resources from the rest of the organization like the Media Team, the Resources Team, and the Leadership Development Team. You will have opportunities to connect and brainstorm with your peers at other programs through confluence calls and regional training events during the winter.

If you have any questions about what being a program leader entails, please get in touch with Ruby Levine (802-272-4140, ruby.levine@gmail.com) or Timothy DenHerder-Thomas (646-670-1682, timothydht@gmail.com) to talk through what being a program leader could look like for you!

That’s me with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis at the White House on Earth Day 2010

Here’s me getting arrested at the White House on September 2nd 2011 in protest against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Photo credit: Josh Lopez

During my college experience at American University I was pretty active in climate change issues on my campus and in my community. I went to Congress to push for ACES. I interned with environmental groups pushing for renewable portfolio standards and new passenger rail. I helped write the university’s carbon neutrality plan. Perhaps most important to this story, I voted for Obama in the Iowa caucuses and in the general election because of his pledges to take truly significant action to stop climate change. After spending years of my young life working inside the normal political system to push for these things this administration claims to believe in, I was fortunate to be invited to the White House’s Earth Day reception (along with about 100 other environmentalists).It was there that I got to meet folks I admired like Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, Hilda Solis, and President Barack Obama.  Everyone in attendance was still holding out hope that a climate-energy bill written by John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham could be passed. Looking back now, we know it never passed, wasn’t even voted on, and probably was the most watered-down bill there possibly could have been that claimed to be mitigating climate change.

I was very lucky to get to speak to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. I really admired Steven Chu for being a great scientist who straightforwardly said what he thought about energy issues; many times I told my friends that Chu was by-far the smartest and most qualified Secretary of Energy we had ever had. That’s why I was so utterly disappointed when he told EneryNow that he thought the Keystone XL pipeline was a good idea:

“I know there’s concerns about this, but both the technologies used to extract the tar sands oil – which are improving dramatically – and so I think that can go forward. I think in the end what we need to do is diversify our supply of oil. Right now our transportation needs come exclusively from oil.”  & “In the end, it’s not perfect but it’s a trade-off.”

Kind of an obfuscated statement for a scientist to make, eh? From what I can tell, he tepidly supports the thing, or has been told to do so by others in the administration, or maybe he’s just saying what he thinks the other people in the administration want him to think. I can only hope behind the scenes he is telling Obama to stop the pipeline because it will further chain our economy to oil and only make climate change worse.

But hope hasn’t worked thus far. Hope for a climate bill? Hope for an end to mountaintop removal? Hope for an end to offshore drilling? Hope for an end to oil company subsidies? Sad to say, but none of that hope has worked out for us environmentalists lately.

So instead of hoping, I decided to go back down to the White House and physically express my disagreement with Dr. Chu and his boss.

Getting handled by US Park Police. Still better than a party in the Rose Garden. Photo credit: Josh Lopez

The densely populated cities of the Atlantic coast of North Americahave been preparing for Hurricane Irene. As someone who just decided that this was the perfect weekend to visit New York City, I find myself helping my brother and NYC resident tape up his windows, search for flashlights and candles, and fill the bathtub with water. We are checking the hurricane watch and evacuation advisories to see if it is necessary that we peace out of the city.

For someone who is typically living in Toronto, an urban setting which hasn’t faced a hurricane since I have lived there, this rapid response to extreme weather events is new. But, I don’t want to act like ALL people in North America are void of dealing with the impacts of climate change. I want to recognize the reality of communities in the Arctic, where unpredictable cracks in the ice can cost people their lives; farmers are faced with unpredictable weather, resulting in poor growing seasons; and we can never forget all the communities (mostly communities of colour and low-income communities) that live merely a few kilometers from logging sites, coal-fired power plants, fracking sites, tar sands projects, and mountain-top removal sites.

But this blog post isn’t for all of y’all. I am writing to those who have chosen not to take action on climate change because they think it does not directly impact them. I write to many of the other Torontonians, New Yorkers, or others who can talk about climate change as if it is something that impacts others.

Climate action advocates often face the difficulty of dealing on somewhat of an invisible issue, in that carbon emitted in the atmosphere is rendered invisible to cause floods and storms in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and small island nation states kilometres away. Floods and monsoons, pfft…I don’t have to deal with that (And sometimes it is pfft…I dont have to deal with that…yet)! The challenge then becomes compelling people to act on issues of climate change because they are acting in solidarity, which may be difficult given the pervasive aura of NIMBY-ism.

But as I bring in some of the chairs off my brother’s balcony to make sure they don’t go blowing off into Manhattan’s Greenwich village, I turn to him and ask: “So, if only our cities were more bike friendly, eh?” (I figure I can ease them into the How about we stop Big Oil, Big Coal, and all the other extractive industries, like logging and mining, from wreaking havoc on the earth-conversation).

I wonder if an abnormally hot and humid summer, followed by a hurricane which has prompted the first planned closure of the NYC subway system, can be a bit of a kick in the shins to climate action activists and our audience to say “If we want to mitigate these extreme weather events from impacting communities, including our own, we need to do something about it.”

Now is an opportunity to appeal to the masses who will only take action if it impacts them directly.

And what better time to be taking action than at a time when there is already so much going on? As I type, hundreds of people are taking part in the Tar Sands Action, willing to face arrest if that is what is needed to tell Obama to stop the Keystone XL pipeline which would facilitate tar sands expansion; and several individuals with Wild Idaho Rising Tide blocked an Exxon/Imperial Oil “megaload” shipment heading for the Alberta Tar Sands. Folks in Canadaare getting ready for a similar action to the Tar Sands Action, taking place in Ottawa on September 26^th.

We can still continue to take those individual actions that reduce our carbon footprint, but we need collective action to reduce the large amounts of carbon that is being pumped into the atmosphere on a larger scale than my taking a cab across town. The amount of carbon emitted by deforesting acres of forest to create oil extraction sites, or by blasting into mountains to burn dirty coal would undo any of the individual actions we try to take.

Political organizing is absolutely necessary to stop these projects and to influence decision makers that these environmentally destructive operations cannot take place unregulated. The consequences of these are being felt and people are willing to take action to protect their own communities and those who are most impacted. Individually we may be ignored, together we can make some noise.

If predatory extractive industries and their crony politicians go unchallenged, then they continue contributing to the greenhouse we are trying to mitigate. Some of us may have the opportunity to live off the grid, create zero-waste, and sustain ourselves on our own gardens; but that may not stop some of the most destructive industries from colonizing the atmosphere. It is for that reason, we must couple our individual efforts with those of our allies to do what we can to protect our environment and our communities.

These are lyrics from my favorite song this summer, Battles by The Smart Brothers.

It’s a love song, but I also hear a call to action, a call to protect that which we care most about.

The Keystone XL pipeline, and the tar sands extraction it would spur, is so obviously one of the worst actions the United States could take with regard to climate change, not to mention all the communities along the pipeline route whose water and ecosystems would be threatened by crude oil spills. Today, leaders of the largest environmental organizations in this country united to release a letter calling on President Obama to block the Keystone XL pipeline.  You know when Environmental Defense Fund teams up with Rainforest Action Network that something big is in the air.

The tar sands industry has been trying for years to send tar sands crude to American refineries, and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, in James Hansen’s words, would be game over for the climate.  The predecessor to Keystone XL, the Keystone pipeline, has already had 15 spills in the United States and over 20 spills in Canada since it became operational last year.  The Enbridge pipeline dumped 800,000 gallons of tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River, and the pipeline that spilled 42,000 gallons of oil into the Yellowstone River also carries tar sands crude (a full list of pipeline accidents can be found here).

President Obama himself, without any influence from Congress, can make the decision to deny or approve the Keystone XL permit. Since Saturday, 275 people have been arrested for protesting the Keystone XL pipeline outside of the White House, calling on Obama to deny the permit.  If this is not an act of love to protect our neighbors, country and planet from the tar sands evil at our door, I don’t know what is.  And it is incredibly encouraging that the environmental leaders who sent the letter to Obama said “there is not an inch of daylight between our policy position on the Keystone Pipeline and those of the very civil protesters being arrested daily outside the White House.”

If you have the means, please join our brothers and sisters in DC through September 2nd to urge Obama to stop the pipeline.

For folks who cannot travel to DC to participate in the protests, please contact the White House Comment Line.  Call 202-456-1111 between the hours of 9AM and 5PM Eastern, and say “The tar sands represent a catastrophic threat to our communities, our climate, and our planet. We urge you to demonstrate real climate leadership by rejecting the requested permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and instead focus on developing safe, clean energy.”

You are encouraged to call the White House Comment Line as many times as you would like! If you want to learn more about the tar sands action, visit http://www.tarsandsaction.org/.

“And I’m leaving in the morning, to meet the evil at our door…You are the one I fight my battles for, you are the one that I adore.”

While making my mental pro-con list, I realized that Todd was right. My con list was short: I might have a record, which as a college student with the unknown in front of me seems reason for concern. However, the pro list was much longer. I would be fighting the corporate powers of Bank of America, Peabody Energy and so many others found in St. Louis in ways that my years of rallies, protests, phonecalling and voting had never done.

My privilege was the most notable item on my pro list. I knew that because of my socioeconomic status and my community of friends and fellow activists I would be bailed out of jail quickly. Using my privilege as a white female with enough money seemed like one of the biggest services I could provide where others in the movement can’t due to the unequal realities of our legal system. As activist Lisa Fithian said, “It should be our rich white kids risking arrest.”

When 15 of us, the Midwest Rising 15, sat down in the downtown St. Louis intersection, Peabody Energy on one side, Bank of America on the other, we linked arms and chanted. Looking around the circle at the strong, determined faces surrounding me, I knew I had made the right decision. We spent 10 hours in jail, charged with street demonstration and failure to obey police orders. The last one released, I exited to fifty people cheering and waiting for me.

The love I felt reminded me of how lucky I am to be part of a group of people fighting for a more just world, and some unexpected pros worked themselves onto my list. First, my arrest had inspired others. It had invigorated not just me, but those waiting outside. For all of us who work so close to burnout, seeing new tactics used is inspiring and makes us feel alive again. Second, getting a brief look into the legal system reaffirmed my commitment to fighting systems of oppression. The convergence had already linked economic and climate justice movements, but hearing stories of people held overnight with no food or water reminded me that movements working together are even stronger. I was both depressed and inspired when I reminded myself that in the United States we are innocent until proven guilty.

We must all continue to think strategically to fight for justice for people and the planet. As sixty sit in jail, sixty more risk arrest today and hundreds others gear up for action regarding the Keystone pipeline, as Tim Dechristopher spends two years in prison, I am humbled to be a part of a growing movement realizing and exercising the power of civil disobedience as a tactic for change.

If you are willing and able, I ask you to contribute to the bail funds for the Midwest Rising 15 here.