Much can be accomplished through policy venues.  But we should not delude ourselves that policy alone will solve the problem.  Good policy is nothing without good implementation.  But what happens when implementation fails, when the structures we have created are broken?  What recourse do we have?  As far as I can see we have two options: 1) reform/transform political structures through further policy change and 2) take direct action to stop those failures.

These options are not and should not be exclusive; they are both necessary.

Direct Action is a safety net between well-intended policy and political failure and corruption.

The Wikipedia definition of corruption is “utterly broken.”  It further defines political corruption as “the abuse of public power, office, or resources by government officials or employees for personal gain” and corporate corruption as “corporate criminality and the abuse of power by corporation officials, either internally or externally.”

Likewise, it defines Direct action as “politically motivated activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political goals outside of normal social/political channels.”  It is important to note that while many direct actions involve civil disobedience, not all do.  Actions that disrupt daily habits or social norms can be just as effective at drawing attention and applying pressure as those that break the law.

In the 1980s the first Reagan EPA sought to dismantle environmental protection laws.  In response, Congress placed stricter requirements and timelines on the EPA, in essence forcing them to fulfill their mission.  Additionally, environmental advocacy groups began training lawyers and activists to bring citizen suits against the EPA and polluters.  While lawsuits are legal in nature, I consider them direct action in this context because they had never really been used to force government implementation of its own laws before.

I want to take a look at the relationship between corruption and direct action in West Virginia and Utah, two of the most fossil fuel dependent states in the country.  When Massey CEO Don Blankenship ousts WV a Supreme Court Justice who rules against Massey and then parties on tropical islands with other justices, and when WV Department of Environmental Protection employees are afraid to do their job because of the fear of retribution from the coal industry, we have corruption.  When the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining bypasses county authority to speed the development of tar sands near Moab by a foreign company, we have a system that is broken.

In these situations, legal recourse has a very long shot at being effective.  Powerful interests are entrenched and will exercise their power to prevent change.  While it is possible that lawsuits, elections, referenda and laws may enact change, direct action can increase their likelihood of success.

Direct Action creates political space for champions to promote change.

Traditional organizing strategies of electoral mobilization, building public support or disapproval and advocating for policy change all take time.  This change does not come quickly.  And yet, there are situations where time is in short supply.  In the Coal River Valley, WV, activists with Climate Ground Zero are physically stopping mountaintop removal blasting through direct action.  At the same time, their allies around the region are working to end mountaintop removal through policy change.

Likewise, at the end of 2008, the Bush Administration attempted to sell off huge swaths of public lands for oil and gas drilling in Utah.  Local organizations were filing lawsuits against the process, but were not sufficient to stop the auctions.  Instead, Tim DeChristopher intervened in the auction to prevent the oil and gas industry from purchasing these parcels.  Eventually the Department of the Interior under Ken Salazar voided the transactions, but Tim’s actions both prevented immediate harm from drilling and generated attention and political pressure on the DOI to take action.

Direct action can capture public attention more vividly than policy.

Policy changes are not particularly sexy to the mainstream media.  Reclassifying the term “fill” to be included as “waste” may not hit headlines, but it could halt most mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.  Young and old people chaining themselves to mining equipment not only presents a striking visual, but attaches a human face to our work.  The broader attention to direct actions can increase the political pressure for change.  Of course with all direct action, but especially acts of civil disobedience, we must be careful to control the message.

Direct action very much has a role in our organizing, and is often most successful when paired with traditional organizing tactics.  As an organizer, I’ve been trained to pursue strategies that will be successful with the least amount of confrontation.  The premise is to avoid making enemies as long as possible.  Do not provoke opponents needlessly.

Where lobbying works, do it.  Where creating local energy solutions is possible, do it.  Where forming partnerships with business, government and civil society creates lasting agreement, do it.  Direct action is not always essential.

But there are places in this country (and world) where those options are not working.  There are places where our government has been corrupted or broken, there are places where policy doesn’t prevent exploitation.  In many of these places, victories do not come easy and expanding the grassroots base is difficult.  And it is in these places that direct action is most necessary.

The question that remains, is how badly broken does a situation need to be to warrant direct action?

Keep reading + Scroll down for Action Form!

Two environmental activists appeared in court today accused of terrorism-related offences during the Copenhagen climate summit in December.

Natasha Verco, an Australian honours student, and Noah Weiss, an American citizen who lives in Denmark, will face similar charges in a trial which is due to last all week.

Verco, who has organised non-violent direct action in her native country and who has been part of the Climate Justice Action (CJA) network in the lead-up to the summit in Copenhagen, has been charged with organising violence, organising public disorder, significant damage to property, and organising disorder during the international talks on climate change which took place in Copenhagen last year. If found guilty, Verco faces a maximum of twelve and a half years in prison.

Speaking a day ahead of the start of the trial, Verco recalled her arrest: “On December 13 I was riding my bike down by the Copenhagen lakes,and a plainclothes police woman jumped out at me and pushed me off the bike. She took me to an unmarked police van with six or seven plainclothes policemen. I asked them ‘Are you randomly picking me up?’ and they said ‘No, we hunted you’. They held me by myself in an underground carpark for about 16 hours, I think. Then I was taken to Vester prison and held there for three weeks and two days. I was charged the day after I got to prison, but bail was refused because, they said, the investigation was ongoing and I would influence it if I was released.”

Verco and Weiss say they both had their phones tapped, along with 17 other activists, which is legal under recently introduced terror legislation in Denmark. Verco said: “I feel nervous and indignant at the same time, I wonder what the hell they’re going to argue because I can’t see what evidence they’ve got for these charges. And looking back at the calls that they’ve taped, it feels very invasive. Under the new terror laws they can do this, but it seems to me that applying terror laws to activists is steadily eroding the base of our democracy.”

Verco was heavily involved in organising the day of action on December 14, but was arrested before it happened. When it took place, she was still being held by police. “The police say that they prevented anything happening by taking me in. There was no violence, and no disruption of the public infrastructure, because they’d arrested me.”

During the fortnight of talks, dozens of protests from the small to mass rallies of 40,000 people, took place; the Danish police arrested nearly 2,000 people. The police are now processing nearly 200 legal complaints about the treatment of the arrestees. Verco and Weiss were both involved with CJA, the network which helped to organise some of the protests during the talks, most notably the Reclaim Power demonstration outside the conference centre for the negotiations.

Apart from Weiss and Verconone of the other activists charged during the protests, including the Greenpeace Four who were arrested and held for three weeks after unfurling a banner during a black tie event, have yet had their court dates set.

Take Action:

Follow THIS LINK to submit a letter to the Danish Ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs, or manually Copy & Paste the following letter into an email. Sign your name and send to the following:

The Danish Ministry of Justice: jm@jm.dk

The Minister of Justice, Lars Barfoed: trm@trm.dk

Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs: um@um.dk

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lene Espersen: udenrigsministeren@um.dk

March 2010

To whom it may concern,

As a concerned citizen, I am writing to express my concern at the decision of the Danish government to bring charges against individuals arrested during the peaceful protests in Copenhagen during the COP 15 last December.

The international movement for Climate Justice which organized the mobilizations in Copenhagen is composed of many hundreds and thousands of groups and individuals worldwide who represent the interests of the majority of the people of this world. As a person who feels represented by them, I strongly condemn the repression of the Danish state which aims to stifle dissent, a right which is the basis of any functioning democracy.

I add my voice to those who demand that the charges against Natasha Verco and Noah Weiss and the other climate prisoners, like Stine Gry, Tannie Nyboe, Malthe Ege, Mads Kissow and Tadzio Muller, are immediately dropped. Freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate are basic human rights, and the citizens of the world are astonished by the fact that charges are brought against people for the organization of legal protests in Denmark.

The actions of the Danish state not only threaten Danish democracy, but threaten to set a worrying precedent globally that dissenting voices must not be heard – repressing and criminalizing those who struggle for social justice, real democracy and human rights worldwide.

I urge the Danish government to take all these voices into consideration and to make sure that the climate prisonners are immediately released– the world is watching.

The current climate crisis is a global emergency. In Copenhagen thousands of people protested against the UNFCCC that was imposing false business solutions instead of solving the problem.

Today the struggle for climate justice is a duty, not a crime.

Sincerely,

[your-name]

TORONTO—More than 150 people gathered outside the RBC Annual General Shareholder Meeting today to protest the bank’s leading role in funding the contentious Alberta tar sands. People concerned with the impact of tar sands projects on First Nations, water quality and the climate came from every corner of Canada to ensure that the bank heard the message: ‘stop bankrolling the tar sands.’

Outside the shareholder meeting school children, bank customers of every age, First Nations community representatives and leading environmental groups rallied with brightly colored signs and chants. Inside the shareholder meeting, Chief Al Lameman of Beaver Lake First Nation of Alberta,Vice Chief Terry Teegee of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council of BC, and Hereditary Chief Warner Naziel of the Wet’suwe’ten First Nation of BC addressed RBC CEO Goron Nixon directly about the way tar sands extraction projects have jeopardized their health and their rights. 

“RBC has a decision to make. They can continue to align themselves with the tar sands, a project that is single-handedly compromising the climate, drinking water and the health of First Nations,” said Brant Olson of the Rainforest Action Network, which has been running a campaign to clean up RBC since its shareholder meeting last year. “Or they can lead Canada’s economy toward clean energy and socially responsible development.”

RBC is clearly feeling the public pressure over their tar sands financing. Recently, the bank convened a high-level meeting with more than a dozen international banks for a “day of learning” about the reputational risks associated with the tar sands. In addition, according to information the bank provided to RAN during a February meeting in San Francisco, RBC is currently evaluating new lending criteria that would apply to the oil and gas sector, in particular to the tar sands. However, the bank has been reticent to include Free, Prior and Informed Consent in its policy, which would ensure that First Nations communities are respected in lending practices.

“RBC’s significant financial relationship with companies pursuing tar sands development activities within our traditional territory and without consent warrants close attention,” said Chief Al Lameman of Beaver Lake First Nation. “RBC should update their policies to include a recognition of Free, Prior and Informed consent for Indigenous communities; this globally recognized concept was adopted by TD Bank Financial Group in 2007 and is endorsed by Indigenous communities across the political spectrum.”

Internationally, tar sands financing is gaining tremendous negative  An increasingly vocal group of shareholders and environmentalists turned last month’s BP, Shell and Royal Bank of Scotland annual meetings into a referendum on the oil extraction projects.

“It is unacceptable that RBC is a major financier of the Alberta tar sands, one of the most environmentally destructive projects in the world,” said Maryam Adrangi, a member of Rainforest Action Network Toronto and a lead organizer of today’s rally. “We will not stop until RBC adopts a socially responsible banking policy that includes respect for Indigenous rights and the phasing out financing for dirty fossil fuels like the tar sands.”

According to Bloomberg, since 2007, RBC has backed $16.9 billion in loans to companies operating in the tar sands, and has earned more than $132 million in underwriting fees. As a result, RBC has enabled the production of the world’s dirtiest oil. Oil extraction from the tar sands generates three times the CO2 emissions as conventionally extracted oil, and will soon make Canada the biggest contributor to global warming.

Mining oil from tar sands requires churning up huge tracts of ancient boreal forest and polluting so much clean water with poisonous chemicals that the resulting waste ponds can be seen from outer space. The health impacts to Alberta’s First Nation communities are severe, with cancer rates up in some communities as much as 400 times its usual frequency. In addition, communities living near oil refineries face increased air and water pollution from tar sands oil, which contains 11 times more sulfur and nickel and five times more lead than conventional oil.

The Rainforest Action Network campaign to Clean Up RBC has been demanding that RBC take responsibility for its lending in the tar sands by meeting basic standards set by other leading banks on Indigenous rights, water and habitat impacts and climate change.

CONTACTS:
Eriel Deranger, 587.785.1558
Maryam Adrangi, 416.996.3478
Nell Greenberg, 510.847.9777

###

For more information on RBC and the tar sands, visit: http://understory.ran.org/tag/rbc/
To see how RBC stacks up to other banks on financing in the tar sands see: http://understory.ran.org/2010/01/31/banks-ranked-and-spanked-on-tar-sands

Take a moment and watch hundreds of those around the world taking action and inspiring others in the fight for climate justice.

All images (unless provided by 350.org) ©Robert van Waarden,
Music – “Open Road Kisses” by Small Affairs

In the lead-up to Copenhagen, I was calling the Canadian Prime Minister and other members of parliament. I wanted them to know that they need to make responsible decisions in Copenhagen to ensure that Canada would do its part in addressing the climate crisis, and to do this they would need to shut down our dirtiest industry.

Now, in the lead up to a rally against the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and their financing of the tar sands—I am calling RBC employees.  I want them to know that they need to act responsibly and stop financing the tar sands. Royal Bank of Canada is the top financier of tar sands projects which are making up 95% of Canada’s increase in emissions, violating over 24 aboriginal treaties, causing rates of diseases and cancers to skyrocket in nearby communities, using up local freshwater resources, and destroying the environment.

Do you think all RBC employees know that? I doubt it.

Now, I try to put myself in RBC’s shoes. I pretend I am the largest financial institution in Canada: I serve 17 million clients and employ over 80,000 employees worldwide. I am also the top financier in the Alberta Tar Sands, having put billions of dollars into projects that are destroying the Boreal Forest and putting many communities at risk. Then I think to myself, “Hey! Environmental destruction and human rights violations are a bad thing! I don’t want my millions of clients and employees to know that I do this.”

Then I know what I have to do.  I have to put more effort into developing my public relations than actually acting responsibly.

And then I stop pretending. I am no longer a large financial institution, but a concerned individual. A concerned individual with a phone. So I pick up my phone and I call all those people who do not know and especially those people who RBC is trying to keep in the dark. Check out my video, or some of my friends’, and help us call some RBC employees.

This is what we are saying: “Hi there! I just learned that RBC is the top financier in the Alberta tar sands which is destroying the Boreal Forest, our freshwater resources, and communities in Canada. On top of that it is pumping out tons of carbon and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, thus affecting everyone. People living downstream are suffering from rare cancers and cardiovascular diseases, and this is absolutely unacceptable. As an employee, I really hope that you push RBC to stop financing these dirty projects and to recognize indigenous people’s right to free, prior, and informed consent. Thank you very much for your time.”

I wish that more of the messages left on MY voice mail were educational.

ran.org/tarsands

This March 12 – 20, Mountain Justice Spring Break will bring hundreds of young people face to face with the impacts of mountaintop removal and the coal industry – and give you the skills and knowledge you need to build sustainable communities in Appalachia! Through education, community service, speakers, hiking, music, poetry, direct action and more, you will learn from and stand with Appalachian communities in the struggle to maintain our land and culture.

WHEN? March 12 – 20, 2010 (come for a few days, or the whole week)

HOW? Register (and so much more!) at www.mjsb.org for a sliding scale donation of $50 – $500

WHO? Mountain Justice Spring Break participants come from diverse backgrounds such as coal field residents, college students, environmentalists, and other concerned citizens that care about our mountains. Participants share a common goal to halt mountaintop removal (MTR) and destructive coal mining. Learn all about MTR and Mountain Justice at www.mountainjustice.org, AND find out about Mountain Justice SUMMER Action Camp May 27th – June 6th on Pine Mountain in Kentucky!

CAN’T WAIT?  The MJSB planning collective is looking for Campus Coordinators who can organize a crew of people from your school or community. You (yes , YOU) are strongly encouraged to let us hook you up with a coordinator resource packet to help you start fueling this movement TODAY!

2 years ago I and several friends shut down construction at the site of the Cliffside Coal Plant in North Carolina. It was April 1^st, Fossil Fools Day. After public hearings, petitions, legislative efforts, and protest failed, we knew we had to do something to up the ante in the fight against coal plants in this country. So it was that we found ourselves locked to Duke Energy’s bulldozers on that dark, drizzly morning.

Did we permanently stop the Cliffside construction site? No. However this action, along with the countless other actions like it by groups around the country, have greatly increased the cost, both politically and economically, of building coal plants in this country. While the construction at Cliffside continues, I feel confident that our direct actions, and those of others, is in part responsible for the wave of coal plants that have been canceled in the US (100 and counting).

No doubt utility companies and state governments pursuing new coal plants took note of the fight against Cliffside and decided that the constant controversy and harassment was not worth it (of course the recession and prospects of CO2 being regulated has helped as well). Well its 2010 and Fossil Fools Day is once again rounding the corner. We’ve witnessed the spectacular failure of Copenhagen, the Obama administration time and again capitulating to big business, and corporations doing there best to stall our efforts.

Yet we’ve seen inspiring resistance around the country, from Climate Ground Zero’s relentless direct action campaign against mountaintop removal to citizens shutting down Chevron’s refinery in Richmond, CA. The question is: What are you going to do to raise the stakes on April 1^st?

www.fossilfoolsday.org

These are the words of contempt Sarah Palin aimed at the Obama Administration two weeks ago, but she may as well have taken shot at the climate movement.

The Copenhagen negotiations were largely a flop.  Climate legislation has stalled out in Congress.  Red States and Fossil Fuel Corporations are suing the EPA to revoke their authority to regulate emissions.

In 2008, millions of Americans were inspired by the message of Hope: hope that government can change, hope that yes, we can change the direction of this country.  Many of those people have now become disappointed, jaded, disengaged.  They hoped for change and they didn’t get it.  But as Mrs. Palin so eloquently reminded us, that hopey, changey stuff isn’t working so well right now.

Why isn’t it working?

You could make the argument that governing is more difficult than campaigning.  You could make lament the obstructionist tactics of the far-right.  You could point out that Palin was just trying to rile up the troops.

You could say all that, but you would be missing the deeper reason.

Hope is passive.  Hope is what you have when you have exhausted all other options.  As Derreck Jensen writes, “To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it.”

By placing our Hope in Obama, in Congress, in the UN, we tacitly resign ourselves to the idea that the outcomes are out of our hands.

During the United Nations negotiations in Copenhagen, which the climate movement had been focusing on for years as the pivotal moment to make progress, the Hopenhagen campaign there inspired a fellow activist to jot down these thoughts:

“I have had a deep unease about “Hopenhagen” since before I left for the summit, but I didn’t know what exactly was bothering me until tonight. As I passed through the vacated Hopenhagen square, looking up at the billboards depicting grainy photos of healthy big-eyed children with “Hopenhagen” spelled out across their hearts, after days on end of being practically blinded by the saturation of bus stop ads, Coca Cola’s “bottle of Hope” ads, and glossy pamphlets blowing around on the ground, it dawned on me: Hope is all we have? Hoping is…begging! This is supposed to be the big moment. I came across the planet to make change myself, and this, this stupid, cheesy, hokey corporate campaign is the best humanity can muster in the face of annihilation?
I stood alone, tonight, in the empty square, and stared ahead, and saw that real human suffering, on a scale we have never seen, was on the way, was on the horizon, and nothing but an abandoned city square was in the way. The cold wind blew through my hair. I shivered.  And despite myself, I cried.”

The climate will not suddenly stabilize by hoping.
Obama will not magically secure bold climate legislation because we hope for it.
The climate movement will not become powerful enough to overcome fossil interests by latching onto hope.

We must let go of the hope that we will win.  Who knows if we will or not?  But we will only win by taking action with our own hands, feet, bodies, and voices.

“And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.” -Derreck Jensen

We hauled our gear in at night without flashlights, hiking for miles up the mountain that was quite foggy throughout the night. Then we rested for a bit. Then I climbed a beautiful tall oak tree with stirrups made of climbing rope attached to a climbing harness I was wearing, which I kept on for 9 days straight. I had to break a few branches off the tree on the way up, and I kissed that tree several times during the whole set up process. After getting as high as I wanted, I anchored a climb line to the trunk above me and hauled the platform up after my direct support person below attached it to the rope. I anchored the platform to the trunk after hauling that heavy thing up. Then I hauled the rest of my gear up as direct support attached it to the rope. I don’t remember how many loads I hauled up, but if felt like a lot. I attached each load of gear to the tree or the platform. Next I lay my exhausted body on that platform gently swaying in the pre-dawn light and looked up at the craggly bare branches above me against the divine blank gray sky and felt like I was on the border of heaven and earth. The sunrise was beautiful. Once the light gave us a much wider view of our surroundings I could see the beautiful forest on one side of us and the mining on the other side with giant machines, holes dug for explosives, the toxic lake of waste in the distance, and the life-giving soil ripped away. It felt like being on the border of heaven and hell.

Two direct support people stayed below us for any additional support they might be able to provide. It wasn’t long before the police came up and arrested them and left us with the Massey workers and security guards. The first thing they threatened us with was chainsaws. One guy hollered, “Cut ‘em down.” Then they cut some trunks of fallen trees below us and cut a few small trees down. Later they brought an excavator with a big scoop on it and knocked some trees down near us with it. They eventually used it to pull a cherry picker up near us but they never tried to get us down with the cherry picker.

That evening they started blasting sirens and air horns at us, which continued practically nonstop for the next several days. They built a 10-foot tall chain link fence around us with a big opening so they could drive vehicles in and out of it. They ordered pizza and tried to tempt us down with that. They grilled steaks below us and when Amber and I told them we are vegetarians they said they had popcorn too. They threatened to send bounty hunters after us if we skipped out on our bond agreements and didn’t show up for our court dates later. They threatened to charge us with federal felonies of interfering with interstate commerce. They filed for a temporary restraining order and tried to get us to come down for a court hearing on it. They told us we weren’t stopping any blasting even though we could see recently dug blast holes near us. They told us the weather would keep getting worse.

The wind was a lot scarier than anything the guards did. Studies have shown that this mountain has great potential for harnessing wind for electricity, which will be destroyed if mountaintop removal is allowed to greatly reduce the height of the mountain. It was very windy the majority of the time we were up there, and I worried that the tree might break. The longer I was there though, the safer I felt. Laying inside my zero degree sleeping bag on the platform with a tarp in a pyramid shape around me and the wind swaying me around often felt like being in a womb. I felt so protected by the tree and the earth. I was sacrificing many things by being there and the experience was so fun and empowering that I gained much more than I lost.

The most annoying thing the guards did was the constant blasting of sirens and air horns. I had ear plugs, but a lot of sound got through them. I am a light sleeper and the noise along with the wind and general intensity of the situation meant I got very little sleep. I practice meditation and contemplation and yoga. One of the eight branches of yoga is pratyahara, which means withdrawal of the senses. In the past I had mainly experienced this with my sense of sight while sitting in meditation, but here I experienced it with my sense of sound. There were moments when the sound would completely drop out of my awareness. Unfortunately, as soon as I became conscious of the fact that the sound was gone, it would return. The noise was kind of rhythmic and I was sometimes able to get into a meditative state and perceive it as divine sound. The sound was mainly annoying in that it prevented more sleep and made communication via radio, cell phone and yelling to the other tree sitters difficult.

We set up the sit on a Thursday. I fasted on Sunday, a divine day. I prayed that all living beings will be freed from suffering and find their way to God, and that we will stop mountaintop removal without preventing any workers from being able to feed their families, and that the Brushy Fork dam will not break. I broke the fast with some divine dark chocolate.

During the sit I read a book by Jerry Mander called In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations. I thought this would be fitting since we were in a place where sacred life is being taken. Before reading this book I was not aware of how many Indian nations throughout the world are still struggling to survive. I also used to think that they didn’t have a concept of land ownership when in reality they had and have a very collective concept of land ownership that conflicts with colonialism’s more individualistic concept of land ownership. This results in situations where people are told they are trespassing on land that their people have lived on for thousands of years by people who think ownership is determined by pieces of paper. The people living around Coal River Mountain have more of a right to ownership than out of state corporations.

When I came down I was very dizzy and disoriented while first walking on solid ground for the first time in over a week. We spent three days in jail before getting bailed out. As much as jail sucks, it can be a very empowering experience. All the prisoners I talked to about what I did were very supportive, though some probably thought I was crazy. They don’t like seeing the land destroyed either. One of them was very knowledgeable about wildlife and hates seeing beautiful habitat destroyed.

Thank you everyone who helped pull off this action and supported it. Thank you everyone who will pull off actions in the future that put a direct stop to atrocities that are killing communities. Hopefully you are one of those people. You don’t even have to risk arrest. There are lots of support roles than just about anyone can do. We meant to set up traverse lines between the trees so we could visit each other and share supplies during the sit, but ran out of time before the sun came up. Hopefully in the near future we can build an Ewok village.

I will be traveling in March, April and May doing presentations about what mountaintop removal coal mining is, the problems it causes, the many ways people are working to abolish it, and ways others can get involved. If you are at all interested in setting up a presentation at your school or in your community please contact me at ericblev@hotmail.com.

Please come to the Mountain Justice Spring Break from March 12-20 in southwest Virginia. You can register now at mjsb.org. Please come to the Mountain Justice Summer Camp from May 27-June 6 in eastern Kentucky. You will be able to register when camp gets closer at mountainjustice.org. Please check out the direct action campaign in West Virginia at climategroundzero.org.

Love,
Eric Blevins
www.therevolutionisnow.us

The Climate Movement is Dead:

Long Live the Climate Movement

In the aftermath of the COP15 talks in Copenhagen, the inability of the Big Greens, governments, and market approaches to find genuine and sustainable solutions to climate change is undeniable. As author Naomi Klein so aptly observed at the end of COP15 talks, “A particular model of dealing with climate change is dying.”

In the same uncompromising spirit as Rising Tide publications such as Deal or No Deal, and Hoodwinked in the Hothouse, CMID:LLCM delivers a timely critique of the failures of this “particular model” as exemplified by the mainstream NGOs who have grown all too cozy with corporations and the political establishment. It explores the ways in which “green” capitalism,electoral politics, and market mechanisms, far from solving the climate crisis, are some of the climate movement’s biggest obstacles.

Not content with mere polemic, CMID:LLCM charts a course that diverges from the dominant discourse of the mainstream climate movement. The essay lays out a strategy of supporting and escalating frontline struggles againstdirty energy while building a new global climate movement from the ground up, based around core principles of climate justice, grassroots power, solidarity, and direct action.

The Climate Movement Is Dead: Long Live the Climate Movement is a must-read for anyone left disenchanted by the mainstream climate movement, and all who are ready to step it up and fight for climate justice.

You can download a digital copy to view online or print yourself.

Or send us an email to contact (at) risingtidenorthamerica (dot) org with your name, address, and how many copies you would like to receive. We are happy to provide this publication for free but as an all volunteer collective we greatly appreciate donations. Also consider joining in our print run collaboration:

Rising Tide North America is excited to announce a “Print-Run Collaboration” project for CMID:LLCM.  Local groups and allies can help us raise the funds necessary for an initial print-run of several thousand copies, and in return, receive a big stack “hot-off-the-presses” at approximately the cost of printing (cheaper than photocopies!).

Please email us with “Print-Run Collaboration” in the subject line for more information!