The Next Eco-Warriors (39 page)

German playwright Bertolt Brecht once said, “Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, it is a hammer with which to shape it.” By making all our art ourselves, we were reshaping new clean energy economies.

While we strung together our protest signs, organizers were meeting down the hall to plan out the direction they'd offer participants. At this point, hundreds of people were pulling all-nighters to make the action possible.

Finally, it was the big weekend.

We converted a second warehouse into a Capitol Climate Action convergence space. The broken beams, dusty walls, cracked bricks, and holes in the floor seemed fitting. It hosted more art parties and continuous nonviolence trainings all weekend. The Ruckus Society brought a crew of trainers of color to teach civil disobedience to hundreds of white students. They joked about their role, “We're here to put some chocolate chips on this cookie!” Race was
front and center in a lot of conversations about how we would build a new world together. Legions of light-switch flippers were beginning to understand their role in our power lines of relations. I wished to myself that we had the time and space to go deeper with people about movement strategy and making change. I was proud of our nonviolence training factory but nervous that it was too much of a surface introduction. “The real victory for this action,” I told a friend, “is whether or not all these people go back home and roll up their sleeves and do community organizing.” I decided to say the same thing to kick off our first mass meeting that night.

Nearly four hundred packed into our dusty warehouse. The walls were coated in cracking brick and giant colorful banners. Pressing the megaphone to my lips I shouted, “Who here is from the
Northeast?”
Cheers thundered across the room. “What about the
Southwest
?”
“Yeahhh!
” activists boomed. As I called out each section of the country, the noise was deafening. Everyone was in tha house. Part infosession and part pep rally, that meeting brought a catharsis that reminded me why those endless hours of organizing were worth it. Crews of youth from Oakland taught everyone chants. Mass-action veterans and elders like Lisa Fithian broke down the plan, with giant maps papering the walls. We were organized. Later that night, youth from across the country danced and celebrated the birth of a new era.

_________

THEN IT WAS THE BIG DAY. Energy Action Coalition had a rally in front of the Capitol building, mobilizing some thousands of youth. I was encouraged by their turnout. The so-called apathetic youth didn't exist here that day. When their rally was over, we had teams in place to direct people three blocks away to our convergence spot.

May and Will from
350.org
helped set up the sound system. Like bees buzzing around a hive, friends were setting up the banners and flags. I spotted my childhood hero Dr. Vandana Shiva. Her snuggly embrace made me feel like an old friend. It was our first time meeting in person, though we had spoken many times about us kicking off the rally together. Dr. Shiva's work had inspired me for years. I was giddy.

“Are you ready to start?” I asked.

“Let's do it.” She smiled.

The bullhorn was back on my lips. In kicking off the rally, I think I said something cheesy about how the warmth of our bodies and action were going to heat up the cold day. After a few minutes of leading some chants, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by thousands of people, already moving in unison. Dr. Shiva took the mic.

Vandana talked about the Global Justice Movement confronting the World Trade Organization ten years earlier in Seattle, grounding us in the streams of movement that swirled around us, helping us stand on the shoulders of organizers before us.

Dr. Shiva has a presence that is calm and grounded but loud. She didn't yell into the microphone as much as hummed,

In handing me back the bullhorn, I felt as if she was passing the torch. I was humbled. “Let's go!” I shouted, and we were off.

It was like clockwork. Action teams deployed to each gate, locking them down. I thought about the brave crews of activists who were blockading the back gates, out of the view of the cameras and all the fanfare. Less concerned with the spectacle of it all, they were there to do a job. Many affiliated with Rising Tide, they wanted to lock down the back, to ensure that the Indigenous groups and Appalachians could lead the march and be in the spotlight. Solidarity. A Piikani and Dené Native named Gitz Crazyboy yelled into the bullhorn with an Indigenous contingent. He had come down from northern Canada to talk about how tar sands oil extraction was industrial genocide killing Indigenous communities and their way of life. As he talked about the cancer rates in his community, I looked at the army marching behind him and smiled.

We had a full program. And the clock was ticking—if we didn't surround our sound stage with people quick, the police were going to overwhelm us and tow it away.

I stepped on stage to emcee our main event. The sea of people swallowed the power plant in front of me. Insulated with cheering bodies, we had claimed our space. The cops couldn't move our stage now.

The Internet was streaming with real-time photos of beautiful images of young people blocking gates with banners reading Closed: for climate justice! Red, yellow, green, and blue banners swept around the DC streets like estuaries forming a river of endless faces yelling and singing.

I had to find some way to keep energy up and keep rolling through our tight program that featured hip-hop artists, scientists, politicians, community members, and folk singers. It was a blur. Amid the constant legal updates being barked over our radios, hot chocolate and blankets being distributed to participants, and speakers, we needed to keep people informed of the changing level of risk. Police negotiators were trying to make sure that those who were risking arrest were in the right places and that everyone was safe. I led chants and helped move us through our barrage of speakers. Bobby Kennedy Jr., Eleanor Holmes Norton, Dr. James Hansen, Gus Speth. The list went on. Then Enei took the mic.

“We're not environmentalists! We're here because our people are dying.” She was so precise with her analysis the seas of people in front of her were captivated. Without a doubt, the stories from the frontline community members, like Enei, energized the masses of people who sat-in for hours upon hours—all day in the cold. Nobody was getting in or out of that plant.

Then Bill addressed the crowd, “I've waited twenty years to see what the global warming movement was gonna look like, and boy does it look beautiful!” He motioned to the power plant that was now swarmed. “One down, six hundred more to go!”

The day was wearing on. We had reached the end of our speakers list. And we got word from our police negotiator that the cops had no intention of arresting anyone today. And we didn't have any other cards up our sleeves. We had already achieved our goal—the plant was shut down for the day. But we were all worried that it would feel like an anticlimax.

Even in the eleventh hour, even after we won, we were still debating the exit strategy. We could have escalated. “What about scaling the fences?” someone suggested. Anyone trying to enter the actual facility would definitely get arrested. I smiled at the thought of Dr. Hansen climbing over barbed wire. Wasn't gonna happen. And the more radical activists who would be gung ho for such an endeavor would take the spotlight off of the frontline folks and spokespeople.

We needed to end on a high note. I got the go-ahead from the team and stepped onto the stage.

“Well, I've got some good news, and I've got some better news ... ” I joked. Cheers erupted. “The good news is that we shut them down. Operations have stopped. We've won!” When the yelling died down, I continued, “And the better news is that they didn't even need to arrest us for it to happen!” It was my somewhat ungraceful attempt at a reframe. People were too excited to care much. “Let's see a show of hands of who has shut down a coal-fired power plant before today?” One or two people put their hands in the air, a bit confused. “And who is now gonna go home after today and do it
again, and again, and again?
” The thunder had returned.

The crowd marched back up the street, singing. The action was over. Mostly.

A few stragglers were unimpressed. They wanted to stay locked down till the bitter end. “We were promised that there would be arrests. This isn't a real civil disobedience, this was a choreographed photo op.” They had a point. We did much more hand-holding with this action than I had ever seen in any other mass mobilization. It was part of the terrain with the goal of engaging so many new folks. I still think we made the right choice in the end.

_________

THE CAPITOL CLIMATE ACTION HOPED TO CHANGE the national conversation on climate. Within a single media cycle, we had positive pieces about a mass climate action in the Associated Press,
Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, New York Times, Democracy Now!
, the
Nation
, and a host of others. The action generated more than seven hundred media stories.

In doing so, we wanted to open a doorway into the movement for lots of new people and legitimize nonviolent direct action as a tactic. The breadth of endorsing organizations is one indicator of success. More than a hundred groups publicly endorsed the action, ranging from public health organizations, religious groups, and clean energy businesses to grassroots environmental networks, labor groups, and racial justice organizations.

I feel proud of how the Capitol Climate Action served to supercharge the anticoal movement in the United States. Just three days after our action, there was another civil disobedience action at Coal River Mountain in West Virginia. Six days later, there was a mass action in Belgium blockading European Union Finance Ministers, with more than 350 arrests, citing our Capital action as a big inspiration for their recruitment. On March 14, there was an action in Knoxville protesting the Tennessee Valley Authority around a recent coal ash sludge spill. The same day, eighty activists inspired by our action marched in Palm Springs, California, as part of the Power Past Coal campaign. Three inspired actions happened that week in Massachusetts. Decentralized
actions targeting coal happened across the continent on April 1. A month later, there was a mass action called the Cliffside Climate Action in North Carolina to stop Duke Energy's proposed coal plant.

PHOTO BY KIMIA GHOMES

And that's just the beginning. Our generation is entering a profound time of transition and crisis. That much is certain. But the future is unwritten. Our work together will determine whether or not there will be justice for people and the planet.

_________

Joshua Kahn Russell currently works with the Ruckus Society training a wide variety of groups and networks in nonviolent direct action. The battle against coal in the United States has made some positive headway in recent years with new enforcement by the Environmental Protection Agency. But there is still a long and bumpy road ahead in the battle to end the fossil fuel madness
.

ONE DAY SOON, WE WILL STAND at the edge of a cliff, toes dangling, as the earth begins to collapse beneath our feet and we look to the depths into which we will fall. We know already we are being pushed to the very limits. In many ways, it's not our fault; we've been pushed here by generations addicted to the idea of
progress
, no matter what the costs, and who trained us as toddlers to swallow its extravagance whole. But now we must take responsibility, responsibility for things that aren't even our fault. Yes, it's unfair. Yes, it's an injustice. But we have two choices now: survival or suicide. It's just that simple.

The good news is there is a movement, some would even say a revolution, as the stories in this book testify. It's not a reincarnation of the 1970s environmental movement, but an entirely new movement of its own. It's as diverse in its tactics as it is in its voices. It's as global as global warming is. And it's surging in the so-called apathetic youth of the 21st century. Why? Because it comes down to that very question of survival. It's not the survival of future generations, as we've been told, but our own—and we know it. So we have to fight, fight for our lives.

But we won't be able to do it alone. As much as the stories in this book are of individuals who fought, they are also of groups of individuals who fought
the battle with them. The reality is heroes don't win the revolutions. It is ordinary people doing the extraordinary. And it takes all of us to battle for the changes that need to be made. Gandhi himself was not victorious alone but because of the people that stood beside him. Therefore, we cannot go at this alone either. The wheels of change turn because of groups of individuals and because of the masses, not ever because of one—despite what we like to tell ourselves.