No Coal! No Nukes! Not Kidding! (Climate Activists Lockdown in Asheville)
This past weekend over 100 activists converged outside of Asheville NC for the Southeast Convergence for Climate ActionThe camp was hosted by Southern Energy Network, Rising Tide, the Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS), and Energy Justice Summer.
The Convergence was a week of trainings, workshops, and strategy sessions focused on building a no-compromise movement against the fossil fuel industry and “false solutions” to climate change like nuclear energy, “clean coal,” and carbon trading.
Today our friends at Climate Convergence took a bold direct action against Bank of America over concerns regarding their investment throughout the coal cycle and their promotion of climate injustice.
Two activists locked down inside the main lobby and other activists blockaded the entrance to the downtown branch of Bank of America. The protest included a large, lively group of concerned citizens dressed as canaries and polar bears.
Read the press release here
Activists carried signs and banners that read: “Bank of America Stop Funding Climate Change,” “Bank of America Stop Mountaintop Removal,” “No Coal, No Nukes, No Kidding” “Bank of America Climate Criminal.”
High Resolution photos can be found here.
16 Responses to “No Coal! No Nukes! Not Kidding! (Climate Activists Lockdown in Asheville)”
Leave a Reply
All comments offered in the spirit of civil conversation are welcome! Commercial spam, obscenity and other rude behavior are not, and will be removed. Valid email addresses are required. (RAN respects your privacy; we will not use, lend, or sell your email address for any reason.)
August 13th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
The other piece of this being that both the camp and the action saw an overwhelming police presence. Various law enforcement agencies had helicopters, the SWAT team, the riot squad and dozens of police vehicles mobilized for this camp.
Why are these local jurisdictions spending tens of thousands on law enforcement resources and person hours, but not on doing something about climate change?
http://asheville.indymedia.org/article/236
August 13th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
NO Coal - NO Nukes - NO Kidding!
NO Compromise!
Joy
August 13th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Canaries and polar bears? Yeah that’ll go a long way toward finding a solution. Ever wonder what would happen to these coal mining areas if thousands of good paying jobs were eliminated… yeah, families in poverty is just a small price to pay to save the polar bears.
August 13th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
hi Seth– You might want to update yourself on the facts of the coal industry, poverty and jobs in coal producing regions [see the attached link]. If anything “modernized” coal mining techniques like mountaintop removal have thrown more families into poverty over the past 30-40 years. Between 1987 and 1997 there was a 29% decrease in mining jobs in coal producing states due to modern coal mining techniques, while profits for the companies and executives increased 32% [that's industry taking away jobs and putting more families in poverty, not environmentalists]. In the early 1950’s there were between 125,000 and 145,000 miners employed in West Virginia; in 2004 there were just over 16,000. During that time, coal production has increased. Today there are more florists in West Virginia than coal miners. Those responsible for the elimination of good paying jobs are Massey Energy, Arch Coal and Bank of America not activists working with communities to highlight the environmental and human rights violations perpetrated by these corporate entities.
As far as canaries and polar bears not helping finding solutions to our climate and energy woes, Americans have a long history of using non-violent creative direct action, from the Boston Tea Party to Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez, to raise consciousness about and resist the wheels of destruction. Bank of America funds coal from the cradle to the grave while promoting themselves as “green bank.” The sooner this practices ends, the sooner we will move onto the next important issue.
August 14th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Big Fish always eat little fish.!!!
August 14th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Well, after I looked at this site, I felt like going thruout my large home & turn on all my lights just for the hell of…..
Did anyone else feel this away after looking at this site?
Thanks
Dr. Dick
August 14th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Thanks spark, you’ve given me a few things to think about. You still have to remember that, despite what coal companies have done in the past, many people must rely on the industry. I was just wondering what jobs you think will be available in these areas after you’ve closed all the mines.
August 14th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Oh, P.S. about the polar bears, yeah, I got it. I just think it’s a little ridiculous… don’t you think comparing it to the Boston Tea Party, Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez is a bit of a stretch?
August 15th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
What happens in these communities is what happens all over the world when businesses close, people lose their jobs, and there’s no alternative in place.
They move to the city (or the “ex-urbs”) and become the landless poor or they stay and engage in the drug trade, most often meth and weed. In Humboldt County, California this has gone on for decades, with outsiders from Colombia now controlling the drug trade and bringing in a heavy culture of violence.
The point is, you can’t shut down the coal mines and not (loudly and clearly) propose real alternatives to coal mining at the same time. You will lose whatever real sympathy you deserve and at the same time damage the cause.
You’d better serve the mountains, forests, and trees by bringing non-poluting industries to the mountain communities.
Unfortunately of course, that requires being part of the capitalist system most deadheads and pseudo-punks who make up your support network claim to rail against.
But you can’t have it both ways.
August 15th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
See, Kevin gets it.
August 16th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Working with labor, encouraging investment in green technology, and creating jobs in a sustainable economy are all part of RAN’s strategy as an organization. You might be right that we don’t say it loud enough, but keep watching.
You’re certainly correct that there is a cost associated with coal abatement. It will cost money to transition workers away from work in destructive industries, and it’s not clear who will pay for it (my vote: tax carbon and fund a hefty rebate to people in coal-affected communities). But that cost doesn’t go away if we stick with the status quo; in fact, it grows. Who pays if we continue pumping carbon into the atmosphere and destroy our own habitat? Future generations do, many times over, most in communities that are even worse off than coal towns in the United States. Furthermore, almost all of the money made by allowing the coal economy to continue will line the pockets of investors. Allowing coal pollution to continue would be a costly and ineffective way to help the communities that you’re concerned about, not to mention the fact that they’d still be working in a coal mine.
It’s not OK to maintain the status quo until we come up with something better, and the coal industry won’t spontaneously disappear if other kinds of economic development occur in coal-affected communities (although there’s a lot of reason to believe that resource extraction actually inhibits long-term development). Keeping coal on life support until it’s convenient to switch to something else is like taking out a loan against the welfare of our children. Like a sub-prime borrower, you’re eying the low, low introductory rate (keeping the coal industry wheezing along through subsidies and lax environmental policy) and betting that your children and grandchildren will have a way to handle things when the shit hits the fan a couple decades down the line. But unlike with the current mortgage slump, when we default on our debt to the climate, the balance will be extracted from us in human suffering.
August 16th, 2007 at 8:51 am
Real solutions to environmental problems will never take place by poorly planned publicity stunts…..and in fact such self-serving stunts actually intefere with the great work being done by thousands of environmental groups with long records of success.
Environmentally concerned citizens around the global are joining TOGETHER to creat SOLUTIONS to the problem by creating energy alternatives.
The 1970’s ended over 25 years ago……dressing in costumes and shutting down public access to local banks actually works AGAINST real solutions.
I challenge this organization to take off their bear suits, take off their canary costumes, and GET TO WORK to solve our problems.
Change results from years of hard work…not hollerin at the power structures.
THINK!!!!
August 16th, 2007 at 8:59 am
Don: it’s not for lack of solutions that banks continue to fund destructive industry. It’s for lack of will. Until we force them to bring their behavior in line with the values of their customers, no amount of “THINK!!!!!”-ing will solve the problem.
August 16th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Thanks for your response Luke…
I challenge you to study the history of the Environmental movement. Dressing up in costumes and closing down branch banks has NEVER forced ANYONE to “bring their behavior in line with the values of their customers”.
I agree with your goal of changing behavior of the power structures that exist….but why use failed strategies that everyone else abandoned 30 years ago????
Why not actually create solutions?
Why not THINK about the ultimate impact of publicity stunts and whether they have any chance of creating solutions?
Other environmentalists and environmental groups around the globe have learned from the past how to be effective. We can’t afford to waste time dressing up and playing games.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Don, actually a study released back in 2004 from the University of Washington found the opposite. The researcher, a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology, found that “each protest event that occurs in a given year increas[es] the number of pro-environmental bills passed by about 2.2 percent … working from the inside has not had much of an impact.”
This is only in the legislative sphere, pertaining to whether or not bills get passed, but I think RAN’s work speaks for itself in the corporate arena. Citi, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase all agreed to sit down with RAN to craft environmental policies due to our actions at their branches (though we do use lots of other tactics as well).
In fact, since we’ve dressed as monkeys, dinosaurs, 18th century statesmen, barbecue chefs, and even hazardous material workers, a running joke around the office is that the sillier the costume, the better the policy we get.
October 10th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
[...] movements. At Bank of America’s regional office in Asheville NC, Rising Tide activists locked themselves together in protest of the bank’s coal investments. A few weeks later, Mountain Justice [...]