Why would I fly across the country on my own dime knowing I would most likely end up in jail in one of the poorest parts of America?

Well, have you ever heard of MTR?

Don’t feel bad, my friends are intelligent well-read and informed people, but most of them had never heard of MTR (Mountain Top Removal) either.

So, I went to Coal River to help bring much needed attention to this hidden, criminal (but somehow legal) form of mining. I was honored to be joining an inspiringly brave group of concerned Americans, which included – NASA climate scientist James Hansen who was among the first to sound the alarm on the climate crisis. The sharp, charismatic, 94 year old, former West Virginia U.S. Representative and Secretary of State Ken Hechler, who was the first congressman to introduce a Federal bill to abolish strip mining in 1971. (If passed the bill could have prevented this mess we find ourselves in). And Michael Brune, executive director of Rainforests Action Network who is committed to ending to this terrible, destructive practice. I was deeply moved to be arrested with those affected by MTR in Kentucky, and the many local residents fighting for their very lives, including a half dozen senior citizens, canes, walkers and all.

Me with Dr. James Hansen at Marsh Fork Elementary School

Mountain Top Removal is a devastatingly destructive form of mining and has already destroyed 2,000,000 acres in the Appalachian Mountains.

Coal companies have literally blown up over 500 mountain tops to access the coal seams and then dumped the refuse into the valleys below, killing over 3000 miles of HEADWATER streams. The EPA just gave the go ahead for an additional 42 mountaintops to be blown off with another 6 permits pending.

Mountain Top Removal leaves behind a virtual hideous moonscape of devastated earth, billions of gallons of poisonous toxic sludge, and boarded up towns with dramatically high rates of cancer.

Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for, and am deeply indebted to the miners working in coalmines and on MTR projects who risk their lives daily to bring power to our country. I understand they feel threatened by anything that might take away their jobs. And, I don’t want to see them lose more jobs, as 75% of mining jobs have already been lost to the machines and explosives of MTR.

While it takes fewer miners to remove coal with Mountain Top Removal there are just as many dangers, accidents and fatalities! It is a cheaper way for the companies to mine and that’s why it’s becoming so pervasive.

Yesterday, I received this email from a woman in Virginia -

Dear Daryl,
Thank you so much for coming to West Virginia and trying to save our mountains from Mountain top removal. I am a 9th generation Appalachian and it pains us to see what is happening. If it was not for the Internet I wouldn’t have known about your efforts. Massey has quite a bit of influence of the local media in the coalfields. I am sorry you were arrested but I thank you for standing up for what is right.  We need to work on sustainable communities here in the mountains so that coal miners will have opportunities for jobs not so dangerous. My brother works, when he can’t find anything else, at the mines driving the large dump trucks that haul the coal out of the pits. It’s dangerous work even if you are not underground. You just wouldn’t believe the equipment they give them to work with. This one site he was in this massive huge dump truck that the floorboard was rusted out with open holes. Rocks would fly back into the cab from the tires. And when it rains, it’s a mudslide. One of his co -workers was killed when the dump truck went over an embankment last year. Reporting gets you fired. And yet these workers will defend the job because there is nothing else. So thank you for standing up with us. We do appreciate it.

Then there’s the sickness…

According to WVU’s institute for health policy research, coal county residents are more likely to suffer from chronic heart, lung and kidney diseases, cancers and generally suffer from excess numbers of premature death. There’s a high cancer risk for up to 1 out of every 50 Americans living near the more than 100 billion gallons of toxic sludge in the clay-lined and unlined  (the majority unlined) coal ash landfills and slurry ponds, such as the TVA Kingston ash sludge landfill that collapsed into the Emory River in December.

Tennessee Valley Authority officials consistently have said the ash spilled in December from the utility’s Kingston Fossil Plant wet landfill in Harriman, Tenn., and in January from its Widows Creek pond in Stevenson, Ala., is non-hazardous…  but after the spill, regulatory and independent testing have found high levels of toxicity in the spilled waste and raw water where the two spills occurred. 31 of the landfills and slurry ponds in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama are on or near major waterways!

The slurry pond above the Marsh fork elementary school where we held our protest holds 2.8 billion gallons (it’s one of the smallest ponds – one nearby in brushing fork holds 9 billion gallons) of sludge in unlined pits containing arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury.

Marsh Fork Elementary School site and toxic holding pond

Tragically but predictably in coal river valley, the children are often sick with headaches and asthma and of the 200 students and teachers at Marsh fork elementary school cancer rates are higher than average.

Three teachers have died from cancer and one is struggling with disease now.

In 2005 one student died from ovarian cancer at age seventeen and another was still battling ovarian cancer.

Today I received this from a man in Raleigh County, West Virginia –

West Virginia. It is hell.
Every morning a 6 am my cat starts coughing. My eyes burn, my nose burns (sometimes bleeds), I get ill, and my health continues to fall apart. I got two forms of cancer, I can’t drink the water.. and we are 15 miles from Marsha Fork where they are making (was supposed to be shut down) a cyanide based pesticide that in an accident killed 1800 people in India. My kid is lead poisoned, my wife is- and in a mile radius 10 people have had heart attacks or died from whatever is here. The dust is full of arsenic and the Massey power plants create a blue haze which is really sulfuric acid. EPA won’t come near this place. It is owned by the coal industry. Thousands, who live here and are dying from 100 miles of rivers under coal sludge, Do the earth a favor and check on this and if you feel like improving our life send us a ticket out of here. I am sending you a picture of my son. He is being poisoned here. It breaks my heart. We cannot even get workman’s comp and have huge families. We are the poor of southern West Virginia..

State regulators are telling the people that it’s an “improvement” to flatten a forested mountain, seed it with grass and hope that some shrubs will grow – and then allow hunters who have signed “the appropriate waivers of liability, indemnifications and assumptions of risks” to hunt whatever animals might choose to inhabit such barren fields.

As humorist Dave Barry says, we’re not making this up, although we wish we were.

Let me make one thing clear…  there is no such thing as clean coal!!!

I wish President Obama would stop using the term and take CEQ chief Nancy Sutley and EPA head Lisa Jackson to visit these unfortunate mining sites under their jurisdiction.

When we flip the switch to turn our lights on, most of us have no idea where that power comes from. According to the U.S. dept. of energy, more than 50% of our electricity comes from coal.

Coal emits much more carbon (CO2) per unit of energy than oil and natural gas. From the acid drainage of mines polluting rivers and streams, to the release of mercury and other toxins when its burned into the atmosphere, the fine particulates that wreak havoc on human health, and the colossal waste, coal pollutes every step of the way.

“Clean coal” is the industry’s attempt to “clean up” its dirty image – the industry’s green wash buzzword. It is not a new type of coal. “Clean coal” methods only move pollutants from one waste stream to another.  Coal is a dirty business!

The good news is we have a solution! A study of the long-term benefits of INFINITE Wind Power versus FINITE coal MTR in Coal River Mountain, West Virginia already exists. They show “excellent potential” for efficiency, productivity and economic benefit. Though it doesn’t have short-term financial returns, wind promises to provide clean, inexpensive energy and offer scores of safe jobs for the long term. Just check out the staggering figures from a report released by the American Wind Energy Association “wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year”. Renewable energy will continue to grow exponentially where as mining jobs have decreased or remained relatively stagnant at “81,000 workers” for the over 20 years, according to the 2007 U.S. dept of energy report.

I can understand why those who live in coal towns are frustrated, because while we have this technology available to us NOW – it is still just “a promise” in these regions.

Being led away by the police

It’s imperative we let our president, our elected public servants and entrepreneurs know that this is where we want our investment to be directed.

Hopefully some wise, forward thinking heroes will step up the plate, build the wind farm and take this incredible win, win, wind, opportunity to bury the dirty dinosaur of Mountain Top Removal forever.

Daryl Hannah
http://www.crmw.net/
http://www.appvoices.org/
http://ilovemountains.org/
http://www.ram.org/obamamtr

You can follow Daryl on Twitter: http://twitter.com/dhlovelife

About a month or so after the Capitol Climate action I wrote a movement strategy piece to reflect on its lessons. It is the cover story for the May issue of Z Magazine and pasted below. This magazine came out on the day we heard from the Administration that they have begun to implement their promise to phase coal out of the Capitol Power Plant.

Climate Justice and Coal’s Funeral Procession
Learning from the Capitol Climate Action

The snow was 4.5 inches deep and it was 23 degrees out when our action started at 1pm. We could already hear the Fox News commentators making the usual absurd statements: “A global warming protest in the snow?! Maybe this climate change stuff isn’t real after all, ha ha ha.” But by the end of the day, even Fox News gave positive coverage to the largest protest in history demanding solutions to the climate crisis.

On March 2nd, around 4,000 people came to the Capitol Power Plant in Washington DC, over 2,000 of whom risked arrest through civil disobedience. The vast majority had never been to a demonstration of any kind before, let alone engaged in non-violent direct action. People from communities most directly impacted by coal’s lifecycle — from Navajo reservations in the Southwest to Appalachian towns in the Southeast — led the march. With vibrant multicolored flags depicting windmills, people planting gardens, waves crashing, and captions like “community,” “security,” “change” and “power,” we sat-in to blockade five entrances to the power plant that literally fuels Congress. We called the whole thing the “Capitol Climate Action” (CCA).

The belching smoke stacks just two blocks from the Capitol building made a fitting target for a national flashpoint. They symbolize the stranglehold that the dirty fossil fuel industry – and coal industry in particular – has on our government, economy, and future. Burning coal is the single biggest contributor to global warming. We will not be able to solve the climate crisis or build a clean energy economy without breaking its hold.

Notable people of all kinds joined our demonstration, legitimizing the tactic of civil disobedience for a mainstream audience. From the scientific community, Dr. James Hansen (the world’s foremost climatologist) and Gus Speth (former environment advisor to Jimmy Carter) risked arrest. Writers like Wendell Berry joined them. Environmental advocates like Dr. Vandana Shiva and Bill McKibben, religious leaders of all stripes, DC’s Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, and celebrities such as Daryl Hannah participated.

At the end of the day it was clear that the police had been overwhelmed by our numbers and were not going to arrest anyone unless we escalated to felony charges, which we were unwilling to do (though the image of Dr. Hansen scaling a fence is pretty romantic). Instead, we declared victory after shutting the plant down for the afternoon. Thousands of us exited on our own terms and committed to use the experience to build our local movements stronger in what has become a defining year for the climate.

We cannot win the battle on climate change without immediate, binding, science-based federal legislation. 2009 is crucial, and not just because of the terrifying tipping points that scientists describe. It’s our year because the political window to pass this legislation is growing increasingly urgent as we march toward the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen this December. In the U.S., the fossil fuel industry employs over 2,340 corporate lobbyists and is throwing over $90 million at pushing false solutions (nuclear, “clean” coal, industrial agrofuels, and others) that devastate communities. In response, people’s movements need to create political space for progressives in office to write bolder policy (and push them do to so) in the short and mid-term. For the long-term, we need to continue to build community-based solutions, like wind farms, urban gardens, and other projects that localize our economies. This calls for an aligned “inside / outside” movement strategy that honors the different roles that a broad spectrum of organizations, networks, and activists must take.

CCA sought to anchor an outside action-arm of this spectrum. The role of such an anchor is to help shift the center of political conversation in the U.S. further to the left. This must happen within the context of building the broad-based progressive majoritarian coalition currently coalescing in the United States, offering a holistic narrative and program of solutions to intersecting crises (ecological, economic, political etc).

The mistakes and successes of CCA are instructive for building a movement that is both broad-based and politically savvy, as well as bold in demanding genuine solutions. Evaluations of actions like CCA must always be measured against this objective.

Context
The pace of direct actions against coal has sharply increased since 2004. These campaigns have been organized and carried out by a polycentric global network of student organizers, “frontline” communities (those most directly affected by injustice), radical environmentalists, and traditional non-profits. In the United States, communities have been using non-violent direct action to confront coal at all stages of its lifecycle (finance, extraction, “cleaning” and transport, burning, and energy consumption). This trajectory began gaining momentum on November 10, 2004 with a blockade of Maryland’s Dickerson Power Plant, grew to three major direct actions in 2005, two more in 2006, six in 2007, shot up to 18 actions in 2008, and 15 actions within the first two and a half months of 2009 alone.

Similar to the Anti-Nuclear movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Anti-Coal movement has targeted specific mines and plants while challenging the overall legitimacy of fossil-fuel-based economies.

We organized the Capitol Climate Action because we saw an opening to connect these struggles more publicly, help build momentum around them, and “supercharge” the energy to keep the exponential increase rising.

This struggle has transcended single-issue organizing. The varied efforts to stop coal have brought diverse stakeholders together. Stemming from the people of color, working class, and women-led Environmental Justice movement, Climate Justice has become a political banner for the climate crisis’ intersecting racial justice, economic equity, community health, and environmental quality issues, of which elements of “no coal struggles” are a part. It is useful to think of campaigns against coal as one strand of a robust frontline-led Climate Justice movement.

At CCA, marginalized communities impacted by mountain-top removal mining in Appalachia mobilized their bases to travel to DC. Indigenous communities resisting strip mining and resource theft from the Southwest United States and from Canada joined them. Folks suffering from asthma and pollution caused by coal-burning plants in the inner city also played a role, and were joined and supported by thousands of other folks (primarily white youth and students, but also religious congregations, families, teachers, and others) new to this movement.

Organizers from four national/regional non-profit organizations (Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and the Ruckus Society) comprised the CCA organizing core. These were not community-based organizations, but rather sought to act in solidarity with frontline groups. CCA organizers consulted such communities throughout the build-up, and we invited these groups to lead the march and become spokespeople for the action.

CCA Goals and Outcomes
We had three “big picture” goals with the Capitol Climate Action:

1) Change the national conversation on climate.
We wanted to get sympathetic mainstream media coverage, with a climate justice framework that highlighted coal as a driver of global warming. Within a single media cycle, we had positive pieces in the Associated Press (AP), TIME Magazine, CNN, USA Today, New York Times blogs, Democracy Now!, The Nation, and a host of others. The action generated over 700 media stories.

We wanted the message to be specific enough to be impactful (no more coal!), but also solution-oriented and visionary. Great care was taken to make sure the media reflected concerns ranging from public health to economic sustainability, weaving them together to make a political statement that was quite radical. While media outlets ignored the specifics around “2009 climate policy”, the general receptiveness of media to our broader message reflects an opportunity to continue to build and shape a new progressive narrative around climate and the economy.

2) Press the new administration and Congress for bolder climate policy in 2009.
This “mid-term” goal is difficult to evaluate just a month after the action, but we are already seeing indications of some success. Three days before our action, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Capitol Power Plant would be “greened” by switching from coal to natural gas. Our action objectives went well beyond this specific plant, and natural gas is certainly not the solution (it’s an industry-backed false solution), but it’s a meaningful step forward that was clearly the direct result of the threat of protest. While Pelosi’s move seemed aimed at taking the wind out of our sails, it had the opposite effect, publicly validating the power and efficacy of grassroots popular pressure. It demonstrated that people-power can open the political window we have with a new Congress and administration…and that we need to push harder.

We timed our action within the “first 100 days” of the new administration to communicate that regular people are offering leadership and not waiting around to have change legislated for them. More specifically, CCA coincided with the largest lobby day on climate in history. Thousands of young people who attended the Power Shift 09 youth summit on the climate crisis (occurring that same weekend) demanded clean energy policy inside Congress. Various reasons prevented us from working explicitly with the Power Shift conference to have a publicly unified approach, which was a missed opportunity to integrate strategies and do thorough political education with participants about the value of outside friction creating inside momentum.

3) Build the climate justice movement and legitimize non-violent direct action and civil disobedience.
We believe that we will solve the intersecting crises of our time through a mass movement of millions. As such we must to be relevant to, and help build our “anchor” as part of, our country’s progressive majority. We therefore did not focus on mobilizing seasoned activists. We primarily engaged “passive allies” – people who care about the issue but have not yet taken action. We wanted CCA to be a vehicle through which new people had a transformational first experience and joined the movement.

The breadth of endorsing organizations is one indicator of success. More than 100 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. These groups helped mobilize a base of mostly first-time activists, (many of whom also came from Power Shift) who participated in a build-up that trained more than 2,000 people in civil disobedience, growing the capacity of our movement.

We also measure success by how well this action served to “supercharge” the movement against coal across the country. Three days after the CCA, there was another civil disobedience action at Coal River Mountain in West Virginia. Six days later there was a mass-action in Belgium blockading EU Finance Ministers, with over 350 arrests, citing CCA as a big inspiration for their recruitment. On March 14, there was an action in Knoxville protesting the Tennessee Valley Authority around the recent coal ash sludge spill. The Same day, 80 activists inspired by CCA marched in Palm Springs, CA as part of the Power Past Coal campaign. Three CCA inspired actions happened that week in Massachusetts. Decentralized “Fossil Fools Day” actions targeting coal happened across the continent on April 1. On April 20, there is a mass-action called the “Cliffside Climate Action” in North Carolina to stop Duke Energy’s proposed coal plant.

Manufacturing Victory? Arrest and Escalation.
CCA navigated new challenges: we wanted to be good organizers and “meet people where they were at” – which meant “baby steps” for brand new folks. After CCA, some of the more seasoned activists critiqued that we did too much controlled hand-holding of new activists and should have escalated further.

We likely could not have escalated this action without some incurring felony charges and potentially endangering others unprepared for it. While escalating to achieve some arrests may have attracted more media attention, it is likely it would have been lower quality. Such coverage would likely focus on a handful of arrests rather than 4,000+ courageous people braving the freezing cold in an unpermitted march and illegal action. Regardless, participant expectations lost alignment at the exit: depending on one’s perception of action goals, this move was either strategic, or a fabricated victory declaration.

A “decision dilemma” is a direct action term that refers to a certain kind of escalation. It means that we create a situation, through non-violent action, where the target is forced to either negotiate with the activists, or react with force (including arrests). Mistake number one was that CCA lacked a real decision dilemma from the beginning, putting us in a difficult spot on the day-of. The lack of demands around this specific plant (and defaulting to national policy-related demands being advanced by the students lobbying that day) undercut the possibility for one. There was no specific response we were demanding on that day, other than the prevention of movement in and out of the plant. In freezing weather and police who were determined to wait us out, we had no tricks up our sleeve. We made the right decision for our circumstance, though questions about whether we could (or should) have shaped the action differently beforehand are valid.

Tactical circumstances (blizzards and all) aside, escalation must be in service of larger movement strategy – would pushing harder have been a service to the goal of bringing along the general public and pulling the conversation further left? Perhaps.

There are two kinds of direct action: “instrumental” and “expressive.”

Expressive actions communicate an idea. They are like a big exclamation point. They help shape popular discourse by influencing public debate. In these kinds of actions, arrests can help raise a profile, attract attention, and can give activists a moral higher ground. They can also, however, marginalize change-agents and distract from core messages, instead focusing on the tactic rather than the issue. Context is important.

Instrumental actions have an immediate concrete goal, directly stopping something from happening (for example, blockading a port deploying weapons to Iraq). In such actions, arrests are not the goal, but often an unfortunate byproduct. As friends have humorously noted, in any struggle throughout history, getting captured is usually seen as a bad thing.

The Capitol Climate Action was a mix of both of these things, leading to differences in perspective among participants about the role of arrests, and a lack of clarity about the utility of focusing on this specific plant, versus the stated symbolic action objectives. This action was an opportunity for us to flex our muscle; it served as a great “gateway,” though it didn’t fully test our limits.

Ninjas playing Chess
While there were over 100 organizations endorsing CCA, the core organizing was convened by four non-profits. The resources and time from these groups helped this action be detail-oriented and well coordinated. The front-line community groups we consulted said they did not have the capacity to help in the organizing, but requested input on the message as well as clear roles up-front in the action itself. Tactical decisions were made on-the-ground by a group of folks prioritizing safety of the group, empowering participants, and getting wide media coverage. Toward that end, we encouraged participants to form affinity groups (small groups of people who support one another). Unlike mass-actions of the Global Justice movement era, these affinity groups did not have decision-making power during the action itself. This organizational model was appropriate for the goals of this particular action, though there is still a crucial role for mass-actions that are rooted in street-level democracy and horizontal decision-making. As a symbolic action, CCA sought to stoke the wildfire of local instrumental actions across the country against the coal industry. Such instrumental actions must be community-led and part of ongoing strategic campaigns.

If we hope to have a sophisticated action-arm of a broader progressive coalition we must be precise about the roles of different organizing models as well as the roles of various organizations within them: “insider” non-profits who have a seat at the government table, direct-action-oriented non-profits, radical grassroots networks, community-based organizations, frontline communities, progressive politicians and green business.
Those of us who play the outside game must increasingly learn to be like ninjas – using exactly as much force as required to reach our objectives, but not more. We must be surgical in our interventions and have a strategic plan for how it helps shape the inside game. As such, movement strategy looks a lot more like a game of chess than one of checkers. Checkers are black and white (or black and red, as it were), and lend themselves to homogenous plowing forward without forethought. Chess is not just a game of strategy, but one that has a team of players each with differentiated roles and abilities. This is our current political moment.

Moving forward
Our political landscape is shifting, as is the nature of the “environmental” movement. Three out of the four White House environmental “heavy hitters” are people of color. Environmental leaders with racial justice organizing backgrounds like Van Jones are becoming Obama’s advisors. This signals a meaningful opening.

Until now, struggles against the coal industry have primarily centered on preventing the construction of new coal-burning plants. We now need to go after existing coal plants across the country. Here, lessons from the Anti-Nuclear movement are instructive. Direct actions at plants across the country did not decommission individual nuclear facilities, but cumulatively helped create moratorium on nuclear plant construction that lasted decades.

The seeds are planted for decentralized actions against coal across the United States, integrated with varied campaigning tactics on multiple fronts. Should we be successful at networking efforts, this network must weave itself into a broader Climate Justice movement (whether or not it uses that name). If we hope to win, the movement must be relevant enough to relate to, and help create, a broad-based progressive majority that is unafraid to build unlikely alliances across the political spectrum, while maintaining a principled anchor of its left wing.

Groups helping anchor the left wing of this formation are tying conditions to participation. These conditions currently center around economic empowerment and social uplift for communities of color and other impacted peoples, led by a compelling, if potentially co-opt-able, call for green jobs. Climate Justice organizers can build their leverage in this new political terrain through increased demonstrations of power. The Capitol Climate Action sought to test our limits, and found that we’re ready for more. So let’s push further.

For photos, video, and other multimedia from the Capitol Climate Action, see www.capitolclimateaction.org.

Joshua Kahn Russell is the Grassroots Actions Manager at Rainforest Action Network and was a lead organizer on the Capitol Climate Action.

This morning, the Cliffside Climate Action brought hundreds to Duke Energy’s headquarters in Charlotte North Carolina to protest the construction of the new Cliffside coal facility.

The latest news is that 44 community members and supporters have been arrested, sending a bold message of urgency around the need to get off coal for the health of our communities and the future of our planet.

The Cliffside Climate Action is the latest in the growing wave of civil disobedience demanding that we get our country off dirty energy and coal power. Duke Energy’s continued pursuit of construction of two coal-fired power plants stands in stark contrast to its rhetoric of environmental care.

Check out all the photos in the Charlotte Observer, the Stop Cliffside Twitter feed, and a piece in the WCNC News.

There are moments in a nation’s — and a planet’s — history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived, and we are writing to say that we hope some of you will join us in Washington D.C. on Monday March 2 in order to take part in a civil act of civil disobedience outside a coal-fired power plant near Capitol Hill.

We will be there to make several points:

• Coal-fired power is driving climate change. Our foremost climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, has demonstrated that our only hope of getting our atmosphere back to a safe level—below 350 parts per million co2—lies in stopping the use of coal to generate electricity.
• Even if climate change were not the urgent crisis that it is, we would still be burning our fossil fuels too fast, wasting too much energy and releasing too much poison into the air and water. We would still need to slow down, and to restore thrift to its old place as an economic virtue.
• Coal is filthy at its source. Much of the coal used in this country comes from West Virginia and Kentucky, where companies engage in “mountaintop removal” to get at the stuff; they leave behind a leveled wasteland, and impoverished human communities. No technology better exemplifies the out-of-control relationship between humans and the rest of creation.
• Coal smoke makes children sick. Asthma rates in urban areas near coal-fired power plants are high. Air pollution from burning coal is harmful to the health of grown-ups too, and to the health of everything that breathes, including forests.

The industry claim that there is something called “clean coal” is, put simply, a lie.But it’s a lie told with tens of millions of dollars, which we do not have. We have our bodies, and we are willing to use them to make our point. We don’t come to such a step lightly. We have written and testified and organized politically to make this point for many years, and while in recent months there has been real progress against new coal-fired power plants, the daily business of providing half our electricity from coal continues unabated. It’s time to make clear that we can’t safely run this planet on coal at all. So we feel the time has come to do more–we hear President Barack Obama’s call for a movement for change that continues past election day, and we hear Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s call for creative non-violence outside coal plants. As part of the international negotiations now underway on global warming, our nation will be asking China, India, and others to limit their use of coal in the future to help save the planet’s atmosphere. This is a hard thing to ask, because it’s their cheapest fuel. Part of our witness in March will be to say that we’re willing to make some sacrifices ourselves, even if it’s only a trip to the jail.

With any luck, this will be the largest such protest yet, large enough that it may provide a real spark. If you want to participate with us, you need to go through a short course of non-violence training. This will be, to the extent it depends on us, an entirely peaceful demonstration, carried out in a spirit of hope and not rancor. We will be there in our dress clothes, and ask the same of you. There will be young people, people from faith communities, people from the coal fields of Appalachia, and from the neighborhoods in Washington that get to breathe the smoke from the plant.

We will cross the legal boundary of the power plant, and we expect to be arrested. After that we have no certainty what will happen, but lawyers and such will be on hand. Our goal is not to shut the plant down for the day–it is but one of many, and anyway its operation for a day is not the point. The worldwide daily reliance on coal is the danger; this is one small step to raise awareness of that ruinous habit and hence help to break it.

Needless to say, we’re not handling the logistics of this day. All the credit goes to a variety of groups, especially EnergyAction (which is bringing thousands of young people to Washington that weekend), Greenpeace, the Ruckus Society, and the Rainforest Action Network. A website at that latter organization is serving as a temporary organizing hub: http://ran.org/get_involved/powershift_and_mass_civil_disobedience_updates/. If you go there, you will find a place to leave your name so that we’ll know you want to join us.

Thank you,

Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben

We woke up at 3:30 am, but few of us had slept the night before. You’d think we’d be groggy, but the adrenaline and excitement propelled us into action. By 5:30am two trucks holding steel barrels reading “good jobs, healthy communities: we deserve a clean energy future” and “prosperity without poison” pulled into the rendezvous point. My heart was pounding as I pulled a van full of concerned citizens and young activists to meet them, two more cars trailing me. A half hour later we all jumped out at the entrance to Dominion’s new $1.8 Billion coal-fired power plant in Wise County VA. Within seconds we had a blockade. Nine people were connected to concrete-filled barrels, two of which donned six large solar panels illuminating the sun in the background of a large banner reading “Renewable Jobs to Renew Appalachia.” Two more chained themselves to gates, keeping them closed. Our solar lit banner stretched out above the rosy smiles of visionaries young and old. It was a true privilege to work with such skilled organizers and help coordinate one of the most fluid, tight, and positive Nonviolent Direct Actions I’ve ever been a part of.

We watched the sun rise together.

CHECK OUT OUR VIDEO HERE:

Solidarity

I’m not from Appalachia. I’m here because I’ve been deeply inspired by coal-field residents who have spent their lives standing up for clean air and water, good green jobs and a better future for their families. And it’s made them subject to intense harassment and intimidation. Wise County citizens have been fighting this Dominion plant for over two years; they’ve spoken out at every public hearing, filed ever paper and lawsuit possible, and gotten 45,000 people to sign a “mile long” petition to the governor. And now many took the next step and invited friends from around the region and country to join them in solidarity for the first ever protest at this plant. Nonviolent Direct Action is about risking one’s own personal safety for the greater good. It is an act of courage that can come with some severe consequences. That people travel from all around to support this local struggle is emblematic of the world we are fighting for – one in which we look out for one another and support each other, even when that comes at personal cost. 11 of the activists today were arrested and are currently navigating their way through the labyrinth that is the U.S. legal system. We have a prayer vigil setting up for them as I type this.

Intergenerational

Alongside those who chose to put their bodies on the line, came a contingent of intergenerational cheering protesters, including a nun, veterans, schoolteachers, and students. The positive energy was infectious: there was a sense of agency and empowerment shared among all of us, even as we choreographed an elaborate and potentially dangerous dance between police and Dominion employees. The action was courteous, respectful, and residents who were new to this type of action kept remarking about how it was a “class act.” The words “classy,” “beautiful,” “reasonable,” and “respectful” were constantly heard both from Wise County residents, passers-by in cars and trucks, and even the police.

It’s no surprise people were ready to take such a step – and to take it so seriously. Wise County has already had 25% of its historic mountain ranges destroyed forever to mountaintop removal mining. We’re not just talking about saving the environment here, we’re talking about cultural survival for one of the poorest regions of the country.

Vision

Our action was visually striking. Our banners said things like: “Rise Above Dirty Energy,” “Jobs or Clean Water? We Deserve Both!” and many of us wore shirts saying “Invest in Appalachia, Don’t Destroy It. Today’s Destruction is not Tomorrow’s Prosperity.” Our positive energy and solution-oriented approach clearly had resonance, demonstrating that we were in the overwhelming majority. Most cars on the highway visibly reacted to our scene, and in a community so divided over such a controversial topic, over 85% of the reactions were enthusiastic and supportive. A record by most standards for demonstrations of any kind.

Solidarity was clearly a theme of a day. Not only did people from surrounding communities come together to take a stand, but there were actions in support organized from Coast (NYC) to Coast (CA). In San Francisco more Rainforest Action Network activists infiltrated the Bank of America annual investors’ conference and managed to secretly swap out Dominion CEO Thomas F. Farrell’s presentation with our own – full of photos from this morning’s Virginia action. It stayed up for fifteen minutes, much to his dismay.

Strategy

So many of us chose to engage in this action because it made good movement-sense. Beyond the campaign itself, actions like this help move the coal conversation forward – locally, regionally, and nationally, shifting the spectrum of the political debate. Local groups declared that actions like this offer them bargaining chips – upping the ante in negotiations on a wide range of coal fights, compelling other residents to action, and most importantly raising the profile and visibility of people who are often unseen in the rest of the United States. Locals sent a clear message: we will not be silent. All of this within an international context in which a recent landmark court case determined that Climate Change was so urgent that it justified breaking the law.

It’s only been a few hours since we left Dominion, and there is already a steady stream of media – one sure to grow as the day progresses. For such a small-town action, with the nearest media outlets over an hour away, in addition to front page articles in all the local papers, we’ve already had articles in:

The Associated Press (AP) Wire

Washington Post

National Public Radio (NPR)

The Richmond Times Dispatch

Democracy Now!

Kingsport Times News

WAVY TV 10

Bristol Herald Courier

Virginia News

WTOP News

Daily Press

WJZ

DC Indymedia

Guerrilla News Network

Mobile News Network

SpinWatch

WSLS 10

And that’s just the beginning!

This was the first action of RAN’s ACTION TANK, a project to incubate new strategies for change.