What can you say about a young activist killed by police while trying to stop the destruction of an urban forest for the construction of a militarized police training facility to practice urban warfare? It marks an escalation of repression against the environmental justice/climate movement in the U.S. of the kind more commonly associated with Brazil or Mexico. It has prompted rallies and vigils around the country, including in Connecticut.

On January 18, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, 26, who took the forest name Tortuguita (“Little Turtle”) or Tort, was shot by police who were raiding various camps and tree sits in the forest that comprised the movement to Stop Cop City. The official police story – amplified by the mass media, the mayor and Governor Brian Kemp – is that someone shot first at the officers, injuring one, and the police returned fire. They said no camera footage is available, and they didn’t produce a gun for several days that they now say was bought legally by Paez Terán. They have also told conflicting versions of what happened. In one version police say they surrounded the tent while Tort was inside, leading to speculation that the officer was injured by friendly fire.

The Atlanta Police Foundation, a private entity, got permission from the city to build an actual town on 100 acres of forest, the better to practice urban policing. Not just activists, but local residents from the neighboring part of the city, which is majority people of color and lower income, oppose the project. Part of the forest is a public park, used by people on a daily basis.

From mid-December until mid-January, a total of 19 people have been arrested and charged with “domestic terrorism,” but the putative actions by the protesters that prompted the charges have not been specified. For most, their only crime was trespassing, a misdemeanor. The raids on the forest defenders have been carried out by an almost unprecedented collaboration of local, county, state and federal authorities, including the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

The opposition to Cop City – focused on racial and environmental injustice and climate concerns – has been militant and decentralized, with some people carrying out sabotage of heavy machinery and focusing their ire on the CEOs of companies participating in or funding the project. Some consider destruction of property violence, while others don’t, but it certainly doesn’t rise to the level of killing another human being. Tortuguita (who used they/them pronouns) declared on several occasions to reporter David Peisner their commitment to non-violence, if not as a belief system at least as a strategy: “The right kind of resistance is peaceful, because that’s where we win. We’re not going to beat them at violence. They’re very, very good at violence. We’re not. We win through nonviolence. That’s really the only way we can win. We don’t want more people to die. We don’t want Atlanta to turn into a war zone.” I urge everyone to check out the full story by Peisner in The Bitter Southerner. 

Peisner even speculated that Tort might have been telling him what he wanted to hear about nonviolence, but concluded they were most likely sincere, based on how they lived their life. They were a trained medic and volunteered with Food Not Bombs. I have met countless young people engaged in frontline fights around the country who remind me of Tort: smart, extremely brave, loving, mostly anarchists and committed to nonviolence.

A week before Tortuguita was killed, I interviewed a local resident who has been active in the fight to Stop Cop City. I spoke to her again after their death, and she said, “Folks who live here are incredibly grateful for all the support we’ve gotten – vigils, donations to a memorial fund, notes of condolence; donations to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, and some people have traveled to Atlanta to stand in solidarity. We are continuing to push because police and politicians are out of control. We’re calling for an independent investigation that does not include law enforcement.” Click here to help.  

Tortuguita’s mother hopes to travel to the U.S. from her home in Panama to pursue justice for her son.

Anyone in Connecticut who wants to work on this issue can sign up for a zoom meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 31. 
 

Remember the Keystone XL pipeline fight? After more than 10 years of struggle that involved thousands of people and all kinds of tactics,  including a lot of non-violent direct actions at critical points directed at critical targets; the creation of the CIA – the Cowboys and Indians Alliance fighting together on the Great Plains to stop the Black Snake; and the involvement of a myriad of climate orgs, it finally died when President Joe Biden made cancellation of the State Department approval for it to cross the Canada-US border one of his very first actions in office, back in January, 2021.

But there was already an existing Keystone pipeline, running from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to Cushing, Oklahoma. It has leaked more than a dozen times since becoming operational in 2010, and on Dec. 7 the biggest leak to date occurred, spilling 588,000 gallons – almost enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool – onto the Kansas soil.

We fought the Line 3 pipeline in more recent years – another Black Snake, this one running from the Alberta tar sands to Wisconsin, across the entire state of Minnesota and its indigenous wild rice lakes. It became operational in October 2021, just five months after our affinity group, the Mayflies, blocked two entrances to the Enbridge man camp for pipeline workers for part of one day. The pipeline immediately started spilling drilling fluids into the pristine waters of northern Minnesota. And I just learned while researching this post that the original Line 3 leaked 1.7 million gallons of crude oil on March 3, 1991. There have also been leaks along the infamous Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), which has been operating illegally for the past two years in violation of a court order requiring the company to do a full Environmental Impact Statement. Which, of course, should have been done BEFORE construction.

Those of us fighting fossil pipelines always say it’s a matter of when, not if, a pipeline will leak, or in the case of gas, maybe explode.

On the brighter side, I want to mention some of the successes we’ve had in the past several years, and the amazing people who made success possible.

In 2016, six members of Beyond Extreme Energy from as far away as North Carolina arrived in cold, snowy western Massachusetts for the Martin Luther King Day weekend walk against the Northeast Energy Direct (NED) gas pipeline proposed by Kinder Morgan. Boy was it cold! With the wind chill on the third day the temperature was 6 degrees. But our hearts were warmed by the amazing people we met, including several “raging Grannies” who helped power the walk by singing old tunes with fresh lyrics. We were fed and housed along the walk, and you can imagine how delicious a hot meal was when we came in from the cold. We made a few good friends on that walk that we’ve continued to work with. Oh, and the pipeline was cancelled!
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Some of us did another walk in March 2017 across eastern North Carolina to oppose the 600-mile Atlantic Coast fracked gas pipeline (ACP) that was planned to cross West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina, possibly extending to an LNG (liquefied “natural” gas) export terminal in South Carolina. While not as cold as Massachusetts, it was still chilly for camping, so we camped inside many of the days. It was organized by APPPL, the NC Alliance to Protect the People and the Places We Live, and included my friends from western NC as well as powerful African American and indigenous leaders from the poorer eastern part of the state, which is where the pipeline was scheduled to be built, after the whiter, wealthier residents of the central part of the state objected to the original path through their communities. Nothing new there.

There was also very effective organizing against the ACP by a coalition in WV and VA called ABRA, the Allegheny-Blue Ridge Alliance. All that organizing paid off when the company trying to build the pipeline pulled the plug in July 2020.

And we have stopped Sen. Joe Manchin's dirty deal three times in Congress, and we will stop the Mountain Valley pipeline (MVP)!

So we end the year with some wins and some losses (coal use reached an all-time high this year), keeping in mind and heart the long view – that we do as much as we can while we’re here to preserve the quality of life on earth for all. And if we fail on any given day to do so, we try not to waste energy beating ourselves up about it. 

This blog post was published first in the CT Mirror:

For years I’ve thought that the annual COP (Conference of Parties) meetings to discuss the climate crisis were a contradiction, as they have a giant carbon footprint, including emissions from private jet-setting fossil fuel CEOs.

Emissions are still going up, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned we are “on a highway to climate hell.” Now, with COP 27 happening in the resort town of Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt — a police state — I have even more reasons to be disgusted. Read on for my proposal for a low-carbon, environmental justice-focused COP.

A recent analysis shows that taking a long-haul flight generates more carbon emissions than the average person in dozens of countries around the world produces in a whole year. There are 35,000 COP 27 “delegates,” whatever that means, the vast majority of whom flew there. What can 35,000 people discuss and decide on? Very little, as past COPS have shown.

The group Global Witness found that 636 fossil-fuel lobbyists are among those attending COP 27. That’s more than the combined number of delegates from the 10 countries most impacted by the climate crisis and more than even in past years.
And Egypt being a police state, there are many fewer activists attending than in previous years. Many couldn’t get visas, and the dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has banned many Egyptians from attending.

Why is Egypt even hosting this thing? The COP rotates among the continents and it’s Africa’s turn. Africans contribute a few percent total to the greenhouse gases that have been released into the atmosphere, but already suffer some of the worst impacts, like the severe flooding that occurred last month in Nigeria. Things will only get much worse for them.

Egypt says it wants to use its high profile to push for loss and damage for the most impacted countries, including in Africa, but Egypt itself is aiming to become a regional gas exporting hub. That certainly qualifies it to host a climate summit? Not that other countries haven’t also been ramping up fossil production while claiming to be hip to the climate crisis.

Egypt is holding thousands of political prisoners, probably the most famous being Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist. He’s been imprisoned for nine years and on hunger strike for more than 200 days. He announced he would renounce even water once COP 27 started, and his family finally received word that he has had “medical intervention” (force-feeding).

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish environmental activist, announced that she wouldn’t attend the conference in part out of concern for human rights abuses in Egypt. 

The New York Times notes that the conference will feature “biodegradable drinking straws and recycling bins, beach strolls and electric shuttles.” That’s good because activists will need those shuttles to get from their hotels to the official “protest area” in the desert, miles from the site of the COP meetings and they can only protest if they register in advance. But but but – this protest area in the desert will be “very chic,” according to one Egyptian official, complete with cafes and restaurants. You can’t make this stuff up.

So, how could world leaders and advocates for a safe climate — and NOT representatives of the companies causing the crisis — have meaningful discussions and make real, impactful decisions to reverse the trajectory we are on?

Civil society groups that go to the COPs to demonstrate for real action can do so effectively on their own continents. (Organizers in New Haven just held a Climathon to discuss problems and solutions on a local level — nitty, gritty work that’s not as glamorous as jet-setting to an international venue, but critical just the same.) Since Covid, other groups have held conferences, including global conferences with thousands of people, online. There are emissions connected to this kind of endeavor, but they pale in comparison to in-person gatherings. Virtual conferences would also allow more people at the forefront of the crisis — who tend to be poorer — to contribute their valuable perspectives and experience to the discussions.
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For those who don’t have internet access, it’s a lot easier and cheaper to provide that than to send them to Egypt or any other far-flung place where they can enjoy a “chic” environment while the planet burns.

News flash! An amazing coalition of frontline and BIPOC groups, supported by more mainstream enviro orgs, managed to throw a wrench into Sen. Joe Manchin's and Sen. Chuck Schumer's plan to incorporate Manchin's "dirty deal" into the Continuing Resolution to fund the government. Instead, a clean CR passed without his deal, which would have greatly reduced both agencies' oversight and grassroots opportunities to object to infrastructure projects that would affect them. See my previous few posts for background, and click here to listen to or read a short interview explaining what happened and what might be next.
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I just watched a 2014 movie I don’t know how I missed, based on a true story. The film is Pride, and it chronicles the efforts of Gays and Lesbians Support the Miners, a group in London that supported the national coal miners’ strike of 1984-85 – a strike to stop the mine closures that were promoted by the Iron Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to reduce the power of the unions. The group was the brainchild of Mark Ashton, an activist with the gay rights movement in Britain (and, though the film never mentions this, he was a member of the Communist Party and General Secretary of the Young Communist League). His pitch to his comrades was that they should support the miners – despite some of the  gay men having been bashed by anti-gay violence in those very communities – because the powers that be treated both groups so terribly.

The group raised and sent a ton of money to three mining communities in Wales, and then began visiting the miners and their families. There was the usual anti-gay bias on the part of some, but others welcomed them from the beginning – especially most of the women. Some of the miners’ wives visited their gay allies in London and spent a wild night going to London’s gay bars. People on both sides came to respect and care about each other.

Then a leak to the sensational press (such as it was in the pre-internet age) highlighting the gays’ support led the miners to vote to end their relationship with the group. The union eventually lost the strike.

It’s notable that this occurred as AIDS was ravaging the world, and a scene in the movie shows one gay man criticizing the group for raising funds for [anti-gay?] miners and not for the gay community.

The film ends as the gay community in the UK is putting on its annual Gay Pride march in London. Remarkably, busload after busload of miners and their families arrive to join the parade. This really happened, and I have goose bumps as I’m writing it.

As the credits roll, there are updates to the lives of the real people depicted in the film: a member of Gays and Lesbians Support the Miners, who was the first man in the UK diagnosed with HIV, was still thriving; a miner’s wife, who became a leader of the miner-gay and lesbian alliance and then went back to school was elected to Parliament from Wales; and Mark Ashton, the leader of Gays and Lesbians Support the Miners, died of AIDS at 26, just two years after the events depicted. That broke my heart.

This story offers food for thought for our current situation:

• The intersectionality (what we used to call Solidarity) is off-the-charts inspiring.
• The LGBTQ+ movement, after making many strides, is facing some of the worst backlash in decades, at least in the U.S.
• Don’t get me started on the devolution of the media.
• And coal mines across the U.S. are closing, at first due to cheaper fracked gas but now also due to cleaner and cheaper renewables. I can’t be against that, because coal is deadly not only for the climate but for the communities where it is mined, whether underground or through blowing the tops off the mountains. But the miners are not the villains, and I’ve seen their anger and fear at the prospect of losing their livelihoods. In fact, they could be heroes in their own film. It’s encouraging that among the positive measures in the Inflation Reduction Act is the extra points proposed projects get when they pay union wages for the workers hired.

I heard about this film from my friend George Lakey’s book, How We Win – one of the best books on organizing I’ve ever read. George will be speaking in Hamden at the Unitarian Society at 7 p.m. on November 30 about his just-released memoir, Dancing with History, and he’ll be signing copies of both books.
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And even though I gave away the plot, I highly encourage you all to watch the film for yourselves.

Four of us (including Rachel on the left and me second from right) drove down from New Haven in my electric Chevy Bolt for the day of lobbying and a rally on September 8 dubbed No Sacrifice Zones: MVP Resistance Comes to DC. That made the drive an hour slower but also cheaper than driving a gas-powered car, and boy, did we feel righteous! We also came to oppose Sen. Joe Manchin’s dirty side deal that would force through not only the Mountain Valley pipeline, but would weaken bedrock environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and make it easier to push through any infrastructure project with little or no public input.
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I only go to DC for actions of one kind or another, and when I stay with friends, I barely get to see them, which was the case again this time. Someday I’ll go down just to see my pals.

The organizing that went into both the lobbying and the rally was phenomenal. We did lobby training either online ahead of time or when folks arrived at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation that morning, which served as our headquarters. Once we signed up to lobby, organizers coordinated with Congressional staffers to set up appointments, and each team included a lobby liaison and a frontline fighter. Our very savvy liaison was Dahlia with the newish Jewish climate org, Dayenu (which means “Enough” in Hebrew). Our frontliner was Nancy, a retiree who lives in Monroe County, West Virginia, the place I most fell in love with of all the gorgeous places we passed through on our Walk/Drive for Appalachia’s Future last spring. She’s been fighting it for 8 of the 12 years since she retired.

Eluned and I were the Connecticut team, and the four of us met with staffers for both our senators, Chris Murphy and Dick Blumenthal, and our Congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro. Nancy explained the situation on the ground (see my past few blogs for more on that), including how the consortium of companies building the Mountain Valley pipeline through West Virginia and Virginia and maybe into North Carolina has lost permits from three federal agencies due to their egregious violations. It was on life support before Manchin and Chuck Schumer made their “side deal.” The silver lining is that it thrust the MVP into the limelight, and now folks down there are fielding almost more interview requests than they can handle, explaining to a much broader audience (including readers of The New York Times and the Washington Post) why the pipeline is a bad idea.

All the staffers listened but of course were non-committal when we made our asks that their bosses 1) make a public statement in favor of separating the side deal from any must-pass legislation, like the Continuing Resolution to fund the government or the National Defense Authorization Act; and 2) oppose the side deal. Since Blumenthal is on the Judiciary Committee, I emphasized to his aide that the side deal would remove jurisdiction over any appeals regarding the MVP from the Fourth Circuit, where judges have often ruled against the developers (with good reason) to the DC Circuit, where they hope to get more pro-business rulings. That idea – that moneyed interests can pick their courtroom – is so anathema to the way our government is supposed to operate that members of Congress should vote against the deal on that basis alone.

I like to share some Manchin quotes from his home-state media outlet to demonstrate the man’s hubris:
 
Manchin said the language will be in a continuing resolution to fund the federal government for when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. “This is something the Republican Party has wanted for the last five to seven years I’ve been with them,” he said. “It either keeps the country open, or we shut down the government. That’ll happen Sept. 30, so let’s see how that politics plays out.”

We were thrilled that while we were lobbying, Sen. Bernie Sanders made a very strong statement against the side deal, going so far as to say he’d vote against any must-pass bill that included it. We were also happy that at least 72 House members signed onto a letter from Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) calling for the side deal to be a stand-alone bill.

The rally later that day was held in a cozy, tree-lined spot on Capitol Hill, just big enough for the 500 people who came, including front-line fighters from struggles against mining and drilling from all over the country, from Alaska to California to the Gulf Coast to the Upper Midwest, in addition to Appalachia. Contingents from each of those areas took the stage together, each person speaking for about two minutes about their particular fight and all of them pledging solidarity with each other, and showing up for each other, as No Sacrifice Zones implies. The music, if anything, was even more powerful than the speakers. Four of us seven “Mayflies” who locked down last year to protest the Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota reunited and took a selfie (above).

I tend to talk with folks and walk around at rallies, and I know I missed a lot even though I was there the whole time. So, after I got home, I listened to the whole thing again, and I really had missed a lot! You can watch the whole 2 hours and 11 minutes here, or just skip through it. At 2:06, you can catch the final song, Idle No More, sung by two indigenous women from North Carolina, which harkens back to the nonviolent indigenous uprising in Canada begun a decade ago and seemed an appropriate way to end. Whatever happens with the MVP and the side deal, we have work to do for the rest of our lives.  

In my post last month, I blasted Joe Manchin for refusing to vote with Democrats to pass even a greatly scaled back version of President Biden’s Build Back Better initiative. Maybe Manchin read my blog, because just a day or two later he came back to the table and agreed to what became the Inflation Reduction Act. (Seriously, reporting indicates that not just my condemnation, but that of thousands of others convinced him that he didn’t want to be responsible for destroying the liveability of the planet.)

But what I wrote in July seems on the mark: “Some folks I respect say we should be more positive and talk about solutions and not be such Debbie and Donny Downers. My only problem with that approach is, we can build out all the solar panels and wind turbines and battery storage we want, and we can promote energy efficiency and conservation (not using the energy in the first place) 24/7, but if we don’t turn off the gas and oil spigots (coal is dying on its own, but we definitely should encourage its retirement), we are not going to dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in.”

Because the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has some good things (promoting electric vehicles and incentivizing more renewables) and some bad things (requiring offering millions of acres for on-shore and off-shore oil and gas drilling as a prerequisite for building renewable energy projects).

In other words, digging the hole deeper. It’s all carrots and no sticks – no enforceable requirements for reducing climate pollution in the law – which was probably the only way it was going to pass, but which makes achieving the advertised 40% reduction over 2005 levels pretty squishy. Many frontline groups fighting fossil projects, like indigenous folks in the Midwest and Black folks on the Gulf Coast who are already overburdened, point out that they’ve been thrown under the bus – again.

As if that’s not bad enough, the side deal to the IRA that Manchin and Schumer agreed to is really despicable. In legislation not yet finalized and to be voted on in September, it would require the completion of the Mountain Valley fracked gas pipeline (MVP) through West Virginia and southwestern Virginia, much-delayed because of all the violations the consortium building it has committed. It also calls for “streamlining” the permitting process, which would reduce a lot of government oversight and public participation. See my June and July blog posts for more on the MVP.

It will likely be tacked onto “must pass” legislation such as the budget bill. While the proposals to “streamline” the permitting process would also apply to renewable energy projects, the side deal takes an “all of the above” approach to energy, with fracked gas projects and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) getting billions in subsidies through the IRA that even former CCS project developers now say is a total waste of money and will only help entrench rather than phase out fossil fuels.

 We can’t afford that at this late stage in the climate crisis. We must stop it.
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Folks from the frontlines of the MVP fight are gathering to lobby their elected officials in DC on Thursday, Sept. 8, to vote NO on the bill, and then attend a rally at 5 p.m. I am going and would love to bring you with me. Not only is this a critical fight for all of us, but meeting the people along the path of the MVP was a highlight of my life as I’m sure it would be for you. Check out the link below or send me a message. https://tinyurl.com/nodirtydeal

And PLEASE call your reps and senators in Congress and tell them (probably just leaving a message will take you about 30 seconds) you are opposed to this side deal. We need all the voices we can get. Go here to find them: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

Also attaching link to my two op-eds that just came out that pretty much blanketed the state, thanks to running in all the Hearst papers as well as the CT Mirror:

https://ctmirror.org/2022/08/30/mountain-valley-pipeline-killingly-ct/
https://www.nhregister.com/opinion/article/Opinion-Stop-side-deal-that-undermines-climate-17397503.php 

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice…well, that’s what Joe Manchin pulled on President Joe Biden when he decided for a third time that he just can’t support even a super-scaled back version of a Build Back Better bill to start to address the climate crisis and create good green jobs. He says he’s worried about inflation and is opposed to taxing millionaires – like himself – a cent more to raise funds to support a green energy transition.

Young people have excoriated Manchin – who gets his millions from a coal-related business – saying that he’s signing their death warrant. This comes right after the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v EPA that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot enact sweeping measures to reduce carbon and methane pollution. And that is right after SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade, threw out a New York law restricting carrying guns in public, and ruled police can’t be sued if they don’t read suspects their Miranda rights.

Sounds like we’re going in the wrong direction(s).

Biden and Democrats in the Senate were tip-toeing around Manchin, trying to avoid annoying or angering him so they could consummate a deal. Now that he’s closed that door (though not entirely – after his third snub he unbelievably dangled a little hope that maybe someday he would support something) Democrats can stop kowtowing to him.
One of his demands has been that federal regulators allow completion of the Mountain Valley pipeline, which runs through his state of WV and Virginia. It’s a fracked gas pipeline only a little more than half complete. The company filed a formal application with FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) in October 2015 with an in-service date of late 2018. The locals have been fighting it ever since. The company already got one 2-year extension and is currently pursuing a 4-year one. (See my June post for more about opposition to the pipeline.)

Now that Dems have nothing to gain from placating Joe, I’m hopeful that the bureaucratic wheels will turn to deny the extension (on the sturdiest of legal grounds, of course, which certainly exist, in spades – mainly that the company has racked up thousands of violations; completing it would endanger the water, air and land of surrounding communities; it would generate a significant amount of all the greenhouse gases in the U.S.; and it is not meant for local consumption).  FERC gave a ridiculously short time frame for comments on the petition, but due to public pressure the agency extended the deadline to July 29.  And you can help by signing one or all of these petitions, and bonus points for personalizing it:
Sierra Club Comment: https://act.sierraclub.org/actions/National?actionId=AR0363219
Appalachian Voices Petition: https://tinyurl.com/3pv9bzsx 
Chesapeake Climate Action Network Petition: act.chesapeakeclimate.org/page/42391/-/1

I’ve had some interesting discussions recently about whether the strategy of pushing Biden to declare a climate emergency and stop implementation of fossil fuel infrastructure, subsidies and exports is the right one. I’ve been part of local, state and national groups that have been advocating exactly that for years. Some folks I respect say we should be more positive and talk about solutions and not be such Debbie and Donny Downers. My only problem with that approach is, we can build out all the solar panels and wind turbines and battery storage we want, and we can promote energy efficiency and conservation (not using the energy in the first place) 24/7, but if we don’t turn off the gas and oil spigots (coal is dying on its own, but we definitely should encourage its retirement), we are not going to dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in. And we need to be serious about providing new, well-paying jobs for those who are laid off, either in the clean energy sector or some other arena.
The People vs Fossil Fuels national coalition of more than 1,200 groups is calling for local actions around the country on August 2, demanding that President Biden declare a climate emergency and stop approval of all new fossil fuel projects. We are planning one in Connecticut. For more info: www.peoplevsfossilfuels.org or for the CT action fill out this form right away for our meeting July 28 at 7 p.m. -- https://tinyurl.com/57ykc3jh
 
Photo is of an occupation of the MVP right of way. 

Of all the indelible images from my 12-day Walk for Appalachia’s Future along the 303-mile route of the under-construction Mountain Valley Pipeline through West Virginia and southwest Virginia, none sticks with me more than 13-year-old Callie Coffey swinging on the playground of the community center where we camped one day. She is a child and that’s what children should be doing, instead of fighting for their future during climate chaos. So, she planned the grand finale rally in Richmond, VA, on June 4 with her middle school classmates. Click here to watch her reading the letter she wrote to VA Governor Glenn Youngkin. 

There are many other memorable images, mostly of the gorgeous green mountains and the raging rivers and streams after some heavy rains. This region is full of mountains and water – some of the best drinking water in the world, which is threatened by this 42-inch diameter pipeline. It goes through some of the steepest terrain where pipeline construction has ever been attempted. The geology it would pass through is karst – limestone that is full of holes and caves that filter the water -- but that is a terrible place to build a pipeline, as the land has a tendency to slip. Still other images of the gashes made by pipeline construction on the steep slopes. After seeing gash after gash, to an outsider they honestly look all the same – but each one is a total desecration to a family’s land, air and water, and I even heard there were plans (since abandoned) to run the pipeline through family graveyards.

Our “Walk” was more of a drive, as we always prioritized meeting with frontline groups and individuals fighting the pipeline. We often had three meetings a day, and after 8 straight days of that I was delighted to get a morning “off,” which was when I was able to catch up on my journaling and audio editing. We did get to walk a few miles in beautiful places, usually along a river or stream, and one day we walked about four miles of the Appalachian Trail – an easy, beautiful hike on a gorgeous day with temps in the low 70s. We passed out small flyers about the Walk to anyone we could along the trail or on the roads or in the towns we passed through, and got mostly positive responses.

The good news is that the company is years behind schedule and billions over budget, and no new construction can happen until (if) it gets the permits it needs to proceed.

We have walkers doing all kinds of media – Twitter, Facebook, blogging, radio – and then there are the journalists covering us as well. We learned about the endangered, multi-colored Candy Darter that will hopefully help stop the pipeline, that was covered by two reporters from Bloomberg News. Click here for my segment on this for Between the Lines. Other reporters covered one of the daily memorials we did honoring people who had been lost during the pipeline fight, and also covered a tour of the historic Black section of Roanoke, which was almost destroyed by urban renewal – or “Negro removal” as the residents called it. We visited one of the few markers commemorating the famed labor organizer Mother Jones, who was arrested in West Virginia, and we learned about one of the biggest labor catastrophes in U.S. history when hundreds of Black and immigrant workers hit silica rock when building a dam on the New River and died from inhaling silica dust. One day we held a vigil outside the jail in Roanoke where, outrageously, 10 people held there had died over a four-year period. So, it was a very intersectional two weeks!

One of the things I liked best was how many older women have been on the front lines. Retired teacher and author Becky Crabtree locked down into her beloved old Pinto on the pipeline right-of-way on her own property at the base of  Peters Mountain, WV, which was taken by eminent domain after she and her husband refused to sell it to the MVP. Three other elders locked down across a different right of way in a Crown Victoria in Virginia. Both actions stopped construction for about a day. Becky (photo below) said that didn’t seem important to most people, but, “It was important to me. You got to have some dignity in this world. You’ve got to stand up for something.” She is now running for the West Virginia House of Delegates. You can hear/read the short interview with Becky for Between the Lines here.

Then there was Red Terry, who at 61 years old sat in a tree for 34 days in 2018 on Bent Mountain near Roanoke to stop the pipeline, along with her daughter in a nearby tree on their family’s property, which they also refused to sell and lost by eminent domain. It’s a big commitment to do a tree sit, obviously, and it also requires lots of on-the-ground support. And sometimes the authorities cut off that support, and still the tree sitters hung on for several weeks, catching rain water and irregular resupplies when folks could get around the opposition.

We also visited the historic twin tree sits at Yellow Finch on Bent Mountain, which were occupied for 932 days by a changing cast of protesters. The final two who were extracted ended up spending many weeks in jail on misdemeanor charges before being released on bail.

We finished the "walk" in Richmond, with an action June 3 that focused on Wells Fargo Bank as the main funder of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and included some beautiful spiritual elements; and the youth-led action on June 4.

I’ve always loved mountains, and have spent many vacations in Vermont and the Adirondacks of New York. But there was something about the beauty and fragility of the land we passed through, combined with the fierce commitment of the people to their home places and to each other, and the new friends I made, that gave me the feeling this is a part of the country I will belong to for the rest of my life.

In mid-April I participated in two actions of the many organized by Extinction Rebellion NYC over ten remarkable days of “love and rage.” There were protests, marches, beautiful performances, art-art-art, and times set aside for self-care and care for others in this movement to confront the climate crisis. This is a global phenomenon; the U.S. version rests on four principles: People in power (including the media) must Tell the Truth about the crisis; The Government must enact legally binding policies to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025; We must have A Citizens’ Assembly to oversee the changes, as we rise from the wreckage; A just transition will prioritize the most vulnerable people and indigenous sovereignty…and repairs the effects of ongoing ecocide to prevent extinction of human and all species, in order to maintain a livable, just planet for all. A fuller description is here: extinctionrebellion.us/demands-principles

One day there was a march called No War, No Warming, calling out war and the climate emergency, and their interrelationship. As marchers passed near Zuccotti Park (site of the initial Occupy movement) and the famous Bull of Wall Street, we set up two tripods, with banners declaring No War and No Warming, and an activist perched atop each. I locked down with another woman (each of us with an arm inside a metal pipe) and stood under the tripod, just to increase the time the cops would have to spend getting us out before going after the tripod-sitters.

The weird thing was, when we arrived there were seven officers, and as we proceeded to set up the entire action, more and more came – to watch! There were about 40 by the time we were all in position. Only then did they give warnings and say we’d be arrested if we didn’t leave. Nobody left. Nine of us were arrested and spent between four and seven hours in jail before being released. We were all in separate cells, which was bo-ring. But we could talk a little with the person in the next cell, and we spent some time singing. We have to go to court on May 6. That's me standing with the mask and sunglasses right behind the No Warming banner.

A few days later I was watching a webinar with Dr. Jonathan Foley, director of Project Drawdown, which put 100 solutions for a sustainable planet in a book of that name that came out a few years ago. His work focuses on solutions (or “opportunities”) rather than shaming and blaming our government and business leaders or demanding that they do as we say. (Not that XR does that. One of its principles is “no blaming or shaming.”) One example Foley gave was that Google provided its employees with a free high-end lunch, and one day introduced “meatless Mondays.” Some employees complained because they felt like something was being taken away from them. So, the company switched its marketing to promote gourmet vegetarian fare, and everybody loved it.
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I think we have to do both: call out the crisis and propose positive solutions. We can celebrate that clean energy is growing by leaps and bounds, but we still need to point out that overall, fossil fuel emissions are up, not down, and that’s not sustainable. Here’s a link to his excellent talk.

I’m overjoyed when I see the crocuses, vinca and dandelions sprouting in my yard in the spring. I’ve never understood why the lovely dandelion, in particular, has been relegated to the seventh circle of hell as the worst weed in the world. I know how – through the machinations of the pesticide industry and the cleverness of Madison Avenue – but I’ve never understood why millions of homeowners have fallen for it and spent lots of time, money, and poison on eradicating them.

I’m working to eliminate my lawn, little by little. My back yard is half taken over by creeping purple ajuga, which requires no mowing. I do have a lawnmower – a quiet, non-source-polluting electric one. (The energy source from our electric utility is still mostly nuclear and gas, and we can’t put solar on our roof without cutting down our big maple tree, so that’s not an option.) I have also planted flower and vegetable gardens in various spots.

Every spring my scientist-husband and I disagree about when to mow. I want to let all the spring flowers in the grass fade on their own, rather than kill them, and he always wants to mow as soon as the grass gets a little long.

I’ve always had science on my side, as it’s clear that bees and other pollinators will benefit greatly from feeding on these yummy first flowers of the season. Now there’s a movement behind the science that homeowners around the country are getting behind, and I am, too.

This wonderful article in The New York Times is about No Mow May, when homeowners are asked to let their grass (and weeds) grow for the month of May before tidying up in June (or not). When Appleton, Wisconsin, became the first city in the country to participate, researchers found that No Mow May lawns had five times the number of bees and three times the bee species as mown spaces. The idea has since spread to many other states. If it's not already in Connecticut, I plan to bring it here.

With bee populations plummeting, this project is more than just a good idea – if enough of us do it, it might actually help save the bees.