From: Rory McIlmoil [mailto:rorygep@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, February 13, 2009 6:26 PM Subject: March 2 coal protest in DC
Please pass this along....
I'm writing today to ask you to consider going to Washington, DC, to join thousands of others at a protest on March 2 at the coal-fired power plant that provides electricity to the U.S. Capitol. Attached below is a letter of invitation from Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben that convinced me that this protest is a good thing that's well worth doing. I hope it will convince you too.
A great many of those attending this event will be there primarily because they're concerned about climate change. I think it's especially important that people living in and near Appalachia's coalfields be there as well, and so do folks who are organizing the protest. Money is available to help carloads of people coming to DC from the coalfields pay for gas or van rental.
Please note that although the organizers of this event expect to see many, many arrests for civil disobedience that day (and are prepared to provide legal support for those who are arrested), it's also expected that most folks who attend the protest will not be intending to get arrested. Please note also that this event is being carefully planned to be completely nonviolent.
The organizers of the March 2 event are asking everyone who wants to attend to go first to a nonviolent direct action training. Training will be available in DC on the morning of March 2--so it should be doable for you to travel to DC on March 1, do the training and go to the protest on March 2, and plan to travel home on March 3. (Arrestees might be delayed in leaving if the police take a long time processing them.)
Nonviolent direct action trainings are also being held well in advance of March 2 in several states; see www.capitolclimateaction.org website for more about this, and more information about the protest itself.
I want to emphasize that my intention here is not to divert anyone from going to the MTR lobbying week in DC March 14-19--that's important work, too. If you're already planning to go to DC for lobbying and can't manage to come on March 2 as well, that's fine. But if you aren't able to go or interested in going to DC for lobbying that week, or if you can come to DC both for March 2 and for lobbying later in the month, I hope you'll do so.
If you think you might be interested in going and would want to carpool and/or share a hotel room with others who live near you, please let me know and I'll try to sort out the details. (It would be simpler and better if one or more folks in or near West Virginia could coordinate this there. If you're willing to do that, please let me know and I'll make sure you get all the information you need.) If you know other folks who might be interested in going, please feel free to forward this email to them.
Best regards,
Tricia ------------------------------------------------- Tricia Shapiro 2330 Woolyshot Branch Road Hot Springs, NC 28743 -------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear Friends,
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_updat es/. 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
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