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
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Tricia Shapiro
2330 Woolyshot Branch Road
Hot Springs, NC 28743
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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_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
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Kind Regards,
Rory McIlmoil
Coal River Mountain Wind Project
(w): (304) 854-2182
(h): (304) 854-1937
www.coalriverwind.org
www.crmw.net
"The progressive state is in reality the cheerful and the hearty state to
all the different orders of the society; the stationary is dull; the declining
melancholy."
ADAM SMITH.