We are the ones we have been waiting for.

DYING FOR COAL.

(Adi Nochur from SSC)

People hacked up black tar. They cried black tears. Paramedics in biohazard suits desperately tried to save their lives. It was a lively day for the financial district of Boston. We left major banks and financial institutions nervous, scared, and on their toes.

Here’s a video of the carnage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xoaoNm7hVE

(cut it and paste it in your browser, its not a link)

Last Wednesday across the country in major cities from Dallas to New York, Rainforest Action Network activists stormed branches of Merrill Lynch to hold them accountable for funding TXU, a corporation trying to build 11 coal-fired power plants.
I had the privilege of coordinating the Boston action.

(Mike Da Cruz and Will Lambek of Brown SDS)

It’s hard to describe how big of an impact these coal plants would have. First of all they are planned to mostly be built in rural Texas communities, and I shouldn’t have to outline the class implications of building toxic dumps in low income communities and giving their children asthma. The local connections ran deep, as a similar company is trying to build a power plant in a low income community of color nearby in Chelsea. The power plant is being built right across from an elementary school.

The global impacts are staggering. These plants will release 78 million tons of greenhouse gases. That’s more than many countries. More than 21 combined U.S. states. More than 14 million new cars on the road. More than all of BP releases. More than Japan’s entire commitment to the Kyoto protocols - this one project would cancel out the Kyoto Protocols for the country of Japan. It’s one of the biggest steps backwards our country could take in the fight against climate chaos.

(Carly Huebner and Heidi Cooper)

We saw we had about a 3 month window to either stop or seriously scale back the project. So we went for it.

RAN’s strategy is to follow the money. Crazy how so often captialism’s at the root of things, isn’t it?. Some activists were challenging TXU on legal grounds, others through community pressure, others were trying to block their permits, other people were even activating the business community. But we know that even if TXU got it’s permits, they couldn’t function without financial backing. Three major banks were funding TXU: Morgan Stanley, Citibank, and Merrill Lynch. So far we have secured 20 banks who won’t mess with TXU. Merrill Lynch was the strategic target.

There were actions across the country, but no standing RAN chapters in Boston yet. Most of the folks who came out were various friends, allies, and SDSers (from chapters in Providence, Boston, and New York). SDSers in Portland Oregon had a demo in PDX, and SDSers were rocking in the big New York Action too (from chapters in NYC, and New Jersey), which had a “Billionaires for Coal” meme (an amazing action that got really major media. Look for accounts of it elsewhere!).

Pictures of that action here:
http://www.digitalrailroad.net/astern/Production/PhotoGroupView.aspx?pbid=4&msa=1&pgid=7690967

In ours, people violently died and hacked up pollution that was really hot fudge. We were going to originally splatter charcoal around and smear it all over ourselves, but we figured that with it being ash Wednesday and all, the messaging might be confusing. Then we were gonna sling brownie batter around, but didn’t want to waste brownies (or potential-brownies).

(Will Lambek and I)

After the climate change murders, we marched inside to deliver a letter from the RAN executive director to the CEO of Merrill Lynch. We were told that Merrill Lynch had briefed security that we’d be coming, and under no circumstances would they come down and chat with us.

(Will Chalmus and I)

Turns out they were feeling the heat though. Breaking news has it that TXU is crumbling, and the 11 power plants have now been scaled down to 3. Amazing. We’re still waiting for details and the dust to settle; and I imagine we cannot fairly take credit for this…but collectively in the last few months across the country activists took down 8 of these disgusting things. It gives me more inspiration to gear up for bigger fights.

We can’t stop here. No new coal. Period. Congress isn’t gonna regulate carbon. And as long as Wall Street continues to fund this stuff, we gotta fight.

Global warming is increasingly becoming THE issue of our generation. Everyone in our society is talking about it…except for most radical folks on the Left, for some reason. Al Gore is telling people that if they turn off their lights then they are doing their part. That’s not true. This is real, its looming and dramatic, and there are real power structures and people who are making it happen. It’s going to affect people in our generation the most; it is a youth issue. The people fucking the world are gonna be dead before they see the full effects of this….and then we will be dead, if we don’t do something. It disproportionately affects people who live in the Global South and folks of color in the US (Katrina, Stan, Tsunamis…).

We need to radicalize and polarize this issue. Its one of the most fertile vehicles to build a multi-issue mass movement in this country that can also confront the war, immigrant rights and other pressing issues. The emerging post-issue groups like SDS really need to take this seriously I think…

The action made the front cover of the Boston Metro, IndyMedia, was in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Spare Change News, and some local TV and radio. Maybe Newsweek too, we’ll see.
Holler.

The NYC and other actions made the New York Times, a million financial journals, and city papers across the country.

If you are hammering away at the brand of a company and need to increase the pressure and public visibility of your campaign, coordinated, publicized street theater works. plain and simple.

(Ivy)

here is some of the Boston media:

IndyMedia:
http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/198290/index.php

Wall Street Journal:
http://blogs.wsj.com/energy/2007/02/26/billionaires-for-coal-group-skeptical-of-txu-deal/

PDF of the front cover of the Boston Metro:
http://metropoint.metro.lu/20070222_Boston.pdf

Internet version of the Metro article:
http://boston.metro.us/metro/local/article/Protesting_Merrill_Lynchs_support_of_coal_plants/7105.html

the Herald:
http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=184301

more pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rainforestactionnetwork/sets/72157594549323351/

(Will Chalmus, Mandee Schwartz, Jenny Venezia, Carly Huebner, and Heidi Cooper)

(Neena Pathak and Will Lambek)

(Will Lambek and I)

(Grace Yasamura from Rainforest Action Network)

(Heidi Cooper)

*All photos by Jonathan McIntosh

On Thursday at noon Neena Pathak and I gave a workshop / presentation at Brandeis University in Waltham.

The title was “Zapatismo and the Anatomy of Solidarity”

And the stated description was:
Ever wanted to do activism abroad? Fascinated by transnational social movements? Thought about power and privilege and how that plays into folks from the Global North doing work in the Global South? How do we navigate our privilege and travel in an ethical and reciprocal way? What is Zapatismo? Come join Neena Pathak ( ‘08 ) and Josh Russell ( ‘06 ) in a participatory workshop about the challenges and complications with doing “solidarity work” abroad, that draws on these two Jane’s and Karpf Grant awardees’ experiences with the Zapatistas and other indigenous rights groups in Chiapas, Mexico. We will use Theater of the Oppressed tools and other games, so come ready to move around!

(Neena!)

About 20 students showed up. The games and involvement were interesting and I was really impressed with the depth to which folks wanted to engage these issues. Given the way Zapatismo and that movement is romanticized and idealized by people up North, people had a really grounded and serious approach. The issue of folks who have the privilege to travel abroad often go with the pretense of activism and “helping,” cuts through so many lines and legacies of imperialism, colonialism, racism, etc etc. Its only going to increase as neoliberal globalization pushes forward; more universities are going to find ways to give students grants, stipends, and fellowships to go abroad in the Global South, and unless we develop models to make that process look a lot more like solidarity and a lot less like charity, students will probably keep perpetuating the process of unconsciously taking a lot more than they give.

(me!)

A lot of what we talked about were our own struggles in confronting these issues within ourselves; we certainly had our share of hypocrisy and embodying our own critique. A lot of these issues seem to be simply irreconcilable to some degree. We drafted a pseudo-coherent document of what we learned in our research called “The Anatomy of Solidarity” that shares some ideas, but not answers. I wish we were on top of our shit enough to have answers! (I don’t actually think there are hard and quick “answers” to these things). It may get published as a workshop manual later in the Summer.

For folks interested in this kinda stuff, my friend Bruin is putting together an anthology that deals with the contradictions and problems with being someone from the North going to the South. It’s called Less Than Settled, and feel free to email me if you’d like to contribute a chapter.

p.s. - a great scam: Dominoes Pizza has this giveaway where if you are a reporter they will deliver free pizzas. As long as the place you need them delivered is not a residence (i.e. an office or a school) you can just call up and say you are a reporter from anywhere and get free pizzas. We scored 4 free larges with toppings! Hott.

(Unfortunately this site won’t let me embed videos, so there will be links to fun youtube videos throughout the article. click on them!).

The Ohio University campus has been rocked this year by a decidedly anti-democratic, unaccountable administration, pushing unpopular policies without any student input whatsoever. “Free Speech Zones” on campus attempt to shut out discourse and protest. Arbitrary fees around popular student parties and holidays, the sudden cuts of Athens Varsity Sports teams, and indulgent pay bonuses for Administrators have left students feeling alienated and without control of their college. Ohio University is being run like a corporation rather than an educational institution.

SDS has risen up to advocate for student syndicalism and a radical vision of a democratic university, and built an impressive coalition in the process. The SDS free speech demonstration on Friday, Feb 2nd, was attended not just by activists, but students most activists groups wouldn’t think to try to organize – including athletes and Frat boys.

I was invited to come to OU in Athens by their SDS chapter and the umbrella activist group InterAct, to do workshops, trainings, and other action support, both as an SDSer and also as an organizer from Rainforest Action Network (RAN). Trainings with SDS ranged from sustainable organization building to campaign strategy, while I got to connect with InterAct about collaborating on a few RAN-related projects including shutting down a corporation called TXU building dirty coal fired power plants (but that is a separate entry entirely).

We woke the morning of the demo to a new blanket of snow coating the campus. It was beautiful. We met in a nearby coffee shop early to tie up loose ends. Somehow a PBS news crew found us an hour early and interviewed Olivia and Sarah.

The snow was falling as students gathered around the civil war monument – an area NOT in a free speech zone. A student read the plaque outside the monument - one that discussed liberties that we’re supposed to have in this country, and about 150 students gathered around the SDS banner hanging from the monument.

Initially, energy seemed low. Some folks didn’t even want to chant. I soon realized this was a good thing; about 90% of the people there had likely never been to a demonstration before. Despite the lack of racial diversity, in other respects the diversity of students there was staggering. SDS managed to mobilize a wide cross section of campus, including students with a wide range of interests and backgrounds - people who would have never come out to a demonstration if it werent for Athens SDS’ strategy to simply be relevant.

After the president of the Graduate Student Union spoke, Will Klatt gave a speech about the corporatization of our universities:

( see video: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6yrstQEac8

I was also invited to speak about Free Speech Zones:

( see video: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8UqyFd_yiI

After which I convinced folks that chanting can be fun and it doesn’t make you a hippy:

( see video: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYcsRGtxhuo

Rosemary Esch announced SDS’ demands on the administration:

( see video: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKzVC3lQ1dw

And Dylan spoke about SDS being inspired by Malcolm X and organizing students AS students:

( see video: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn2nY1J4nUw

People were fired up and marched to the presidents office. Energy was high, people were dancing and chanting and whoopin and hollerin.

We reached the chief of police and demanded entrance.

And got it.
The cop actually turned out to be a pretty nice guy. Most of his background in stopping “civil disturbance” had been shutting down KKK rallies, so he seemed pretty down that we were actually trying to do something positive. Always important to remember to try to get inside the head of the police if you confront them - on campuses at least, they usually just don’t want to look bad in front of their bosses. If you can challenge their power and authority and get what you want, while still making it so they can play it off to their superior like they had control over the situation, then not only do you win and alter the power dynamics, but you usually eliminate the chance of arrest.

When we found out the president was in hiding, we decided to have a spokescouncil to see what to do next.

Strategically, it was useful for a lot of reasons. Not only did we want to democratically decide what to do next, but it helped all the participants in the demo - people with very different backgrounds and experience levels in activism - feel ownership over the march. Part of the strategy of the demo was to engage and activate people as much as possible. It worked (I’ll explain how in a minute).

( see video: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhchlJCEyMk

We decided to march to a meeting of Vision Ohio - where administrators were proposing additions for the campus to business leaders, without student input.

We danced:

( see video: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=044vliYDgM8

And went inside the new student building and shook things up:

( see video: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5z-6-Oe0Hc

And tracked down the Dean.

A student issued the demands:

( see video: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i_xgwpEWEw

And he pinkey-swore Sarah that they would be responded to by the president before the deadline that SDS issued.

( see video: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow4TtcHuWpQ

Afterwards we found out where the Vision Ohio meeting was, had a spokescouncil, and headed down there. The cop asked us to not be disruptive, and we thought that was appropriate. We pinkey-swore that we wouldn’t, and we kept our end of the bargain. Tactically, it was a great move, as in any action you need to make sure to exit on your own terms. We had already gotten what we wanted, and we decided to push it further - but if we had ended up getting kicked out it woudln’t have been useful to us at all. It would have killed the energy and disheartened all the new folks involved. Instead we just ate all the cookies and soda at the Vision Ohio meeting and did interviews with lots of press.

Like I said, SDS is trying to be relevant. It’s actually quite a revolutionary thing to do, given how most “radical” groups on campuses are content to build exclusionary, elitist subcultures and regress into them (and then wonder why all the other students are “apathetic” since they can’t relate). Building on the anger from the recent sports cuts and other assaults on campus, the whole demonstration was cultivated to activate people and give them a sense of ownership over the demo.

At the end, we pushed that idea even further. We announced that we were going to have a strategy session workshop, and it wasn’t just for SDS - everyone was invited to come shape SDS’ strategy. If SDS is supposed to be building a student movement, their vision and strategy has gotta be shaped by real students, not just a small section of them. We wanted it as participatory as possible.

I was asked to facilitate the training/workshop. Some of the best ideas came from people who had not only never thought strategically before, but had never thought about activism period before. In the session we identified clear concepts about what it means to strategize campaigns – differentiated between campaigning for change or simply protesting it, between specific goals, broader vision, and the difference between being guided by a strategy rather than a random assortment of tactics. We identified power holders in the administration, how they were related to other power holders, what their points of weakness were, and how to leverage our own power to target them. We identified what the different kinds of tactics are, how to build and escalate them, and brainstormed on how to use them to connect with allies, be accountable to other students and student groups, build power, and win concrete victories each step of the way.

I left the strategy session feeling like Athens SDS is really experimenting with models of organizing that are pretty new for our generation. The push for genuine participation by the general student body in their strategy - indeed thinking strategically at all - is a welcome change to the alienating subcultural elitist bullshit that seems to confine a huge part of the student left (the mostly-white sections of it at least). The need to be open minded, to be positive, to build up rather than tear down, and to be open to other “nonactivist” voices is a huge step in the maturity and sophistication of the activism at OU.

Until we can organize students in their own interest as students, we will be stuck in the thoughtlessness of doing self-congratulatory actions simply to “piss people off.” OU activists are realizing that militance is about strategy, vision and goals, about being serious, grounded, thoughtful and long-term. Often times young radicals get confused, thinking that tactics themselves can be militant or not. Tactics are only as militant insofar as they are strategic to achieving radical goals - and often “fucking shit up” is the clear road to marginalization and impotence. Athens SDS is building power on campus for real, being relevant for real, and being in it for the long haul. And they are doing it with concrete victories.

Nothing builds a movement like winning.

We live in a generation of cynicism. Students nowadays are perhaps (legitimately) more skeptical than any other generation in history. It’s not “apathy” so much as its grounded in an assessment that ‘we don’t have the power to make change’. When you organize on campus and you WIN - you show people that they are powerful, that they can make change, that win is enough to shatter the illusion of impotence. The shattering of that illusion is often a radicalizing process. It so deeply rocks the way we have been taught to view the world that it forces us to shift our perspective just to make sense of the things around us. That’s the process that I saw in Athens, Ohio. While SDS chapters across the country are thinking about how they can radicalize their campuses, Athens is providing a useful (if situationally specific) model.

As is important with every victory, its crucial to celebrate. So after the punk rock dance party, activists were gonna head over to the fraternity house, to which everyone was invited by a frat boy in the march. Unlikely alliances indeed!

(here is a little bit of media around the event. From Speakeasy Magazine and The Post:
http://speakeasymag.com/index.php/campuslife/article/news_020407_001 http://thepost.baker.ohiou.edu/articles/2007/02/02/news/17457.html )