"Young people come of age with a critical eye and a hopeful heart. It's that combination of critical eye and hopeful heart that brings change." - Marshall Ganz
Driving through Rockport and the other small seaside towns of Massachusetts with my parents, I had Vampire Weekend's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" in my head. Around me were colourful wooden houses like the one in the music video, and with their multiple stories and three-car garages they showed me what old New England money really means. I knew there was a lot of money in the United States, but to see so much affluence within and outside of Boston hit the point home. I imagined what I saw replicated (with different architecture of course) in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, and the countless other American metropolises. I knew then that I truly was in the belly of the beast - the beast being our global economy.
After saying my goodbyes to my parents, I rolled my suitcase into Fisher College on Beacon Street and immediately found the registration room for Green Corps. After doing some quick introductions with the others in the room I sat down and tried to focus on tax forms which was incredibly difficult. My mind was whirring with big thoughts: new place, new people, first real job.
Words from the Veterans
After meeting everyone formally that night and being surprised that there are only 21 of us in the class this year, we dove right into training the next day. I've never had classes like this before. On the second day, we got a first-hand account of what life is like in the "direct action" camp of environmentalism from a bigwig: U.S. Greenpeace Executive Director Phil Radford. It was really neat to meet the man at the top of an organization that you hear so much (good, bad, and ugly) about, and be able ask him what he thought of his group's image. For the record, he supports his group's radical image, but stresses that their radical tactics are only warranted if they are effective. He noted that every campaign Greenpeace runs is based on a scientifically sound bottom line, and posited that "we have all the answers, we just haven't got the power." I've found that this is the sentiment tying everyone together in the environmental organizing community.
My favorite guest speaker thus far has been John Rogers, a Senior Energy Analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Their group, which was founded in 1969 by nuclear physics grad students at MIT, works at the intersection of science and policy in order to ensure that technology is used responsibly. They have developed a Clean Energy Road Map for the next 50 years, illustrating how we can reach our GHG reduction targets to reduce the impacts of climate change. Their goal for the U.S? The 2030 energy mix they envision = 48% wind, 23% biomass, 8% solar, 10% hydro, and 11% fossil fuels (as they are phased out). They have also identified the policy tools necessary to achieve these changes, and are favoring a cap & trade strategy over tax restructuring. In his book Plan B 4.0, Lester Brown (World Watch Institute) argues for the latter based on the fact that this avoids fluctuations in carbon prices which can scare off investors. I don't understand enough economics to know who to believe - it's another thing to add to my "to learn" list.
Another bigwig we've heard from is Lois Gibbs, the passionate stay-at-home mother from Love Canal who many say is the founder of the modern environmental movement. Her story was incredibly moving; if you aren't aware of the saga, I suggest you Wikipedia Lois or hunt down the movie made about the case. To the budding organizers in the audience she said: "People out there want to do something; they just don't know what to do," and, in a tongue-in-cheek but forthright way, "Mothers and babies are the perfect tool to use against politicians - it's political suicide to ignore them!" Indeed, to win the Love Canal campaign she arranged for a handful of the community's cutest toddlers to toddle in and stand below the NY Governor's podium. I'm not planning to recruit babies for any of my campaigns this year, but I will have to come up with some smart and creative ways of getting politicians to listen and act.
The Art & Science of Organizing
When we're not listening to guest speakers, we're learning the nuts and bolts of organizing. I had no idea it was such a science. To get a certain number of new members to join the group, or a certain number of people out to a press conference, you must meet and ask a certain number of people at the right time. We're being taught how to design campaign plans so that we can set goals and reach them along the way, but it's all a lot more to do with numbers of people than I anticipated. It makes total sense though: the business world operates based on dollar figures. Money (which reflects individual power), is one change agent, and people are the other. Therefore, those in the world of social change balance their books with membership and attendance rates.
While learning all this, the Green Corps central staff has made sure that we gel as a group which means socials every night. It's wonderful spending every day with intelligent, friendly, and progressive people; I feel pretty spoiled. Boston also has incredibly cool things to do: we went to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, and to Walden Pond to see where Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson began the environmental movement in the 19th century.
Red Sox vs. Indians
Getting my Hands Dirty in Vermont
I worked on a campaign with the Toxics Action Center for three days beautiful Vermont. I wasn't ecstatic about the campaign - in retrospect the science was pretty shaky on the side of the protesters. This emphasized to me that we organizers should be working on campaigns we know have just cause in order to maintain and build credibility, as well as not waste our time and energy (as well as that of the public on which we rely).
Despite this, the people on the campaign were wonderful. We stayed with an elderly but young-at-heart woman named Annagret. She lives in a beautiful A-frame nordic-style house. On the main wall of the living room hangs a tremendous blue and white oil painting, done by an artist she befriended while swimming in nearby Lake Caspian. Annagret has an audible but non-impeding German accent that makes all of the fascinating things she says sound just that much more interesting. She has an 18th-century dowry chest sitting in her basement that she had shipped over from Austria when one could still afford to do such a thing.
She had just finished insulating her basement to improve energy efficiency, and heats her house with a wood stove and heat pump. Her wood is stacked in the cellar in piles of two pieces, with each tier perpendicular to the next to encourage air circulation and discourage mould. She said her basement gets a little damp on account of the worm farm she constructed in an adjoining room. She uses this to feed her phenomenal garden, which was sporting lilies to rival those on Garden Island when I arrived.
The first night we were there fork lighting ripped through the skies and rain poured down as we drove to her house. Rural Vermont reminded me so much of home, probably because it's only two hours south of the border. The next day she took us to Hardwick and introduced us to everyone in town: the co-op owners, the progressive agriculture group, the elderly church-goers, and a contractor who has restored all of the buildings in town over the years while simultaneously growing a long blonde mustache and white beard down to his belt buckle. Many people we met were very upset about the issue we were campaigning about, while others were cagey and visibly upset because they didn't approve of what we were doing. That was definitely a good thing to experience, as I'm sure it's not the first time it will happen in this line of work.
Sign-Off
Thanks for reading this first entry. I would love any questions or comments you have; they'll help focus my writing and perhaps make it more than just an easy way to keep in touch with you all! *If you're puzzled about the blog's name, it came about because every derivation of social/environmental change agent was taken, so I decided to make up my own word to describe what I think this work is training me to be. I don't know where it will take me, but I do know that I already feel much more useful in the face of global problems, and know that I can do something about them for the rest of my life.
I find out this weekend where I'll be going for the next four months and what I'll be working on. The options are: Passing California's Climate Bill, Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, and Food & Water Watch's campaign to ban arsenic from chicken feed. I'd love to work on numero dos - phasing out coal-fired power plants on college campuses - but it's a choice that's only partially under my control.
We shall wait and see.
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