We launched the Climate Disobedience Center five years ago. It was a wild proposition at the time: to form a little center that would have the back of people who take risks to defend the web of life, and would broaden the conversation around direct action, invitational nonviolence, and push the edge of moral imagination of climate action. When we started out we were clear that we would not be a typical non-profit. We weren’t going to take typical non-profit salaries. We were ready to risk the very existence of the organization if it was the strategic and moral thing to do. And because of our commitment to act on our principles in accordance with our sense of strategy, morality, creativity and intuition, we weren’t going to be dependent on grants that would limit our ability to act. 

Since 2015 we’ve supported activists across the country through their legal processes, through trials using the climate necessity defense, we’ve consulted about strategy, and connected hundreds of people with lawyers and legal resources. In the last year alone, we have offered new trainings and innovated ways to offer real community support to defendants with remote court appearances. Meanwhile, we have also struck out on our own to build coalitions, develop campaigns and support actions that would push the boundaries of what is possible from the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline fight, to the Valve Turners to the No Coal No Gas campaign in New England. And over the past two years, we have joined partners across the country to develop a network of direct action teams at the intersection of racial healing and climate justice.

At the end of the day, movements sustain themselves when people show up to share with their community the most precious things they have: their time, their wisdom, their vision, creativity, passion and skills. A movement grows when people see what is happening, how something new is growing, and feel called to add their gifts into the mix as well. There’s no amount of compensation, or paid staff, that can build it.

We didn’t have language for this when we started out. However, since we began our work as part of the “Yet-To-Be-Named” network, we have come to understand this as the functioning of a gift economy: a relationship of mutuality, trust and care made real in the material world by time and resources.

This March we put our plans for training and action on hold due to COVID-19 and threw ourselves into mutual aid and resiliency work while also pivoting into the pandemic future. In our last big email we asked our friends who are financially stable to use their stimulus checks for reparations. In June we turned our attention and time to the fight for Black lives in the streets sparked by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, the most recent in a 400 year history of oppression and death. In response we have been helping train, organize and act at the invitation of Black leadership where most of us live. Why? Because Black lives matter.

Racial Justice is Climate Justice

The fight for Black lives and the fight for climate justice are related. It has been evident forever that the front lines of the climate crisis are run across the bodies of Black, brown and Indigenous people in this country and around the world. The communities on the fence lines of refineries, oil rigs, power plants, tar sands mines, toxic waste dumps, polluting industries, and the people on the receiving end of the worst diesel exhaust and particulate pollution are not white. With perhaps the exception of Appalachia as a sacrifice zone for coal and fracking, the impacts of the fossil fuel industry fall along racial lines. And of course it is well established that those most directly impacted directly by the ravages of climate change in the US and around the world are the Black and brown people who have historically suffered under the boot of Western economic and environmental colonization, genocide, and exploitation.

But it goes deeper…

I hope this finds you and your family and friends healthy and doing as well as is possible under the circumstances. I want to invite you into some of our personal and collective commitments at the Climate Disobedience Center to participate in the creation of a more just and equitable world.

The COVID-19 pandemic brings into sharp focus many of the ugly truths about racial inequities embedded in our institutions and systems, including a dramatic racial wealth gap that raises barriers to access educational, nutritional, healthcare, housing, and other critical resources. This wealth gap compounds the disproportionately high rates of chronic disease, incarceration, and environmental injustice experienced by people of color, particularly Black, Latinx and Indigenous people.

In this moment of global uncertainty, we can contribute to building the future we envision by beginning or deepening practices of radical solidarity. And we want to invite you to take a concrete action this week.

We were already in unprecedented times while staring down the barrel of the climate crisis. And now we’re in a pandemic that is pulling our attention to real immediate needs in communities across the country. Many of us have been practicing all our lives how to handle crisis situations. For some this experience of societal unraveling is brand new - for others this is an emergency that has been unfolding for generations. In this time, a legacy of racial violence and economic disparity is driving harms harder and faster for the most vulnerable and those on the front-lines. Meanwhile, we face a government that downplays the magnitude of the problems and does too little too late. Now we are confronted with a real opportunity to turn toward each other and community rather than isolation or turning on one another.

A lot of climate organizations are writing about what they’re doing in this time-of-virus. We’re not going to do that right now. Instead, we want to take a moment to share some things we’re seeing that impact our movement in this time.

This weekend across two states, a community of climate activists stopped 10,000 tons of coal in its tracks in three successive train blockades. This is the next step in a campaign that started in August to shut down the Merrimack Generating Station in Bow, New Hampshire - the last large coal-fired power plant in New England without a shut-down date. There is no justification for burning coal in 2019: it’s far too late for that. And taking responsibility in 2019 means taking action.

There was fresh snow on the ground when the train, which was 80 cars long, rolled into Worcester, MA at 9:30 AM on Saturday, December 7th. It sat there almost a full day before it started rolling north again at 7:30 PM. Before the train had moved more than a couple miles, it was stopped by a small but determined group of activists who had been standing in temperatures well below freezing all day. A rotation of students from Clark Climate Justice (Clark University), with support from members of 350 Central Massachusetts and the Central MA climate disobedience praxis group, had been keeping themselves warm enough and ready to act throughout the many hours of waiting. 

ON SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, MEMBERS OF THE WORCESTER COMMUNITY BLOCKADED A COAL TRAIN EN ROUTE TO THE MERRIMACK PLANT IN BOW, NH

Worcester, MA -- Currently, more than 20 members of the Worcester community’s student climate justice groups are blocking a Coal Train heading to the Merrimack Plant in Bow, NH. The students blocking the train are protesting the continued usage of the coal plant. This protest stands against the burning of coal that continues to destroy the climate, and the harm upon frontline communities that the fossil fuel industry inflicts, especially in the global south. This direct action is an important element to larger movements towards climate justice. 

As with any tactic for responding to the climate crisis, the use of the necessity defense in civil disobedience trials is subject to misinformation from a variety of sources. Regardless of the intentions of those sources of misinformation, part of our job is to routinely reiterate the facts and clarify where we stand. There is of course a lot of grey area on this, since “The Law” is not a hard and fast code, but rather a constantly evolving context of countless power struggles. So with that in mind, let’s look at some of the misinformation floating around the web recently.

I was arrested a week ago. Getting arrested is good for news headlines and Facebook statuses. But getting arrested wasn’t the point.

We were trying to remove fuel from the fire that’s burning our planet. This specific fire: the coal-fired Merrimack Generating Station in Bow, NH. But that wasn’t the point either.

I have spent the past week reveling in the beauty of the climate strikes mingled with many ongoing grassroots fights for justice. I feel deeply connected to and grateful for the energy that is rising. I am also conscious that this one moment didn't achieve the transformation we need – not yet.

This is for all of you who have been building the world you are certain we need, doing it sometimes quietly and sometimes very loudly. I see you. Your long work has created the conditions that made this week possible.