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.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 20, 2019

Press contact: Jay O'Hara, 774-313-0881
[email protected]

Concord, NH - On Saturday, August 17th 2019, eight determined New Englanders, supported by a team of more than a dozen others, removed over 500lbs of coal from the fuel pile at Merrimack Generating Station in Bow, New Hampshire. This facility is the largest coal-fired power plant in New England without a shutdown date. Says Tim DeChristopher, co-founder of the Climate Disobedience Center: “With the global climate crisis having advanced this far without a dramatic change in US carbon emissions, we have a responsibility to remove this fuel from the fire. Indeed, it is now a necessity to take matters into our own hands and safely shut down this facility.”

This weekend on the South Coast of Massachusetts we're going to get to witness the end of an era in the state, when a controlled demolition implodes the huge cooling towers on Saturday April 27th. Providence's Extraordinary Rendition Band will provide the soundtrack for a jubilant dance party in Fall River's Kennedy Park at 8AM that morning. (I hope you'll join us!) This moment is both an important moment for our movement to reflect, as well as a personal point for me.

I got into climate disobedience in earnest in 2013 when Ken Ward and I anchored our little white lobster boat, the "Henry David T" in the shipping channel in front of the coal plant, and demanded that the plant be shut down immediately. We remained there for a day, blocking the unloading of 40,000 tons of Appalachian coal from a hulking black ship which has traveled up from Norfolk, Virginia, to supply what was then the largest single source of CO2 emissions in New England.

That act of disobedience lit a fire in the climate movement to focus on direct action and hone in on that massive coal plant. That summer, there were hundreds of people at the gates of the plant demanding it's immediate closure, dozens were arrested at the gates, and a long march kicked off later that summer from Fall River to the proposed site of Cape Wind.

And it's precisely here that we see the catalytic work of climate disobedience: to set a narrative, grounded in the moral imagination of what is necessary, rather than what is thought to be politically possible. Prior to the lobster boat action, advocates were proposing that the plant be shut down by 2020. But on Saturday the plant will have been shut down for nearly two years and the huge monuments that tower above the skyline of Fall River (let alone Somerset) will come down forever.

IT WAS NOT CHEAP GAS

But why, you might ask, have a dance party celebration for the climate justice movement when it was cheap fracked gas that really shut down the plant? It's conventional wisdom to say that this plant was shut down because the cost of coal couldn't compete against cheap fracked gas flowing into New England. And we're going to dance because we believe that premise is utterly false - or at least incomplete.

Emma Schoenberg and I leading the Next Steps walk into Montpelier on April 9th. photo credit: Zac Rudge/350VT

It’s a badly-kept secret that I love taking long walks. That started for me in 2005 when I hiked the Appalachian Trail and got mixed with climate activism starting with the Energy Exodus walk in 2013, and with two Quaker-led climate pilgrimages along pipeline routes and between coal plants in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. So it’s no wonder that when my friend Maeve McBride asked about doing a climate walk led by 350 Vermont, I got excited and jumped in.

It might not be exactly obvious why pitching in on a five-day 65 mile walk through Vermont called Next Steps is the work of the Climate Disobedience Center. Aside from taking the streets through Middlebury and Montpelier without a permit, we followed the traffic laws and weren’t overtly disruptive on our journey. We gathered 300 people in the state house at the conclusion of the walk and sang the place down at the invitation of our elected representative allies, and the doors were open for us and we left on our own accord.

But on another level this is precisely the work of the CDC - building the bonds of trust and love that make possible a vibrant movement of risk taking and disobedience. And was for me an experiment in building what we call “the field”.