Who: Author, editor, organizer, & puppeteer David Solnit

When: Friday, February 26th at 7:00 PM

Where: Ken Sanders Rare Books — 268 S. 200 E. Salt Lake City, UT

Art, culture and theater are essential to tell our stories, win public support, keep us hopeful, have fun, and powerfully communicate from our heart. Using strategy in our organizing is key to make our movements more effective in winning positive social change in our communities and for a better world. Join David Solnit for an evening of art and theater from frontline struggles, stories from successful mass mobilizations, and reflections on how we can be strategic in stopping climate change and shifting the system behind it to build a better world.

Sign up at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=313633894069

Download the flyer for the event:

The Utah Citizens’ Candidate initiative started after a posting on Craigslist seeking applicants for the position of “Courageous Congressperson” to represent District Two in the upcoming Democratic election. Criteria for the job included “commitment to transparency” and to “defending fundamental human rights over corporate profits.” After withstanding an early setback when the initially chosen candidate, Dr. John Weis, unexpectedly withdrew, the Citizens’ Candidate Initiative has continued to move forward with its efforts to offer a congressional representative chosen by and for the people of  Salt Lake’s District Two.

Claudia Wright at the Public Interviews

Claudia Wright, the new Citizens’ Candidate, was bested by Weis by less than five votes in the initial runoff voting process. Now that she has been asked to take his place as the Citizens’ Candidate, Wright says she is delighted to take the reins. “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to discuss issues that have been absent from the public dialogue for too long. This campaign is about the big picture, and I am ready to move forward into this role,” Wright explained. Weis offered Wright and the initiative his continued support through the duration of the Citizens’ Candidate campaign.

Wright is a career educator who has spent much of her life teaching History, Humanities, Women’s Studies and Gender Studies to high school and then to college students. She currently teaches at the Universities of Phoenix and Utah, and has received myriad awards as an exceptional educator, including the Excellence in Teaching Award from Brigham Young University, and Teacher of the Year from the Excel Foundation. Wright is a founding member of the Utah Chapter of the Human rights Coalition. She has hiked and camped all over Utah’s deserts and mountains, and is passionate about environmental and sustainability issues. She is a vocal advocate for universal health care, having suffered great personal loss in her family circle as a result of inadequate access to health care. She is a member of the LGBT community, and a vocal advocate for equal rights for Utah’s LGBT citizens.

The final candidate was selected at a public interview and runoff vote open to citizens of District Two, held at the SLC Library on January 30th. After a panel of seven representatives from local progressive groups that support the Citizens’ Candidate initiative interviewed the four final candidates and the audience of about 110 locals asked them questions, all present District Two voters offered their ranked choices for their preferred candidates. The instant runoff voting process reflected that preferential differences between John Weis and Claudia Wright were marginal in the first round of voting, and that majority support clearly favored Wright after Weis’ votes were redistributed.

Visit the Citizens’ Candidate website to learn more and find out how you can support this bold new step in grassroots democracy.

KRCL, 90.9 FM is Utah’s source for progressive community radio. RadioActive is an interactive, multifaceted program designed to put Utahns in touch with the issues of our times, and inform and assist them on how to get involved in their local communities and at large. Peaceful Uprising is excited to announce that we will be designing and hosting weekly RadioActive programs, beginning in March! Our Friday Uprising shows will focus on the myriad, diverse issues surrounding climate change, and the immediate and long-term social and political repercussions of these issues. We will inform Utah citizens on how get involved now, in their communities and beyond. Stay tuned for details, and be sure to listen in and join the conversation!

Visit RadioActive’s website to listen in online.

Of all the “green” films at Sundance, the most important film for the climate movement was the one that exposed what the greens lack: “Freedom Riders.”

In my eyes, “Freedom Riders” represents everything that the climate movement is missing: commitment, sacrifice, boldness and confrontation.  The facts of this film blow away a lot of the conventional wisdom that is holding our movement back from realizing its true potential.  This is a film that the entire climate movement needs to see.  There were more lessons in this film than I could process in one sitting, but here are some thoughts.

Motivation. We are always told that people need to feel personally threatened by the climate crisis in order to act. Some of the key figures in “Freedom Riders” were white students in Tennessee who were not threatened in any way by the status quo; yet they made a bold commitment to ride into certain danger in the deep South.  They dropped out of school during finals, and literally signed their last wills and testaments before they left.

Nonviolence. The film clarified a difference between nonviolence and avoidance of violence.  The Freedom Riders, who were committed to nonviolence, were also clearly and intentionally inciting violence against themselves. This they saw as necessary in order to escalate the situation to a point where it could no longer be ignored.

Politics. There were a lot of unintentional correlations between Obama and the Kennedys, who really didn’t want to have to deal with civil rights.  The activists involved knew they had to create enough social upheaval that Kennedy had to pick sides, which was a huge political risk.  Nothing about the political situation favored the Freedom Riders.

Sacrifice. This really puts our movement in perspective.  There is not one of us in this movement who have committed anything close to the level of sacrifice that the Freedom Riders did.

Numbers. The Freedom Riders were vastly outnumbered everywhere they went, even when they rallied the whole movement in Birmingham.  At the peak there were a few hundred Riders, but they achieved major national legal changes that ended formal segregation against immense political opposition. Their strength was never in numbers, but in their willingness to sacrifice. We have more than enough people in our movement to force the change we seek. A small group willing to throw themselves into the gears of the machine really can stop the machine.

These lessons are invaluable to our movement right now.  The most common question among climate activists since Copenhagen has been, “Where do we go from here?”  We know that what we have been doing hasn’t worked.  I suggest we learn from the social movements of the past and try something new for us and old for America: sacrifice, confrontation, boldness.

It has been almost a year since Tim DeChristopher and a group of colleagues founded Peaceful Uprising. Since then, we have grown to be a passionate, diverse group of about 40 people, with a broad coalition of support that includes social justice organizations, gay rights advocates, artists, state and local leaders, students, environmentalists and many more. We are the front line for the climate movement in Utah. We are committed to defending a just, livable future through empowering, nonviolent action. We will be busy in the coming year with creative, hard hitting campaigns, and training new activists who want to take a stand. See what we have been up to in the last year.

Powershift

Our first action was attending the Powershift 09 conference and Capitol Climate Action in Washington DC last March. A weekend of workshops, speeches and networking focused on clean energy, environmental justice and leadership. At the end of the weekend we joined 3000 others in shutting down the power plant that fuels the US capitol. Five of us risked arrest to blockade the gates, but luckily, no one was arrested that day. We came away from the weekend energized and empowered, ready to take on new challenges.

Lobbying Jim Matheson

Taking a cue from Gayle Ruzicka’s phone tree lobbying system, we made a phone tree of our own to lobby Jim Matheson for the ACES bill. ACES was the climate change bill that passed out of congress this summer, and before it did we made almost 300 calls a day to Matheson’s DC office, demanding he push for comprehensive legislation in line with the latest science. We also made a life size paper mache unicorn for Matheson, inspired by his support for clean coal and Van Jones’ comment that clean coal is as viable solution as having unicorns pull our cars. Matheson ignored us and took a conservative stance, (read: he sacrificed survival for business as usual) but we know he was listening.

Climate Change Kills! Flashmob Gallivan

Taking advantage of the mob mentality at the summer Twilight Concert Series, Peaceup organized a flashmob for climate justice. An estimated 300 people “dropped dead” for five minutes while a 900 square foot banner hung from the Walker Center. The Salt Lake Tribune covered the story and printed a fantastic photo of the banner. The story was picked up by the national climate movement, and put Peaceup and Utah on the map for climate activism.

350.org Day of Action

Working with a broad coalition of local groups, Peaceup organized a local festival for the 350.org International Day of Climate Action. With speakers, local music, dance and art, our event brought people together to communicate a bold message to our leaders- “climate justice is survival, now or never!” A photo of our human sculpture was delivered to both the United Nations and Utah’s senators. Senator Bennet was audibly shocked to see that 400 people gathered to spell the number 350.

Hello Peaceful Uprisers!  It is good to be stateside again.

You may know that I went to Copenhagen to attend/participate in/keep an eye on the UNFCCC 15th Council of the Parties — or COP15 –  climate summit. It was one of the most intense, whirlwind experiences of my life, and I was there for over 20 days, so I won’t even try to relate ALL of the things I did there in one post, but upon request, I will share some of the highlights, and hopefully provide some inspiration for your own activism.

As far as the political why and how of the failure of COP15 — well, that is a really long story that will be included in next month’s issue. In a nutshell, COP15 failed because of 3 main reasons: 1) There aren’t enough people “taking it to the streets” (particularly in the USA) and making it clear that survival is non-negotiable. This country never changes without a mass movement of citizens DEMANDING it, and the clean energy shift will be no exception. This apathy is partly due to the so-called “big green” groups like NRDC and WWF that are not telling the truth about how they are falling short of what is needed to create a survival future.  2) There is a lack of leadership, ownership, and foresight on this planet (consider the main debate: on one hand, we have the annihilation of 1000′s of species, entire SOCIETIES of people, and an uninhabitable planet for our children. On the other, we might have to pay 15 or 20 dollars more a month on our utilities. And its a nail-biter? Our priorities are wacked! And 3) Corporations and their profit equations own our political leaders and many of our minds. See, healthy planetary change is not as profitable as the status-quo, and politicians vote along donor lines more so than public opinion polls. Of the People and By the People has been hijacked by special interests.

Ah, that brings up a good story about corporate influence. Coca Cola was the main sponsor of “Hopenhagen“, which was the unscrupulous PR campaign commissioned by the UN to turn the main square of the city of Copenhagen into a concert space, media hub, and  all-around feel-good marketing opportunity venue.  Billboards lined the square with soft messages of hope (as in, we hope that our leaders will do what is needed, instead of making them do what is needed  [an admission of helplessness]), and all over town, Coca-Cola had saturated public space with “A Bottle of Hope” posters.

I spent most of my time with The Yes Men and their small crew, putting together elaborate shenanigans and being ready to participate should shenanigans find us. One day, I arrived at HQ (an art gallery downtown that we were using as a workshop) where people were talking about what we could do to expose Coke for their hypocrisy (Coke is the kind of corporation that executes labor organizers and destroys villages and uses more water that you could ever imagine, to name just a few things). So we hatched a plan, clapped our hands together, kicked it into overdrive, and 4 hours later we had written and sent out a press release to the major outlets covering “Hopenhagen”, compiled a list of talking points about Coke’s greatest crimes, and thrown together a fake commercial that was intended to project onto the gigantic globe in the middle of the square. Off to the corporate festival we went. Here’s what we did:

Mike (the Yes Man) and Laurel (a Yes Woman) took on the persona’s of Coke executives who were so fed up with their company’s outright lies that they were calling the media to announce that they had written and taken a pledge to never drink Coke again. With the cameras rolling, group after group of Hopenhagen-goers took the pledge (I went first of course, acting like a passer-by). While outside, on a globe the size of a medium-sized house, an old Coca-Cola commercial came on, with the fuzzy polar bears (do you remember them?) interlaced with footage of real polar bears drowning. In that special cursive font that Coke uses, instead of saying “Always Coca Cola” it read, “Never Coca Cola”.

That was just one afternoon/evening.  Things were happening every day! The point of that story is that a group like Peaceful Uprising and The Yes Men don’t wait around and wait for permission from a board of directors before we act. And when we act, we move to expose the truth creatively, nonviolently, and powerfully.

I’ll give you another example of how creative, intelligent protest can make a difference. Early in the trip, I managed to get a badge for access to the “Fresh Air Center“, which was a cavernous cafe in downtown Copenhagen that had been transformed into THE off-site media hub for journalists to use. A live feed was constantly streaming into the room from the plenary at the Bella Center (where the COP15 was actually being held), and computers lined all the walls. One evening, we heard that the assistant Secretary-General of the UN (second in command) was coming by to take a few questions and see the place. So we arranged to do an absurdist fashion show for him after he was done talking. As soon as he finished, we threw on some Survivaballs (funny inflatable, round suits that are meant to represent an option for the very wealthy to stay safe from climate change) and cat walked around the cafe. We were interrupted (planned) by the Climate Debt Agents (who were all over the place in Copenhagen, wearing bright red suits and sunglasses to symbolically collect the money owed to developing nations who are being affected the most by the pollution put out by developed nations) who took the stage and made their case. Apparently, the assistant Secretary General was so moved by this that he canceled his plans to meet Ban Ki-Moon (the Secretary-General himself) at the Bella Center so he could write about it in his personal blog.

One more story for this issue…this is my personal favorite.

As part of a super-elaborate hoax, (more on that next time) we rebuilt the press briefing room (watch first video) of the Bella Center in the basement of our workshop. My primary mission for going to Copenhagen was to provide some sort of contrast, some sort of message of hope that wasn’t this baloney about crossing our fingers. I knew that COP15 would fall short, but what would a good deal even look like? I was afraid that the majority of people would have no idea in their minds about what success in Copenhagen would entail, thus having no constructive place to direct their anger and disappointment. So, after the Great Canada Hoax was finished, we opened up the set for people to come down and record videos of themselves making announcements from “The Bella Center.” Since we were so close to the Fresh Air Center, I ran back and forth bringing leaders of the global climate movement and anyone who was interested into the basement to record a statement. I helped create the “Good COP” website, which looks exactly like the real COP15 website, but ours just has videos. We had Jessy Tolkan, fresh out af a meeting with Al Gore, Bill McKibben came, Daryl Hannah, and even George Monbiot from The Nation to name a few. It was a blast, I’m telling you. If you watch nothing else, see Mike’s introduction and the announcement by Jessy Tolkan (leader of the Energy Action Coalition.) Jessy had zero time to prepare, and I still get goosebumps when I think of her video. It is on the top of the column of videos on the left, in the middle of the three.

That’s it for this issue, my friends. I hope you don’t mind if I share some more stories in a couple of weeks. It’s my hope that you take away from my experience an enthusiasm for repairing the world creatively, and by taking chances, and putting yourself in the middle of the action. I would live to answer any questions you might have. Feel free to email me at peacefuluprising@gmail.com. Type “Attn. Ashley” in the subject line.

If you want in on the wealth of projects like these that we are currently working on, make sure you are on our Action Team!

Here’s to 2010 — the year we stopped asking for a livable future and started demanding it.

(And had a hell of a good time doing it.)

Ashley Anderson