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

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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.