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