Thursday, February 12, 2009
{The B LUE Banner'}
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Students travel to Washington for conferenc
By Rhys Baker
S’AF? Writer
RDBAKER@UNCA,EDU
More than 50 UNC Asheville students
visit Washington, D.C. this month for
Power Shift, a climate change conference
attracting youth from all over the countiy.
“Power Shift ’09 will be the largest
youth gathering ever on the issue of cli
mate change,” said Jessy Tolkan, executive
director of the Energy Action Coalition.
According to Russell Anderson, the
Southern Energy Network’s North Caro
lina organizer, UNCA had the most stu
dents registered in the state, beating UNC
Chapel Hill by one registrant. Power Shift
organizers anticipate more than 10,000 at
tendees for this year’s conference.
The Energy Action Coalition, a partner
ship of 48 U.S. and Canadian organiza
tions, sponsored the first Power Shift two
years ago. Coalition organizers said they
wanted to face issues of social and envi
ronmental justice together by organizing
youth in campaigns to protect the environ
ment and promote social responsiblity.
“Power Shift is a bunch of youth from
around the country getting up to go to dif
ferent workshops and panels,” said fresh
man and Power Shift attendee Azaria
Miller. "I want to be aware of issues and
bring evetyfthing I learned back to campus
to educate people who weren’t able to go.
1 want to be less sedentary and more ac
tive.”
Conference participants will attend
w'orkshops with a wide variety of topics
such as gender, sexism, climate change
and event planning. The w’orkshops focus
on anti-oppression, corporate accountabil
ity, education, environmental justice and
international impact, according to the En
ergy Action Coalition.
“We need to repower our nation and the
world with 100% clean, just energy,” said
Brianna Cayo Cotter, Power Shift com
munications director. “We need a political
power shift that refuses to be dominated
and dictated by big, dirty business interest '
for a minute longer and starts investing in
us, in our future, and in survival,”
Senior Elbe Johnston, the executive of
sustainability for the Student Government
Association, attended Power Shift ’07 and
worked on the Power Vote campaign.
“On the lobby day there was a big stage
that the Energy Action Coalition set up on
the lawTi of our nation’s capital. I turned
Sulkiro Song - Staff Photogri
Kasey Baker, a junior, gives thumbs up wearing his Power Shift T-shirt at a meeting where Power Shift '09 gathers
Swannanoa Room. Jonah Freedman,right, a junior, plans to attend the Power Shift conference, holds a piastic he
from the Power Shift conference held in 2007.
around to see thousands of youth with
signs and banners and with the Washington
Monument in the background,” Johnston
said. “Then we dispersed to meet with
our respective congressman to tell them of
our support for any effort they put toward
clean energy and climate change.”
The lobby day is a crucial part of Power
Shift, Johnston said.
“It made me feel like i was a part of
something that really had the possibility to
make a difference.”
1’he conference attendants choose be
tween lobby training or non-violent direct
action training. Participants either attend a
lobby day on Capitol Hill, or a direct ac
tion protest known as the Capitol Climate
Action on the last day of the conference.
Last year the students dressed in bio
hazard suits and shoveled coal onto the
street in front of Citi-Bank, a coal support
er according to the coalition. Participants
laid down in front of the bank blockading
the entrance.
“We have said for a long time in the
youth climate movement, that our future is
at stake,” Cotter said. “It is more than our
future that is at stake. It is our basic sur-
^Tower Shift ’09 will be
the largest youth gathering
ever on the issue of climate
change. ”
- Jessy Tolkan, executive director
of the energy action coalition
vival. It is the survival of peoples, .species,
entire countries, and of our planet that is at
stake here. We don’t have time to wait or
be patient and polite any longer.”
This year demonstrators will gather at
the Capitol Coal Plant, which provides
Capitol Hill with energy. A Facebook
group for the demonstration contains more
than 2,000 people who plan to attend.
A1 Gore, Noam Chomsky, Bill McKib-
ben and NASA scientist James Hansen en
dorse Power Shift, according to conference
officials. Van Jones is currently the main
speaker this year. He wrote '"The Green
Collar Economy: How One Solution ^
Fix Our Two Biggest Problems," ;
“Van Jones as a speaker is reallyj
powering because of his commitmef
leading the green jobs movement,”]
Johnston, who saw him speak at P«
Shift ’07 and at the Association for
Advancement of Sustainability in Hi!
Education conference in 2008.
Johnston said utilizing the skills ^
Power Shift on campus was the most
powering part of Power Sh ift. J
“Power Shift showed me there are
sands of people across the nation who
equally concerned with the direction:
nature and world are headed in tenns o1
impacts of climate change, environniO
degradation and the disparity betweei
rich and the poor,” Johnston said.
For more information
about Power Shift, visit
www.powershift09.org