(Glad to hear folks are pressuring Brown for serious climate action. I hope you also decide to shadow Kerry. His energy bill is a shameful backsliding giveaway to industry, and we must demand better. – promoted by eli_beckerman)
Sporting large, brown ‘oily hands,’ and carrying signs reading “Fight Climate Change Now,” a dedicated group of climate activists spent nearly two hours ‘shadowing’ US Senator Scott Brown at fundraising events in Boston on Wednesday evening.
Four groups were involved in planning and carrying out the shadow event: 1Sky, 350.org, the Global Warming Education Network, and Paint Brown Green. Supporters of the groups first gathered outside of a fundraiser for MA treasurer candidate Karyn Polito, held at the Liberty Hotel, a former prison in Boston. Among other taunts, three of the activists chanted, “Climate change victims, hear them wail; climate change deniers belong in jail!” Senator Brown was not seen entering or leaving the event.
After 45 minutes of demonstrating outside the first fundraiser, the protesters marched past the offices of both US senators Kerry and Brown on their way to a second fundraiser, held for Brad Marston, republican candidate for US Congress, held at the Kinsale restaurant, on Cambridge Street in Boston. Commenting on Boston’s weird recent weather, the activists chanted, “Six weeks of drought, then four inches of rain; how do you like your climate change?”
Then, just as the demonstrators were told that “security had been notified,” the impossible happened: Senator Brown approached the restaurant on foot. Seeing her chance, activist Susan Shamel immediately went to the senator’s side to voice her request for strong US climate legislation. Shamel and Brown spoke for nearly a minute before the senator waved to the other
activists and disappeared inside.
“He was supportive of my request for legislation, but blamed democrats for not bringing appropriate legislation to the senate for a vote,” said Shamel. “He also said that he could not support a tax on energy,” she went on. “I told him that revenues collected could be returned to the taxpayers, but he was skeptical of this approach,” Shamel said.
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I know that Repower America was doing or planning on doing a door-to-door campaign to get thousands of letters in support of climate legislation to Senator Brown. This might have changed. I haven’t followed the discussion as closely as some, but it appears that a comprehensive climate change bill is dead.
Besides Repower America, there’s the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Resources Defense Council, Conservation International, the Sierra Club, US PIRG, Green for All, the Blue-Green Alliance, many high profiles corporations, and a huge variety of other environmental, labor, and business groups and organizations that have endorsed comprehensive climate legislation. But the fossil fuel and industrial lobby is immensely powerful and such a large number of Democrats are beholden to them that even the lesser bills more likely to pass will be rather odious.
Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Climate SOS, and a diversity of grassroots environmental and ecological activist groups have said the Climate legislation passed by the House is a step backward and have been vocal about how awful the Senate outlines have been.
The Green Party of the United States in its Platform and public statements has agreed with these groups. But this leaves unanswered what exactly the response of those who oppose legislation that can reasonably pass through the meatgrinder of corporate influence. What is the alternative?
And this is an open question, even environmental groups supporting legislation want public pressure to build a better compromise.
The Climate justice rubric offers a set of values and organizing principles, though the makings of a mass movement have yet to occur. A lot more general education and connections between our social and economic ills need to be made.
Thankfully the Stein campaign for Governor is doing just that, connecting issues of health, economic security, community development, our crisis in democracy, and the ecological crisis into a compelling vision on how to fix the Commonwealth. Go Jill!