Author Archives: Mary Sweeters

Welcome to the new Greenpeace Semester class!

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GPS.SU1.2013group.photoIntroducing the newest class of the Greenpeace Semester!

They hail from many different places: Tennessee, California, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, and Envigado, Colombia.  They have joined Greenpeace for the next five weeks in Washington D.C. to learn many of the important skills of environmental activism to take back to their respective communities. They’ll be participating in workshops, skills trainings, and traveling for a week to get experience campaigning on an environmental issue.

Stay tuned and follow their adventures on Twitter, on Tumblr, or future posts here.

Welcome Stephanie, Angie, Melissa, Alex, Ben, Vinnie, Mackenzie, and Jackie!

The Greenpeace Semester is still accepting applications for our second summer term and fall term.  If you’d like to apply, click here.

 

 

 

Greenpeace Semester – Learning the Ropes

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A Greenpeace Semester participant reaches the end of her rope during the climb training, which is part of Actions Week.

Greenpeace’s long history of direct action – indeed, a pillar of our philosophy – sometimes involves climbing in order to get to a place in plain view from which we can send a message or stop an environmentally destructive activity from continuing. During Actions Week in the Greenpeace Semester, participants first gain an understanding of non-violent direct action as a core of our philosophy, then spend a day learning some basics of technical climbing as it applies to activism.

The Greenpeace Semester is currently accepting applications for the summer and fall term.  Apply online here.

Raleigh Residents to Duke Energy: No Rate Hikes for Dirty Energy

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Greenpeace organizer Becky Ceartas speaks to a crowd in Raleigh, NC protesting Duke Energy's proposed rate increases that would go toward more dirty energy like coal and nuclear power.

Last week the students of the Greenpeace Semester listened to residents of Raleigh, NC as they testified to their Public Utilities Commission about the rate increases that Duke Energy – the electricity company in North Carolina as well as 5 other states – is trying to make them pay on their monthly electric bills. One woman said that she pays as much as $500 every month to make sure that her family’s lights stay on. That means that if Duke Energy gets the increases it wants, her bill will go up by over $50, which she simply can’t afford. Continue reading →

Greenpeace Semester: North Carolina Bound

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Greenpeace participants Devin and Heather paint banners as part of the preparation for their trip to Raleigh, NC.

This past week, Greenpeace Semester participants spent most of their time preparing to go to Raleigh, North Carolina.  Why?  They are spending the next two weeks there for what is called the Greenpeace Semester Campaign Trip, which is a chance to put the skills they’ve learned into practice. They’ll be talking to residents about the impact of Duke Energy’s dirty energy policy on North Carolinians and helping out at a public hearing.  They’ll also join the students at NC State to advocate for divestment from dirty energy.

Stay tuned for more updates on their adventures!

The Greenpeace Semester is now accepting applications for the spring and fall term – apply here.

Meet the new Greenpeace Semester class!

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“I want to know that what I am doing now is benefiting my entire generation and those to come.”

“This is the field that I am studying in school and to have the experience of hands-on field training would make me a stronger activist.  There is so much more that I can learn and this is the perfect program for that.” Continue reading →

Greenpeace Semester: Meet the Fall 2012 class

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     Meet Ellen, Karina, Hannah, Kris, Kaitlynd, Paulina, Drew, and Rachel.  They are the class this fall for the Greenpeace Semester, Greenpeace’s activist training program for young leaders.

They come from many different places, from Tennessee to Ohio to Oregon to Baja, Mexico. They are all united in their passion and commitment to being part of the solution to the world’s environmental problems, to challenging themselves to learn some of the fundamental skills of activism and then bring their new knowledge back to their communities.

And boy, are they ready.

Says Ellen, “A semester with Greenpeace will give me an inside look at what to prepare for in terms of my future career. I want to save forests, end nuclear power, protect endangered animals, reduce our carbon footprint, advocate sustainability, rid the world of toxic chemicals, and put an end to global warming!”

Stay tuned for more about this class; they’ll be doing great things this fall.

Want to join the Greenpeace Semester?  Applications are being accepted for spring – apply early to receive $100 off tuition.

Greenpeace Semester Students Draw Inspiration from Ohio Activist

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Ohio activist Elisa Young, center, talks with Greenpeace Semester students, including author Miles Goodrich (in red hat) during the students' trip to moblize Cincinnati residents against Duke Energy's proposed rate hikes.

 

Written by Miles Goodrich, Greenpeace Semester Summer 2012

Because students proved a critical force in sustaining the social movements of the last century, Greenpeace has developed its own semester long program – the Greenpeace Semester – to train young adults in mobilizing for the environment.  Each semester, students go on a trip to work on a critical environmental issue with Greenpeace.

This session, our class went to Cincinnati to protest Duke Energy’s rate hikes, which the company proposed soon after the city switched to renewable energy credits after a successful grassroots organizing campaign to stop buying power from Duke – a move which cost that company close to 100 million dollars.  Despite being dropped in Cincinnati, Duke still owns that cities grid and is working to charge residents more to use it in and attempt to make up for that lost revenue.

On the drive out there, we stopped outside the dilapidated town of Cheshire, Ohio to speak with local anti-fracking and coal activist Elisa Young.  At first glance, Elisa’s warm smile suggests she’s a kindly neighborhood everywoman.  And indeed she acts with the sweet disposition of a grandmother—offering the fifteen students of the semester both homemade salsa to eat and homemade rocking chairs to relax in—but her warmth only extends so far.  To local fracking companies, Elisa is the worst kind of neighbor: a nosy citizen meddling in corporate affairs by demanding transparency regarding the supposedly public exploits of businesses.  “When they’re essentially writing the laws,” said Elisa of the energy companies with enormous influence over local governments, “you have to do your best to keep them honest.”

Despite her dedication to taking on a powerful industry, Elisa is a reluctant activist.  She survived the same cancer that claimed the lives of many of her friends and family—innocent casualties of the poisonous coal plants that have desecrated her ancestral home.  Elisa has experienced firsthand the damage the fossil fuel industry wreaks.  She knows what she is up against, but that does not stop her from doing her best to protect her homeland.

Elisa’s best work consists of trawling through hundreds of pages of obscure legal language and navigating her way around corporate bureaucracy—all in the name of staying an informed citizen.  “She was so inspiring as a grassroots organizer,” student Mackenzie Greisser said of Elisa, “fighting such a difficult fight for so long, but with success.”

Rather than chaining herself to every fracking well in Ohio (“I would do it if I thought it was how we’d win”), Elisa prefers to take on the industry by forcing them to abide by the law: registering the correct permits, filling out the proper paperwork.  Through this citizen-empowerment activism, Elisa has made a name for herself as the persistent, annoying gadfly, always double-checking the reports that energy companies file.  She understands the importance of participating in democracy beyond voting every four years.

Though Elisa stayed behind in Cheshire as we moved on to Cincinnati, we all took a bit of her and her citizen-hero mentality with us to the city council on Tuesday during a public hearing on the issue of allowing fracking waste to be stored within the city limits. We witnessed plenty of Elisa-like gumption and conviction among the nearly twenty citizens who all called upon the council to ban injection wells—sites where fracking waste is forced into the earth.  Echoing Elisa’s story, Mackenzie described how her family’s susceptibility to cancer makes the toxic byproducts of fracking a disturbing means of energy acquisition.  “Elisa fighting for her hometown inspired me to fight for mine by standing up against fracking,” Mackenzie said, “and the council thanked me for being an active student.”

So as much as anything, the Greenpeace Semester’s trip to Cincinnati to mobilize support against Duke Energy’s rate hikes is an experiment in democracy: government by the people.  And not corporate people, but living, breathing people who fight for their right to live on stable earth and breathe clean air.  People with the tenacity of Elisa Young and the drive of Mackenzie Greisser.  People who still believe in democracy.

This blog was written by me, Miles Goodrich – Greenpeace Semester student.  You can read more about my class trip experience here: renewthefuture.tumblr.com and go to www.quitcoal.org to learn more.

Twitter: @GPSemester

Facebook: Greenpeace Student Network

Petition: https://secure3.convio.net/gpeace/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1023

Student Activists Learn From Residents Living Next to Coal Plants

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The Marshall coal plant near Charlotte, NC.

Written by Greenpeace Semester student Sarah Dymecki

For most of the eight Greenpeace Semester students, the issue of coal and mountaintop removal was something we had learned about during the five weeks we spent with Greenpeace. It did not directly affect the majority of our hometowns, but we knew how the problem contributed to climate change. However, all this changed when we got to Charlotte. Suddenly we were hearing real stories from people that have been affected by coal their whole lives. After that week, our perspectives changed.

We spent the majority of our four days in Charlotte collecting petitions and recruiting new volunteers to aid in the effort to Quit Coal in North Carolina. Both the Riverbend and Marshall coal-fired power plants are surrounded by communities that are continuously poisoned. Their air and water are contaminated by dangerous metals leaking from the power-plant stacks and the coal ash waste ponds on site.  Even worse, if one of these ash ponds were to breach, the communities and rivers downhill from the plants would be completely destroyed.

On a Thursday in mid-June, the students trained community volunteers to canvass the neighborhoods surrounding theirs and ask their neighbors to oppose the plants. Among those was a mother of two, Sara Ellington Behnke. At the age of 37, Sara was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma while her children Anna and Cade were six and four. Sara’s mother and brother-in-law also go sick with cancer. Sara’s doctor said that he suspected environmental causes for her family’s cancers but could not definitively connect them to the power plant.

Now a five-year cancer survivor, Sara is volunteering with the local Quit Coal campaign to protect her children’s health and make sure history does not repeat itself. She says, “I want to control what I can control.” She continues to research the quality of her water and air to rally her community members behind her to shut down Riverbend. During our interview she expressed her belief in the grassroots power of this campaign and how excited she was to hear about the support we heard from residents in the past week.

During the canvassing day of action, Sara and her eleven-year-old Anna joined us to canvass throughout their neighborhood of Mountain Lake, where most houses are adorned with a dock and boats. Their story and determination to create change had an immense impact on the people they spoke to that day, “Every person that answered their door signed our petition,” said Sara.

Our trip may be over, but we have been forever impacted by the knowledge, skills, and determination we have gained from our visit to Charlotte. Sara’s story is one of many. Communities continue to be affected by the dangers of coal every day, with the constant billowing of the smoke coming out of the stacks as a reminder. We hope that by sharing the stories we have collected, we can shed light on the issue and find more people like Sara to stand up for healthy communities and clean energy.

Student Activists Pay Visit to Embassies, Demand Southern Atlantic Whale Sanctuary

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Written by Alex Ryan and Bruna Bouhid

Earlier this week, we Greenpeace Semester students took to the streets in Washington, D.C., determined to make a difference in the fight to protect the world’s whales.  With images of illegal commercial whaling fresh in our minds after learning about their plight, we wrote letters to embassies urging their countries to support whale sanctuaries at the International Whaling Commission (IWC). Continue reading →