The sentiment comes from an article Wen Stephenson wrote for The Nation magazine a few years back and it is exponentially more relevant today. The whole exercise is designed to brainwash school kids into thinking picking up trash addresses the issue of Nature and Our collective relationship to it. It is an all too easy step from there to click-tivism and seeing your mailbox crammed with fundraising letters from the enviro-nonprofit Complex.

If you pay attention to such things you might have seen the latest Senate Energy Bill, supported by both of Montana’s distinguished statesmen. It “streamlines development of energy projects” and “establishes a pilot program to ease permitting obstacles for gas and oil drilling”. The “all of the above” energy policy of the Obama administration designed to Make America Great Again.

The very next piece on NPR (Liberal capitalist radio where I heard about it) described all the money the Feds would be pouring into Bull Trout recovery because its habitat is being mangled by climate change. What was missing (always) was any commentary as to the insane disconnect. This is the normalizing process, like picking up trash on Earth Day or re-cycling your plastic.Within the act is embedded a reassuring we-have-this-under-control continuity. Next years Earth Day plans are already being made.

This issue of a “Just Transition” has come to the forefront as the climate movement begins to be taken seriously by both labor and capital. The painful reality is that the necessary shift from fossil fuel energy to sustainable energy will be disruptive for everybody. Sorry. Guess we shouldn’t have waited till it was a crisis to start planning. But that’s capitalism for you. Permanent crisis. We can pretend there will be a seamless, just transition to a new “green capitalism” where everyone has jobs and wealth or we can admit that, as Robert Jensen puts it “we will need ways of organizing ourselves to help us live in a world with less energy and fewer material goods.”

At this very juncture, our  Canadian friends are grappling with the same difficult economic and political implications, in what is perhaps a preview for us here in the US. A document called the Leap Manifesto has roiled the New Democratic Party and forced the entire nation to see there are some hard choices (and struggles) ahead. In unflinching terms, the Manifesto lays out the science and the timeline. It says “no more investment in fossil fuel infrastructure”, which doesn’t go over so well in Alberta, home of the Tar Sands. They want to build pipelines, and by they, I mean the corporations, the workers, and the politicians who want to be re-elected (including NDP Premier). You know the argument by now: jobs, the “economy”, slow transition, etc.. Sound at all familiar?  Reality bites.

The Leap coalition, with a strong youth contingent, pushed hard to have the document (some principle authors include Avi Lewis and wife Naomi Klein) accepted into the party platform and though the agreement reached was to continue the debate, the issue was contentious enough to bring down the party leader. Conservatives mock the proposal as “utopian and idealistic” and say it will hurt workers and the economy. Of course unchecked climate change will result in ecocide and social chaos but whatever.

To fund the transition, the Leap proposes taxes; taxes on transactions, taxes on wealth, taxes on carbon. Opponents want hard and fast numbers of what all this “costs”, what the “price” will be. And it is here that the climate movement faces its own crisis. How it answers that question is the most critical juncture we face; will it reject this Market language and logic and propose a totally new framework-  or will it try to mitigate and mollify Capital using the same failed logic which got us here in the first place. This is an ideological struggle of the first order, of historical magnitude, and it is now in play. The only Just Transition is one that abandons Market logic altogether. Neither the cost nor the price nor the value can be calculated in dollars and cents.

Two community members, Lee Van de Water and Shannon Curry, locked their arms together and refused to move for the mile long coal train. With other participants, Lee and Shannon were able to hold space on the tracks for an hour, preventing it from moving towards its west coast destination. After refusing to leave and going limp, both were cited and released for trespassing.

By participating in any one of these events Saturday you can help start this fall’s season of climate action off on a strong note, and you’ll also get a chance to learn more about Flood the System and other events coming up later this fall.  Please join us in the streets!

The Story So Far

Over the past year, hundreds of thousands of people have flowed into the streets to fight back.

Fast food workers in over a hundred cities went on strike, with thousands arrested demanding $15 an hour and a union. Young people in Ferguson, protesting the murder of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, showed us the power of sustained action as they fought back against state violence for weeks, reinvigorating a national movement for Black liberation. Hundreds of thousands of climate activists marched at the People’s Climate March in New York, and the next day Flood Wall Street shut down the heart of New York’s financial district.

Across the country, and the world, powerful movements are using nonviolent direct action to to disrupt business as usual and demand lasting systemic change.

These moments show that broad mobilization and disruption are ways that we can transform our society. It is time we move beyond conventional strategies. Its time we connect across movements and #FloodTheSystem.

LETS BRING THE FLOOD TO THE ROCKIES THIS FALL — AND MOVE MONTANA AWAY FROM A FUTURE AS AN ENERGY EXPORT COLONY. WE ARE WORKING WITH INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS ACROSS THE REGION TO HELP AMPLIFY THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE. PLEASE STAY TUNED HERE, ON THE FLOOD THE SYSTEM WEBSITE or on the BLUE SKIES CAMPAIGN WEBSITE. WE HOPE TO SEE YOU IN THE STREETS, THE FIELDS, FACTORIES, FAST FOOD JOINTS, DETENTION CENTERS AND MINE SITES THIS FALL!