Energy Action Training in Chicago!

Last weekend, Olivia journeyed to Chicago for the Energy Action Coalition PowerVote Training conference. She returned, a bold youth activist bearing gifts of bumper stickers and t-shirts for her beloved housemates. Here are her thoughts and impressions:

Energy Action is a group that is working tirelessly to galvanize young people across the nation and foster the environmental movement from the ground up. The recent failure of the climate bill has led the environmental leaders of this nation to take a step back and look at how we came to allow such failure from our elected representatives. What we need, what we failed to have, is a movement behind our desperate pleas and actions. Energy Action, along with the 130 students who attended the conference and thousands of others across the nation is committed to creating this movement through grassroots action in their local communities.

I’ve always believed that one of the primary struggles facing the environmental movement is the perceived notion that caring about the environment is only for those who can afford it, those who can afford to put solar panels on their roofs or wind turbines in their backyards. This is most certainly not the case. At the conference Energy Action partnered with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, a community group formed in protest of the coal plant in their neighborhood. The plant, on the south side of Chicago was grandfathered in to the Clean Air Act and is only 3 blocks away from the community’s elementary school. Each year, it causes over 40 premature deaths and a thousand hospital visits for asthma and other respiratory illnesses. These people have neither the money nor the power to say, hey, don’t put a power plant in our back yard. What they need, and what similar communities across the nation need, is an environmental movement that demands equality and justice for all. During the conference, we marched against the coal plant alongside members of the community, an amazing and eye-opening experience.


Over the course of the weekend, we talked a lot about developing relationships and creating networks that we, as youth activists, can effectively leverage to achieve the results we want in our government. Luckily, that is exactly what we are doing here at Race to Replace. We need to continue this effort, creating and maintaining a coalition of concerned and angry young people who not only desire change, but demand it.



Check out the coalition's website to see how you can be a part of Powershift 2011!