Kentuckians at Power Shift '09
A couple dozen KFTC members and about 170 high school and college students from Kentucky are participating in Power Shift '09 this weekend in Washington, DC, along with about 12,000 mostly young people from around the country. They are coming together to learn, strategize and build a movement that will help move this country away from dirty power and to a clean energy economy.
"If we are going to have a movement that includes everybody – we have to include everybody. Let me tell you what that means. That means we stand with the coal miners. Our brothers and sisters who go into those mines, who suffer with their lungs, who have given their health and now have to blow up their grandmother’s mountain to scrape out the coal. They don’t set this country’s energy policy. They suffer from it, too. And we stand with them.â€
Van Jones, speaking at Power Shift 09
Van Jones, speaking at Power Shift 09
You can read a Washington Post story about the gathering that includes quotes from Lauralee Crain and Ayesha Siddiqi, students at Transylvania University in Lexington.
The Kentucky delegation will be joined by another 20 or so KFTC members who are traveling to Washington today to participate in the mass demonstration and civil disobedience Monday at the Capitol Power Plant, the coal-burning plant that provides steam heat to the capitol and Congressional and other government office buildings.
Already organizers of the demonstration feel they have gotten results. Earlier this week Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid released a letter (copy attached) sent to the Architect of the Capitol asking that the use of coal at the Capitol Power Plant be stopped. See that story here. An updated story from the Associated Press published today can be found here.
The Washington Post ran an interesting article in 2007 about how previous Congressional efforts to stop burning coal at that plant were blocked by Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell and West Virginia senator Robert Byrd. Read that story here.
Tonight will offer the opportunity for an enjoyable evening program with Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben, Janisse Ray, Kathy Mathea and others at Georgetown University. Details here.
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