April 22 is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and before the coronavirus pandemic shut down public life as Portlanders knew it, local climate groups had big plans.
350PDX, the local chapter of global climate action network 350.org, envisioned a demonstration similar to the nationwide Climate Strike in September, when large crowds marched over the Hawthorne Bridge and gathered at OMSI for festivities.
“We were going to do something similar to that, and try to get tens of thousands of people out and really focus it on getting people to join the movement,” said the group’s spokesperson, Chris Palmer. But now, he said, “all that’s been canceled.”
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Youth-led Sunrise Movement PDX was also planning for the Earth Day Strike, organizer Haley “Dallas” Dallas said.
But with statewide social distancing orders now in effect, climate activists — who often turn to public displays of protest to spread their message — have pivoted.
Dallas and Palmer both said their groups shifted much of their focus toward mutual aid and addressing the more immediate threat of the global pandemic.
“There are a lot of retired people in the climate movement,” Palmer said. 350PDX’s five-person staff, all of whom are younger than 30, has been making phone calls to volunteers to see how they are doing, he said.
Dallas said Sunrise Movement PDX is also making sure its members are safe, housed and healthy while trying to ensure frontline communities that tend to be hit first and hardest by economic crises are at the forefront of their efforts. The group has joined calls for citywide and statewide rent, mortgage and utility payment freezes, as well as for the immediate end to homeless camp sweeps and the opening of additional shelters.
During interviews with Street Roots, leadership among climate groups across the state emphasized the shift toward responding to the health crisis first and foremost.
“We don’t see ourselves just as climate activists; we see ourselves as being on the frontlines of a pandemic right now,” said Grace Warner, a collective member of Southern Oregon Rising Tide. Her organization is well suited for bringing people together during a time of social distancing, she said, because its rural members are accustomed to communicating with one another remotely.
“I think COVID relates to all of the things we’ve been talking about for years now,” Dallas said in reference to advocating for health care for all, affordable housing, and an equitable and safe public transit system, as well as a stoppage to sweeps and the prison industrial complex. “It’s just increased the urgency and made people pay attention on the global scale.”
From crisis, comes change
Several climate activists Street Roots interviewed see the coronavirus pandemic as an agent of change — either to be harnessed for instituting systemic and lasting shifts toward a more climate-friendly future or to be exploited for fossil fuel interests, deepening global wealth and power divides.
“It’s super important right now, more than ever, that we have environmental watchdogs who are continuing to track the processes and be engaged,” Cascadia Wildlands grassroots organizer Samantha Krop told Street Roots. She pointed out that among businesses the federal government deemed “essential” was timber and other natural resource extraction.
“We also need to consider the fact that the most polluting industries are getting a boost from the federal government at this moment because of coronavirus,” said Rogue Climate’s campaign director, Allie Rosenbluth.
On March 19, as the nation braced for spikes in COVID-19 cases, and just four days before Oregon Gov. Kate Brown issued her “stay home” executive order, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved Pembina Pipeline Corp.’s plan for the highly controversial liquefied natural gas pipeline and export facility in Jordan Cove — despite previous denials from multiple Oregon agencies for necessary permits.
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Pembina celebrated the decision as “the most significant step forward for Jordan Cove since Pembina acquired the Project,” according to a news release issued the same day. It still needs state approval, however, to build the facility.
“It’s really hard for our community to see that during this time of incredible crisis,” Rosenbluth said, “where people — especially elder rural folks who live on the pipeline route — can’t even leave their homes, that our federal government is still trucking along with permitting fossil fuel projects.”
“The Green New Deal is now needed more than ever on a national scale,” Dallas said. “Climate change is going to increase the frequency and potency of diseases, we’re going to see increased and more powerful natural disasters, and we’re going to see the climate crisis also exacerbate extreme poverty. I think a lot of the structures and systems that we’re seeing collapse right now will only be targeted more in the future as the climate crisis worsens, so this is an opportunity for us to see what isn’t working and use this as a way to fix it so we are more resilient in the future.”
Internationally, 350.org has launched a campaign, #JustRecovery, that calls for putting people’s health first, providing relief to working-class people and communities rather than corporate executives, and building solidarity across borders while creating resiliency for future crises.
“We’ve had a total societal breakdown, and when this health crisis is over, we’re going to kind of have to build a lot of our society and our economy up from scratch,” Palmer, of 350PDX, said. “How can we rebuild an economy that puts people and planet first?”
He said much of 350’s organizing amid the pandemic is around figuring out what policies might be passed now that could usher in the jobs imagined under the Green New Deal, because there will be a lot of people looking for employment once the pandemic has passed.
“There are other people trying to seize this moment too,” he said, “the corporations and the Trump administration and the disaster capitalists — people who are trying to seize this moment to erode our democracy and put more power in the hands of the wealthy few.”
“This is a crisis point,” Palmer said, “and in crisis, a lot of change happens, and half the time, it’s bad change. After 2008, it was more consolidation of wealth and power, but after the Great Depression and a bunch of other examples, it’s been radical progressive, evolutionary leap changes — and we need to make sure it’s that.”
Climate advocacy lives on, online
While the Earth Day Strike won’t pour onto city streets this April, Dallas, of Sunrise Movement PDX, said it will instead take the form of a virtual strike, in solidarity with the national movement still organizing a day of action.
“We’ve moved all of our organizing to online,” they said.
While still in the planning phase, Dallas said to expect a “huge mass-media social media campaign that will call for immediate virtual action,” which will likely include an interactive art event, contacting lawmakers and targeting companies for divestment. There may also be an in-person action if the youth-led coalition planning the event can determine a safe way to come together. Updates will be posted on Sunrise Movement PDX’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.
Dallas also said that if youths are looking for something to do with their time in isolation, Sunrise Movement is always looking for youth organizers of all ages — under 30, that is.
350PDX is advocating for a People’s Bailout amid the COVID-19 crisis and is circulating an online petition to the governor and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, demanding rent, mortgage and homeless camp sweep freezes, and a universal basic income.
Palmer said activists will likely tire of sitting on their computers and emailing lawmakers in solitude, so 350PDX also plans to host weekly happy hour events via Zoom, an online web conferencing platform, where people can come together to brainstorm and check in with each other while drinking beer or wine.
350PDX has also been thinking about ways people across the city could show their support for a People’s Bailout or Green New Deal policies with the display of a special flag or yard sign.
“Something people can still do with their hands and still put it out there in the community,” Palmer said, “and hopefully that would feed into building these communities that we need for building mutual aid, and for mutual activism as well.”
Portland Rising Tide has moved all its internal communications to encrypted video chat, member Audrey Caines said. The group is planning to host webinar study sessions where activists will conduct direct action trainings and bring attention to their campaign to stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which would extend from the Port of Vancouver, Wash., to Vancouver, B.C. Caines said interested parties can look for updates on Portland Rising Tide’s Facebook page or email the group to be put on a list that will receive updates about online trainings.
Down in Josephine County, Southern Oregon Rising Tide has canceled a public hike it had planned to lead along the proposed route for Pembina’s liquefied natural gas pipeline. Now, Warner said, the group is working on other ways to get the message out, such as with photo and video diaries. In the meantime, she’s promoting an online story map that takes viewers on a virtual tour of the pipeline’s proposed route.
Rogue Climate is continuing to keep pressure on elected officials to come out against Pembina’s Jordan Cove LNG project, Rosenbluth said.
“In Southern Oregon, we hadn’t really been focused on things like online petitions and action alerts,” Rosenbluth said. Typically, letter writing campaigns, rallies and meetings were all face to face, but now all those activities have moved online.
“Right now there’s a thank-you petition going to Sen. Ron Wyden from the No LNG Exports page,” she said, “thanking him for opposing Jordan Cove and asking him to use all of his power to ensure that the company does not start pre-construction.”
Meanwhile in Eugene, Krop of Cascadia Wildlands, said her organization is finding new ways to develop educational materials online.
It’s setting up a weekly webinar series that will begin on April 7. The first will feature an Indigenous artist with the Klamath Tribe, Ka’illa Farrell-Smith; Cascadia Wildlands staff attorney Gabe Scott; and a landowner whom the proposed Pembina LNG pipeline would affect, Francis Eatherington. On April 14, the webinar will teach viewers how to write and publish an op-ed or letter to the editor. More information will be made available on the group’s Facebook page and website, or by emailing Krop.
Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites.