'Why I Helped Occupy the Entrance to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration'

by Mike Tidwell (mwtidwell@aol.com)

On Monday, October 23rd 2006, at exactly 8 am, a dozen global warming
activists - some arriving on foot, some in a rented truck - converged
outside of Washington, D.C., and promptly occupied a main entrance to
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the
nation's leading climate agencies.

Parking the truck along a busy curb, two activists dressed as window
washers - painter's hats, squeegees in hand - carried a 32-foot
extension ladder to the building's main entrance. The activists
ascended the ladder and secured themselves atop a narrow ledge 25
feet above the ground. Within seconds they unfurled a 36-square-foot
banner that read: "Bush: Let NOAA Tell the Truth!" (visit
www.climateemergency.org)

On the ground, the ladder disappeared while dozens more protesters
emerged with placards saying things like "Global Warming = Stronger
Hurricanes!" The entrance to a major federal agency, one whose
politically appointed leadership has been widely condemned for
suppressing scientific climate reports, was effectively occupied.

For the rest of the day, the occupation was major news in the
nation's capital. The main NPR station broadcast hourly live updates
of the ensuing standoff with police, repeating the activists' call
for open science and clean energy. A Fox news helicopter hovered
overhead, filming everything. And more than 150 newspapers from coast
to coast and around the world picked up the Associated Press story
that painted an overall picture of principled activism in the face of
politicized science.

As director of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council, I was one of the
chief organizers of this event and played the role of main negotiator
with the dozens of police and Homeland Security officials who
eventually arrived trying to coax the activists off the ledge. My
motivation for acting was simple. Those of us within the emerging
lobal warming movement in America routinely use the words
"emergency" and "crisis" and "impending catastrophe" to describe -
accurately - the runaway heating now afflicting our planet. Wildfires
are off the charts. The Greenland ice sheet is imploding. Hurricanes
are unrecognizable in their fury. And NASA's James Hansen says we
have less than ten years to profoundly alter our use of fossil fuels.

"Emergency, crisis, catastrophe," we say.

But do our actions, as activists and policy advocates, routinely
reflect our words? Does our daily work - as fine and passionate as it
is - reflect the desperate reality as we see it?

The answer, I submit, is no. A resounding no. I speak from
experience. For the past five years, while gasping at the near-weekly
scientific reports of rapid climate demise, I've worked almost
nonstop promoting profoundly modest clean energy policies in my
region. These include a policy mandating that seven percent of
Maryland's electricity come for clean sources. I've worked on a
"clean cars" campaign in D.C. that affects only .2 percent of U.S.
automobiles. And even these baby steps have come after bruising,
intense political battles. And like similar state and regional laws
heroically won across the country, the bills in my region are phased
in over many years - time we positively don't have.

Even if Democrats retake Congress, the best we can probably hope for
- thanks to still-lagging public awareness and the diluting influence
of Detroit and Exxon-Mobil - is global warming legislation that kicks
in with any force about the year NASA's James Hansen says it will
already be too late for the planet.

So, by itself, the legislative/policy fight will not - and does not
promise to - work in time to solve the "emergency." What, then, is
missing? What more should we be doing to bring our actions in line
with the crisis?

The answer, I believe, is to stop using bold adjectives and dramatic
language in voices that are routinely calm and polite. The answer is
to start shouting passionately from the tops of our lungs. The answer
is shutting down the entrances to federal buildings and staging noisy
campus sit-ins and peacefully "displaying" tons of raw coal on the
U.S. Capitol lawn.

We need this not because getting locked up is a justified ego trip,
allowing us to self-righteously shame America with the TV cameras
rolling. We need it because, if done in a spirit of love and justice,
it's our only hope on a terrifyingly tight deadline. It's also the
only way previous social movements have been made "whole" and
therefore successful.

While the NAACP was working the courts, Martin Luther King, Jr. was
on the street boycotting buses. While anti-Vietnam War legislators
were holding hearings in Congress, men and women of service age were
putting daisies in the barrels of Pentagon rifles and refusing the
draft. Big change requires both: legislative action and determined
public protest, often involving non-violent civil disobedience.

With the climate movement, we have lots and lots of
legislative/policy action and almost no feet on the street. It's one
of our biggest problems. Let me be clear: I'm not saying the current
battles for small legislative gains in scattered cities, states, and
- soon - Congress, should be abandoned. These are vitally important
warm-up steps for the sprint just ahead of us. I'm just saying that,
with the enormity of the threat at hand and the paucity of time,
we'll never get running fast enough with these steps alone. We've got
to add this other, time-honored dimension of creative protest to our
tool kit of actions right now and in a major way. There's simply no
way around it.

Which is why several dozen of us worked together to shut down the
NOAA entrance for several hours on that Monday morning October 23rd.
Our goal, for at least a day, was to draw broader public attention to
the suppression of climate science by Bush and the NOAA leadership.
Our goal was also to speak to activists everywhere in the growing
grassroots climate movement: Come on in. The water's fine. We can and
must do this.

By mid day our protest began drawing to a close. Paul Burman, 23, and
Ted Glick, 57 - both bold, nonviolent, climate heroes - were taken
off the ledge by police in a cherry picker after frustrating
authorities all morning and displaying that banner to millions of
people via radio, TV, the internet, and newspapers: "Let NOAA Tell
the Truth!"

The men were arrested, charged with three misdemeanors each, and
released on their own recognizance. One charge, "reckless
endangerment" of themselves and others, seemed particularly
misdirected given that George Bush and his NOAA cronies are
recklessly endangering 6.2 billion people with an impending global
climate collapse.

But unless a critical mass of us within the climate movement begins
shouting out our dissent while sitting down in entrances or standing
up in the streets, future generations may level the same charge at
us: Despite knowing the truth, despite knowing the danger, they went
only halfway and so the danger came in full and engulfed us.

(Mike Tidwell is director of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council and
the Chesapeake Climate Action Network based in Takoma Park, MD. He
can be reached at 240-460-5838. Learn more and see photos of the Oct.
23rd protest at www.climateemergency.org)