Thursday, February 19, 2009

**** YALE360: Why I’ll Get Arrested March 2 To Stop the Burning of Coal. Bill McKibben

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2124
It may seem odd timing that many of us are heading to the nation's capital early next month for a major act of civil disobedience at a coal-fired power plant, the first big protest of its kind against global warming in this country... If you think about it a little longer, though, you realize this is just the moment to up the ante. For one thing, it would have done no good in the past: you think Dick Cheney was going to pay attention? ... More importantly, we need a powerful and active movement not to force the administration and the Democrats in Congress to do something they don't want to, but to give them the political space they need to act on their convictions. Barack Obama was a community organizer — he understands that major change only comes when it's demanded, when there's some force noisy enough to drown out the eternal hum of business as usual, of vested interest, of inertia.