FAQs

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Who is organizing the Capitol Climate Action?

A coalition of over 90 groups (and growing!) is behind this historic effort. These groups come from all corners of the progressive movement - international environmental organizations, grassroots climate justice groups, frontline communities most impacted by climate change and fossil fuels, faith-based organizations and many more. Each group will have its own specific campaigns and issues they work on – but we will unite under a common understanding that confronting the climate crisis has to be the priority for our generation and the new administration. Check out the Endorsing Organizations page for the most current list.
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Why this action? Why now?

It’s time to take a stand on global warming. For more than 30 years, scientists, environmentalists, and Americans from all walks of life have urged leaders to take action to prevent a climate catastrophe. Yet even with the impacts of global warming mounting–droughts and wildfires in the West and Southeast; hurricanes in the Gulf; record floods year after year in the Heartland; deadly heat waves in the Northeast; and the spiraling cost of it all—our leaders have failed to take the action so urgently needed. Now we are running out of time. The Bush administration has left our world with precious little time to avert the most catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis.

While the Obama administration is a welcome change from the past 8 years, we also recognize that powerful interests are working hard to ensure that their profits continue to come before climate solutions. Even in the hopes that a new administration and Congress will prioritize climate concerns – without a powerful grassroots movement, we can expect compromises and half-measures that our communities and climate cannot afford. We aim to help build upon the grassroots movement for climate justice and push the scales of power back towards community and ecological sustainability.
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How Do I Get Involved?

The two biggest ways to get involved are to join us March 2nd in Washington D.C., and to help spread the word to your friends and community.  If you can join us in DC make sure to RSVP so we make sure to keep you up-to-date on the latest action information and logistics.

If you can help with outreach for the action, please do! You can tell your friends and family about this event, post our widget on your Facebook or Myspace profile, blog about the event, link back to this Web site, or help organize a caravan from your community to join us in DC.
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How can I stay informed?

Make sure you sign our RSVP page. This helps us know how many people to expect for this, but most importantly, it lets us get important information to you quickly. We will send email updates leading up to the action, but we also intend to use SMS/cell phone text messages to send out updates before, during, and after the action. If you have a cell phone, make sure to include your number when you RSVP! Or send a text from your cell phone to: 40404 with the message: “follow capitolclimate” (without quotes).

The weekend of March 2nd we will have a convergence space in Washington DC – stay tuned for details. This space will have non-violence trainings all weekend, legal briefings, and be a place to connect with others taking part in the action.
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What is Civil Disobedience? And why are you doing it?

Civil disobedience is a time-honored tactic and strategy of peaceful social movements. It has been used throughout history as an effective way to demonstrate the seriousness of an issue, the morality of a situation, and the commitment people have to bring about change.

There are occasions when outdated laws and policies are unable to ensure justice and the common good. We have reached such a moment in the struggle to stop global warming. As with Ghandi’s walk for independence and Martin Luther King’s march for equal rights, history now calls on people of conscience to peacefully take a principled stand on global warming.  Today Scientists and policy experts, like NASA’s James Hansen and Nobel Prize laureate Al Gore, are calling on Americans to engage in civil disobedience against coal-fired power plants, the country’s dirtiest energy source and biggest source of global warming pollution.
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What exactly will this action entail?

While many participants in the Capitol Climate Action will choose to engage in peaceful acts of civil disobedience, many people will voice their support for these issues in other ways.  In general, our intent is to block off access to the Capitol Power Plant by surrounding the entrances, peacefully refuse to leave when asked, and safely disrupt its operations for the day. If by doing so we risk arrest, so be it. We will reflect the growing global movement that is not quietly asking for, but demanding, climate justice.

Whether you are already committed to joining the civil disobedience or want to learn more, please attend training on non-violence before the action, and we ask all attending to agree to our Action Guidelines and respect the tone of the action.
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What will happen if I am arrested?

We can’t promise anything, but we highly encourage you to attend a legal briefing prior to the action to learn about your legal rights, have questions answered by experienced legal activists, and learn about what typically has happened with similar peaceful actions like this.  Thousands of activists from all walks of life engage in acts of civil disobedience every year and the risks involved are generally things you need to be informed about, but not necessarily fearful of.

We are organizing a legal support team, comprised of experienced legal activists, lawyers, and members of the National Lawyers Guild. As long as you follow the Action Guidelines, we will provide legal briefings and trainings before the action, legal observers during the action, and help coordinate legal support after the action if necessary. For more information, please visit out the Action Guidelines page.
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What if I don’t want to get arrested?

There will be many ways to be involved in the activity, even if you are not able to risk being arrested.  We are always looking for supporting roles from people who are not able to be near the civil disobedience but that can help in other ways.

In addition, there will also be an area away from the civil disobedience for other participants and for people to stand together and support the rest of the activities. We will have legal observers, trained peacekeepers, and agreed-upon action guidelines for all participants to ensure a safe event for all people.
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Why the Capitol coal-fired Power Plant?

The Capitol Power Plant, sitting just blocks from Capitol Hill, symbolizes the stranglehold coal has over our government and future. It’s not the largest or the dirtiest power plant in the country, but as the plant that is actually run by and for Congress it serves as an incredibly iconic symbol of what is wrong with our country’s energy and climate policy. From being outdated and inefficient, to burning dirty fossil fuels including coal, to having its clean-up blocked by politicians pandering to coal industry interests, we see this plant as the strategic target to address our concerns.

You can read an excellent background report on the plant put together by our allies at CoalSwarm here.
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So What Do You Want?

Coal is killing our economy, communities, and future. From the deadly dangers of mining, to the destruction of mountain tops and forests, to the poisoning of water and air, to the disposal of coal ash threatening homes and rivers, to the build-up of greenhouse gases from burning coal in the atmosphere, coal is not clean.

There is a better way. As Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said: “What we do in the next two or three years will determine our future. This is the defining challenge”. Investing in renewable energy, like wind and solar power, creates almost four times as many jobs as the same amount spent on coal.  While we want to see this plant cleaned up and replaced with clean energy solutions, our focus goes beyond the fences of the Capitol Power Plant. We are calling for climate justice at all levels of government, industry, and society. We need new national laws, international agreements, an economy that reflects ecological sustainability, and politics that empower communities. Together, we can build a clean energy future.
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Can I participate if I’m a minor?

There are many roles for people to play at the Capitol Climate Action. We are encouraging minors not to risk arrest and instead to take a role that is less likely to result in arrest – and there are plenty of those roles! If you are a minor and you do choose to get arrested, please make sure you fill out a Minor Jail Support form (download as a PDF). Once you’ve printed and filled out the form, you have two options: (1) You can ask your parent to sign the form, or (2) you can tell your parents you plan on participating in the action and that if you get arrested an adult will be contacting them to get their permission to pick you up from custody after you are cleared by the police to be released. If you don’t do one of those things, it will be much more difficult to get you out of custody and you could be held much longer.
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