Dustin White

Dustin has been though this many times, escorting wide-eyed outsiders as they snap photos of his decimated community. Only a few days earlier he had brought people from the UN to see what it looks like when a coal company blows up a mountain for profit. Like me, they had probably seen the pictures before. In fact, the aerial photos on the Internet are visually more dramatic than the pictures I was able to take, peaking through the trees from one mountain to the next. Still, being there in person was a moving experience, partly because it feels so eerie when life has been removed from a place.

As we drove closer to Hobet 21, the houses disappeared, though isolated driveways and telephone polls showed where families had once lived. We parked near a local cemetery, our cover for being there, and walked up the hill above it to where we could see the twenty-story crane known as “Big John” and the mountain they’ve covered with grass in a feeble attempt to make it green again.

Hobet 21, West VirginiaThe most striking thing to me was the quiet. Behind us we could hear birds and the rustle of wind through leaves. The mountains ahead of us were devoid of life—no birds, no composting leaves, and certainly no people. The people who remain in the wider area are being poisoned by polluted water, one of the reasons Dustin is willing to go through this over and over again with people like me. He’s hoping that if those of us outside of Appalachia know what is happening to his community, maybe we will care—and act.

Those who have been following this blog through the past year know that my commitment to activism around this issue has been growing. What I’ve been feeling lately (and this was increased by people I met at the Read the Spirit gathering) is the need to articulate how my activism and my spirituality relate. Visiting West Virginia reminded me of how many of my early spiritual experiences happened in nature, where I felt my deep interconnectedness with all of life and a force greater than myself, even if I didn’t know what to call it at the time.

Looking over the mountaintop removal pictures again today, I remember an interview I did a few years ago with the Catholic priest and activist Michael Doyle, who served in Camden for decades. He talked about the ideas of Teihard de Chardin, a priest and scientist, who was condemned by the church for his perspective. Michael Doyle said: “The very essence of our sacramental system is matter. Whether it is bread, or water, or oil. If you didn’t have the water, you couldn’t have a baptism. You could lead from there to the idea that matter is so sacred, if you really got that into your bones, how sacred matter is, then I couldn’t take a piece of matter and make it into a weapon that would kill you. I couldn’t do that.”

How would we treat the planet and its people differently if we really treated water (which makes up most of the human body) as sacred? It’s a question worth pondering. In the meantime, it’s clear to me that mountaintop removal is sacrilege. 

This time I’m doing two days with only water as part of Earth Quaker Action Team’s 40-day fast. Again spiritual preparation is part of the purpose. EQAT is planning to escalate our campaign to get PNC Bank to stop financing mountaintop removal coal mining, and we want to be grounded. Some of us have also articulated a desire to model sacrifice because transitioning to a society not dependant on fossil fuels is going to require sacrifice, something our culture doesn’t exactly promote. I understand this reasoning and am trying to live into it. For me, the way to do that is to remember that climate change is already causing hunger. 

Although it is always tricky to blame a particular weather event on climate change, the patterns are clear, and many scientists believe that climate change has already contributed to drought and resulting famine. There are many reports. Here’s just one quote summarizing a study by the International Food Policy Research Institute: “Most severely affected will be the wheat-growing regions of South Asia, Europe and Central Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, where production is projected to decline by 46, 47, and 35 percent, respectively. Also under threat are Middle Eastern rice paddies, where production is expected to fall by 36 percent.” Another article I read a few months ago talked about the number of families in a few different African countries who can't afford food every day because of rising maize prices, so they were skipping food one day a week.

When I thought of such people yesterday as I was craving a snack, I told myself for a moment that it might be easier to go without food if you really didn’t have a choice, if there wasn’t food all around you all day long, like the delicious-looking guacamole my son made when he got home from school. I felt sorry for myself for a quick minute then remembered all the reasons skipping a day or two of food is much easier for me. For one thing, I don’t have to watch my children go hungry, which I’m sure is the most painful part of dire poverty. I also have plenty of stored fat from which to draw energy and a work life that I can adapt when I have less energy. I don’t need to go plow the fields on an empty stomach, hoping things will be better next year.

When I come back to EQAT’s reason for fasting as a group and wonder how our sacrifice relates to our allies in Appalachia, I think of the high cancer rates caused by mountaintop removal. I think of people who lose not just their appetites, but their lives and find this experience of deprivation a good reminder of all I take for granted. 

The previous times I’ve fasted, I had a hard time remembering that it was meant to be done prayerfully, but this time I’m trying to remember. My prayer is for transformation, for myself, my organization, and the people suffering most directly from environmental destruction. Knowing that there are people praying for me, as well as others fasting on the same day, is the main thing keeping me from sneaking a snack right now. Experiencing hunger, if only for two days, reminds me of my deep interconnectedness with other people and the earth, which sustains us all.

I’ll be writing an article about this leading for Friends Journal and another for Waging Nonviolence, so I won’t say too much here, except to answer the questions that friends have been asking about the experience. Basically it was very exciting to be making this stand with such an impressive group of people. I was particularly pleased to see civil rights leader Julian Bond there, though I didn’t get to talk to him. I did get to talk to a lot of interesting folks, though, and had a great time with a UCC leader from Massachusetts named Jim Antal, who was distributing ashes for Ash Wednesday and had a great sense of humor.

It was very meaningful to me to be standing in the footsteps of Alice Paul, Quaker activist for women’s suffrage who was arrested at the White House several times in actions that helped lead to the vote for women. People from home kept telling me that I was brave, but I was very aware that getting arrested by the DC Park Police in 2013 is much less risky than in other times and places. Alice Paul had it much tougher than I did. One of the guys with us yesterday who is from Texas—the Keystone XL pipeline goes through his family’s front yard—said he couldn’t get over how polite the Park Police were. Guess that’s not the way it works in Texas. Same with Maria Gunnoe, one of our allies from Appalachia, where the police are much, much rougher with activists. And then of course, there are my friends from South Africa who got arrested during apartheid. Although my thumb is still numb from the tight handcuffs, participating in this action felt like a privilege more than a risk. 

The most intimidating part was the media spotlight. There were tons of camera people jostling to get in position, though they were more interested in Darryl Hannah and Bob Kennedy than in me. Turns out I’m eating a cookie in all the pictures of Darryl’s arrest, which is my only real disappointment, and that's just vanity. On the bright side, I’ve done a few interviews in the past few days, which have gone well. Here is a piece from the Philadelphia Inquirer blog.

Thanks to everyone for your support! Hope to see many of you at the march on Sunday.

Within the next month, I plan to commit civil disobedience, which may well lead to my arrest. It’s a big step for me—the first time in my life I’ve done this—but saving the climate for our children feels that important. Will you support me, not by getting arrested yourself, but by taking a bus to DC for a different and legal event? 

As many of you know, I’ve felt increasingly called to work to prevent catastrophic climate change. (If you think “catastrophic” is an exaggeration, please read Bill McKibben’s Rolling Stones article.). We all have an exciting opportunity to make a difference by joining 350.org and the Sierra Club in Washington, DC on February 17 for a march against the Keystone XL Pipeline, which is both an important issue and an important test of President Obama’s commitment to the encouraging words in his inauguration speech. The Earth Quaker Action Team (pronounced “equate”) is organizing buses from the Philadelphia area and beyond; please sign up here: http://get-on-the-bus-eqat.eventbrite.com

There will not be civil disobedience that day, no risk of arrest for the tens of thousands of people expected to attend, but a huge showing at the march should make my smaller act of civil disobedience even more effective. We know from history that we are best able to overcome powerful entrenched interests (like the fossil fuel industry) when the two are combined—mass numbers of people taking a stand (like the 1963 March on Washington) along with smaller numbers of trained nonviolent activists willing to demonstrate the seriousness of their cause by taking bigger risks (like those who sat down at segregated lunch counters in the South). The Sierra Club, which has never engaged in civil disobedience before, has recently come to the same conclusion.

It’s kind of scary taking this new step, but I’m mostly excited and grateful for all the support I’m getting. I hope you will join me in DC on 2/17 and spread the word to others. If you can't, please consider making a donation toward the buses or for any legal expenses we might incur at the other action. (You can use the donation option on the bus registration page or send a check to 4510 Kingsessing Ave. Philadelphia PA 19143. To be tax deductable, they must be over $50 and made to the Gandhian Foundation, which is EQAT's sponsoring organization.)

Prayers, of course, would also be welcome! If you want to receive an email or text the day of my action so you can hold me in the Light, please send a message through the contact page of this site or to me directly.

With gratitude,

Eileen

Highlight: seeing old friends.

Most Poignant: visiting my old school and house in Bobonong and seeing how they've changed.

Most Ridiculous: repeatedly turning on the windshield wipers when I want to signal a turn because everything on my rental car is on the opposite side.

Biggest Surprise: how impressed I was by the diamond mining town, Orapa.

Realization: Botswana's early decision to see its mineral wealth as belonging to all the people has made a tremendous difference in people's lives and changes how the mines are run.

Most striking: how every single person I've spoken to in Botswana and South Africa says the same things about how the weather has changed and farmers are suffering.

Fear: the effects of climate change will be more than either people or governments can handle.

Question: how to move to a model of poverty-reduction that doesn't rely on extractive industries and growth.

Inspiration: reconnecting to South Africans and their history makes me want to be more courageous in my activism.

Personal: experiencing African hospitality makes me want to be more generous in my own life. 

Anticipation: seeing my family and sharing all this with them.

1. A famous football coach was convicted of sexually abusing 10 boys.
2. A Roman Catholic official was convicted of endangering children by covering up priest sexual abuse under his watch.
3. A summit of global leaders failed to agree on meaningful action to stop corporations and governments from continuing to abuse the earth.
4. All of the above. 

I won’t hold you in suspense; it’s d, all of the above, but a and b got all the news coverage in the United States because sexual abuse by individuals gets better ratings than environmental abuse by large institutions.

We just can’t help it—human beings like a good scandal, and the news media has been giving us plenty of headlines lately. As the cases of Penn State Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky and Msgr. William Lynn have moved through the courts, we’ve heard about powerful men abusing their positions, tearful victims, and sordid details. We’ve seen the accused shuffling in and out of court, stony faced. There is something cathartic about being the audience to these proceedings. We can rejoice that victims were vindicated and justice was served, if belatedly. We can praise the courage of those who came forward, for without them these powerful men would never have been tried. 

What do we learn from these two cases? The age-old lessons: Power corrupts; and ordinary people find it hard to speak truth to power, even when they know what they are witnessing is wrong.

Which brings us to what might have been the biggest news story in the world, but wasn’t, the UN summit on sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro where negotiators from 193 countries couldn’t agree on anything stronger than affirming some of the things they agreed on 20 years ago at the first Rio summit. 

Activists from all over the world insist that the stakes are too high and too urgent for more stalling. As Bill McKibben put it at a protest outside the summit, “The real news today is that sea ice in the Arctic is at a record low for the date and that every state in the United States, except for North Dakota, has temperatures above 90 degrees.” But even the weather didn’t trump Sandusky and Lynn yesterday, and certainly not McKibben’s point that local weather events add up to a global pattern with catastrophic consequences. A gradually developing problem like climate change, which is denied by institutions with very deep pockets and large vested interests, isn’t as salacious as the other kinds of abuse, though the truth is that the world is getting fucked and our governments are looking the other way. Our president, I’m sorry to say, is like the monsignor who ought to have known better.

Watching the sex abuse cases on TV, it is easy to assume that we would have reported our suspicions right away, we would have protected that kid in the shower. But what are we doing to look out for the people of the Maldives or many parts of Africa where scientists predict that tens of millions of people will die from the effects of climate change? For that matter, what are we doing to protect our own children’s future? Remember that Msgr Lynn didn't have to abuse anyone himself to get convicted of endangering children.

In the end, the powerful men who made news this week were stopped by ordinary people whose consciences overcame their fears. If we want to stop companies that engage in mountaintop removal, fracking, deforestation, or the host of other devastating practices that are contributing to global devastation, we need to be the ones to speak up and hold the powerful accountable. It's the only way abuse ever stops.

Ever since the genesis of the Earth Quaker Action Team, I’ve been cheering them from a distance, thinking that some day—after the book came out, then after the year of fundraising for the GSFS Costa Rica Exchange Program—I’d like to get involved with them. I got an added nudge last year when I showed up at the Philadelphia Flower Show and got to witness one of their protests against PNC Bank for its financing of mountaintop removal coal mining. Finally in December, I showed up at one of their meetings and found something I’ve been missing in my life: positive, Spirit-led and strategic activism about something important, which actually feels hopeful.

Part of it is that this is just a terrific group of people, several of whom I always wished I knew better. Part of it is the singing which begins most meetings, often led by a member of Tribe One, so the songs are spirit-filled and on key (not a given in activist circles, I must say). Something about the singing feels symbolic of what’s special about this group. People are showing up with their whole selves and with joy, which makes the meetings inspiring rather than draining. 

Part of my enthusiasm comes from the fact that I’ve felt a deep spiritual connection to mountains since I started camping in high school, and I love the fact that we are working on an issue that connects that love with my concern about climate change and for economic justice. When the mountains are destroyed to get coal, the people of Appalachia are the first to suffer—with rising rates of cancer and birth defects—but then the coal is brought to places like our area to burn, triggering my daughter’s asthma and contributing to the climate change affecting the village where I was in the Peace Corps, which I wrote about in my last post. I love that we are making these connections. I also love that this is a campaign we could conceivably win. PNC describes itself as a “green bank” with Quaker roots, and EQAT has been both smart and visionary in calling them to live up to their own best image of themselves.

The fact that I joined just as EQAT (pronounced "equate") was getting ready to launch the Green Your Money Program and now the Green Walk for Jobs and Justice—a 200-miles walk from Philadelphia to PNC’s national headquarters in Pittsburgh—has made it easy for me to jump in with both feet, finding things to do that feel both meaningful and empowering. Mostly I’ve been networking with other people of faith and other green activists (I have to put in special plugs for Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light and the folks at 350.org), and it’s wonderful to connect with others who share the same concerns. If any of you want to join us along the way, or if you have contacts near Harrisburg and Pittsburgh in particular, please be in touch.

I still feel led to talk about the impact climate change will have on Africa, something you don’t hear much about in the US, and I am still searching for ways to bring forward that message. Partly I’m hoping to do it in the new book I’m working on (which is still taking shape, so don’t ask me what it is about). I’ll be going back to Botswana this summer for the first time in 25 years, so I’m extremely excited about that! It feels like 2012 is a year full of rich personal changes—and hopefully some social change, too.

Knowing that it’s summer there now and that climate scientists predict that Southern Africa will be hit hard by climate change, I asked if it was hot. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “It’s 45 degrees!” For those of you who live in the Fahrenheit world, that’s 113 degrees to us. I checked later on the Internet to see if I had heard her right. Turns out what was an unusual high back in the 80’s is now the average summer high. The climate website said that it is so hot during the brief rainy season that the water evaporates before it can be absorbed into the ground. I found the below GoogleEarth image of my old village, which shows the white bed of a dry river. Above is a picture of the river when I was there.

I think this was the last straw for me. For a few years I’ve been feeling that I should do more about climate change. I’ve written an article or two about things others have been doing. I’ve posted articles and videos on Facebook (including this compelling one for those who doubt the science). But I recently reheard Father Michael Doyle’s line about what prompted him to direct action during the Viet Nam War. “What do you do when a child is on fire? Write a letter?” 

It’s not like we haven’t done anything. We insulated our old house well and are now insulating our new one. We try to limit our consumption and take short showers. We worked to elect Obama, hoping that would help. But I wonder, when I hear on the news someday about the massive famines climate scientists are predicting for Africa and Asia, will I feel it was enough? I don’t think so. I can’t help remembering that my mother still blamed the British 150 years later for not doing more to prevent the Irish Potato Famine.

I’ve been waiting awhile to see what the thing is that I’m supposed to do. Suddenly there is a new job I just heard about that might be the thing, and I feel a new sense of excitement and hope. Please hold me in the Light as I rewrite my resume for the first time in years and test the leading to apply for this. The timing is a bit stressful—yes, we finally got the house but haven’t finished moving yet!—but I have the sense that if it’s what I’m supposed to do it will work out. If not, then maybe something else will make itself clear. In any case, I’m clear that I need to do something more.

It’s interesting how people love to remember the wrongs that have been done to them or their tribe. My mother could recount the injuries England inflicted on Ireland like it was prayer she knew by rote. Most ethnic groups have their own litanies. Even in our personal lives, we tend to do this, remembering every slight, but glossing over the hurts we have caused others. It’s why Jesus’ teaching is so pointed and timeless: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

This question haunted me after September 11, 2001, when it became painfully clear that most people in the US had no earthly idea why people in other parts of the world resented us. It’s not just that they had forgotten the history of the Cold War: they never knew it. Because US foreign policy was a lot of what I studied in college and graduate school, I felt I needed to hold up some other pieces of the story, even as I grieved along with other Americans. The result was a talk I gave in the Pendle Hill lecture series: “Discernment in the Aftermath of September 11.” You can read it here, if you’re interested.

This morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer headline reads “We Remember,” and I have no objection to remembering. But I think it is important to recognize this human tendency to partial memory and make an attempt to see more fully. How might we be transformed if we used this occasion to mourn all the casulties of this decade of conflict— the million Afghan and Iraqi dead, as well as the victims of 9/11 and the coalition military killed abroad? How many more wars will it take before we learn to love our neighbor as ourselves?

We thought our short sale deal was approved, and so we started packing. We got approved for a mortgage and told our kids to pack their books and take their posters off the walls. I set up gas and electric service and scheduled movers, mold removers, and a chimney guy to deal with the back-draft around the hot water heater. Turns out, however, that only the major part of the deal was settled. The sellers still owe back taxes to the city of Philadelphia, as well as a home equity loan, which was originally with the same bank as their mortgage but is no longer because their mortgage was sold to another company. The bottom line: there are some loose ends that other people have to tie up before we can buy the house. I’ve been doing what I can and letting go of the rest.

Meanwhile, Tom bought me flowers for my birthday and discovered that all the vases were packed. This morning I went to walk the dog in pouring rain and realized that the closet with the umbrellas is behind a pile of boxes. So it’s been that sort of month. It’s been interesting watching my children deal with the uncertainty, especially since some things happened this week that made it seem possible that the deal wouldn’t work out at all. One child continues to pack, certain that we will be moving soon. The other is praying instead of packing, fervently asking for the house every night at bedtime. I remind myself that dealing with uncertainty (and watching us deal with it) is good life training.

I’ve taken a pause from packing to focus on things that should be done, whether we move or not, such as touching up the paint on the front door and the mailbox and sorting through files. I still believe we will move, hopefully soon, but I’m trying to practice that elusive balance between positive thinking and letting go, which in my past experience, brings the best results. I’ve also been asking for prayers because I’ve noticed that works, too. Tomorrow, we should be getting one important piece of news that could end the whole deal or enable us to take the next step. So thanks to those who have been praying for us, and please keep it up!