With the Energy Action Coalition and all of our partners gearing up to run Power Vote again this fall, we have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes made with this campaign in 2008, and to create a more diverse and exciting campaign this year. A key piece of making this a successful campaign that promotes climate, energy, and environmental issues to the forefront of discussions and dialog in electoral campaigns across the country, while also building the skills of leaders in the youth climate change movement, is to build a strong narrative around broad youth civic engagement. Find out more about the campaign at www.energyactioncoalition.org/fall

We need to create a media and movement narrative that tells the story of all of the ways in which youth are engaged and involved. One part of this, of course, needs to be direct engagement around the 2010 elections. But that needs to be tied to all of the rest of the amazing work youth around the country are doing to win against dirty energy, to create clean energy infrastructure, to build sustainable communities and campuses, and to fight global warming. Our generation's work in this movement is extremely powerful and diverse. If the Energy Action Coalition wants to call itself the hub of the youth climate movement, we needs to realize that this work is much larger and much more important than engaging in election cycles alone.

We need to look back to the idea of a broad civic engagement narrative as we define how we build our power and define victory moving forward. Civic engagement is "individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern." As I said previously, this work is already happening all over the country. It is happening when students in West Virginia work with coalitions and organizations and are part of the movement to stop Mountaintop Removal Mining, or when students in the Northeast work to kick coal of a campus, or the Ohio Student Environmental Coalition runs the Make Green a Primary Color campaign. Civic engagement is when young folks in the Southwest work to stop new nuclear facilities from being built, and when young folks in the Southeast volunteer side by side with people from all over the country to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf. And we will continue our civic engagement work as we move into the summer, as students and youth from around the country come together to work on local projects in 10 summer programs, helping to move away from dirty energy and towards a clean, just, and sustainable future. Find out more about our rockin’ summer programs at www.energyactioncoalition.org/summer.

When we look to what we want to do in the fall, we need to recognize the important role that youth can have in the 2010 elections. Historically, voter turnout is extremely low for mid-term elections, and this is especially true for young voters. We have the potential to show the strength and determination of our generation this November, as we once again turn out in large numbers to the polls, and show the country that we are not the apathetic, uninvolved generation that we are often said to be. We have a huge opportunity to influence what issues are being talked about this election cycle, to elect candidates that best represent our values and will best represent our communities in the important years ahead.

But voting, and participating in the 2010 election is not enough. It is not enough for communities who have been disenfranchised for generations, for people who cannot vote because they are not old enough, because they are not citizens, because they are former felons. It is not enough for communities who look at the ballot and see no real choice, for communities who time and time again have been betrayed and sold out by their political representatives. For all of these people, this is not enough. While we must be cognizant of the opportunities that the elections offer us, we cannot allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking that engaging in these elections and pressuring politicians will ever get us the changes we need. This is a part of the puzzle, but we are naive to believe it is anything other than a small piece.
To win on climate change, we need a multifaceted movement that engages in all possible tactics in every community around the globe. We need to lobby and bird dog, we need to write letters to the editor and opinion pieces, we need to plant gardens and install solar panels, we need to comment on permit processes for dirty energy facilities and attend hearings and stand up and speak out for our communities, we need to tie up permits for dirty industries in the legal process, and we need to chain ourselves to machinery every once in a while, too.

We must ask ourselves what we need to do this fall, while engaging in the elections, to move the fight around climate change forward. How can we both engage in the elections and continue winning on local issues and campaigns, while also building the strength of our movement? And the answer is that we need to run a fall campaign that encourages young folks to register and turn out to vote, and to engage candidates in all sorts of ways. But we also need to showcase and emphasize the multifaceted tactics that it takes to build a winning movement. What that means is going to be different in different communities, and our fall campaign has to be flexible enough to embrace those differences.

When I think about the work that my organization, the Student Environmental Action Coalition does, and how we can best use the Power Vote campaign to further our efforts, I know that an important part of our campaigns always involves permitting processes and public hearings, and this makes a lot of sense in terms of the fall campaign plan. For example, in Central Appalachia, the comment periods around various dirty industry proposals (from coal plants to natural gas to mountaintop removal) will be open in the fall. It is critical to the on the ground organizing in KY & WV that we are not only mobilizing people to vote in elections (where there aren't really candidates that support clean energy, thanks to funding from big coal). It is more important that we mobilize people using an array of tactics in order to actually win victories on these issues.

We need to be asking people to vote, and engaging people in other ways around the election, and this is important work. But we need to go further than that, and work to develop activists and organizers with a much greater understanding of social change. After we ask someone to pledge to vote in the election, we should be asking them to take other real actions that have an impact in their communities - like commenting on a proposed coal plant. And, after we ask them to comment, we can work to mobilize them to come to a hearing or other public meeting. Further down the line, as we develop these young folks as leaders, maybe they will have the skills, knowledge, and confidence to speak at a hearing or rally. For communities fighting to stop nuclear and coal plants or to stop new mining and drilling, all of these actions are important parts of building leadership. And these are the actions that are going to strengthen our movement and help us to win.

This, of course, is just one example of one type of civic engagement. Around the country we also need to be engaging students on their campuses to win campaigns around greenhouse gas emissions or green fees, and to support young people who are starting programs to retrofit homes or build solar panels. And EAC will be taking part in 350’s Global Work Parties on 10-10-10 (find more info here http://tcktcktck.org/stories/campaign-stories/mark-101010-your-calendar-...). And the best part about doing all of this work is that when we do go to meet with politicians or candidates, we can say that we aren't just here to lobby you with this information about the climate bill. We can say, we stand up and we fight for our communities and our needs every day. And we can show the politicians and administrators that we mean business, that we have the solutions, and that our generation has already begun to take the lead. Instead of saying, "Please, lead us," we can instead say "follow our leadership." The time to ask nicely for the political system to make the changes necessary on these issues is long gone. It is our turn to stand up, to lead, and to create the world we want to see. It is up to the politicians to follow the lead that we put forward.

So I ask each of you to answer these questions. How are you going to use Power Vote as a tool in your local work? How are you going to use this opportunity to make your voices heard and to demonstrate your power and strength? Find out more about the campaign and how to get involved at www.energyactioncoalition.org/fall and sign up for the kickass fall traning at www.energycation.org/falltraining