How forty students and sixty hours in a veggie bus greased the wheels for the environmental movement at UCF
by: Sebastian Church, UCF Co-Preisdent
Among the many facets of the national Powershift 2011 conference in Washington D.C., a particular phenomenon stood out from the rapid stream of experience: as one whitewashed school bus smelling of teriyaki stir fry and Pedro’s used cooking oil barreled up and down I-95, forty UCF students tangled together to inspire and ignite one another in determination to face the environmental, economic, and social challenges ahead of their generation.
But before diving into that stream, several clarifications need to be made. First, what was Powershift 2011? No definition of the experience, conference, movement, etcetera, provides a total sense of what attendance encompassed. Energy Action Coalition, the group that organized the four-day event, defined it as “a mission to recruit ten thousand youth leaders from every walk of life to be on the front lines in the fight for a clean energy future.”
Except the halls of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center were also filled with older activists, anomalies of a generation that still does not quite understand climate change or the harm of carbon-based energy sources. From April 15th to the 18th – a Thursday to Monday affair – ten thousand passionate and persistent people populated one state-of-the-art convention center to learn how to become better organizers, and how to direct their efforts so as to be most effective in the fight against carbon-based energy sources, so-called “dirty energy.”
Powershift 2011 was also considered to host “the largest organizer training and strategy sessions in history.” To elaborate, Movement Building Sessions were held each morning of the conference, sessions from the Harvard-engendered New Organizing Institute. Several UCF students in attendance had the opportunity to participate as Coaches and Facilitators. As each state assembled separately for these morning movement sessions, Coaches taught each assembly about skills for better organizing - from setting goals, strategies and tactics, to composing “stories of self.” Florida saw over three hundred participants each day. These numbers subsequently broke up into break- out groups guided by Facilitators, who helped participants practice the skills they learned and apply the skills to real-world situations in their own communities.
The personal and professional connections that emerged from these break-out groups continue manifesting themselves through ongoing state-wide collaborations. The instant camaraderie that occurred in the halls of the Washington center was tremendous. Forget about the Hangout, Electric Daisy Carnival, or Bonnaroo. Although these music festivals attract a larger audience – a strikingly true realization – Powershift attracted an undeniably rare blend of positive-natured, environmentally active and conscious people.
An eclectic range of people, on par with the festivals, matched the eclectic range of environmental concerns that were highlighted at the conference. Rallies formed at the sounding of a megaphone, like military companies forming at the sounding of a bugle. Every day of the event, a march against some form of dirty energy stormed down the capital’s grey avenues, into the convention center, and coalesced along the central staircases in the center’s enormous lobby.
The audible inspiration from those marches was deafening. Even onlookers were absorbed into the crowds, simply because the mass spilled all over the lobby, like the antithesis to oil in the Gulf. Singing, chanting, shouting, ranting, there were some powerful people leading the way – power derived not from money and power OVER others, but from motivation and power WITH others. It was uplifting to watch so many people unite in a harmonic voice, in a harmonic vie for a better future. It was uplifting to be apart of that voice. It is uplifting to continue to be apart of that vie.
All this action occurred during breaks between afternoon workshops and panels. The days were divided into three blocks, each with a slew of various topics from organizing a bicycle community much like “Spokes Council,” to learning about the world food market and how it is dominated by international conglomerates. Intellectual Decisions on Environmental Awareness Solutions (I.D.E.A.S.) even held their own seminar on Kill-a-Watt Energy Challenge and how it was able to spread across Florida and expand into other states. Also featured were the unique initiatives that I.D.E.A.S. coordinates, such as Upcycling, Ecosystem clean-ups, and IDEAS for Education. Evenings were reserved for keynote speakers, some of the most experienced and influential people pushing against the Capitol’s destructive environmental agenda. Friday night was a reality-check for the thousands who listened to Al Gore and Van Jones speak on the stark circumstances surrounding climate change, as well as the steep challenges to be faced in creating a clean-energy economy. More speakers followed on Saturday night, including Lisa Jackson of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Bill McKibben of 350.org, “a grassroots global climate campaign,” who further emphasized the need to expand grassroots efforts in the face of corporate lobbyists and special interest. Amid the sessions, workshops, panels, speeches, and rallies that culminated in the experience called Powershift 2011, forty UCF students lead by IDEAS for UCF united with activists from across the country, as well as with each other. It was the first time many of these students were exposed to the greater environmental movement beyond initiatives on the Orlando campus. In that convention center, thousands of other activists from other places with other problems welcomed our bunch of forty and amalgamated us into the momentum of environmental change. We became apart of their stories, apart of their experience, apart of their inspiration, motivation, and celebration. In that way, the very much became apart of ours. We – ten thousand people from fifty states, a handful of territories, and hundreds of campuses – we came together.
Perhaps the most memorable experience of the journey was the journey itself - the sixty hours, 1,700-plus miles spent in the RUNbus, a biodiesel school bus powered by delicious, gold, used cooking oil.
The hindrances of finding fuel and habitual mechanical failure represented more opportunities for the forty to bond. Chants roared, songs belted and voices interlaced in that unlikely transport.
And when we look back on Powershift 2011, we will never forget the struggles and obstacles, nor the optimism and fervor. We will always remember Teriyaki Japanese Restaurant in Sumter, South Carolina, and the ninja grease boys pumping cooking oil into the RUNbus’s reservoir. We will always remember Pedro and his sweet sweet South of the Border cooking grease. We will always remember a birthday celebrated in confusion and perplexity, in Chinatown, D.C.
And most of all, we will remember:
“I! D! E! A! S! POWERSHIFT UCF!!!”
