tar sands

On Wednesday, April 3rd students from the College of Wooster’s environmental action group, Greenhouse, lead a letter writing campaign in protest of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The letter campaign was in response to passage of the House Concurrent Resolution 9 through Ohio’s House of Representatives. Resolution 9, which was passed on March 20th, is essentially a confirmation of support by the Ohio government of the Keystone XL pipeline and calls on Washington to approve the permit needed to begin the process of construction.

On September 26th, more than 200 people crossed over a police barrier on Parliament Hill, making the Ottawa Tar Sands Action the largest civil disobedience in the Canadian climate movement. As an American student attending a Canadian University I found the day particularly exciting for several reasons, not least of which was the sense of international solidarity in this fight against TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

This past Friday, the only thing I was worried about was coming up with a good presentation for the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Conference. While relaxing on my porch after a strenuous week of midterms, our student government president happened to walk by and inform us that the White House had just contacted her about President Obama coming to Pittsburgh on Tuesday. We had been planning to confront the Organizing for America office the following Friday to tell Obama to stop the pipeline, but if Obama was in town, we had to send the message to him directly. I, however, had a midterm during the exact hour that Obama would be coming and resolved to recruit a few friends to greet him.

On Sunday at the AASHE conference, we grabbed Bill McKibben right before his speech and let him know we planned to greet Obama on Tuesday. At the end of his speech to a national conference of hundreds of climate leaders, he said the best thing they could do was attend the rally to meet Obama with a strong message to say NO to the Keystone XL pipeline at 11AM, Tuesday at 313 Oakland Ave. My heart skipped a beat- Bill McKibben, one of my idols, had just announced my house address to a national conference. What’s more- he then told us to stand up so everybody knew who to find. I hesitantly stood up with two of my friends, Nikki Luke and Seth Bush, who looked around nervously. What happened after was chaos. Within five minutes we were interviewed by the City Paper, the Tribune Review, and asked by dozens more what our plans were. The problem was—we didn’t have a plan. And I had a midterm when Obama was coming. Here’s the thing: if Bill McKibben calls you out at a national conference to organize a rally, you are going to organize a rally, whether you have a midterm or not.