The Climate Action Saint Louis Project

Purpose

To inspire direct action in the St. Louis area that brings greater exposure to environmental destruction and justice issues in our local and global community; and to place pressure on corporate criminals. We are a collective of students, community members, labor partners, and other concerned citizens. While the Climate Action Saint Louis Project has been an entirely volunteer operation, we recently elected to house our activities under Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), in order to focus on increasing the involvement of Saint Louis’ low- to moderate-income community and grow Climate Action Saint Louis’ membership.

Guidelines

We will make decisions through consensus.
We will operate using a rotating-role system with members taking responsibility for a certain job for 3 months each. These jobs will include: meeting prep/moderation, detail planning for actions, message and media, turnout, and support for each of these roles.
As the radical persuasive end of the environmental dialogue, we will not compromise our stance for favorable framing.
We will engage in non-violent direct action.

Local Organizing Objectives

Environmental destruction continues to occur in Saint Louis and through out the Midwest region due to continued reliance on fossil fuels, particularly coal, and the insatiable greed of key corporate players headquartered in Saint Louis. We will continue our direct action campaign against these two dirty energy giants by:

Instituting regular direct actions means to force a dialogue between these corporations, non-governmental organizations, and state and local officials about the necessity of transitioning to clean and renewable energy technology.
Offering direct action support to student groups fighting for a coal-free University campuses in the region.
Growing our direct-action-ready membership through pure organizing activities: door-knocking, flyering at community events, outreach to other environmental organizations and weekly membership meetings.

Recent Accomplishments

In 2009 and 2010, we established a grassroots collective of concerned citizens in the Saint Louis area. We helped to plan and implement the Saint Louis 350 Day of Action and sustained great momentum from that event, actively recruiting and organizing on its heels. We disrupted the re-opening of a major regional highway with our “Climate Casualties Die-In” forcing the Governor, city officials and local media to take notice. We began our campaign to apply pressure to Peabody Energy through sustained direct action and creative communication, including street theater at their downtown headquarters, a parody website decrying their “clean coal” research center, a flash mob disrupting a conference, and a “Die-In” outside their headquarters. In collaboration with Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), we lobbied alderpersons to vote “no” on a bill promising Peabody Energy 51 Million in tax abatements and rebates. In addition, we successfully disrupted the Alderpersons’ meeting, preventing a vote on three separate occasions through direct action.

Coming soon...

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