Cars on Main Street honked their approval as a group of approximately 25 demonstrators marched towards the Middletown Power Plant last Saturday afternoon, expressing support for a larger national campaign called “Step It Up Congress: Cut Carbon 80% by 2050.” The demonstration was organized by the Environmental Organizers’ Network (EON) and consisted of students and Middletown residents.
“Caring about the environment is not just for hippies anymore, but it’s a global responsibility,” said Ashley Casale ’10, who both marched in and helped organize the event. “I hope Wesleyan students and faculty come to realize that.”
According to the Step It Up campaign website, over 1,400 demonstrations took place across the nation on Saturday. The website, which listed 16 rallies in Connecticut, described the event as the largest environmental demonstration in the country since Earth Day 1970.
The demonstrators met in Harbor Park at 2:45 p.m. and marched one block down Main Street towards the Middletown Power Plant on Williams Street, brandishing signs with messages like “Step It Up,” “Stop Flying, Travel Locally,” and other slogans that urged for reduced carbon emissions.
EON members Julien Burns ’10 and Emma Goodstein ’10 were behind most of the planning and publicity that went into the event.
Among those who participated was Middletown Mercy High School senior Liz Gionfriddo, also took part in a Students For Ending The War In Iraq (SEWI) anti-war demonstration in Washington D.C. last January. She had met Casale riding on the bus, who then contacted Gionfriddo about Saturday’s climate change rally.
“At my school we don’t really talk about global warming or environmental issues,” Gionfriddo said. “You see teachers and students crumbling up papers and putting them in the trash instead of the recycling bin.”
Others participants included Jorge Arevalo Mateus, a University graduate student with a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology, who attended the event with his wife after learning about it on the Internet. Also present was Middletown resident and Union College sophomore Rebecca Garthwaite, who came as part of an assignment for a class on the politics of global warming.
Marching at the very front of the group were Garthwaite’s two small brothers not yet out of primary school, Ian and Zack, who enthusiastically carried a sign they had been offered by an EON member.
“We let the little guys lead, partially because they were the shortest and needed to be up front to be seen,” Casale said. “But even more importantly because it was symbolic in our eyes of the need for the youth to step up to the challenge of leading our world to environmental sustainability.”
Casale also said that choosing the Middletown Central Power Plant as a destination was also intended to send a political message to the University community, specifically regarding her concern over Wesleyan’s investment in two corporations that manufacture weapons. The large cardboard sign she carried read, “Wes: Invest in Renewables, Not in Weapons.”
“I also think that the environmental movement is inextricably connected to the anti-war movement, so it was no mistake that I chose ‘weapons,’” she said. “I believe that we would be a much more socially, politically, and environmentally responsible school if we stopped investing in war machines and began investing in green energy.”
Participant Izaak Orlansky ’08 said that the majority of Middletown traffic expressed support while the group marched to the power plant. There was one minor confrontation on the street, however, when one pedestrian stopped and argued with the demonstrators about some of the slogans on the signs.
“One Middletown resident retorted that some scientists have said global warming is a ‘farce,’” Orlansky said. “Marchers disputed that, saying that the entire science community and even President Bush has said that climate change is a real problem.”
Emma Goodstein ’10 noted a few other incidents involving passing cars.
“Other people driving by yelled at us that they were going to continue driving their SUVs,” she said, “So you can see that global warming is an issue that still needs to be talked about.”
EON members emphasized that the march is also part of the group’s continuing effort to ensure that new and renovated buildings on campus meet standards of sustainability, as defined by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design’s (LEED) Green Building Rating System and standards set by the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
“The march is significant to the policies of Wesleyan as they renovate and rebuild buildings around the campus,” said EON member Brendan McEntee ’10. “EON just passed a WSA resolution in support of a greener campus and we are fighting to make sure that the new science center is sustainable.”
McEntee, who was also involved in drafting the WSA resolution, defined sustainable buildings as based on LEED’s and “AIA’s resolution of 70 percent carbon neutral by 2030.”
“The state of the environment is in our hands, and unfortunately we have not been doing enough,” he said.
While McEntee stated that the goals of Saturday’s demonstration run parallel to EON’s own aims concerning introducing sustainable buildings to campus, other EON members emphasized that all students should be invested in this movement.
“I think it was a good start,” Casale said. “But I really hope we get more support from the student body in the future. I think we only had about 25 Wes students—and I would like to see 2,000 or more one day—because this is something that affects all of us and that we should all care about and be willing to march for.”
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