350 Eugene offers solutions to the climate crisis and the democracy crisis

John Q. Murray (KEPW – Whole Community News): This is John Q with KEPW 97.3 Whole Community News and today we are very fortunate to have as our guest Patty Hine from 350 Eugene, to give us a preview of what’s coming up this Saturday Oct. 17. Welcome, Patty!

Patty Hine (350 Eugene): Thank you for meeting with me, John at KEPW—big ally and good group—activist radio, love that.

350 Eugene is a co-host for the NK4 Vote Early event. It’s really important to have strong climate leaders, and we have to have good democracy and good practices for voting, obviously, and clean elections in order to get the right people in power to do what’s necessary.

The climate is in a very much a tipping-point stage where we’re beginning to see so many wild and crazy weather events, people are calling them, but it’s much worse than that.

There’s things that you can see from space that you could never see before: the big glaciers melting, the coral reefs dying, the rivers drying up. I mean, these are things on a calamity scale that we’re just beginning to see the beginnings of.

So lots of cool things that need to be said around getting people who are progressive in office, who can really confront what’s needed. And the big problem right now is we’re having a climate crisis coincident with this democracy crisis.

So, we really jumped on with Stan Taylor and the Indivisible Eugene Springfield group to co-host this without any hesitation at all. It’s right up there on every single campaign that we do, to get the vote out and have people do that.

But this event is really singular in that it’s nonpartisan. It’s about the voting in particular and how in Eugene and in Oregon, broadly, we’re just really lucky to be able to vote by mail, and that is really secure.

We are really hoping that everybody will sit down right away with your ballot as soon as it comes. Do your studying on the voter pamphlet. And then vote as soon as you can, write it all down, sign it, take it to the elections office if you prefer, that’s what we do. Or put it, you know, in a ballot box and do it during daylight hours.

If you want to mail it, you can mail it.

But I think first would be drop it off at the elections office, then put it in a ballot box. And if you can’t get to either of those places, put it in the mail.

There’s been a lot of good work lately. The Common Cause folks have held a really important and very well attended training in town about how we can protect the elections. And we can be ballot box monitors and we can be trusted messengers, and we can help our neighbors and friends and family definitely make a plan to vote, talk about it and just encourage people to vote.

No particular candidate or issue. Just exercise your right. Your vote is your voice.

So that being said, it’s really great that No Kings is focusing on this because I think we’re all sitting on the edge of our seats about the election and the midterms are so crucial. I think people are really seeing that we’re ready for a huge, huge change.

John Q: We’re speaking with Patty Hine from 350 Eugene. And we understand there are multiple events in Eugene this Saturday. There’s a tailgate party at Alton Baker Park. There’s a sign-waving and social fun event in Coburg, and your event is at City Hall.

Patty: We’re really lucky to have multiple events here in Eugene. The ones that are for No Kings 4, lots of cities have multiple events. You know, the more the merrier. Everybody’s got their own tactics. And we’ve been very thoughtful and careful about co-planning and making sure everybody is respectful of one another’s locations and timing and so forth.

So ours is just the ‘No Kings Vote Early’ one. It’s the one that is usually promoted by the national organizers—No Kings, Indivisible. And ours starts at City Hall, the music starts about 1:30 p.m. with The Democra-sonics playing, and I think that sounds like fun.

This is really very exciting to be part of this new musical and artistic scene that’s happening with movement-building right now.

So that starts at 1:30 p.m. The rally itself starts at 2 p.m. There’s going to be a half dozen speakers. My understanding is that there will be a woman’s rights speaker, a civil rights speaker, an Indigenous person, a Latino person, specifically on immigration and climate in particular, for which I am very grateful.

None of the No Kings so far have really foregrounded the climate crisis, and we’re really pleased that Stan (Taylor) asked me to find a good speaker for that.

And I found the perfect, perfect speaker in Aya Cockram. She’s the co-petitioner for the wonderful city ballot measure, the Eugene Clean Energy Fund. She’s been in the climate movement here locally as a leader for a number of years now. And she’s just our shining star. So very excited to have her present the climate picture. And I’m looking forward to seeing that.

So that’s kind of the speakers. Then there’ll be, in between chants and songs and maybe even a little dancing (I don’t know), there will be tabling there by all the local progressive organizations.

I know at our table 350 Eugene, if you come before the rally, you can pick up one of our beautiful monarch butterflies to flutter in a little flock of butterflies throughout the event and the rally kind of to raise people’s spirits.

People have gotten used to seeing the monarchs. Our little byline is, ‘These are the only monarchs we need.’ And so we have a sign that accompanies our little flock.

I don’t know if you know this, but a ‘flutter of butterflies’ is how they call it, or a ‘kaleidoscope of butterflies.’ So whatever you want to call it, it’s a lot of fun and people always smile.

So come to our 350 table before the event. The rally starts at two. And then we’ll sign one out to you. And you can also be part of the flutter. You do have to follow the directions of the leader, but that makes it a little more fun and artistic.

So that’s what we’re doing at the event.

We also coordinate the visuals at the stage because we have a very wonderful artivist- (we call her) in-chief, Artivist-in-chief Joanie Kleban. She’s a big graphic artist and puppet designer and outward-facing media publications, public relations. She’s our secret weapon.

And so we have a couple of really nice banners that we usually put on the stage and hold for the duration and just kind of help people see how we can create the best visuals for what will be taped and photographed. It’s a great location right there on the river. We’ve had wonderful results there.

John Q: 350 Eugene is also looking to help get out the vote for a very important ballot measure, the Eugene Clean Energy Fund.

Patty: And then we’re going to go up on the bridge and wave signs. So there’s lots of signs. We’re bringing the 350 ‘Vote early, vote climate, vote for the Eugene Clean Energy Fund.’ That’s the banners that we show when we go places this time of year.

In fact, we have a big 4×8 (sign) that will be in my truck, and it’s advocating that people really support climate action in the city of Eugene by voting yes on 20-388, it’s the Eugene Clean Energy Fund bill that’s going to really jump start the slow really progress we’ve made here in Eugene on our climate action plan, our climate recovery ordinance.

And we have a good staff. And I think people want to do stuff and there’s stuff to be done. The solutions are right here. They just need resources and people who can make it happen.

And so that’s what this kind of fund can bring, like $12, $15 million a year, just as a floor where we can inject into the system here and get some resilience hubs going, some solar projects going with EWEB, more incentives, job training.

It’s pretty exciting. The one that passed in Portland in 2018 has really been game-changing up there. So that’s what we’re excited about.

We think it’s really important that these kind of grassroots campaigns have a lot of engagement because people want to know about it and they don’t know about it, and the Chamber of Commerce is lying about it.

So, you know, we have to be out there and the best way to really be a grassroots organization is to talk with people, meet them on the doors. I’ve done a lot of door-knocking here recently, and I’m really convinced that that’s the way you can change the hearts and minds of people. They’re discouraged. They’re really disappointed in government.

They have a lot of, you know, reasons to be so, so we are the government, we’re the ones to change it. And we still can do that. And this Vote Early No Kings is a really energizing moment, and it’s perfectly timed because we have got to do something.

So we’ll be sign-waving on (Oct.) 29 up on Coburg and Harlow. So 350 Eugene is out on the streets every month trying to get people talking and thinking about what are the latest campaigns that we can work on.

And certainly get out the vote right now, and the Eugene Clean Energy Fund are our focuses. So that’s where you’ll see us and what we’ll be doing.

Other things that we’ve been working on have to do with the forest campaigns. You know, climate activists broadly, deeply understand and are worried about the state of our public and industrial commercial forests as well. They are being cut down for timber to be sold.

And we are losing our best climate solution as Pacific Northwest, which is sequestering and storing carbon in plants and in specific mature and old-growth trees.

So we’re really working hard with our forest conservation partners like Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild to message to the people that once you cut down a 300-year-old tree, planting 300 new trees is not going to help with the climate problem.

Those trees will not grow up fast enough to do what that 300-year-old tree could do without having been cut, and we can meet all of our wood products needs with our industrial forests. We just need to decide to do that.

And the policy is just very, very, hidebound in old thinking. And it’s too bad we don’t even count the emissions from the timber industry here in the state of Oregon, when it is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter, because there are some misunderstandings about how you ought to calculate greenhouse gas emissions.

And really, it’s political, is what it is. So John, we’re big forest defenders because we think forest defense is climate defense. So that’s another thing that we work on.

But there’s state bills that are coming up in 30-some-odd states in the country. We’re passing what they call plug-in solar or balcony solar bills so that people can, off the shelf buy a little system that plugs into their home, and then they can start running their own electricity off of it, and it can defray up to 25% of their bill, which for a lot of people would really, you know, make a difference.

Maybe they can pay their healthcare costs, maybe they can do some of the other things that are required, like educating our kids and paying your insurance and other things.

So plug-in solar is coming on, I think it should be gaining speed.

And then the other one is the ‘Make The Polluters Pay’ bill, which is a Superfund bill that would just make the polluters pay for the externalized costs that citizens are paying instead of corporations. And that’s been going strong in other states as well.

But, you know, the big oil companies and the plastics companies are fighting it tooth-and-nail and calling it dead on arrival. Well, they can talk about it all they want, but the people haven’t shown up yet. And when the people show up, they’re going to have to hear from us.

And the politicians are going to have to stop listening to the corporations, start paying attention to the people, or we’re going to get them out of office because the climate movement is getting busy on the front of elections. They better watch out.

There’s a lot to be done locally. 350 does local policy where we are going to work on a right-of-way ordinance here so that we can do some more finessing to limit gas infrastructure the city. That I think is a thing of the past. Other cities are not building anything with gas because it’s obviously the worst thing you can do for the climate right now.

We’re passing the home energy score (ordinance), which is a small thing, but it’s really good—it’s a movement accelerator where people are going to learn more about their utility usage and how much things cost and what to do to become more sustainable.

I’m very excited, working with the Fossil Free Eugene Coalition—it has really become the climate coalition in town. There’s some awesome organizers in there and it’s sort of cross-movement with tenants rights groups and Sierra Club and Cascadia Wildlands are the fiscal sponsor and they are just amazing with a really good paid coordinator and some interns that are just killing it.

So we have a very strong climate community here in Eugene, and we get together and we do things and we are smart and we have money. And, we’re one of the early adopters of the Fossil Free Eugene Coalition. We kind of laid the foundation early on with the Climate Recovery Ordinance and CAP (Climate Action Plan).

And now this great organization is taking us on, and doing some amazing work.

John Q: We are also invited to attend a showing of the film, the Oregon People’s Emergency Briefing, on Nov. 1.

Patty: So in the U.K., John, last November, a small group of people called the National Emergency Briefing organization got together, just a couple of really smart brothers. They had some PR people, some corporate, you know, they had a lot of brains.

And they put together a program where nine experts from the U.K., national and international experts on the climate tipping points, national security, agriculture, biodiversity. There’s nine areas and they were all expert.

And so they had a three-hour meeting at Parliament with members of Parliament and civic leaders in the U.K. in November. And it was a three-hour meeting and they taped it, and then they produced it and reduced it to 50 minutes.

They built this website to support the showing of it throughout the U.K. and there were like 3,500 showings, and if you look at their map, it’s like everywhere. And pretty soon it’s in Wales and in Ireland, Scotland, and now it’s in Spain and France. And it hopped the pond about a month ago when a guy from Dexter found out about it, got ahold of them and said, ‘We’ll show it in Oregon.’

And we had the first public screening here on Oct. 3 and we had 200 people at the Unitarian church, and about 20 people agreed (and it’s growing) to hold their own screenings. And now it’s happening in Bend, and now it’s happening in Portland, and now it’s happening down in Ashland.

So it’s called the People’s Emergency Briefing. There’s a small team in Eugene who’s putting it on. The next one is on Nov. 1, 3 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church. It’s free and open to the public. Anybody can come, but it will blow your mind. It’s so well produced. And what it is, is these experts talk, you know, for nine minutes each maybe at the most, maybe less.

And then it’s interspersed with reactions from the crowd, like three or four people off and on, just explain like how those presentations are sitting with them and they’re shocked, they’re terrified.

They’re like, ‘Oh my God, what are we going to do?’ But at the end of it is pretty hopeful, like, ‘We made the rules. We should just change the rules. There’s all the solutions are here. We should just implement the solutions and get the people who are barriers out of the way.’

So it’s the best presentation any of us has ever seen. And we’ve been working in the climate movement for over a dozen years.

So it’s the Oregon People’s Emergency briefing. They’re spreading all over Europe and they’re in the United States now.

Stay tuned. The one on Nov. 1 is free and open to the public. There’ll be more and people can have their own screenings. And here’s the website, NEBriefing.org, NEBriefing.org. And it’s really quite astonishing.

John Q: We’re been talking with Patty Hine of 350 Eugene, one of the groups that is sponsoring the No Kings – Vote Early event this Saturday, 2 p.m. City Hall.

For more, check out the 350 Eugene online calendar, at 350Eugene.org.