Learning to lobby

Students from schools across the state gathered yesterday at the first-ever Maryland Power Shift, a conference to train, educate and inform student environmental activists.

In the basement of Jimenez Hall, nearly 100 students from high schools and universities, including this one, learned how to lobby as they cooked up plans to pressure the U.S. Senate to pass a climate bill before an international global warming summit meets in Copenhagen in December.

The regional climate-action meeting didn’t have quite the same impact as March’s national Power Shift, when students blocked the entrance to a coal-burning power plant. And it didn’t attract as much attention as when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the campus for the national Power Shift conference the year before.

Still, organizers said the local focus helped students galvanize around causes specific to the areas they call home.

“This year, the Energy Action Committee [Power Shift’s parent organization], decided the events should be regional ones to bring people together on a local level and facilitate student campaigns,” said Caroline Selle, a member of Maryland Student Climate Coalition, a state-wide student environmental organization that helped organize Maryland Power Shift.

“We stepped in and wanted to create some sort of event to get Maryland students to meet each other,” Selle added.

Students attended training and break-out sessions where they learned about leadership, lobbying, and running local and national campaigns. Fellow students led some sessions, while others were headed by activists from organizations including the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Avaaz Climate Action Factory and the Sierra Student Coalition.

“I came with the idea that I wanted to learn more about how to get people to connect on campus and inspire them to get involved,” junior environmental science and technology major Rachel Wood, a member of MaryPIRG, said. “I think events like this bring people together that have a common goal, and they can learn new things about how to spread their message.”

In some of the training sessions, students acted out meetings with legislators. In the break-out sessions, students devised plans of action to combine local and national issues in an effort to build a successful lobbying base for the Senate bill.

Senior government and politics major Andrew Nazdin, the campaign director for MSCC, said he was confident the event would translate into change.

“Many have attributed Obama’s victory to us,” Nazdin said. “Now that he’s in office, it’s time for him to put his money where his mouth is and go to Copenhagen and push for a strong international climate agreement that won’t leave developing countries behind.”

In addition to Maryland Power Shift, students staged similar events in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana this weekend. Twenty other regional Power Shift events are scheduled for the coming months, Nazdin said.

cetrone at umdbk dot com