A beautifully written piece by Stephanie Black-Schaffer, leader of the Western/Central Mass Team, shared at the Climate Summer Finale in Boston yesterday.Do you know who the hardest person to canvass was? Right now you’re thinking maybe it was the misanthrope who took vindictive pleasure cussing you out, or maybe the apathetic aristocrat who said ‘no’ before you opened your mouth, or maybe the talkative old lady who kept you on her porch for forty minutes.
--Incidentally, we had all three--
But the hardest person to canvass wasn’t any of these. It was the person who was totally informed. Informed but jaded. It was that individual who laughed when he heard your petition, told you he’d sign it because he thought it was a great idea, but that he’d been trying to change the world for decades and no one listened. That would get you wondering. If this active, experienced, informed person couldn’t get anything done, who were you—one college student—to try?
Now imagine living with such a person. My father had the highest National Merit score in the state of Ohio. He’s extremely smart, extremely well-read. Though he’s certain climate change is occurring, he doesn’t believe we can do much about it. He gets me wondering. If my intelligent, informed father doesn’t think anything can be done, who am I—one little student—to presume?
But then it occurred to me: movements start with one or two little people. The Civil Rights movement started in the single digits. There were only nine Little Rock students, one Ruby Bridges, four sit-in demonstrators, one Rosa Parks, two black major league baseball players, one Martin Luther King Jr. If they could change the course of history, why couldn’t I?
--And by the way there are twenty of us, so this is practically in our pocket—
But boycotting climate change somehow doesn’t have the same umph as sitting on the wrong side of the bus. ‘I’m turning off my lights now—how do you like that?’ ‘Check out these solar panels. Pal.’
I don’t honestly think your neighbors would care.
Which is why we weren’t just boycotting, we were also petitioning, holding events, hosting workshops. We are a group of hopeful college students cycling across the state. And for every response that made us stop in our tracks and question our resolve, there was one that made us tuck our clipboard under our arm and skip to the next house.
Who was the best person to canvass? Right now you’re thinking maybe it was the woman who invited us in to use her toilet or the old man who gave us three chocolate chip cookies. (Which was very nice.) But it got better. The best person to canvass was the one who blinked like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing and thanked us for being real, for working to save his planet.
Because that’s kind of what it’s come down to: saving the planet. And we haven’t got much time. After cycling for two months, you start thinking of everything in terms of bikes—you don’t feel sad, you feel “flat;” you don’t feel happy, you feel “pumped.” So I will explain our situation, right now, in terms of biking.
For every steep hill, there comes a point at which you can no longer shift gears; you must either stand on your bike pedals—painstakingly throw your whole weight behind each push—or teeter to a stop and topple over. I sure as heck hope we haven’t passed this point yet, because I hate climbing a hill in third gear.
This is a call to shift gears.
This is a call to change the course of history. This is a call for 100% clean electricity in ten years. We are so passed the single digits at this point.
