Green Corps organizer Melisa Stodiek organized a Climate Activism Training in Miami, FL featuring global warming author Bill McKibben and Chesapeake Climate Action Network Director Mike Tidwell. More than 200 citizens attended the training.

Global warming poses an extraordinary challenge to the environmental movement – one that demands immediate action. Despite the enormity of the problems and increased public awareness around global warming, the U.S. environmental movement is struggling to mobilize the diverse constituencies necessary to win significant climate change policies, particularly at the federal level. Organizations across the country are looking for skilled staff to run municipal and state campaigns, launch national corporate accountability campaigns, and coordinate federal legislative campaigns to implement the kind of bold solutions we need. Green Corps provides flexible, hardworking, effective organizers to these urgent campaigns. 

In the fall of 2009, Green Corps organizers worked on behalf of 1Sky to generate grassroots support for strong federal action to tackle global climate change and investment in a clean energy economy for the future. Their goal was to build the grassroots base in key states by recruiting and training a team of dedicated activists, Climate Precinct Captains, who could conduct monthly actions to show community support for federal global warming legislation. Working in New Hampshire, West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Arizona, Green Corps organizers trained 400 Climate Precinct Captains, generated 1,040 constituent calls, and organized 18 high-profile Days of Action.  For example, in Albuquerque, NM, Green Corps organizer Aaron Myran trained a 15-year old Climate Precinct Captain named Akilah Sanders-Reid, who became a leader of the campaign.  She recruited and trained other citizen activists, coordinated multiple actions and media events, and even got her op-ed published in the local paper.  

Then, from January – April 2010, Green Corps organizers worked in Virginia, Missouri, and Ohio to continue their work on the federal climate bill on behalf of Clean Energy Works, a diverse coalition of more than 60 grassroots organizations representing more than 12 million Americans. Partner groups include Alliance for Climate Protection, 1Sky, Environment America, Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, and many others. Working on-the-ground in key states, Green Corps organizers built a broad coalition of businesses, labor unions, faith groups, veterans, sportsmen, environmentalists, and others who support a transition to a clean energy economy.  A key part of their message was how federal clean energy and climate policies will create new clean energy jobs and whole new industries while protecting the climate from the carbon pollution that causes global warming.  

The Green Corps organizers focused on generating a steady drumbeat of support.  They organized a series of Clean Energy Events to highlight the economic and national security benefits of a clean energy economy. For example, in rural Martinsville, VA, Green Corps organizer Trieste Lockwood turned out 85 people to her Clean Energy Activist Forum, including Rep. Tom Perriello. The event was the largest of its kind in the Southside, a notoriously difficult community for progressive organizing.   Also, Green Corps organizer Nathaniel Meyer coordinated a successful event in Cincinnati that featured Operation Free’s Veterans Tour.  In total, the Green Corps organizers turned out 394 people to these events.

In order to build even more political momentum for a climate bill, Clean Energy Works organized a national event – 72 Hours for Clean American Power Surge – which was a massive, coordinated, grassroots phone-banking effort to generate constituent calls to key legislators. A critical part of this effort, Green Corps organizers and volunteers generated 1,676 phone calls.  In addition to these phone calls, the Green Corps organizers and their volunteers also generated 3,451 handwritten letters and 180 business endorsements during their time working on behalf of Clean Energy Works.

In light of the numerous setbacks to federal climate and energy legislation, the citizen activists recruited and trained by Green Corps organizers are exactly what groups such as 1Sky and Clean Energy Works need to drive grassroots momentum towards real change.