By: Jessica Silber
With a year
remaining in the countdown to the presidential election, conservative
and liberal Americans are mobilizing in the name of the issues they
support. And where do these people go to make their voices heard? Why,
Capitol Hill, of course.
Over 30 UConn students will be among a crowd of thousands of American
youth converging on Washington, D.C. today, rallying and lobbying their
legislators to address climate change.
This day of green lobbyism comes at the end of the larger event,
"PowerShift '07," a conference composed entirely of youth leaders from
around the country, meeting to discuss and address issues of global
warming and climate change through panels, keynote speakers and
workshops. The summit culminates today with a rally held on the lawn of
the U.S. Capitol, according to PowerShift's Web site.
"There will be over 5,000 students attending this - it's really
massive, epic, important," said Jeffrey Czerwiec, Campus Organizer for
UConnPIRG. "This is the first time so many students have come together
on this issue."
PowerShift '07's Web site lists three "ambitious goals" to "make the
U.S. presidential candidates and Congress take global warming
seriously, to empower a truly diverse network of young leaders, and to
achieve broad geographic diversity."
UConn attendees are confident that these goals will be achieved as they
petition Connecticut representatives and senators for their cause.
"The main thing we're lobbying for is specifically the 'One Sky
Proposal,' which would include 5 million new 'green' jobs, global
warming reduction by 80 percent by 2050, and no more coal powe r
plants," Czerwiec said. "These are all science-based standards that we
actually need in order to solve and stop global warming."
"We're really excited to be able to send 30 students down to
Washington. I think candidates will take notice, and realize that this
is a major issue," said Katie Nickerson, a 5th-semester political
science and sociology major and one of UConn's representatives at
PowerShift, is optimistic that the sheer size of the campaign will
serve to fulfill the event's goals.
Other onlookers at UConn are more skeptical.
"My initial instinct to the rally is that any presidential candidate
will have a position on global warming already - it's redundant to
force candidates to have a position," said Robert Bosco, currently a
graduate student in political science, while teaching classes in
globalization at UConn.
He is also skeptical about the presence of partisanship in the rally.
"What you end up doing is just drawing attention to the problem, which
is good and should be encouraged, but you have to be careful that the
event doesn't degenerate into simply a general anti-Bush statement,"
Bosco said. "It has to be held together by conviction of this important
issue, and not partisanship."
However, the presence of so many young and enthusiastic leaders and
attendees at this historic conference, ranging from the University of
Connecticut to the University of California at Berkeley, is cause for
optimism. Despite some problems that the activists may encounter, said
Bosco, "The bottom line is you can't give in to cynicism. You can be
cynical about the issue, but you still need to encourage events like
this."
