This guest blog post was written by Miles Goodrich of Bowdoin Climate Action, where over 50 students have pledged to sit-in for fossil fuel divestment.
The simple refrain of Swarthmore Mountain Justice speaks volume. Entering into an indefinite sit-in of their college’s financial development office last week, Swarthmore students demonstrated the moral clarity and courage that our leaders so desperately require. Too often have administrators slipped up on the oily status quo. Sometimes, students need to sit-in for us all to get our footing back.
The Swarthmore action marks an important transition for the fossil fuel divestment movement. Escalation means an active refusal to participate in the business-as-usual operations which discount the lives of poor communities and people of color. It demands commitment, fortitude, and faith.
These qualities aren’t easy to come by–in the era of climate change, despair can seem all-too-convincing an emotion. But I draw hope from the bravery of those on the frontline of extractive economies, who must risk everything to change everything. Campaigning for divestment allows students to stand with Blockadia, those communities leading fossil fuel resistance. Our rallying cry “whose side are you on” itself developed from a protest song of the Coal Wars, when Appalachia miners fought for livable working conditions. Now, any form of fossil fuel extraction threatens livable working conditions at all. Now, with Swarthmore Mountain Justice’s sit-in, Blockadia has come to campus, and students have become a source of inspiration.
Those Swarthmore students are certainly an inspiration for me. A few years ago, they started the very first fossil fuel divestment campaign in the world. A few days ago, the United Nation’s climate chief endorsed their sit-in, calling for the “moral imperative” of divestment. When the top official of an international governing body uses your language, you know you’re winning.
Swarthmore students have shown what can be done with a vision and the fervor to pursue it. They have reminded us what is possible. The rest of us can turn possibility into reality. This spring, I will be joining Swarthmore in sitting-in for divestment. At my school, Bowdoin College, as well as at schools across the country, students will occupy a building and declare “we have no plans to leave.”
When I’m asked whose side I’m on, I will say: I sit with Swarthmore.
Investing in fossil fuels undermines the very point of investment–to prepare for the future. Right now, colleges are gambling away their students’ futures with tainted carbon stocks. My education prepares me for a world free of outdated fossil fuel infrastructure, and I will not allow Bowdoin to use my future as collateral for that education. Because my administration is so far unwilling divest, I will show them what it means to take climate justice seriously.