The many bills introduced on climate and energy and all the changes made to them had everyone on a roller-coaster. In mid-session, leaders of the House and Senate introduced a set of bills known as the leadership energy package. These bills would have encouraged building new methane gas plants, purportedly based on projections of future energy needs in Maryland. But, thanks to key legislators and many climate activists, including Third Act Maryland, the bills were amended to include important reforms of existing programs and additional requirements for improving the electric grid. The final bill was passed as the Next Generation Energy Act (follow the HB or SB links below for the full name). To learn more about this bill and other important advances, see their summaries below.

RENEW Act Study Bill (HB0128/SB0149) | Passed

This important bill would have Maryland join Vermont and New York in requiring fossil fuel polluters to pay for the damages their work and product has caused to the State. The original bill included a two year study period, followed by implementation of a payment system devised during the study phase. The final bill that passed kept only the study phase. This is a step in the right direction but will need more work to actually drive implementation.

Abundant, Affordable Clean Energy Act (HB0398/SB0316) | Not passed, but…

The battery storage provision for up to 1,750 megawatts from this bill was added to the Leadership Energy package (see Next Generation Energy Act below). Such large-scale battery storage is the fastest and most cost effective way to meet our short-term reliability needs and our long-term clean energy goals. It will be built with “high road” labor standards: good green jobs for a green economy.

Energy Resource Adequacy and Planning Act (HB1037/SB0909) | Passed

Creates an independent Strategic Energy Planning Office for long term energy planning in Maryland. Establishes a framework for comprehensive energy planning that considers reliability, affordability, and environmental impacts.

Next Generation Energy Act (HB1035/SB0937) | Passed

This bill began as the Leadership Energy package and was amended to include key components of other legislation. The final bill included (1) battery storage procurement of up to 1,750 megawatts, to be built with “high road” labor standards: good green jobs for a green economy (Abundant, Affordable Clean Energy Act);  (2) significant reforms to utility rate-setting, including tightening requirements for multi-year rate plans and the STRIDE program (Ratepayer Protection Act);  (3) removal of trash incineration from the renewable portfolio standard  (Reclaim Renewable Energy Act of 2025);  (4) establishment of a rate structure by the Public Service Commission to protect individual ratepayers from the electric system costs of data centers and other large users;  (5) savings for ratepayers by directing utilities to use in-house workers rather than more costly contractors; (6) procurement model for new nuclear energy.

Renewable Energy Certainty Act (HB1036/SB0931) – passed

Compromise between urgency of full deployment of clean energy and importance of protecting farmland in the state: (1) standardizes siting requirements for large scale solar and battery storage projects across the state, (2) requires rooftop solar companies to follow best practices to protect customers from bad actors, (3) requires state to identify state-owned land suitable for solar energy development. Codifies language that keeps solar development confined to 5 percent of priority preservation areas; allows counties to create tougher regulations for large solar after that threshold is met; fast-tracks the Distributed Generation Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity process for some solar projects.

Vasna lived in Vientiane, Laos, from 1964-71, where she attended the American School of Vientiane until grade 10. She completed high school at The Grier School in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, and received her Bachelor’s degree in Human Studies from Bradford College in Bradford, Massachusetts. 

Returning to the initial question of where she grew up, her answer is: “all over.” 

When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, her father, as a former Laotian government official, was sent to “re-education camps” in northern Laos. He did not flee the country as many of his colleagues did. She said, “It took a lot of courage for him to stay, and I would attribute that to his nationalist core.” Her family was powerless to get him justice and unfortunately, an Amnesty International campaign to get him released failed. Two years prior to his death, her family celebrated when they received word that he would be freed. But just before his scheduled release in 1987, they were told he died at the camp of a “stomach ailment.” That seemed highly unlikely and hit hard, Vasna recalled.  

Vasna’s first job after college was working as an assistant to the deans at the Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C. The husband-and-wife civil rights attorneys, Edgar S. and Jean Camper Cahn, started the school with the goal of training law students to represent various disenfranchised communities. These early mentors and the legal aid environment provided her with an infusion of activist energy that lay dormant until her elder years.  

She changed her career after having her second child, returning to school for a degree in medical laboratory technology at Montgomery College in Takoma Park. After 10 years as a clinical microbiologist at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, her antennas were primed for a new journey. As she puts it, “I believe that in life, you have to be open and ready to grab new possibilities when you send requests out to the universe.”  

Timing was perfect when she was offered an academic position. She joined the microbiology department at Georgetown University Medical School as an academic coordinator/research assistant. The job at the university allowed her to earn another degree, a Master’s in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She transitioned to the biotechnology program as a laboratory instructor and retired during the pandemic as associate director. 

“Teaching and mentoring young adults were highly rewarding,” she recalled, “especially when they returned and shared how well they had done in their career paths.” 

When not organizing get-togethers with friends, tending her native plant garden or traveling, she enjoys making floral arrangements. On a recent trip to Kauai, she learned to make a lei of which she is very proud (see photo). 

Vasna said she is grateful to have found Third Act, as it has given her many opportunities to be in solidarity with other activists. She has protested fossil fuel financing by big banks, hosted a postcard writing party in Kensington and canvassed to get folks to vote. New members may get a call from her as a volunteer with the Third Act Maryland Welcome Call Crew.  

This community has also provided her with an outlet to release residual rage and powerlessness over her father’s unjust imprisonment, she said. Now she is doing her part in safeguarding democracy in the U.S. for her grandchildren. 

Building a new gas plant in Maryland is a really bad idea. It’s bad for ratepayers, bad for the climate, and bad for public health.

Yet on February 3rd, Maryland’s top lawmakers stood before the public at a press conference in Annapolis and announced a controversial and risky plan to try to lower power bills and relieve grid congestion by…building…a…gas…plant!

So controversial is this idea that the legislators did all they could to avoid even saying the word “gas” throughout the 28-minute press conference. Yet legislative language released two days later by Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) and House Speaker Adrienne Jones (D-Baltimore County) – the so-called “Next Generation Energy Act” — paves the way for a whopping three gigawatts of new gas combustion in the state. The bill fast tracks electricity-plant construction equal to all existing coal and oil plant capacity in the state today, capacity that is likely to be retired soon due to the failing economics of these dirty plants. 

Top environmental groups in the state – including Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network – were quick to oppose any plan to replace those plants with new gas, saying cheaper, cleaner, and faster-build alternatives exist. And they are right.

Some good energy bills were also announced at the same February 3rd press conference. A bill to cut red tape in the deployment of solar power and batteries in the state is an excellent idea from Senator Brian Feldman (D-Mont) and Delegate CT Wilson (D-Charles). And a bill to improve energy planning in the state is badly needed from Senator Katie Hester (D-Howard) and Delegate Brian Crosby (D-Calvert).  

But the Ferguson-Jones bill opening the door to a gas plant is the opposite of what Marylanders need right now. Let us count the ways. 

Gas is BAD for ratepayers. 

Think your power bill is too high now? Just wait till you start paying for a multi-billion-dollar gas plant or plants near Baltimore that are much more expensive than alternatives. That construction of up to 3,109 megawatts of power from gas – which the Ferguson-Jones bill invites — would likely cost close to $4 billion dollars. If every Marylander shared that cost equally, it would run a family of four about $2,580. 

But President Ferguson has already hinted that the expense could be much higher. Surely knowing how controversial a new fossil fuel plant will be to voters when sea-level rise is already harming downtown Annapolis and extreme weather is disrupting cities and farms everywhere, he said the proposed plant could be “converted” to a carbon capture and storage facility “when that (technology) is available.“

Well that technology is available now for gas plants but no U.S. state has used it because it’s fantastically expensive – and will likely remain so. You have to capture the carbon dioxide after combustion, pressurize the CO2 into a pipeline, and finally inject it into a subterranean cavern guaranteed never to leak. That would add nearly $350 million per year to the gas plant operation, drenching ratepayers with even more costs. 

And, by the way, the nearest possible place to plausibly inject compressed carbon is in far western Maryland – so a pipeline would need to be built out there.

Even without carbon capture, a prominent study commissioned by Google and conducted by the respected research firm Brattle shows building a gas plant today is significantly more expensive than deploying utility-scale batteries (as Texas and California have done to address electricity load growth and grid stability) or investing in energy efficiency and “smart grid” technology. Without a doubt, these alternatives could be deployed to solve Maryland’s in-state generation problem faster and at a lower cost. A bill this year from Delegate Lorig Charkoudian (D-Montgomery) – called the Abundant and Affordable Clean Energy Act (HB 398/SB 316)– would do just that. 

Ferguson and Jones are suggesting the opposite, implying that gas is the best option. But no one – not the legislators, not the gas companies who stand to profit millions, no one – has presented to the public any independent data or modeling that  shows gas beats out alternatives on cost. Where are the numbers? Are lawmakers going to vote without looking at any comparison or independent data? And how about the January announcement of new AI technology showing data centers may need only one-tenth of the energy surge that utilities point to as a big justification for more power plants? Will new gas plants in Maryland end up largely standing idle at a huge cost to ratepayers?

Gas is BAD for the climate.

Make no mistake, despite good strides on clean energy in the past, authorizing construction of a massive three gigawatt gas plant in the 2020s, in a world of rapid global warming, will be THE climate legacy of this General Assembly — forever. And if Governor Wes Moore signs it, despite his personal strong support for offshore wind and solar in the state, the gas plant will be an indelible stain on his record for future state and national voters to remember. The tragedy is that the General Assembly, which has done as much as any statehouse to pass climate bills like the Clean Energy Jobs Act and the Climate Solutions Now Act, has helped lower the cost of solar and efficiency and battery technology, making them CHEAPER alternatives to the gas plant they’re being asked to vote for now.

How, exactly, does a gas plant fit into the state’s statutory goal of being carbon neutral by 2045? It doesn’t. Unless, of course, it’s equipped with the carbon capture and storage technology which, again, is still largely untested and wildly expensive and thus makes the present clean-energy options even cheaper as alternatives. 

And all talk of gas as “better” for the climate is largely untrue. Scores of studies have shown that when you combine the methane leakage from the drilling process – through violent fracking in neighboring states – then add leakage in pipelines on the way to the final combustion plant, the greenhouse gas “lifecycle” total is nearly as bad or worse than coal.

Gas is BAD for public health

Beyond injury to the climate, gas-burning power plants harm human health. They emit air pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NOx), which are linked to respiratory problems, asthma, heart disease, and can particularly affect vulnerable populations like children and the elderly living nearby, leading to increased rates of lung and heart issues due to exposure to poor air quality. 

Using the former Biden Administration’s “social cost of carbon” calculation, a three-megawatt gas plant operating just 15-20 percent of the time as a so-called peaker plant (1500 hours per year), would add an additional $425 million dollars per year in social and environmental harm. Plus, fossil fuel plants are disproportionately located near communities of color, compounding issues of justice.

Time for real solutions, not gas

Fundamentally, the gas plant proposal is bad public policy.  Maryland legislators are ignoring abundant information that shows that clean energy, battery storage and energy efficiency solutions are available, cost less and are healthier for consumers and ratepayers than fossil fuel options.  The cleaner solutions do, though, take money away from entrenched, politically powerful interests – most notably utilities.  If lawmakers are serious about lowering electricity bills and helping Maryland ratepayers, they would abandon talk of building a harmful multi-billion-dollar gas plant and instead pass the alternative bills noted above, especially the Abundant and Affordable Clean Energy Act. And reforming the boondoggle STRIDE Program, where Maryland gas companies saddle  consumers with unnecessary underground pipe build outs, would save tens of billions of dollars for ratepayers.  

The bottom line: Gas is bad for everyone. Pursuing clean-energy alternatives saves money, lives, and our environment. Lawmakers need to start paying attention to what’s good for their constituents.  They should vote no on any new gas plant in Maryland.

(Christine Pendzich is a member of the Steering Committee of 350 Montgomery County and Bob Muehlenkamp is a volunteer with Third Act Maryland. Both groups are committed to fighting climate change with clean energy.)

While Diane was growing up in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., the responsibility to “heal the world,” the Jewish principle of Tikkun Olam, was emphasized in her home. As teenagers in the late 1960s and early 70s, Diane and her friends took public transportation or hitchhiked from the suburbs into the capital to participate in protests against the Vietnam war, in civil rights campaigns, in environmental activism, and in women’s and gay liberation demonstrations. With youthful exuberance, they took to the streets in the nation’s capital, investing endless energy to discuss politics and philosophy, and they embraced the mantra of not trusting anyone over 30.

The arts were also emphasized in Diane’s upbringing, and she enjoyed a 40-year professional career in dance and higher education in roles ranging from chair of a university dance department to executive director of a national nonprofit organization supporting dance in colleges and universities. “Dance is an intensely personal process of attaining technical skill and expressive nuance; it can also be deeply collaborative, where trust, vulnerability, and generosity are essential,” she says. She continues to value active collaboration and thinking outside the box that are part of dance, as well as the tradition of political resistance in modern dance. 

Though she never wavered from her political convictions, Diane’s focus on her career, raising a child, and caring for her aging parents left little time for activism in the political arena. As she says, “I expressed political outrage to anyone who would listen and showed up for my share of marches and demonstrations—but only if they were on the rare free weekend.” At some point, however, that was not enough for Diane. Given the urgency of climate change and the effect on future generations, she concluded, it was time to retire and to act. 

In the Fall of 2023, Diane discovered Third Act. Her first Third Act experience was at the February 2024 nonviolent direct action (NVDA) in-person training in Washington, D.C., where she found others deeply committed and already doing the work.

And then she was off and running. She took part in a get-out-the-vote postcard writing party in Baltimore in March; a Washington-area Rocking Chair Rebellion demonstration at a CitiBank office in April, and Third Act DMV’s Mobilization for Climate and Democracy event with Rebecca Solnit and Jamie Raskin in June. (Third Act DMV is a coalition of Third Act working groups from D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.)

Diane was first arrested, along with other demonstrators, in March 2020 while marching on the Capitol grounds for reproductive freedom while the Supreme Court heard arguments in the mifepristone case. Her arrest was captured by a New York Times photographer and included in its live updates of the protests. She happily exclaimed, “This brought me hero status in my extended family.”

More recently, Diane was a pallbearer for a makeshift coffin as part of the stagecraft for a July 8 Third Act demonstration called Elders Rise Up, at Citibank headquarters in New York. Part of the Summer of Heat campaign, the event memorialized people and animals that have perished because of climate change. 

Diane is a member of Third Act Maryland’s Safeguarding Democracy committee and participated in multiple canvassing, letter/postcard writing events (including hosting two), phone banking, and ballot curing sessions for the November elections. She is currently serving on the Nonviolent Direct Action Toolkit and Resources committee as part of the Third Act NVDA Network. Most recently, Diane felt honored to be a “lamentor” in an action in the Senate Hart Building, a role that meaningfully combines her passion for the environment and her experience as a performer.

Being part of the Third Act community of like-minded, experienced elders is a great place to be an activist again. While her lefty grandmother could never have imagined the climate emergency, her spirit lives on in her descendants. As expressed by Diane’s uncle in his eulogy for his mother:

“She unflinchingly believed that people—each person—could make a difference. She discussed each political event and disaster on the basis of ‘why aren’t you doing something about it now, to put it right?’”

Third Actors are doing something now to put it right.

A lifelong Marylander, Alsobrooks was born and raised in Prince George’s County. In 2018, she was elected Prince George’s County Executive, the first woman to hold the position and the first Black woman elected to the office of County Executive in Maryland history. She has focused on creating jobs and growing economic opportunity; investing in education and breaking ground on 10 new schools; expanding access to health care, mental health services, and addiction treatment; conducting youth outreach; and making sure people are safe.

If former Gov. Hogan is elected, however, the GOP could very well take control of the Senate, putting the Democrats’ pro-environment, pro-choice, and pro-voting rights agenda out of reach, even if Vice President Harris wins the election. Trump knows this, and that’s why he endorsed Hogan, who has been one of Trump’s most outspoken Republican critics. Should Trump win the presidency, he’ll need a GOP majority in the Senate to advance his pro-fossil fuel, anti-choice, and anti-democracy agenda. By electing Angela Alsobrooks, Marylanders can help Democrats retain a majority in the Senate.

The 65-year old resident of Upper Marlboro was born in Dayton, Ohio, to a military family, and grew up in various parts of the U.S. and abroad, including California, Germany, and Springfield, Virginia. Though her family was Catholic, as an adult she found that the Episcopal Church suited her better.

With a mother who became extremely anxious about thunderstorms and snowstorms, Donna was drawn to study meteorology at the University of Virginia. After college she joined the Air Force, met her husband in Arkansas, spent time in Guam, and then completed a master’s degree in meteorology, sponsored by the Air Force, at the University of Maryland. 

The Air Force assigned Donna the meteorology subspecialty of atmospheric chemistry for her degree; at the time, the world was focused on understanding how chlorofluorocarbons (used in refrigerators, air conditioners, and aerosol cans) were destroying the ozone layer. She said, “During the 1980s, ozone depletion and its causes brought concern and action across the world, culminating in the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which phased out these dangerous chemicals.” 

Industry tried to fight this change and there was partisan pushback, but the world came together to ban the harmful chemicals, and President Reagan signed the treaty. Donna contrasts the way nations came together to ban chlorofluorocarbons with the difficulty in getting nations to take meaningful action to deal with the climate emergency. (The Climate Solutions podcast Audiomentary: Ozone: How to Solve an Environmental Crisis ties the ozone crisis to the current climate crisis, offering lessons learned.)

After completing 10 years with the Air Force in 1991, Donna worked as a contractor at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, as a scientific programmer in the division studying ozone.

In 1996, Donna went on to work as a contractor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) in Suitland, as a programmer. In 2001, she became a federal employee with NESDIS, overseeing operational product generation from environmental satellites. Donna worked on fire and other land surface products, as well as products that monitored the earth’s ozone layer. In 2011, she began leading a team that distributes data and products from environmental satellites to national and state government agencies and commercial weather information companies as well as international weather forecasting organizations.

In January of this year, Donna went into semiretirement, reducing her hours by half, which has given her more time to volunteer with Third Act on democracy and climate efforts.

For many decades, Donna focused on individual actions like recycling and conservation to try to solve the problem of climate change. When she learned that fossil fuel companies promoted the concept of individual carbon footprint to divert attention away from their responsibilities, Donna became more motivated to take part in communal actions to hold those responsible for climate change accountable. (For more on Big Oil’s deceptive practices, see this University of California-Davis blog post, Big Oil Distracts from Their Carbon Footprint by Tricking You to Focus on Yours.)

Donna is proud of her three children, who all have careers that serve the public and who are climate supporters, and she’s grateful for her very supportive husband. In her spare time, Donna loves to visit and hike through nature’s beauty. Her favorite Third Act slogan is “No Time To Waste,” as we are in such a critical phase to stop fossil fuel extraction to save our beautiful, nurturing planet.

Movement is life. This is true for an individual and for a collective. Movement is also the foundation of Third Act Maryland — who we are and what we do.

But what sustains this movement?

1. A community of skilled and dedicated people, of course, without which there is no movement.

2. The planning and carrying out of episodic actions that provide focus and expression. Actions like  sit-ins at Citibank, one of the big dirty banks, and collecting signatures to petition Costco to clean up its affiliation with the Citibank credit card.

3. A vision of what else the world could be like.

But a movement is also sustained by the ongoing work between actions, work that provides the necessary stability, continuity, connections and relationships, self-healing, and self-improvement. In essence, the work in between actions forms the foundation of a movement.

Writer, activist, and Third Act advisor Rebecca Solnit provided a wonderful mushroom metaphor for this work in an illustration based on this article in The Guardian. Solnit wrote, “After a rain mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many come from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown. What we call mushrooms, mycologists call the fruiting body of the larger, less visible fungus. Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but it is the less visible long-term organising and groundwork — or underground work — that often laid the foundation.”

A similar metaphor was shared last February at a Third Act training on nonviolent direct action. California redwood trees, which, though shallow-rooted, grow higher than 300 feet, are highly resilient and stable. Over time and mostly out of sight, their roots intertwine, widely and densely, forming a community of mutual support.

This centrality of relationships and connectedness, and the importance of the in-between, foundational, and often not very visible work can be found nearly everywhere, including, of course, in the foundations of buildings. For competitive athletes, for whom movement is literal, the analogy is the long periods of training in between competitions. In the environmental movement, Julia Butterfly Hill is a perfect example of the importance of in-between work. Hill is perhaps best known for her tree sit of over two years in Luna, the name given to a particular redwood tree in Humboldt County, California. One of the purposes of tree sits is to prevent clearcut logging by lumber companies. Hill’s tree sit was the visible episodic action, made possible by broad, in-between, foundational community support, support that was ongoing by the movement and that made her specific tree sit possible. 

Given the importance of in-between work, how can we in Third Act Maryland more thoughtfully and consistently incorporate it into what we do? With the November election fast approaching, the obvious near-term and critical in-between work is showing up to do the organizing and groundwork such as  canvassing and phone-banking necessary to ensure that we can keep a republic. We would love to hear your ideas about near- or long-term in-between work that Third Act Maryland could undertake! Please email us at maryland@thirdact.org.

by Rob Wald

Citibank CEO Jane Fraser likes to talk about how she’s a working mother and understands the concerns parents have for their children’s future. But her actions as the head of the bank that leads the world in funding fossil fuel expansion suggest the opposite. An estimated 20,000 children worldwide are displaced from their homes every day due to climate change. And in the face of this humanitarian tragedy, Citibank continues to fund new fossil fuel projects.

So on July 27, I joined hundreds of other Summer of Heat activists, many with their children, for a rally at Citibank headquarters in New York. We marched to Fraser’s apartment building, where we erected a shrine to the displaced children by piling dolls, stuffed animals, children’s shoes, and other items on and around a table on the sidewalk. We sang and chanted and stood behind the shrine in a solemn display of solidarity with displaced children.

Before long, I was arrested with 58 other people and brought to a special police station for mass arrests. Processing was very slow. I stood outside with my arresting officer (AO) for about two hours, waiting to be led inside the jail, where my zip ties were cut (a huge relief) and I was searched and led into a holding cell with my comrades.

While I was waiting outside with my AO, who was a huge man with tattooed forearms as thick as a tree branch, we struck up a conversation. We talked about our hopes and dreams and I learned that he came from a long line of New York City sanitation workers and cops, and that his Italian ancestors were farmers. He had two kids, and his wife dreamed of opening an animal rescue center.

When I learned his wife was from Puerto Rico, our conversation steered toward the climate crisis and how island nations around the world are already facing an existential crisis. I told him that my son has Type 1 diabetes and that last summer — the hottest humans had ever experienced (until this summer) — a number of pharmaceutical plants shut down due to extreme heat. Insulin supplies weren’t affected that time, I told my AO, but I realized that a disruption to insulin supplies could be how my son dies from climate change.

I explained that that was why I was engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, even though my son is an adult and can take care of himself. He looked me in the eye and told me he understood, and that it wouldn’t matter if I were 85 and my son was 60, I would never stop being a parent. He said  he would do ANYTHING to ensure the safety of his children, that he didn’t blame me for doing what I, as a parent, had to do. We continued chatting, about sports, the problems with capitalism, our broken healthcare system, the need for change. Shortly before he led me into the station for processing, I said, “You know, when you stop being a policeman, you might consider joining our movement.”

He replied, “Don’t be surprised if you see me out here with you one day.” I wanted to give him a hug, but, zip ties . . . I’ll never forget that conversation. My experience taught me that we can grow our movement one conversation at a time. Even when those conversations are with burly New York City cops. 

After participating in the New York City Elders Day Protest on June 13, with animated marching, singing, and chanting, this elder felt totally energized. So, when I heard that the first protest of Elder Week at Citibank headquarters in NYC on July 8 would be a more somber occasion —a procession with a coffin, tombstones, and “Lamentors” coming from as far away as San Francisco — I was not particularly enthusiastic. But I am so glad that curiosity got the better of me. It was the most brilliantly conceived, emotionally charged and superbly executed protest I’ve ever been a part of.

On the morning of the protest, we gathered at the North Moore Street side of the city block-sized Citibank building and listened to sidewalk sermons by Bill McKibben, Hip Hop Caucus President and Chief Executive Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., Episcopal Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, United Church of Christ Rev. Jim Antal, and two inspiring  young activists.  Already present were the Lamentors, dressed in sackcloth, ashes on their faces, heads covered and bowed, and with hands outstretched, palms up. The rest of us wore and carried signs. 

After the sermons, a bagpiper led a slow and silent procession of the speakers carrying our banner, following by the Lamentors walking single file, four pallbearers carrying a coffin, and the rest of us hundred or so protestors carrying signs. About as many police officers watched and accompanied us on our route around the building and ending in the Greenwich Street plaza in front of the main entrance to Citibank. 

Once in the plaza, the die-in began with some of us lying on the pavement and others marking our bodies’ outlines with yellow chalk. We then got up and filled the outlines with statistics and slogans, including “Climate Change is Bad for Business,” “Fossil Fuel Kills,” “Stop Funding Extinction,” “RIP Next Generation’s Dreams,” “Citi $ = Death,” “Be a Good Ancestor,” and “Invest in Green not Greed.” We chalked pretty much every part of the plaza, including the inactive fountain in the middle. Citibank employees who may have been unaware of our action in real time, would see the plaza as they left the building.

Behind us and closer to the Citibank entrance were protestors with 20 cardboard gravestones each with an epitaph for a real victim of heat deaths, such as “United Parcel Service PS Driver Collapses Delivering Packages in Texas,” “Ashlyn M. Maddox Nurse Dies During Oregon Heat Wave at Age 36,” and “52 Yr. Old Farmer Felled by Heatstroke on Cornfield – Heat Death.” The protestors also placed the makeshift coffin before the police. 

All the while, silence pervaded the plaza, with a woman’s keening, a high funereal voice, the only sound heard anywhere. 

By now, the Lamentors had lined up in front of the building, the entrance to which had been secured by a phalanx of police officers. Next to the officers was a line of arrest-risking “red” protesters, many of them continuing the die, lying on the ground with the sun beating down on them. The earlier speakers stood in front of the prone bodies. As protester struck a gong, one speaker at a time recited recent climate crisis-related events.

13,000 Americans died of heat-related causes last summer. Gong.

Lytton Canada exploded from heat in 2021. Gong.

Each new month brings a new heat record. Gong.

Young monkeys fell out of trees from heat in Mexico. Gong.

1,700 people died from heat during the Haj in Mecca. Gong.

Arrests

Then a police officer announced: “Anyone lying down will be arrested.” In response, more protesters lay down, including the Lamentors. Thus began the first of 46 arrests, with the protesters’ hands zip-tied behind their backs, including Bill McKibben’s. Several protesters with medical conditions asked not to be tied, and their requests were granted. 

While our comrades were loaded into police vans, Summer of Heat organizer Valerie Costa thanked us all for being staunch resisters and making a difference. We then cleared the area, leaving behind the lower plaza completely covered with yellow chalked facts and helped to load everything into a van. Those who volunteered as Jail Support proceeded to Luna Pizza near police headquarters where the arrestees were taken. As was the case for the NYC Elders Day Protest on June 13, several of our group waited for the release of the arrestees at the police station and then accompanied them to the pizzeria. 

Though I didn’t sign up to be in a “red” role, I carried a sign and stood with them in front of the police line. In hindsight, I wish I had a “red” role.  The stipulation for a “red” role person is that they only carry a cell phone and keys, which would be given to “yellow” supporters for safekeeping until later retrieval. Because I knew I would have my luggage with me, I didn’t think I could be in a “red” role. So, I was surprised when I saw two carts with people’s suitcases and bags transported from the plaza to the pizzeria. But it was too late to change my travel plans. Next time!

In terms of outreach, we were not as successful as the one on June 13th.  Police had cordoned off the plaza, so handing out information cards to passers-by was not possible. There was little press coverage, except for one local TV station and Democracy Now. Still, although we did not connect with the Citi employees or pedestrians, it was clear that some police officers, as witnesses and arresters, were moved. They could have stopped us at any moment on the plaza, as they did within 10 minutes on June 13th, but they watched our entire production before taking action.

I’m looking forward to more protests throughout the summer. With enough protesters, resisters and fleeing bank customers, the bank’s determination to stay on its present planet-destroying course will crack. 

Check the brief YouTube video and a July 11 New York Times article about the hundreds of activists descending on City Bank to protest its disastrous policies. 

My thanks to Diane DeFries who was a pallbearer at the protest and added significant details.

In the late 60s and early 70s, the women’s liberation movement clarion call, “the personal is political,” propelled many into activism. It fortified my teenage friends and me as we cut our activist teeth on anti-war demonstrations, civil rights campaigns, the environmental movement, women’s and gay liberation protests, and other causes that excited moral, ethical, and philosophical outrage. We embraced an unflinching belief that our actions would bring about a better world. Taking to the streets in the nation’s capital was our social life; we had absolute self-assuredness of our convictions and our actions, and could talk endlessly about politics, philosophy, and, of course, not trusting anyone over 30. Yes, the personal was political, but the political was also personal.

Over the ensuing decades, I never wavered from my political convictions. But a demanding career, raising a child, and caring for aging parents superseded any real activism. I expressed political outrage to anyone who would listen and showed up for my share of marches and demonstrations (if they were on the weekend). As undeniable evidence of the climate emergency and threats to basic rights and our system of government grew at an alarming pace, I knew it was time for me to take to the streets again. I decided to retire so I’d have time to devote to activism.

I thought I would dive into activism as soon as I stopped working, but I didn’t anticipate the difficulty I would have navigating retirement. Suddenly I had time to do what I had been yearning to do for years. But the loss of comradery and confidence I derived from my professional life has been disorienting. I have not been able to effortlessly take up where I left off. I don’t have the self-assuredness and energy of my youth. I feel like I’m starting from scratch.

Third Act seemed like an obvious place to start my journey back to activism—joining with like-minded, intelligent, thoughtful people working on the world’s most urgent crises. Initially, “like-minded” and good work got me to the door, but it has taken more to get this introvert into the room. To participate in Third Act’s nonviolent direct actions requires learning about the development, skills, strategies, and risks of specific actions. The prospect of putting your body on the line also means developing trust among everyone in our movement. That’s a tall order for a bunch of strangers.

The Mobilization for Climate & Democracy, held on June 6, was a meaningful event. Rebecca Mazur describes the activities of the Mobilization in more depth in her June 16 blog post . The stated intention of the day-long program is in its title: mobilization. The Mobilization was successful on that front, providing information needed to organize upcoming actions. It also fostered the development of community, the human connections so important to sustaining action. The programming provided depth and breadth and a rhythm that gave space to enter and to engage. The well-organized and well-executed structure included full-group information sessions (the why and the what of being there), small breakout sessions (hands on, personal, and practical), inspirational speakers (much needed motivational reinforcements), singalongs (embodied expressions of collective convictions), and food (plain old nonmetaphorical nourishment). It provided not only information but opportunities for growth, enrichment, and fortification for a group of otherwise unconnected folks—the extroverts and the introverts, the experienced and the inexperienced in political activism, the established and the newbies in Third Act, and the confident and the floundering. Making space for individuals builds community. For some, being part of the community may mean dipping in a toe, and for others it may mean taking a plunge. (For me, sharing my personal reflections here feels like both a toe-dip into an activity and a plunge into trust.)

Listening to Third Actors talk, it seems that some in this community made an effortless transition from professions to activism. I trust, however, that I am not the only one who is taking longer with transitions. Having aged out of the youth-fueled notion that anyone over 30 was corrupt and inept, there is great satisfaction in being among those aged at least 30 x 2 who bring experience, skills, wisdom, and tremendous doses of kindness. Thank you to those who organized the Mobilization in a way that acknowledged the multiple ways individuals may find themselves becoming part of a community and to focus that community to mobilize and address the most imminent and critical issues for our future.