Youth groups are turning up the heat, demanding that candidates stand up for clean energy and stop taking money from the fossil fuel industry.
The latest group to form is Power Vote, a national campaign to turn out young voters in key states on these issues.
Power Vote is a campaign of the Energy Action Coalition, a coalition of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice groups working together to build the youth clean energy and climate movement on state, regional and national levels in the US and Canada.
The Power Vote campaign will include coordinated days of action, voter registration, and get-out-the-vote activities in cities and campuses in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Maryland, Texas and California.
Bands and artists are supporting the campaign by filming videos and spreading the word on social media. Over the weekend, over 2000 concert attendees signed the Power Vote pledge to participate.
"Big Oil and the 1% are trying to hijack our elections by spending millions of dollars, but we are fighting back," says Whit Jones, Campaign Director of Energy Action Coalition. "Hand in hand with musicians across the country, we’re mobilizing hundreds of thousands of youth voters to stand up to big polluters and their dirty money and demand 100% clean and renewable energy."
In 2008, Power Vote turned out more than 350,000 youth climate voters in key districts across the country. The campaign plans to escalate its efforts this year along with dozens of partner organizations ranging from community-based environmental justice organizations and regional youth networks like the Southern Energy Network to national environmental and voter registration organizations.
Another group composed of teenagers, iMatter, has been holding marches around the world (43 countries and 180 cities in 2011) and is enmeshed in a court suit to force state and federal governments to take serious action on climate change.
In May, a US District Court Judge heard the arguments and is deliberating now on the question of whether young people can sue to compel their government to take serious measures to stop global warming.
Here’s the iMatter website: www.imattermarch.org
Here’s the Power Vote website:
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