Editor’s note: This commentary is by Asa Skinder, Carmen Richardson-Skinder and Alec Fleischer, the three students who were arrested last week when they refused to leave the Vermont House of Representative during a climate action protest. Asa Skinder, 18, of Montpelier, is a student at Middlebury College majoring in environmental studies who has worked with the Vermont Youth Lobby, Sunrise Movement, 350 Vermont, and most recently Extinction Rebellion. Carmen Richardson-Skinder, 15, of Montpelier, is a freshman at Montpelier High School, a member of the Montpelier High School Earth Group and is doing conservation work this summer through Vermont Youth Conservation Corps. Alec Fleischer, 21, of Middlebury, is a student at Middlebury College majoring in environmental studies with a focus in policy. He is an activist fighting for a just transition towards a more equitable world for all.
[S]kipping school to risk arrest, we unfurled banners off the Vermont Statehouse balcony telling our elected officials that we must urgently address climate change. Holding signs reading โFossil Fuels Killโ and โSee You in January,โ we were handcuffed, processed, and charged for the outrageous crime of demanding our legislators take action to ensure a livable future. Despite their tongue-in-cheek agreement that climate change is an existential threat, even Vermontโs Democratic legislators continue to fail our generation through their inaction.
Days before our arrest, a UN report claimed that โ1 million species already face extinction.โ Additionally, the IPCC stated that โlimiting global warming to 1.5ยฐC, compared with 2ยฐC, could reduce the number of people both exposed to climate-related risks and susceptible to poverty by up to several hundred million by 2050.โ At the current warming of 1หC, Vermont has already seen tropical storms Sandy and Irene, widespread Lyme disease, decreased snowpack, local species extinction, and countless other problems. We are on track to warm the world by approximately 6หC, but Vermont refuses to significantly mitigate fossil fuel consumption, acting as if our actions have no impact. Instead of treating climate change as an enemy directly harming Vermonters, we are failing to meet our mild emissions goals and our Democratic Party still fails to include climate change in its top five priorities. Especially as youth, inaction is a direct threat to our wellbeing and is simply unacceptable.
All three of us have been trying to work with our elected representatives to address climate change since middle school. One example is S.66, a โbill [that] proposes to prohibit the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure in Vermont.โ In support of this bill, we have walked for five days from Middlebury to Montpelier, given testimony in an overcapacity committee room, lobbied legislators, and attended several non-disruptive rallies. We have even worked with 350Vermont to pass a resolution in Middlebury supporting S.66 by the sweeping margin of 802-237. Middlebury is among the 55 Vermont towns that have passed the resolution to date, however, S.66 has failed to receive a vote in the Statehouse. We refuse to continue being ignored by our representatives, especially our Democratic legislators.
All Americans reap the benefits from those who participate in nonviolent direct action. In the civil rights era, brave young activists of color refused police orders to leave segregated lunch counters and were subsequently arrested. Despite being beaten, labeled as instigators, and prosecuted, these activists forced a national debate that exposed the evils of segregation. Most importantly, their actions forced legislators to take a stance on whether they were for or against segregation, creating a landscape that required genuine policy initiatives. According to Martin Luther King, โnonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignoredโ, forcing change. Our nonviolent protest had one message: our legislators must act now as climate inaction is intolerable.
We students have a plan. We will be introducing a Green Mountain New Deal on the first week of the next legislative session in January. Using the framework of the national Green New Deal, we will unite diverse organizations in a coalition for climate justice in Vermont. Through grass-roots people power, we will push for transformative climate action that supports the needs of the most vulnerable Vermonters and rapidly reduces our emissions. No longer will it be acceptable to kick climate action down the road and our nonviolent action helped expose this issue. Legislators, we look forward to working together in January to pass comprehensive climate regulation.
Stand in solidarity and support our activism demanding climate justice by attending our arraignment on Thursday, May 23, at 8:30 a.m. at the Barre Courthouse.
