From Shock to Victory: The Planet’s “Immune System” at Work

- by Jan Baty, Newark Res­i­dents Against the Pow­er Plant

As I saw Alex Lotor­to (cam­pus and com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er for Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work) step out of his car, unload­ing mate­ri­als for the meet­ing he was to lead at my house, I had a flash back to how I had dis­cov­ered the Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work. In Newark Delaware, res­i­dents had tak­en on the enor­mous task of stop­ping a project the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware was con­sid­er­ing, a data cen­ter pow­er plant, pro­posed by The Data Cen­ters, LLC (TDC), to be built in the heart of this col­lege town and the uni­ver­si­ty, at a for­mer Chrysler plant site. The plans for the pow­er plant had now grown to 279 megawatts —at least two times larg­er than any oth­er on-site pow­er gen­er­a­tion facil­i­ty at data cen­ters in the US.

News of this pro­pos­al had been kept tight­ly under wraps for over a year by City of Newark staff, TDC, the State of DE and the Uni­ver­si­ty of DE until June 2013, when the CEO of TDC approached the local Sier­ra Club chap­ter seek­ing an endorse­ment for this project as being “green.” The alarm was raised by the direc­tors, Stephanie Her­ron and Amy Rowe.

An offi­cial resident’s group was formed, Newark Res­i­dents Against the Pow­er Plant (NRAPP), which by now had hun­dreds of mem­bers and dozens of work­ing groups and neigh­bor­hood groups across Newark. Much effort was going into per­suad­ing city coun­cil to with­draw their sup­port of this pro­pos­al. City coun­cil meet­ings were filled with pas­sion­ate state­ments by cit­i­zens, includ­ing rev­e­la­tions of results from FOIA requests, and uncov­ered infor­ma­tion about TDC’s plans. There was a con­tin­u­ous stream of let­ters to the edi­tor of the Wilm­ing­ton News Jour­nal.  Know­ing how long it often takes for gov­ern­ments to respond, some of us were eager to pour our ener­gy into edu­cat­ing uni­ver­si­ty fac­ul­ty, and stu­dents about this —since most knew noth­ing about it!  We real­ized that if giv­en enough pres­sure the Uni­ver­si­ty could cer­tain­ly stop this project.

We formed a group of res­i­dents, fac­ul­ty, and stu­dents, which became a resource for moti­vat­ing the uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ty. Fac­ul­ty (most­ly in envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies) began reach­ing out to colleagues—students were quick to con­nect with envi­ron­men­tal and oth­er stu­dent organizations. 

I remem­bered an envi­ron­men­tal lawyer I had met in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Per­haps he would know of a region­al orga­ni­za­tion that could help us learn about how to make a dif­fer­ence on cam­pus, that was also doc­u­ment­ing evi­dence about the dan­gers of ‘natural’gas. We had a brief con­ver­sa­tion. “Here’s Ralph Nader’s phone num­ber. Call him.”I did. After leav­ing a mes­sage about our needs, I received a short mes­sage back. I could hear a hum­ming sound of oth­er peo­ple talk­ing in the back­ground, and a man’s voice in a hoarse whis­per said “Ener­gy justice.net …Mike Ewall”, and gave me his phone num­ber. Feel­ing some­what like a char­ac­ter in a detec­tive nov­el, I phoned Mike.  What a relief to con­nect with this orga­ni­za­tion and to find out what a resource they are.  A lat­er con­ver­sa­tion with Alex revealed that he was trav­el­ing to DC and could stop on the way to give us a pre­sen­ta­tion.  Sup­port was show­ing up.

Alex is a per­son of con­sid­er­able warmth, intel­li­gence, humor, courage and ded­i­ca­tion. I can­not imag­ine sur­viv­ing with what he takes in stride day after day. His pre­sen­ta­tion was orga­nized around how to take an increas­ing com­plex­i­ty of infor­ma­tion and pos­si­bil­i­ties and orga­nize that into a more usable con­text. One chart, “The Mid­west Acad­e­my Strat­e­gy Chart”, had five head­ings: GOALS, RESOURCES, PEOPLE, TARGETS, and TACTICS. 

As we orga­nized our con­ver­sa­tions around these, we began to real­ize how much we were already doing, and how to strength­en the con­tacts we were mak­ing. For all of us, this meet­ing gave us courage. There was a larg­er sup­port­ive world out there.

A series of actions and events evolved. 

•    We set up a Google group for shar­ing infor­ma­tion, and a local Epis­co­pal church offered us meet­ing space near cam­pus for our increas­ing num­ber of meet­ings with students.

•    We start­ed plan­ning a Teach-In on cam­pus for the spring semes­ter, which would present spokes­peo­ple from the res­i­dents, the TDC, and envi­ron­men­tal fac­ul­ty from the uni­ver­si­ty.  This even­tu­al­ly hap­pened and was a great success. 

•    A few peo­ple designed a White Board video pre­sen­ta­tion, (with hand draw­ings and a voice — over explain­ing the dan­gers of this project), that went viral. 

•    A num­ber of con­cerned fac­ul­ty wrote dynam­ic let­ters explain­ing their oppo­si­tion to the project for the stu­dent newspaper. 

•    We were inter­est­ed also in edu­cat­ing stu­dents to the Indige­nous per­spec­tive. An oppor­tu­ni­ty opened up when a vis­it­ing out­side envi­ron­men­tal group trav­el­ing from cam­pus to cam­pus to raise lev­el of aware­ness regard­ing envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, gave us space for a pre­sen­ta­tion at a free stu­dent din­ner. We were able to invite two pre­sen­ters, Den­nis Cok­er, the Lenape Indi­an Chief and Amy Rowe, one of the found­ing mem­bers of NRAPP. Amy’s mes­sage was about the excite­ment of becom­ing an activist with heart. Den­nis spoke of the impor­tance in native tra­di­tion, of “Every­thing done for the community…A sim­ple life…respect for self extend­ing to respect for oth­ers and the planet.”

•    Out of that gath­er­ing came students’suggestion to have a ral­ly on the main cam­pus green (this was the first time since the 80’s when some­thing like this had been done) where they cut out sil­very grey strips of fab­ric donat­ed to us —rep­re­sent­ing smoke—and waved them around as they danced in a cir­cle, chant­i­ng enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly.  Even some pro­fes­sors chimed in.

As NRAPP began tak­ing a more active role on cam­pus in addi­tion to all of their speak­ing out at city coun­cil meet­ings, con­tin­u­al FOIA requests, and point­ing out inac­cu­ra­cies in the TDC’s con­tin­u­al­ly chang­ing pro­pos­als, they orga­nized let­ter writ­ing to the board of trustees, and alum­ni.  To cre­ate a strong pres­ence at Deci­sion Days on cam­pus (when per­spec­tive stu­dents and par­ents would be vis­it­ing), the need for strik­ing ban­ners became clear. I went around to local hotels, ask­ing for old sheets and then found peo­ple to make dra­mat­ic ban­ners we could hold, one of them say­ing “Which Future Do We Deserve?”with smoke­stacks care­ful­ly paint­ed on one side and flow­ers on the other.

And one more event that I found par­tic­u­lar­ly moving—for the last board of trustees meet­ing before the sum­mer break, stu­dents were asked to make and hold ‘Selfies’containing their pic­ture, what they were study­ing and that they were in oppo­si­tion to the pow­er plant. What a feel­ing it was to come into the foy­er from the park­ing garage to find a cir­cle of young peo­ple stand­ing quietly–their pres­ence and state­ments say­ing it all. Cer­tain­ly even a board of trustees would be moved by that!!

By May, as the momen­tum of con­cern with­in the town and the uni­ver­si­ty con­tin­ued to grow, the fac­ul­ty sen­ate vot­ed 43–0 against the pow­er plant, say­ing that the plant would be incon­sis­tent with the university’s core val­ues and signed com­mit­ments to envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Then from a July 11 News Jour­nal arti­cle came the wel­come announce­ment that the Uni­ver­si­ty of DE had ter­mi­nat­ed its lease with TDC after a year long debate over green ener­gy and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment in Delaware. “After more than a year fight­ing the project, oppo­nents cel­e­brat­ed, gath­er­ing out­side Old Col­lege Hall on Main St., hoist­ing signs thank­ing UD for its deci­sion.” NRAPP co-founder Amy Rowe was quot­ed as say­ing “I think the Uni­ver­si­ty has learned that the Uni­ver­si­ty and the com­mu­ni­ty are partners.”

Many yearn for community—people help­ing each oth­er with shared con­cerns for the plan­et, which is our home. Some­times this com­mu­ni­ty emerges due to a shared threat, and then the ongo­ing chal­lenge is to keep grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty to build the “art of the pos­si­ble.” The acronym NRAAP has now changed to Newark Res­i­dents Alliance Project. The ‘immune sys­tem’ of the plan­et seems to be work­ing. Orga­ni­za­tions and resources such as The Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work are at its core. Thank you for all you do.