The Tide Is Rising and So Are We!!

The tide is rising and so are we!
The tide is rising and so are we!
The tide is rising and so are we!
The tide is rising and so are we!
The tide is rising and so are we!
The Tide Is Rising by Rabbi Roshana Meira Friedman

Greetings in the sacred season of Epiphany. I meant to get this out on
Epiphany Day, January 6, but there was other stuff going down so “forget about it!” So we’re a month into the newest year, but I’m still not used to 2020. In fact, when I first let myself say “2020,” tears came to my eyes. I seriously choked up, overcome with…well I’m not sure I was totally in touch with what I was feeling. It was somewhere between “Holy shit!” and “Oh my God!,” a dissonant blend of the old Spiritual “My Lord What A Mourning,” Bob Dylan’s “Eve of Destruction,” Bach’s “Ode To Joy” and “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Us ‘Round!” I know this first year of the newest decade will be a time of Great Turning when we will once again sink our souls’ work into proving the “moral arc of the universe, though long, bends toward justice (Martin Luther King Jr.)”.

Each year, my hope is kindled in the Story of Magi at the Nativity, wise leaders from beyond the borders who, transformed by a Dream, choose to take a safer route home through treacherous territory so the light keeps shining in the darkness. Make no mistake, the light is born of the ancient decree announcing a subversive world order where wolves dwell with lambs, the poor are lifted, the 1% scattered and all Creation does a happy dance led by a little child. And make no mistake, this is the Year of the Child. As the old year drew to a close, Greta Thunberg became Time’s Person of the Year. Her words to us, echoing into the new decade, could be our Epiphany. She says, “You come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” She says our children don’t want our hope. They want us to act as if “our house is on fire. Because it us.”

So I don’t know what it looks like in your community to follow our children and stand with them in this fight. Here’s what it looks like over here. Late in 2019, our McMinnville Congregations and Climate coalition, a network of people from 6 local congregations, sponsored a fundraising dinner in support of Our Children’s Trust, 21 youth (ages 12-23) from communities all over the U.S. suing the federal government. They claim a Constitutional right to a healthy atmosphere and a livable future. Juliana v. U.S., alleges our government, including the last 11 Presidents (from JFK), knew the climate science and were warned that burning fossil fuels would lead to catastrophe. They allege that, not only did they do nothing to stop it, they continued to subsidize, fund and expand the fossil energy economy while lying to the public about the consequences. They demand the U.S. create and implement a scientifically verifiable, legally binding National Climate Recovery Plan.

We were privileged to have two of the twenty-one plaintiffs, brother and sister Isaac and Miko Vergun from Beaverton, join us for the evening and share their stories. Isaac was 13 when the lawsuit was filed in 2015. For his 5th grade science project, he researched carbon footprint statistics and climate change education. He was particularly inspired by meeting Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, after which he began a campaign to get the City of Beaverton to divest from fossil fuels. In fact, Isaac dedicated his bar mitzvah (Jewish rite of passage) project to this effort, gathering more than 500 signatures for divestment. In the past two years, he has become a national leader in Plant for the Planet. He spoke about the critical importance of staying engaged and the hope he finds in community action.

Miko is Isaac’s older sister. She was born in the Marshall Islands, a low-lying Pacific nation on the frontlines of climate change. Inspired by the culture and resilience of her people, she fights for a future where their land can stay above sea level. Now in her first year at Evergreen State, she’s been a climate activist since 7th grade, when she joined Plant for the Planet. She spoke to us of the history of colonization of the Marshall Islands and how the culture has been stripped from the people since the islands became a testing site for our development of nuclear weapons—how much of the island country has been cemented over in a supposed attempt to cap off the contamination. She said, “Now with climate change, the land is slowly being taken away again.”

There were 130 of us in the room that night and the energy was amazing. Our local young people were very visible with us. Middle school student Ileana Barsotti, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, spoke of going to a recent Youth Climate Strike and her newfound passion for climate justice. Her friend Uki, told us about the climate resolution she and her classmates would soon deliver to the McMinnville City Council. Then Ileana introduced Isaac and Miko. OCT staffers Kaitlyn Sledge and Nate Bellinger expanded our understanding of the breadth of Our Children’s Trust as they support youth bringing similar lawsuits in several U.S. states and some foreign countries. Nate talked about the tedious work of going through boxes of transcripts and testimonies in Presidential Libraries across the country to find and document evidence of who knew what and when. Kaithlyn explained our donations would go to fund the completion of curricula to educate Congresspeople, Legislators and the public at large about the litigation and the larger climate story…also to help fund plaintiff transport and lodging as they travel to hearings, rallies and town hall meetings. We ate good food together. We listened to the stories. We contemplated what’s at stake. And we met people we never knew before. When all was said and done:

              —Our goal was $10,000.
              —We raised $19,406!
              —Another donor for OCT matched it all and tripled the largest gifts.
              —Altogether we accounted for $46,163!!!!

WOW! Just WOW! We drew our theme from a song by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman, titled “The Tide Is Rising And So Are We!” We sang each verse together:

The tide is rising and so are we!
The tide is rising and so are we!
The tide is rising and so are we!
The tide is rising and so are we!
The tide is rising and so are we!

Each stanza, then, ends with the words THIS IS WHERE WE ARE CALLED TO BE! I know many in the room felt the calling that night. There is so much at stake. And this is our 2020 Epiphany: Our planet has never seen a time of so much devastation and greed, but never has there been a better chance for humanity to grow up and become who we were born to be. Many think people of faith, especially Jesus people, are climate deniers and against all things scientific. We showed up that night to prove them wrong. In 2020 we need to keep showing up. In fact we think supporting Our Children’s Trust is one of the most vital ways we can love our neighbors in this time (that’s a Jesus thing)! And in fact people of our many faiths believe every corpuscle and quark of life is infused with a fundamental goodness, that what we are called to do is speak truth to those in power to get their lives and political systems right with that goodness. We believe justice is what unconditional love looks like in public and we will work to make love real in the face of impeachable lies, high crimes and misdemeanors wherever they rear their misguided heads.

A segment on Our Children’s Trust aired March 3, 2019 on CBS. We showed the segment at the beginning of our fundraiser “The Tide Is Rising.” I close with a few tiny snippets from interviews of lead plaintiff Kelsey Juliana and Chief Legal Counsel Julia Olson by “60 Minutes” host Steve Kroft. Though they are the old decade’s news, these words are infused with our persistent charge for the new one:

60 Minutes coorespondent Steve Kroft: How important is this case to you?

Lead Plaintiff Kelsey Juliana: This case is everything. This is the climate case. We have everything to lose, if we don’t act on climate change right now, my generation and all the generations to come.

Lead Co-Counsel—Attorney Julia Olson: President Johnson’s administration, issued a report in 1965 that talked about climate change being a catastrophic threat…Every president knew burning fossil fuels was causing climate change.

Steve Kroft: Has the government disputed that government officials knew about this for more than 50 years…and warned about it for 50 years?

Julia Olson: No. They admit the government has known for over 50 years that burning fossil fuels would cause climate change. They don’t dispute we are in a danger zone on climate change…that it’s a national security threat—a threat to our economy—to people’s lives and safety. They do not dispute any of those facts.….And they don’t want it to go to trial.

Steve Kroft: Why not?

Julia Olson: Because they know they will lose on the evidence.

Excerpts from “60 Minutes” on CBS (March 3, 2019)

Friends, this catastrophe of climate and cultural injustice is so huge, the challenges so daunting and stakes so unprecedented and incomprehensible. In the face of it, we often hear people, especially those of privilege, exclaiming, “But what can one person do?” We just keep giving the answer author Kathleen Dean Moore gives in her book Great Tide Rising. What can one person do?: Stop being one person! I’m very proud of our work in McMinnville.

We will keep at it because we believe our children will win on the evidence. And, by the way, I’ll be wearing a new hat in 2020. Maybe you should order your own for this next campaign. In case you can’t read the words in the photo at the top of this blog, they say: Make America Greta Again!”

I encourage you to watch the whole “60 Minutes” segment from March 3. Then stop being one person and make a donation at: www.ourchildrenstrust.org/donate.

And I’ll even go beyond that. If you’d like to do a fundraiser through your congregation for Our Children’s Trust in 2020, email me at (pitneycompost@gmail.com). I will work with you and share our organizing materials so it would be very easy to replicate where you live. We will make sure at least two of the youth plaintiffs come and speak. Juliana v U.S. is one of the best chances we have…so please give it some thought and get a hold of me. Ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around. Happy Epiphany.