Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE)

By Ted Glick

It’s the morning of the twelfth day that I haven’t been eating. The only things I’ve been putting into my body are lots of water, salt, potassium and a multi-vitamin.

How do I feel? Weak, very weak, as do most of the others—about 15 as I write—who are also fasting and intend to do so until September 25^th, the day after the people’s pope speaks to Congress. 11 of the 15 are also, like me, on the twelfth day of water-only.

We’re physically weak mainly because of the water-only diet but also because we’ve been conducting this hunger strike on the sidewalk in the hot sun in front of FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, from 7 am to 6 pm every work day. We’ve been leafletting and talking to FERC employees, including, several days ago, Norman Bay, the chairperson. We’ve been leafletting and talking to passers-by and people who come to visit, as have Tim DeChristoper, Medea Benjamin, “No Impact Man” Colin Beavan, local high school students, and more.

We’ve been using white boards to make signs that we change as the days go by. We’ve been putting up quotes from Pope Francis and Gandhi. Every morning part of our routine is to change the number of the days that we’ve been fasting on the signs that say, “Day ___ of 18-Day Hunger Strike for No New Permits for Fossil Fuel Infrastructure.”

We’ve also been traveling around DC. We’ve gone to important local demonstrations, several times to the site of a sister fast being conducted by the Franciscan Action Network, and meetings.

All of these activities are taking a physical toll, adding to the impact of not eating.

Spiritually, however, we’re a very strong group. Every day we gather together outside of FERC in the morning and the afternoon to meet and go over everything that has happened or is happening that day. We always begin by going around our sacred circle with each faster reporting on how they are doing. Sometimes individual fasters have reported problems, some pretty serious, as far as how they are doing. So far we have been able to help everyone in those situations to get over them and continue on, sometimes aided by local nurses who have volunteered their services for free.

At the end of each meeting, we join hands for a minute or more of silent breathing together and communal strengthening, and it always works.

Two-thirds of the way through this ordeal, we’re seeing the end of it. We’re starting to talk about how to come off the fast in a way that doesn’t do damage to your digestive system. I shared yesterday my nine-day plan—one day of transitioning back for every two days of fasting– for how to do so based on my past fasting experiences.

The fast will end this coming Friday, September 25^th, at 12 noon in front of FERC, the day after Pope Francis speaks before Congress. We will end it by breaking and sharing bread together—a very small piece for each of us—and with the many hundreds or more people we hope will join us. We are inviting people who do so who can to bring a healthy loaf of bread to share so that, together, we will break bread together there on First St. NE, affirming life and community and our determination to keep at it until we have won.

We need people to join us on the 25^th not so much to support us but to make a strong statement to FERC, and all those who will learn of our action, about the need for FERC to heed our demand: No New Permits for Fossil Fuel Infrastructure.

Some of the fasters got into the monthly meeting of the FERC Commissioners a few days ago, the meetings BXE has been attending and speaking out at for a year. One of them stayed throughout it, and he reported on how the Commissioners were talking about how electrical power companies need to be making plans to switch to gas as their fuel source going forward. Much of that would be fracked gas. This is consistent with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan projections and the very serious economic problems being experienced by the coal industry.

The Commissioners did not talk about the need for power companies to get serious about switching to wind or solar energy as their power source, even though 1) they are price-competitive with coal and gas, 2) they are actually clean and non-polluting, no water contamination, no poisoning of the air and land, and 3) they don’t leak methane, a greenhouse gas 86 times more powerful than CO2 over a 20 year period.

It has become very clear that a, if not the, central battle to prevent worldwide climate catastrophe is the battle over whether natural gas, increasingly fracked gas, or renewables is going to become the primary electrical power source in the next decade. FERC Commissioners are going all-in on an expansion of fracking infrastructure and exporting the stuff around the world.

This decision must not go unchallenged, and it is not. There is a growing and connecting national movement, centered along the east coast right now, that is taking on FERC, in DC and in the scores and scores, maybe hundreds, of local communities where people are organizing to fight new fracking infrastructure. Many more need to join this fight, and now.

Let’s make September 25^th at FERC in DC, following upon the big Climate Justice rally September 24^th on the mall as the Pope speaks to Congress, the next major manifestation of our determination to prevent FERC from continuing to poison local communities and our threatened climate. In the words of Pope Francis, “There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.”

Wake up FERC!

Ted Glick is the National Campaign Coordinator of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Past writings and others information can be found at http://tedglick.com, and he can be followed on twitter at http://twitter.com/jtglick.

by Ellen Barfield

I’m the Beyond Extreme Energy faster at the Federal Energy “Regulatory” Commission who is NOT taking water only, but juice, because I have to buzz back and forth to Baltimore every night to look after my elderly husband, and also dash to various meetings of other orgs I work with. But on the 9th day, over the HUMP!! of our fast I too am feeling muzzy-headed, spacing out on other responsibilities, dealing with tiredness. But the strong solidarity of our little group, and the kind support from all kinds of folks all over the place, is such a bond, and the gathering energy for the Pope’s visit and all the activities in support of the environment and against climate crisis is so inspiring, that I have no doubt this is what I need to be doing.

The FERC employees are getting to know us and smiling and even some of them talking though they’ve been told not to. BXE folks around the country are fasting during daylight Ramadan-style, or for a day or several, or a few days a week. Frontline community members who resist fracking projects damaging their towns and threatening their families are sharing their stories with us and helping us create quilt squares for a visual representation of the BXE network.  We 12 fasters at FERC check-in twice a day for calendar updates and to see how we’re doing physically and spiritually, and to plan all the documents and events we have coming up. We hold hands in a circle at the end of each meeting, and the strength is amazing.

We advocate FERC shifting from facilitating extreme fossil fuel extraction to green renewables, and the workers  there keeping their jobs and helping move the nation toward zero emissions. The idea of economic conversion, changing existing damaging jobs to good life-affirming jobs with government support for re-training and transition, is something I’ve understood and discussed ever since my first activist work seeking to change the nuclear weapons complex. An editorial cartoon I inspired back then shows a woman burying a bomb which grows up to be a windmill. Fracking towers should also become windmills, and workers in the fracking industry, and the government regulators at the Federal GREEN Energy Regulatory Commission, can do jobs they feel proud of helping us shift our economy and infrastructure. And new jobs installing wind and solar arrays and retrofitting existing buildings for efficiency will build the new economy.

When the Pope speaks to Congress next week, and so many citizens listen and endorse his message, we BXE fasters will be adding our energy to many other faith and environmental leaders and tens of thousands of citizens to push the government beyond its resistance to going green. We have no illusions green change is around the corner, but the Pope’s visit is a terrific opportunity to rally and increase the pressure for that change.

For more information on BXE and the fast, and to support BXE, go to https://beyondextremeenergy.org/september-fast-at-ferc-for-no-new-permits/

Peace, Ellen Barfield

by Mackenzie McDonald Wilkins, reposted from www.popularresistance.org

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Washington, DC –  Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) fasted in solidarity with organizers and hunger strikers working to reopen the Dyett highschool with a green energy curriculum. This was the 9th day of the BXE fast and the 30th day of the Dyett hunger strike. BXE is fasting at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) demanding an end to all new fossil fuel infrastructure permits. FERC’s continued permitting of fossil fuel projects disproportionately impacts poor folks and people of color due to project placement (like many LNG terminals in the Gulf South that need FERC approval) and climate change (like super-storms Katrina & Sandy).The Dyett hunger strikers are demanding that their high school, in a mostly black area of Chicago, be reopened with a green energy curriculum. After years of organizing and numerous days without eating, their school will be reopened, but not with the requested curriculum—thus, their hunger strike continues. The courage of the Dyett hunger strikers, including Cathy Dale and Jeanette Taylor-Ramann who had to end their strike due to health concerns, has inspired BXE fasters to keep going, despite weakness, dizziness, hunger, and other pains.

BXE sent this letter to the Dyett organizers and hunger strikers:

by Melinda Tuhus

Today’s monthly Federal Energy Regulatory Commission meeting marks the one year anniversary that Beyond Extreme Energy has been attending these meetings and raising the issue of FERC’s approval of almost all fracked gas infrastructure projects that come before the agency. A few fasters and other supporters who had never attended before were able to get in, while the “regulars” were shunted to another room to watch the proceedings on video.

Francis Eatherington came all the way from Oregon to try to address the commissioners about the Pacific Connector Pipeline route. As the meeting was about to start, she stood and said, “You have to listen to me. Wildland fires are burning right over the proposed pipeline route. FERC never considered the dangers of this common occurrence in southwest Oregon.” The wildfire season has been extended for several weeks in recent years, burning many more acres, due to climate change. She expressed concern for the firefighters risking their lives already, and moreso if they have to contend with possible gas explosions.

In response to her statement, she was removed from the building by security.

In solidarity with the members of Beyond Extreme Energy who are conducting an 18-day, water-only fast, Eatherington began a juice fast today until September 25.

Tighe Berry, a member of Code Pink, simply stood up and asked why Eatherington was being removed. “She came all the way from Oregon” to speak to the commissioners, he said. “This is supposed to be a public meeting, but you don’t let the public speak. You could hold your meeting in a closet.”

Another BXE faster who got into the meeting was Berenice Thompkins. She spoke passionately about the dangers of the climate crisis exacerbated by drilling and burning fracked gas, and of the damage to communities forced to host these projects. She was also escorted out.

Video from the meeting and interviews with Eatherington and Thompkins:

from Ted Glick’s personal account:

I spoke to Norman Bay for several minutes today, Day 9 of the 18-day water-only Fast for No New Permits, on the sidewalk in front of FERC. I went up to him when he was seen leaving the building with an assistant. I introduced myself and walked next to him, asking if he would come down to receive the five copies of the Pope’s encyclical we will be bringing to FERC on September 25th at noon. He said he would consider it.

Then he stopped and we looked each other in the eye. He told me that he respected what we were doing with the fast and the commitment it showed as far as our beliefs. He said he felt this type of action was a good type of action.

However, he went on to say that he really had problems with us disrupting their monthly meetings and asked if we would stop doing that.

I responded: how can we do that when there’s no change at FERC as far as permitting gas pipelines and fracking infrastructure, one after the other, with virtually no exceptions.

His response: these are just pipelines. We’re a regulatory agency. Blaming us is like blaming the steel companies that make pipes. It’s the production of the gas that you need to deal with.

My response: how can you say you have no responsibility for the expansion of fracking? Without pipelines and infrastructure the fracked gas industry couldn’t be expanding and the gas wouldn’t be sent around the world. And you have a legal responsibility to do environmental impact statements and assessments which address the climate and environmental impacts. You also are supposed to be acting in the public interest, not the interests of the gas industry.

At that point, he checked out on the conversation, said something to the effect of “we should talk more,” and he headed off down the sidewalk.

The BXE fasters will discuss this new development and determine next steps.

BXE wrote Commissioner Bay regarding Laura Gubisch’s recent arrest/acquittal and future BXE access to commission meetings.

by Elisabeth Hoffman, reposted from https://climatehoward.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/hungering-for-climate-justice/

All along, fasters with Beyond Extreme Energy have had two questions: How will this feel, and how will I pass the time? Of course, that’s in addition to the broader concern about how to ensure their actions help bring change.

From the day after Labor Day until Sept. 25 — 18 days — a dozen people are on a water-only fast on the sidewalk in front of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, on First Street NE in Washington, just down the street from Union Station. Some have stayed overnight on the sidewalk as well, although most head for Lincoln Temple United Church of Christ to sleep.

Other people are fasting for a shorter time, at FERC or in their communities. They are calling on FERC to stop issuing permits for pipelines, compressor stations, storage and export facilities, the machinery of a fracked-gas-powered economy. They want to end the revolving door for employees between FERC and the industry it regulates. They have the support of more than 80 health professionals who have signed an open letter to FERC asking it to stop its “unethical experiment” on communities. They are fasting to show their “unwavering commitment,” as one faster’s sign says, to people and places in the way of fracking. And to a climate overheated by our insatiable appetites that require ever more fossil fuels to be extracted and burned.

The fast ends Sept. 25, the day Pope Francis speaks at the United Nations and the day after his address to Congress, when he is expected to call for climate, economic and environmental justice, topics from his encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.  Because the “earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth” — as the pope phrased it.

Beyond Extreme Energy activists have been at FERC before, blocking its entrances in nonviolent disobedience actions or speaking out at its meetings. They are always hauled out, sometimes to jail. They and affected residents have written letters, testified, lobbied. So far, FERC has not slowed the pace of permits. It has called BXE activists a “situation,” which it has handled with new rules intended to silence dissent and isolate FERC commissioners. FERC members are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate but have no oversight other than the courts.

As the days pass, the fasters, ages 19 to 72, remain optimistic, sometimes tired, sometimes lightheaded and dizzy, particularly if they forget to get up slowly. Many say they feel weaker. Food comes only in dreams. One dreamed of a trolley of teacakes rolling by, another of eating a cookie in front of the others. One said he dreamed he had eaten a sandwich and woke up feeling shame and fearing the dream was real. One evening, Steve Norris, a retired history professor and, at 72, the oldest faster, took his son to dinner: “It was very interesting, because I was not tempted by the food. … It’s not that food doesn’t appeal to me. It does a lot. But there’s something about this mysterious journey being more important now than anything else.”

Faster Clarke Herbert, a former teacher, says one key benefit is that those fasting are getting outside their routine. “And that is what we are asking others to do” to solve our environmental and climate crisis. “We will have to move into a new world, to change from compulsive consumption. That makes fasting really beautiful,” he said.

In an email on Day 5, Norris of Asheville, NC, wrote that “the experience so far is one of both joy and sorrow: There is the great exuberance and learning that comes from working and fasting daily alongside people with rock-solid determination to challenge climate change and its attendant economic, social and racial injustices. And

the exhilaration each time I see a stranger’s eyes light up and they say something like: ‘thank you for being so bold. Please keep it up.’ Then too there is the sadness of dealing daily with the reality that millions of people (the victims of Hurricane Katrina and emigrants from Syria, for example) are already dealing with the impacts of climate change, and that nothing in the short term is going to stop their uprooting and pain, and that ultimately my own grandchildren and great-grandchildren may be similarly impacted.”

Faster Lee Stewart posted on Facebook Saturday: “Today is day 5 of the 18 day water-only hunger strike at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) — an agency that fuels community destruction and climate pollution. My energy and spirits ebb and flow. Sadness, joy. Fogginess, clarity. Breathlessness, stability. Can hardly walk, ready to stand strong. Much love to those who stand up to FERC all over the country. Much love to those who act for justice in the face of bleakness.”

Among the youngest fasters, at 23, Sean Glenn says she is feeling mostly “sleepy and grateful to be doing this with such amazing support.” After the fast, she heads to Rome, where she will join a 500-mile pilgrimage with former Filipino diplomat Yeb Saño, among others, to the Paris climate talks.

With no need to shop, cook or wash dishes or be much of anywhere but FERC, how do fasters fill the time?

• They offer a glossy card with information about the fast to passersby, often FERC employees. Some accept it, others walk by stony-faced. A few offer words of support. On Day 1, someone driving into the FERC parking lot accepted a flier and said FERC employees had been instructed not to talk to the fasters.

  

• They take a turn on the bicycle generator, which is used to power phones and laptops during the day. No passersby have taken them up on offers to try out the bike.
• They put dots on a United States map to show the locations of communities fighting fossil-fuel projects.
• They use fabric paints or markers to design fast T-shirts.

  

• They design and will be making quilt squares showing the harm to communities from FERC-approved projects. During the summer, faster Jimmy Betts traveled across the country with the United States of Fracking banner, which was made for an earlier BXE action at FERC. He talked to people fighting fracking and other fossil-fueled projects and now is connecting them with the fasters. Each faster will call one or more of the contacts and design a quilt square based on the conversation. BXE is also spreading the directions for the quilt squares through social media.
• They read. Some read Pope Francis’ encyclical, which was part of the inspiration and timing for the fast. Or newspapers. Or Rivera Sun’s new novel, The Billionaire Buddha, a story of love, connection, healing and awakening. “Imagine that one generation could change the course of all the generations of humanity yet to come. Imagine that the human story does not end in the chapter of today,” Rivera writes in the novel. The fasters can imagine that. Day 1 of the fast happened to coincide with International Literacy Day, which was celebrated with a read-in.

  

• They get interviewed by alternative media. CNN, just steps from FERC, hasn’t even poked its head out the door to ask what’s going on.
• Every few days, one of two nurse volunteers checks their blood pressure and pulse.

  

• They know the sun’s cycle, which beats down on the sidewalk in front of FERC from about 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., before slipping behind the building. During the first three days, the fierce sun and humidity had them crossing the street to the shade for meetings and respite. In the sun, they mostly sit on camping or beach chairs under rain umbrellas. They apply sunblock.
• One day, some fasters joined Elders Climate Action for a flash mob at Union Station and in the cafeteria of the Longworth House Office Building. In the evenings, some attend #BlackLivesMatter and environmental justice meetings in DC, because all these struggles are intertwined in a system built on inequality and sacrificed communities.
• On Day 1, Doug Hendren, the Musical Scalpel, entertained the group with his guitar-playing and anti-fracking and social justice songs — “The Ballad of Pope Francis” and “Fracking’s Just a Bad Dream,” for starters.

  

• They hold morning and afternoon meetings to check in with each other and plan activities, including the Sept. 25 action to end the fast. That day, starting at noon, the program will include music, speakers, a procession and an attempt to deliver five copies of the pope’s encyclical to the FERC commissioners. BXE is inviting passersby who have seen the fasters daily, as well as people who have rallied in DC during the pope’s remarks to Congress the day before, to join in the ceremony to break the fast and deliver the encyclical.
• They nap.
• And they fill and refill and refill again their water bottles from jugs of spring water that faster Debbie Wagner brings from her home. Periodically, they add a bit of salt or potassium. And they hunger for climate justice.

  

Beyond Extreme Energy is a signatory to this letter asking President Obama to end federal leasing of public lands for fossil fuel drilling and mining.