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Obama to Thousands of Young Climate Activists: Push Me
Bring to Washington, DC, 1,000 political organizers who are willing to play hardball, and you can get serious face time with the president of the United States. Even if you aren’t yet 25 years old.
Thousands of youth gather on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC to call for a green economy in 2009. On the periphery of this year's Power Shift conference, President Obama made an unexpected appearance at a White House meeting with youth activists. “[Obama] told us it was our job to push the envelope and it’s his job to govern,” said Shadia Fayne Wood, a member of the steering committee of the Environmental Action Coalition. “That was really reassuring to hear from the president, because we’ve gotten lots of pressure from Big Green groups saying we shouldn’t be criticizing him. I think our meeting [with Obama] shows their strategy isn’t working, and it’s time for young people to be leaders of this movement."(ActionFactoryDC/Flickr) Shortly after 4 pm last Friday, April 15, Barack Obama dropped in unexpectedly on a White House meeting that his aides were holding with the Environmental Action Coalition, a network of climate change groups on college campuses that had drawn the 1,000 organizers to its PowerShift conference in the nation’s capital. Interviews with multiple sources in the room indicate that Obama spent twenty-five minutes with the young EAC activists, telling them, “You have power, that’s why I’m here.” Ten of the eleven activists were women; none was older than 31. Their discussion with the president was friendly but plain-spoken—one young woman even interrupted Obama, who didn’t seem to mind—as the activists urged the president to be the clean-energy champion they and their peers had done so much to elect in 2008.
The PowerShift activists are reinforcing their tough-love message today, when thousands plan to demonstrate at the White House before marching to Capitol Hill and the Washington offices of the Chamber of Commerce, BP and other business groups the activists accuse of obstructing the fight against climate change.
“The president told us he wants the same things we want, but the politics in the country are really hard right now,” said Maura Cowley, 28, one of two chief co-organizers of PowerShift. “We said that’s fine, but he can’t call coal, oil, nuclear and natural gas clean energy when actually they are quite dangerous. And we said we’re here to help create the political space so he can show bold leadership on truly clean energy choices.” This was precisely the focus of a jam-packed session at PowerShift aptly titled “What To Do When the President’s Just Not That Into You” where many former Obama volunteers seemed ready to apply their social networking skills to demand far more ambitious leadership from the president.
Asked for comment on the accuracy of remarks attributed to Obama, White House spokesman Clark Stevens told The Nation, “The president appreciated the opportunity to discuss the administration's record on clean energy as well as his ongoing focus to build a twenty-first-century clean energy economy with PowerShift leadership.”
The power Obama apparently perceives in the PowerShift activists reflects the grassroots muscle young people demonstrated in the 2008 presidential campaign. It’s not just that in 2008 people under 30 voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Equally important is that a large number of young volunteers, many of them getting involved in politics for the first time, mobilized millions of other people to vote for Obama as well.
If the president wants similar enthusiasm from youth in 2012, he must do much more about young people’s priority issues such as climate change, said activists attending PowerShift. “Obama really needs to address the urgency of getting [the country] off coal and fossil fuels if he wants us to get out the vote for him in 2012,” Ashley Hall, 21, a junior at Michigan State University, said as she joined 400 other students from Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin in training sessions to sharpen their skills at attracting and working with allies, writing press releases and other basics of political organizing.
By implicitly threatening to withhold their enthusiasm from the president’s re-election effort, the young climate activists are pursuing a sharply different strategy than most big environmental and other progressive groups centered in Washington. Aside from the Sierra Club—the lead sponsor of PowerShift—and one or two others, most so-called Big Green groups have instead focused on maintaining friendly access to the Obama White House, even when this has meant supporting policies that fall well short of desirable.
The most notorious example is the cap-and-trade bill that was the centerpiece of Obama’s early climate policy. Although many environmentalists outside the Beltway complained that the bill promised at best incremental emissions reductions, both the White House and its Big Green allies insisted it was the only realistic way forward. The cap-and-trade bill’s weaknesses ended up leaving the environmental base unexcited about pushing their elected officials to approve it even as corporate and Republican hostility to climate action remained undeterred. Cap-and-trade was duly crushed on Capitol Hill, leaving environmentalists in disarray and polluters in ascendance.
“[Obama] told us it was our job to push the envelope and it’s his job to govern,” said Shadia Fayne Wood, a member of the steering committee of the Environmental Action Coalition. “That was really reassuring to hear from the president, because we’ve gotten lots of pressure from Big Green groups saying we shouldn’t be criticizing him. I think our meeting [with Obama] shows their strategy isn’t working, and it’s time for young people to be leaders of this movement.”
The young activists heard much the same message from Al Gore, Van Jones and other notables who addressed PowerShift 2011. Speaking to a crowd of thousands as lights flashed and music boomed through the Walter Washington Convention Center, Gore told the young activists in a near-shout that 26 was the average age of the NASA engineers who put a man on the moon in 1969. The crowd went nuts. Jones, a former Obama environmental adviser, later pointed out that these young activists had more computing power on their laptops and iPhones than the entire US government had at the time of the moon landing. “If you use your laptops and iPhones not as toys but as tools, you can change the world,” Jones said as another roar erupted and the crowd leaped to its feet.
The new direction these young climate activists are charting is based not on leveraging inside access in Washington or bending over backwards to find common ground with polluters. Instead, they’re finding that the route to wielding decisive power in Washington is through grassroots organizing outside of the Beltway that can keep elected officials honest. Thus most of PowerShift was spent on training sessions to help the activists build trust, develop unity, and improve their organizing skills.
“We think this is the largest grassroots organizing training in US history,” said Courtney Hight, 31, the other co-organizer of PowerShift. Hight was a key youth organizer for Obama in 2008 and worked briefly in his White House before concluding that real change required exerting greater pressure from outside government to counter-balance the constant pressure from big corporations. “These 1,000 activists will leave here, go back to their campuses and communities, and work to stop coal, build the green economy and enable the Millennium Generation to play a non-partisan role in the 2012 election campaign.”
“We want to pull back the curtain on the role corporations play in our democracy and draw a line in the sand for politicians,” added Cowley. The young activists have already issued a clear demand to all candidates in the 2012 elections: if you want our support, you must pledge not to accept campaign contributions from big polluters. Asked at PowerShift whether Obama would make such a pledge, Kalpen Modi of the White House Office of Public Engagement said, “I don’t know.” The White House will have the opportunity to provide a more considered answer today, when thousands of young climate activists rally outside the front gates. In a sign these young people are refreshingly serious about politics and have only just begun to fight, the banners they will be carrying say, “Grow Power.”
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101 Comments so far
Show AllMore comments from the Great Deceiver himself. And my! All those little green hats, too.
Cute.
Well, get to work kiddies, (and don't forget to send him a contribution for 2012).
Are people in their 20s watching too much TV? They seem delusional...
I am certain you two will want to share your own activist resume with this forum. In the light of your criticism of folks who are doing SOMETHING, trying to make a difference, your pettiness is glaringly obvious.
Ceratinly it would have been ego gratification to upbraid Obama for his errant leadership and political hypocricies but it would be useless as tits on a bull. More to the point is that these kids care , perhaps more than you do in fact. They rose up from their computers and pursued the goals in which they believe.
Surely some will become frustrated and leave political activism, others may continue to believe that their goals lie in dealing with the establishment, but some small few may arrive at a better road to success for their agendas. I continue to support action , even if I believe it misguided, to sniping from ones computer desk. These kids have my support for their enthusiasm and commitment, you two, not so much .
"these kids care "
Your response to the above shows that you realise the futility, yet you write like the compassionate school teacher, "tries hard, but could do better."
When you comment, "Surely some will become frustrated and leave political activism, others may continue to believe that their goals lie in dealing with the establishment, but some small few may arrive at a better road to success for their agendas." You know pretty well that what President Obama is saying is:
Keep shouting. I'm totally deaf but the louder you shout, the more energy you will waste, just like me and my friends who are at the centre of the problem churning money and maintaining unsustainable economic structures to support oblivious consumption.
No it does not just take one or TWO to make a difference. We need responsible government and regulation TOO. But as long as oligarchs and a plutocracy is left to rule without the harness of an abiding commitment by an aware electorate committed to political participation and real change; a little more than green caps and marches to listen to speeches of trite self-serving righteous oratory, enthusiasm alone will not cut it.
Daedalus had faith and "supported the enthusiasm and commitment" of his son TOO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus
enthusiasm alone will not cut it.
------------------------------------------
Very true. But it's a start. And, more important, the sine-qua-non for the start.
No-enthusiasm motivates nothing but couchpotatoism.
Forty years ago, we Second-Wave feminists identified what we called the "click experience". Which was what happened when suddenly some sexist practice to which we had never thitherto really attended would suddenly become figural for us. The "click" was the penny dropping, the lightbulb coming on over our heads, the mental kaleidoscope revealing a formerly invisible pattern. The click would be followed by an adrenaline rush. And a massive feeling of RAGE, which might be described as enthusiasm carrying a pitchfork and torch.
This discussion just moved over to Ralph Nader's article here at CD "Waiting for the Spark" (your click his spark)
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/19-4
Me, I'm already pumped up with RAGE.
Exactly and thank you. It amazes me how blind some are,if indeed that IS what they are.
Oh and for Lucitanian:
Dedalus, if you will recall rightly, warned his son about flying too near the sun, thus he did a bit more than you credit him.
Push me = Send money
Direct democracy NOW!
The only reason Obama showed up is his reelection. And no one told him to bugger off, that he's part of the problem. Nobody made the connection between the wars and escalating enivronmental destruction that includes climate change that Obama's policies are responsible for. What a wasted opportunity.
“The president told us he wants the same things we want, but the politics in the country are really hard right now,” and the Big Lie was swallowed whole.
Exactly. Had this been a year or two ago, Obama would have sent the security forces to take names and photos. This is a ploy by the biggest fraud ever to enter the White House. If the environmental movement swallows this whole, then they have shown their own impotency. The point is to get concessions from Obama BEFORE the election, and not to trust that this lying deceiver-in-chief will actually do something after he gets their votes. And, buy the way, anyone notice that nuclear was not mentioned in the article? How clean is the process of procuring nuclear energy, not to mention storing the contaminated waste for thousands of years? Yet, Obama supports nuclear and deep-water drilling. Let's not be suckers--this was all about the elections.
Perhaps Obama thought the crowd might mistake him for Bill Clinton playing the sexophone.....
What a cynical man. And what a perverse exercise in hypocrisy this unexpected hijacking of a supposedly serious meeting was.
Obama is the ultimate political opportunist. There's not an honest bone in his body.
There is not a bone there either. He is held up entirely by hot air an the peoples' need for self delusion.
Give him credit, O-bomber is the best at saying what people want to hear....Before throwing them under the bus.
What a snake! I'll never forgive myself for voting for him.
There are so many reasons I will actively work against his re-election, but perhaps the most compelling to me right now are the pictures of dead juvenile dolphins washing ashore, knowing that this god damn corrupt administration has greenlighted more deepwater drilling in the gulf. The hatred in my heart is much worse than what I felt for the Bush Cheney Reign of Terror. At least they were honest about their goals and objectives.
[Obama] told us it was our job to push the envelope and it’s his job to govern,”
We should push, all right.
Push him right out of the Democratic tent in 2012.
Obama's repeated invocation of FDR's "Make me do it" rhetoric is really getting tiresome.
Barack Obama ain't no FDR (not even close) and when he uses FDR's rhetoric, he just sounds foolish,
Is Obama really so devoid of new ideas (and speeches) that he has to keep using the same line (repeatedly [week after week])?
Why does Obama need to get "pushed" to do anything anyway?
Obama's claim that he needs to be "pushed" to do what he promised if elected is an insult to everyone who voted for him.
We pushed--and hard--for single payer, then Medicare for all, but still Obama didn't govern. He was making sweetheart deals with Big Pharma and health insurance companies behind closed doors while polls were showing that 71 percent of the public wanted Medicare for all. Even Donald trump pushed for single payer.
" “[Obama] told us it was our job to push the envelope and it’s his job to govern,” said Shadia Fayne Wood, a member of the steering committee of the Environmental Action Coalition. “That was really reassuring to hear from the president, because we’ve gotten lots of pressure from Big Green groups saying we shouldn’t be criticizing him. I think our meeting [with Obama] shows their strategy isn’t working..." "
*
Well. Chalk one up for Obama. Then subtract "a thousand cuts" to the ecology from that again, and you have the net environ-mental result: Obama + 1, Environment - 1000 = Environment: minus 999. Not a good number - nor proportion.
"That one", Obama, deserves no trust. No matter how much "the politics in the country are really hard right now". Obama made it that way. Mostly through defaults on pushing back.
I suppose "Big Green" says it all. More lobbyists with corporate money and concerns. BP says how "green" they are as do half a dozen other big corporations. The presidency has become so perverted in intent - His job is more than "to govern" whatever that means, it use to be more important to "lead". He's using the same old "push me to do what's right" tactic. Why should we or these young people have to "push" the president to do what's right? Shouldn't he just do it because it's right?
Or because he can? The "most powerful man in the world" needs to be "pushed" by some 20-somethings wearing green hats to implement green jobs and renewable energies? WTF? He's had two f*cking years! I guess we just haven't "pushed" him enough.
Sometimes the stupidity of the American people just boggles my mind... Are people still falling for this crap?
When I think of Obama's statements that he needs to be pushed, I have a mental image in my head of a foul-mouthed, bigoted old man too cheap to fill a car with gas, demanding that his son drive him around everywhere and bitching endlessly about how, when the car ran out of gas not surprisingly, the car that is ultimately his fault needs to be 'pushed' to the nearest gas station-while he stays in the car and denounces his son all the while.
Maybe he should be pushed off a cliff instead.
One good thing is the independent nonpartisan voters are growing.
Now if the environmentalists push Obama for peace, they might at least attack the root of the problem.
These well-intentioned folks are green in more than one way, and one such way is that they are naive about Obama and the entire corrupt Washington political clique.
This is yet another case of Obama's politically exploiting people's authentic concerns about the future of the Earth.
Thank you Karlof for bringing up the WARS so early in the posts to this article. Nothing, and I mean nothing of any means will happen around climate, social justice, reversing the fascism in this country, etc., unless we boldly and courageously confront the biggest issue of the past fifty + years, our propensity, no, our need for war. The US needs wars, lots of them, we're addicted to war. The greatest thing the "youth vote" can do is get behind the peace movement if they want real change. After all, it's in their best interests. I think in the U.S. the belief is that the peace movement belongs to everyone else. We have to remember that the biggest polluters also reap the greatest benefits of war, and lots of it.
Absolutely.
Imagine a war on spurious consumption. Or how about a war on waste or a war on pollution? Imagine spending a tenth of what is now spent on the military and its global aggressions, to actually "defend" your country against your own insatiable apatites for consumables, instant self gratification, and endless mounting debt.
“[Obama] told us it was our job to push the envelope and it’s his job to govern,”
And politicians like to call themselves LEADERS!
Terran
They should push Barry. We should all push Barry. To resign.
It's his job to govern. Well, it's about time he figured that out. How long has it been?!!!
Did they provide mops and buckets to clean up the bullshit after he left.
And while they activists have to do the pushing, how about maybe just finding someone a little less slimey so it's easier to move the person.
queerplanet,
I think it is more like shovels and a dump truck to clean up Barry's bullshit!
The previous commenters have mostly all said what needs to be said.
This article is effectively a sequel to "Youth Environmental Movement Frustrated With Obama: 'I Want The President I Campaigned For To Show Up'" by Lucia Graves*
So I'll repeat part of my comment to that one:
___________________
This "Maura Cowley" person ought to be arrested and locked up for corrupting the morals of a minor if she's actually telling innocent Youth things like, "We’re really glad we have Obama in office, but he’s not going to do what we want him to do unless we push him."
Somebody needs to be pushed, all right-- pushed offstage, to offer one of the milder possibilities.
___________________
I don't know whether this Judas goat Cowley is responsible for getting the Charlatan-in-Chief to pop in to the EAC meeting-- but like disconsolate disciples after the Crucifixion, the woebegone envirettes were doubtless heartened, even electrified, by news of this sighting. He Is Alive!
Yes indeed, Obama is getting his second-term second wind, and the Pied Piping begins anew. The naïve and credulous will buy his pitch and skip along behind, believing that they'll be able to catch those nimble cloven hooves and hold them to a clean-burning fire.
They're hearing "Push Me!", but he's really saying "Push THIS!"
* http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/04/15-8
LIBERALS HAVE FAILED to be a political force. You cant just elect a democrat and then sit on your hands.
If Obama said or did anything progressive the right wing media would tear him apart. You cant leave him hanging. YOU have to be a force against special interests. YOU have to get Obama's back.
It's YOUR responsibility. YOU have to cause a ruckus. YOU have to be the real tea party. YOU have to drive the news cycle.
I mean YOU reading this right now. STOP SITTING ON YOUR HANDS.
You mean we should request that the killing of students in Honduras should stop? How about the killing in Pakistan? Or the killing in Bahrain? Did he stand up for democracy in Wisconsin? What about the health care sell out and extending the tax cut for upper incomes while cutting medicare for the elderly. What about shooting wolves from airplanes. What is the difference between Obama and the Governor of Wisconsin or Michigan or Main or Ohio? I say write in Nunuv Theabove in 2012.
beef brisket, you are either a shameless shill or completely delusional.
Based on your use of caps, I'm leaning toward the latter.
"If Obama said or did anything progressive the right wing media would tear him apart."
That is an interesting theory. It would be great to test it out some time, but alas, we are still waiting for this hypothetical scenario to take place.
Hey genius, think about this. If Obama actually DID say or do something progressive, perhaps we would support him. But a third term of George W. Bush is simply nothing to rally around.
If you only read the mainstream media--a bunch of trained seals for corporations--then you wouldn't know about the thousands who are causing a ruckus around the country. They're protesting Republican governors (who they actually put into office, the fools) who are trying to impose emergency powers, negating all elected officials and instead appointing "consultants" with the power to disband unions, sell off municipal assets, close schools, etc. Do you hear about this in the MSM? So don't assume that people are just sitting on their hands.
>Obama to Thousands of Young Climate Activists: Push Me
Does he say that to Goldman Sachs also?
Or is it more like: "You say it, I'll do it!"
To quote GWB: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.."
I'm suspicious. Obama energized and mobilized the youth to work his successful 2008 campaign, and I suspect that's what purpose his addressing this crowd served on April 15th. Did he immediately rush off after his "unexpected appearance" to meet with his friends from the Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street?
Obama to Thousands of Young Climate Activists: Push Me
Politicians have no shame. They are sociopaths. Obama reminds me of Richard Nixon. Nixon would look you right in the eye and lie through his teeth. It did not bother him one bit.
Obama is a known liar pandering for his masters and your '12 vote. Don't compromise yourself for yesterdays ideas. The ends do not justify the means. You will get only shuck and jive from Obama or any of today's politicians. Just say no to the status quo. Young people, you can change the world if you believe and persevere.
Today you are young and idealistic. Throughout your life you will be tempted to turn to the dark side. The rewards are great for a few. 'All this I will give you if you bow to me'. If you succumb to the dark side, the cycle of evil continues for another generation. It is up to you to draw the line. Keep on, keepin' on.
This "push me" argument is contemptible in many ways.
But, the reason it can never actually work is that the media already ignores all left movements. Over the past 10 years, myriad organizations have "pushed" in cumulative numbers in the millions - against a stolen election, the wars, for healthcare, for environmental action - only to gets completely ignored and memory-holed by the media.
So, I assume what Obama means by "push me" is that when we can create enough media attention over an issue is that he has to pay attention to it, he will pay attention to it. But Obama is a well-educated man; he is familiar with the corporate ownership and control of the media, and he is familiar with the Bernays' theory and application in the manufacture of consent among the masses. He knows this will never happen.
And if we DID do something to command media attention of our grievances, and those of the great majority of working USAns, Obama would be the first to condemn us all as violent terrorists.
Seattle, and the reaction afterward comes to mind.
The man is beyond contempt. If I write anything more, this post will be deleted, so I'll stop here.
"The president told us he wants the same things we want, but the politics in the country are really hard right now."
Well, gee, what happened to the Obama who posed in front of the Superman statue?
Aw, shucks, he's Clark Kent again.
Dang. Oh well.
Fools.
This man hasn't done a damn thing for the left and we're supposed to accept stupid f*cking bulls*t like politics are hard right now?
Which is worse the brazenness of that lie or the inherent contempt he holds for the people he tells it to?
In 2012 we'll be told that the Presidency is the "most important and powerful job in the world" and we simply can't let some knuckle-dragging, gun-toting Republican nut-job win it. Yet now, the man who holds that job has to be "pushed" to do what's right.
Argh!
Let's think outside the box. If we want real change we're going to have to allow for getting in on the GOP contest to make sure that someone such as Mitt Romney, to this president's left, gets a win a the GOP convention. Forget about the Democrats. This is 1952 all over again. We can get a Dwight D Eisenhower. We just have to get out to make it happen. Iowa isn't going to vote on the GOP side for the tea bag fruit cakes. Get real! The same is almost surely the case in New Hampshire. Those are the first two states to vote on the Republican side.
How can anyone expect that a Republican will be to this president's right? Get real! This is W's third term and worse. This president rules by decreee on foreign and national security policy even going so far as to allow himself the crazy right to have a US citizen abroad whom the president deems a threat to be bumped off. Gee the Godfather for president anyone? Where are those "lovely" checks and balances we're supposed to have in a separation of powers system such as ours in the field of foreign and national security policy?
In 1968 General Gavin who was retired general and combat vet opposed to the Vietanm War rightly advised those who wanted to stop the war to get active on the Republican side. He saw that a sitting president wouldn't get beat in his own party and basically he didn't. Even after so many contested primary victories for both Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, the Democrats ended up with a pro war candidate. Meanwhile George Romney, the father of Mitt was definitely anti war, but the anti war types didn't even get involved with his camapign. If Romeny had won at the GOP convention he could have gone on to stop the war and turn our priorities toward domestic social programs so many dovish types wanted, but we wasted our time on the Democrats. I know I was a part of those who did so. Let's not make that mistake this time. Let's learn from history. We can get another Ike no matter what the Democrats or the tea party loonies say. We can make it happen. It's just what they dont' want us to do. That says it all!
Mitt Romney? Jesus, man, you've lost your mind...
This has to be, just HAS to be, a perfect example of what happens to many progressives when they've been pushed so far into the rabid and crazed territory of the far right getting its way on everything, that they become weird adherents of the far right. As if that's some antidote to fascism, or whatever the psychological maneuver may be. Drink some good whisky or something, Dude. Score some good weed. Do anything but nurse your wacko dumbass idea. Mitt Romney? Why stop there? Go all out for Donald Trump.
Nope - that poster is not representative of anything.
This ho-hum article about Obama once again cynically posing as a progressive doesn't deserve to be the lead article on this site, and perhaps doesn't even have a place on this site anywhere. We get it. This is very old news. Now let's hear about something that really matters.
To belabor the point just a wee bit: ask Dr. Margaret Flowers and Donna Smith and Rose Ann DeMoro and a host of other prominent advocates for single-payer health care how responsive Obama is to being "pushed".
It would be wrong to say that they did everything they could to give Obama "political space" to support real health care reform, but they couldn't even get themselves arrested. Because, in fact, a few of them DID wind up getting themselves arrested.
Obedient Servant,
This is a great example to show that Obama saying "push me" is only meant to be rhetorical.
EXCELLENT POINT!
Very good point from a different perspective.