December, 01 2014, 10:30am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Lindsay Meiman,Senior U.S. Communications Specialist,lindsay@350.org,us-comms@350.org,+1 347 460 9082,New York, USA
Bill McKibben and 350.org receive Alternative Nobel
350.org founder Bill McKibben will receive the Right Livelihood Award also known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' at a ceremony at the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm today. The Jury honours the author, educator and environmentalist 'for mobilising growing popular support in the USA and around the world for strong action to counter the threat of global climate change'.
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
350.org founder Bill McKibben will receive the Right Livelihood Award also known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' at a ceremony at the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm today. The Jury honours the author, educator and environmentalist 'for mobilising growing popular support in the USA and around the world for strong action to counter the threat of global climate change'.
"This prize really goes to the vast number of people who have joined the most widespread movement in the planet's history. On every continent, in every faith, from every background, people are now fighting together to beat the first truly planet-scale challenge we've ever faced," said McKibben.
McKibben used his stay in Sweden to join an artistic action with a young indigenous Sami singer calling on the City of Stockholm to divest from fossil fuels. He commented, "The Sami people - able to count on winter for as far back as we can peer into history - now find treacherous weather that makes their traditional lives ever harder. In this they provide a warning to the rest of the planet."
The Fossil Free campaign demands public institutions stop funding the fossil fuel industry, which has five times more oil, coal and gas in its reserves than can be burnt without triggering catastrophic climate change. The campaign aims to weaken the industry's political power, and thereby break the climate deadlock and build the solutions the world needs. The divestment movement has spread rapidly around the world and is gearing up to take collective action in a global mobilisation.
McKibben is one of five recipients of this year's awards. His co-laureates are whistleblower Edward Snowden (USA) and Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger (UK) who share a joint Honorary Award, human rights activists Asma Jahangir (Pakistan) and Basil Fernando/ Asian Human Rights Commission (Hong Kong, China).
The prize money of about 660,000 SEK will fund the work of 350.org and its partner organisations. McKibben said, "This money will be used to support 350.org's various fights against the fossil fuel industry, from Australia to Alberta. It still leaves us a tiny bit short of Exxon's wealth, but since most of us - me included - are volunteers, the money goes a long way!"
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
LATEST NEWS
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Democracy defenders on Tuesday hailed a ruling from a U.S. federal judge striking down a 19th-century North Carolina law criminalizing people who vote while on parole, probation, or post-release supervision due to a felony conviction.
In Monday's decision, U.S. District Judge Loretta C. Biggs—an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama—sided with the North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute and Action NC, who argued that the 1877 law discriminated against Black people.
"The challenged statute was enacted with discriminatory intent, has not been cleansed of its discriminatory taint, and continues to disproportionately impact Black voters," Biggs wrote in her 25-page ruling.
Therefore, according to the judge, the 1877 law violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.
"We are ecstatic that the court found in our favor and struck down this racially discriminatory law that has been arbitrarily enforced over time," Action NC executive director Pat McCoy said in a statement. "We will now be able to help more people become civically engaged without fear of prosecution for innocent mistakes. Democracy truly won today!"
Voting rights tracker Democracy Docket noted that Monday's ruling "does not have any bearing on North Carolina's strict felony disenfranchisement law, which denies the right to vote for those with felony convictions who remain on probation, parole, or a suspended sentence—often leaving individuals without voting rights for many years after release from incarceration."
However, Mitchell Brown, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs, said that "Judge Biggs' decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to reengage in the political process and perform their civic duty."
"It also makes our democracy better and ensures that North Carolina is not able to unjustly criminalize innocent individuals with felony convictions who are valued members of our society, specifically Black voters who were the target of this law," Brown added.
North Carolina officials have not said whether they will appeal Biggs' ruling. The state Department of Justice said it was reviewing the decision.
According to Forward Justice—a nonpartisan law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social, and economic justice in the U.S. South, "Although Black people constitute 21% of the voting-age population in North Carolina, they represent 42% of the people disenfranchised while on probation, parole, or post-release supervision."
The group notes that in 44 North Carolina counties, "the disenfranchisement rate for Black people is more than three times the rate of the white population."
"Judge Biggs' decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to re-engage in the political process and perform their civic duty."
In what one civil rights leader called "the largest expansion of voting rights in this state since the 1965 Voting Rights Act," a three-judge state court panel voted 2-1 in 2021 to restore voting rights to approximately 55,000 formerly incarcerated felons. The decision made North Carolina the only Southern state to automatically restore former felons' voting rights.
Republican state legislators appealed that ruling to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which in 2022 granted their request for a stay—but only temporarily, as the court allowed a previous injunction against any felony disenfranchisement based on fees or fines to stand.
However, last April the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the three-judge panel decision, stripping voting rights from thousands of North Carolinians previously convicted of felonies. Dissenting Justice Anita Earls opined that "the majority's decision in this case will one day be repudiated on two grounds."
"First, because it seeks to justify the denial of a basic human right to citizens and thereby perpetuates a vestige of slavery, and second, because the majority violates a basic tenant of appellate review by ignoring the facts as found by the trial court and substituting its own," she wrote.
As similar battles play out in other states, Democratic U.S. lawmakers led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont in December introduced legislation to end former felon disenfranchisement in federal elections and guarantee incarcerated people the right to vote.
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"It isn't just that Trump's Department of Labor fought overtime pay—it's also that Trump appointed anti-labor judges who are about to block Biden's new rule," he said.
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More than four dozen labor unions across numerous industries on Tuesday signed a letter expressing solidarity with students who have been suspended and arrested in recent days for protesting at Columbia University, including members of the on-campus labor group Student Workers of Columbia.
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