For 3.5 years we’ve been targeting PECO to get them to increase to 20% solar by 2025, creating thousands of jobs that prioritize employing those from low-income communities and communities of color historically cut out from development in Philadelphia.
Dirty electricity is an assault on our communities and climate. Our region suffers from high rates of asthma, smog days, and increasingly hot and wet weather. These human-made crises steal our health, security, and economic opportunity, but they hit communities of color and economically vulnerable communities the hardest.
PECO built this system and profits over a million dollars every day from it.
PECO has a problem. In March, severe storms fueled by the warming arctic caused as many outages as Hurricane Sandy. And chronic smog is getting worse in every county in our metro region and South Jersey. The culprit? Climate change and dirty power, with emissions from fossil fuels trapped in ever hotter air.
Yet instead of cleaning up its electricity and using solar to bring new jobs and lower bills to impoverished neighborhoods, PECO is maneuvering for a rate increase.
One by one each volunteer stepped up to the shallow pans of water. Against a backdrop of security personnel, each one carefully leaned on two supporters and allowed a third to remove their shoes and socks and gently wash their feet. Eighteen times, Rev. Holston of POWER lay his hands on their backs and offered a blessing. They carried the blessings of all of us as they faced arrest to interrupt PECO's daily profit from dirty energy, and demand transformation for green jobs and justice.
At a powerful action on Tuesday, March 27, more than 60 members of the Power Local Green Jobs Campaign processed in silence to PECO headquarters. Our action was a Day of Mourning for the lives and opportunities lost because of PECO’s continued reliance on fossil fuels. These losses are not abstract. In front of the largest utility in our state, we heard personal stories about children struggling with painful asthma, neighbors trying to foster community in the midst of oil refinery pollution, and Philadelphians struggling with poverty because of the lack of good jobs. We honored this loss with religious symbolism from different traditions - tearing of fabric, wailing, dance, and the mourner’s kaddish.
On December 7, the Big Change for Green Jobs day of action brought 240 elders, youth, faith leaders, and community groups to PECO locations across the region.
It's been clear for a while that PECO is accustomed to delaying change through small steps and short-lived programs. The company has been prepared to dodge and delay for many years while the most damaging and oppressive impacts of dirty energy continue to fall on vulnerable communities.
I walk because I want the twelve-year-old great-grandson who lives with me to know I’m “all in” for his future.
I walk because I’ve seen members of my family suffer when they were jobless, and I know that PECO could bring more good-paying jobs by building for solar instead of fossil fuels.
Originally posted on WagingNonviolence.org
The result of the 2016 presidential election has spurred many people to step beyond their old definition of “good citizen” to become active for change. This presents a challenge: how can movements provide more volunteer opportunities to do meaningful, empowering work, and how can the newly active gain the skills they need?
“Zoom!” went the kids on scooters!
“Whoosh!” went the jogging team!
“Tap, tap, tap!” went Nelson’s wooden stilt legs!
“Scuff, step, giggle!” went the hundred+ walkers!
“One, five, ninety nine!” went the registration and fundraising team.
Last week, Pennsylvania’s largest utility, PECO, floated some possible pilot projects to increase solar in its service area over the coming years. If all are enacted, the projects, could double the amount of solar energy PECO delivers. So why are green jobs activists, like myself, planning to do laps around the utility’s Philadelphia headquarters in a protest called the PECO Runaround?
Read the whole article on Huffington Post.
