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On Feb. 27, a group of University of Maine students will join thousands of other students from across the nation in Washington, D.C., at Power Shift 2009, a 4-day conference that emerged from the Power Vote campaign to encourage green initiatives.
“We’ll learn all these skills we can bring back to UMaine. We all care about green jobs and green energy a lot. It’s a huge national thing; we want to be there – we want to be part of it,” said Jenniffer Plowden, president of the Campus Health and Environment Network (CHEN).
This fall, students all over the country united under the Power Vote campaign and collected more than 300,000 pledges. Those who signed promised to vote and demand our leaders create green jobs, invest in a clean energy economy and cut pollution.
“I heard about the whole Power Shift thing through Power Vote that went on during voting, and I’m involved with CHEN as well. We want to go down there and make this huge shift happen,” said Whitney Kent, a fifth-year resource and agribusiness management student. “We’ll be there for four days and learn how to peacefully protest. We’ll be demanding clean energy and, on the last day, we will be storming the halls of Congress and peacefully protesting for clean energy. It will be three days of workshop, a lot of it having to do with clean energy.”
The four-day Power Shift event will take place over the weekend until March 2. People will attend various panels and workshops such as “Climate Justice” and “How Going Green Can Save You Green.” They will listen to key speakers throughout the weekend including Nancy Pelosi and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Carol Browner.
“We will be able to facilitate what we have learned here on campus,” Plowden said.
When asked which speaker Plowden was most interested in hearing, she said, “Bill McKibben . I have read his books, so I’m looking forward to seeing him.”
Robert Goodwin is organizing the Power Shift trip.
“I wish more people were [going], but I’m happy that we are bringing ten,” Goodwin said.
He plans to listen to Pelosi over the weekend, and when asked what workshops interested him, he said, “I’m interested in going to the Bike Share workshop.”
The Green Team at UMaine joined the Power Shift movement and brought it to campus last year.
“The thing that I think is phenomenal about this movement is the passion you find among those involved. It has caused me to feel the same passion about demanding clean energy, and knowing our strength as a youth,” said Amy Marchessault, public relations chair for the Green Team, in an e-mail.
“What we take out of it, we will bring back to campus,” Kent said.
UMaine students who plan to attend Power Shift are from various groups and student organizations on campus such as CHEN, the Green Team, the Student Women’s Association, the Maine Outing Club and the Society for Conservation Biology.
“A lot of the people that are going are leaders in the UMaine community, so hopefully they will learn skills to facilitate change on campus, specifically in sustainability,” Plowden said.
“Whatever we learn will be spread in so many different directions,” Marchessault said.
The group hopes to get the $350 registration fee and transportation costs covered by Student Government funding.
Ten thousand students nationwide will attend Power Shift ’09, according to its Web site, powershift09.org.
Bangor Daily News