December 2, 2015
Page 7
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O PINION
Proving Cities Can Lead on Climate Change
Portland acts
before it’s too
late
d aPhne w ysham
Mayor
Charlie
Hales recently took
a step no other may-
or in our country —
and perhaps the world — has yet
taken: He submitted a resolution
to the City Council calling for an
end to all new fossil fuel infra-
structure in the city.
After listening to testimony
from children as young as eight,
elders, faith and tribal leaders,
and sustainable businesses, all
speaking with passion about the
need to act on climate before it’s
too late, the council voted unan-
by
imously to pass Hales’ landmark
resolution.
This resolution is the most
far-reaching of its kind: Oregon’s
largest city has gone on record
saying it will “actively op-
pose expansion of infrastruc-
ture whose primary purpose is
transporting or storing fossil
fuels in or through Portland or
adjacent waterways.”
The resolution also included
strong language promoting a “just
transition” for any workers who
might be economically dislocated
as the city moves toward a greener
and more sustainable economy.
While Portland, the first U.S.
city to adopt its own climate ac-
tion plan, is known international-
ly for its leadership in this arena,
this initiative was unprecedent-
ed even here. It all began when
grassroots activists collectively
said “no” to the dozens of pro-
posals for oil, gas, and coal ship-
ments out of the greater North-
west — projects that would carry
as much carbon annually as five
Keystone XL pipelines.
Activists hung a now legend-
ary banner from Portland’s iconic
St. Johns Bridge that read sim-
ply, “Coal, Oil, Gas: None Shall
Pass.”
When Hales refused to back
down in his support for a pro-
posed propane terminal — the
largest single business investment
in Portland history — we orches-
trated direct actions, taking over
the City Council itself on Earth
Day in humorous displays of dis-
obedience.
We bird-dogged the mayor,
spreading posters of his likeness
with the nickname “Fossil Fuel
Charlie” around the city. Hales
ultimately pulled his support
from the project. But we didn’t
stop there.
We garnered international
headlines when we mobilized
“kayaktivists” and joined Green-
peace protesters in blockading
Shell Oil’s Arctic icebreaker, the
Fennica, for 48 hours in Port-
land’s docks. This action galva-
nized public attention and sup-
port to keep the Arctic off limits
to all oil and gas drilling. We
held rallies that swayed our city’s
leaders to divest from fossil fuels
and oppose the expansion of oil
train traffic within city limits.
These actions prove that a
committed citizenry can persuade
local elected officials to respond
to climate science, despite the
gridlock at the state, national, and
international levels. Innovative
policies at the community level
can make a big difference.
Portland’s rejection of new
fossil fuel infrastructure is con-
sistent with the scientific finding
that humanity must keep 80 per-
cent of proven oil, gas, and coal
reserves in the ground to prevent
climate chaos. It also opens up
the political and economic space
to embrace the just transition to a
clean economy.
If more cities follow Port-
land’s lead, we might just meet
this challenge. Join us.
Daphne Wysham is the direc-
tor of the Center for Sustainable
Economy’s climate and energy
program in Portland. Her com-
mentary was distributed by oth-
erwords.org.
Ugly Truths It’s Way Past Time for America to Face
The scars left
on college
campuses
m arian w right e delman
Georgetown Universi-
ty President John J. De-
Gioia recently announced
the university will rename
two buildings on campus
named for two 19th cen-
tury Georgetown Univer-
sity presidents: Thomas F.
Mulledy, who in 1838 arranged
the sale of 272 slaves from Jesu-
it-owned Maryland plantations
and used the profit to pay George-
town’s construction debts, and
William McSherry, who also sold
other Jesuit-owned slaves and was
Mulledy’s adviser. The sale ig-
nored the objections of some Jesu-
it leaders who believed using the
money to pay off debt was immor-
al and their demands that families
be kept together.
Georgetown’s action followed
a student sit in outside President
DeGioia’s office but it was part of
a longer ongoing process examin-
ing the university’s historical con-
nections to slavery. The renaming
was one step recommended by the
Working Group on Slavery, Mem-
ory and Reconciliation established
by the president this school year.
Recently student protesters at
Yale University repeated calls to
rename its Calhoun College hon-
oring slave-owning Vice President
and South Carolina Sen. John C.
Calhoun, already a subject of cam-
by
pus wide discussion. For years the
college featured a stained glass
window depicting Calhoun with
a chained black slave kneeling
in front of him. After complaints
the slave’s image was removed
but Calhoun’s remains as does his
shameful legacy that
haunts our nation still.
Georgetown
and
Yale are among the
growing number of
colleges and universi-
ties struggling to come
factors involved in the trans-At-
lantic slave trade. The Brown
family included slave owners and
slave traders as well as at least
two members who became ac-
tive abolitionists. The committee
learned 30 members of Brown’s
governing board owned or cap-
tained slave ships and slave labor
was used for some of the school’s
construction.
Brown is far from alone. In
his groundbreaking 2013 book
Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and
slave trade. Slaves helped build
many university buildings includ-
ing some at Thomas Jefferson’s
University of Virginia. Students
sometimes brought slaves to col-
lege to serve them, as George
Washington’s stepson did when he
attended King’s College in New
York City, now Columbia Univer-
sity. Many university founders and
early presidents owned personal
slaves including Dartmouth, Har-
vard, the College of New Jersey
(now Princeton University) and
Many university founders and early
presidents owned personal slaves including
Dartmouth, Harvard, the College of New
Jersey (now Princeton University) and more,
and some colleges owned slaves.
to terms with their historical con-
nections to slave owners, slave la-
bor, and slave profits and the scars
they leave on campuses and our
nation today. What values do we
want to hold up for our young as
worthy of honor and emulation?
Brown University in Prov-
idence, R.I., was the first Ivy
League university to move for-
ward with a large scale investiga-
tion of its history under the lead-
ership of former president Ruth
Simmons. In 2003 she appointed a
Committee on Slavery and Justice
to learn more about Brown’s past
ties to slavery and wealthy bene-
the Troubled History of Ameri-
ca’s Universities, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology scholar
Craig Steven Wilder document-
ed many of these connections. In
the book’s prologue he says: “In
short, American colleges were not
innocent or passive beneficiaries
of conquest and colonial slavery .
. . The academy never stood apart
from American slavery—in fact,
it stood beside church and state
as the third pillar of a civilization
built on bondage.”
The nation’s oldest colleges
depended on direct and indi-
rect wealth from slavery and the
more, and some colleges owned
slaves.
William and Mary, one of the
slave owning colleges, produced
one of the most awful stories
Wilder shares—that of founding
trustee Rev. Samuel Gray, who
“murdered an enslaved child for
running away”: “Rev. Gray struck
the boy on the head, drawing
blood, and then put a hot iron to
the child’s flesh. The minister had
the boy tied to a tree, and then or-
dered another slave to whip him.
The boy later died. Gray argued
that ‘such accidents’ were inevita-
ble, a position that seems to have
succeeded, as a court declined to
convict him.”
Slave corpses were used in a
number of the colleges’ medical
and scientific experiments. In one
of Wilder’s examples, Dartmouth
College founder Eleazar Whee-
lock’s personal doctor arranged
for a slave’s skeleton to be wired
up for study and his skin tanned
at the college shop and made into
a cover for his instrument case.
Ongoing university “research”
throughout the 19th century bol-
stered many of the race-based
claims used to support slavery.
Across our country this ugly
and profoundly morally defec-
tive past is finally being brought
into the light. Brown University’s
Committee on Slavery and Justice
said: “We cannot change the past.
But an institution can hold itself
accountable for the past, accept-
ing its burdens and responsibil-
ities along with its benefits and
privileges.”
More universities and institu-
tions must follow Brown’s ex-
ample and engage in a thoughtful
process of truth telling of their
own and America’s history in or-
der to lift the indefensible blot of
slavery on America’s dream which
plagues us still.
College students, faculty, and
administrators seeking an hon-
est historical accounting on their
campuses are to be applauded.
Only the truth will make us free
and move us forward together.
Marian Wright Edelman is
president of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.