20 Years Ago Today: SEAC on the Threshold of a National Movement

   

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Nearly twenty years after we both spent countless hours helping to organize Threshold in our first semester at UNC-Chapel Hill, C-line and I recently sat down to remember SEAC's early days. We thought about visiting the Forest Theatre, where Threshold concluded in an emotional ceremony on Sunday, October 29, 1989. But it was otherwise occupied by the Paperhand Puppet Intervention, performing one of their annual late summer shows. So we traveled a few hundred yards down the road, and ended up at the curved stone bench behind Gimghoul Castle that overlooks the far edge of Battle Park.

At the first SEAC organizing meeting of the fall semester '89 (in Hamilton 100), Jimmy Langman convinced us all that Threshold was going to spark a national movement, and Ericka Kurz gave a fiery, impassioned speech wearing a cool black leather jacket. Besides Jimmy and Ericka, SEAC founding members who were running the show included Alec Guettal, Blan Holman, and Don Whittier. They were all juniors, seniors, even recent grads, but nobody past their early twenties. Still, as C-line put it, "They seemed so old. And we said, tell us what you need us to do!"

The nuts and bolts effort required to actually organize a nationwide conference in the pre-internet era was a little less romantic. Working alongside dedicated souls like Lisa Abbott, Chris van Daalen, Celeste Joye, Yu-Yee Wu, Raj Krishnasami, Mark Chilton, Quaker Kappel, Ruby Sinreich, Susan Comfort, Sarah Davis, Dave Ball, Nicole Breedlove, and a bunch of other SEAC'ers, we prepared mass mailings, entered hundreds of pre-registered attendees' names into ancient Mac computers, lined up crash pad arrangements with hundreds of UNC students, and using a primitive device known as the landline telephone, called up folks who wanted more info to convince them to make the trek to Chapel Hill. And my favorite part, sitting around in endless meeting circles on the second floor of the Campus Y, arguing over one minor detail or another until the WHOLE GROUP reached a consensus.

Threshold ad from Oct. '89 issue of Music Monitor.

The conference succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Over 1,700 people showed up from around the country, representing 43 states and 225 schools. It was the largest gathering of student activists since the heyday of SDS in the late 60s. And it launched SEAC as a national student environmental movement. By the early 90s, SEAC chapters existed at over 2,000 U.S. colleges and high schools.

SEAC helped spark a renewal of progressive activism on campuses nationwide. From early on, organizers expanded the definition of environmental issues to include environmental racism and corporate accountability. Over the next few years, national SEAC trainers traveled the country to run local weekend organizer trainings that schooled a new crop of student activists.

SEAC coordinated additional national and regional conferences (most notably, the 1990 Catalyst conference, which drew 7,600 students to Champaign-Urbana, IL) and organized a series of national campaigns (including energy independence, corporate greed, defense of old growth forests, Free Burma, and anti-globalization). SEAC-sponsored voter education work helped elect green candidates at local and state levels.

Unfortunately, SEAC's growth made it overly reliant on grant money. And when some of its foundation donors eventually decided the group was too radical, and yanked their support, SEAC lost a significant chunk of its budget. The number of paid staffers plummeted from 13 down to 7 and then zero.

PIRGs also began jockeying with SEAC chapters for members, and after using SEAC's membership list to organize a 1994 conference, founded a competing student activist network called Free The Planet.

Internal SEAC struggles intensified, and the national office in Carrboro, NC closed its doors in the fall of 1996. However, SEAC rebuilt from the grassroots up, and reopened its national office in 1998, which moved first to Philadelphia and then Charleston, WV.

On a personal level, my involvement with SEAC convinced me I wanted to be an organizer, and laid the foundation for all my political work that's followed. I saw my first published articles appear in issues of SEAC's national newsletter (later renamed Threshold Magazine). I became good friends with C-line, and our adventures have continued ever since. I worked on my first winning political campaign thanks to SEAC, when we elected Mark Chilton to the Chapel Hill Town Council in 1991 (at age 21, he was the youngest candidate ever elected in North Carolina, and the first and only UNC undergraduate to hold public office in Chapel Hill to this day).

Two decades after Threshold, SEAC remains the nation's largest student- and youth-led environmental group. The most fitting thing that happened to commemorate Threshold's 20th anniversary was that from Oct 16-18, the SEAC-affiliated Energy Action Coalition sponsored a regional summit (Carolinas Power Shift) at UNC-Chapel Hill. 350 student environmental activists gathered from schools in North and South Carolina to network and organize for action on clean energy and climate change. And speakers included Mark Chilton (now the two-term mayor of Carrboro), wearing his original Threshold t-shirt!

Clearly, SEAC continues to mobilize young people to protect our planet and our future. For more information on SEAC and its work today, visit SEAC.org.

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Abbie Hoffman, Gone Too Soon: 20 Years Later

   

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Is it surprising that the 20th anniversary of Abbie Hoffman's death this month received scant mention in the media? At a time of economic turmoil, continuing war, and widespread newsroom downsizing and press layoffs, reporters and columnists have other things on their minds.

But it still shows how far back in time the sixties seem in 2009. In the past few weeks, the only passing mention of Abbie Hoffman that a Google search reveals in any major media was a reference to Abbie killing himself in a snide NY Daily News column about the impending 40th anniversary of Woodstock.

It's true that Hoffman was at Woodstock, and his resulting book Woodstock Nation was a crucial artifact of the sixties' most seminal countercultural event. He was shoved off the stage by the Who's Pete Townshend, impatient for him to relinquish the microphone. At the time, Abbie was doing what he did best, rabble rousing the crowd about John Sinclair, a Michigan activist who had been sentenced to ten years in jail for possession of two joints.

But it was two decades ago this month, on April 12, 1989, that Abbie was found dead in his New Hope, PA apartment. The cause was apparently suicide, an estimated 150 phenobarbital pills in his system. Hoffman was only 52.

Abbie was not only the most celebrated and irreverent activist of the 1960s New Left, but a dedicated community organizer and civil rights movement veteran who never gave up trying to change the world.

Relatives and close friends initially rejected the idea that Abbie killed himself, holding out other possibilities. One was that the overdose was accidental.

"Abbie, as many of you know, was somewhat careless with pills, and we always warned him about this kind of thing," his brother Jack Hoffman told the Associated Press. David Dellinger, one of his Chicago Seven co-defendants, voiced doubts at Hoffman's memorial service. "I don't believe for one moment the suicide thing." Dellinger said he had been in fairly frequent touch with Hoffman, who had "numerous plans for the future."

As reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Abbie's daughter Ilya "felt that the absence of a note was a telling sign that her father did not kill himself." "For a writer not to leave a note...I mean, he wrote everything down, everything," she said. "No one in our family believes he committed suicide," added Abbie's son Andrew at the Bucks County, PA coroner's news conference where the preliminary autopsy results were announced.

According to writer Marc Catone, some friends "claim that it was side effects from a new medication that may have contributed to the state of mind leading to his death. Others suspect a more sinister situation in which Abbie was murdered, but made to look as if he had taken his own life."

It is undeniable that Abbie was a thorn in the side of the US power structure as one of CIA's most prominent critics. As Catone puts it, "in the late 1980s, Abbie became quite a visible figure on the lecture circuit, detailing the illegal activities of the CIA, particularly in the wake of the Iran/Contra 'arms for drugs' scandal of the Reagan Administration." His brother Jack echoed these feelings, reminding the Philadelphia Inquirer that "his brother's controversial life led him to take many risks and earned him some powerful enemies."

"Hoffman's brother, Jack, was adamant yesterday in his refusal to believe Abbie would have gone without a word, at a time when their elderly mother, Florence, 83, was suffering from a recurrence of lymphatic cancer...'He played with death a lot. Look who he was. There was always someone around the corner,' Jack Hoffman said. 'It's not a simple suicide in my mind, in my heart, in my head,' he said. 'There are too many unanswered questions.'"

In 1994, Jack Hoffman released a book about Abbie, titled Run, Run, Run: The Lives of Abbie Hoffman. After exhaustive research, he concluded Abbie probably did kill himself, overwhelmed by his poorly-medicated bipolar disorder during a particularly bleak state of depression. "This book is a coming to terms with the contradictory emotions and the questions I had after Abbie committed suicide," said Jack Hoffman, "and the guilt."

I met Abbie in 1987, when I shook his hand after hearing him speak at Brown University alongside Timothy Leary, and will always regret not taking him up on his offer to come rap with him and some other young activists at a nearby coffeehouse. Not content to rest on his legendary sixties laurels, during his last few years he tried to help spark a revival of the student left. The thing that shook Abbie up the most about the 1988 presidential race was how, in his words, "Students went three to one for Bush. That was the most depressing part of the election for me."

Barely six months after his death, in October 1989, his dream was partially realized when 1,700 student environmental activists came to UNC-Chapel Hill for Threshold, the Student Environmental Action Coalition's first national conference. It was the largest gathering of student activists since the demise of SDS in 1969. SEAC chapters sprung up at 2000 colleges and high schools around the country, and SEAC spent the next several years helping rebuild student organizing on US campuses.

The Student Action Union, a national student activist group that Abbie advised and promoted, had brought organizers to Chapel Hill the previous year, in July, 1988, for a "Unity Meeting" that followed on the heels of the SAU's National Student Convention, held at Rutgers in February, 1988. That meeting was one of the inspirations in the minds of SEAC activists when they began planning for their own national conference the following year, and the rest was history.

In what may have been his last print interview, conducted in February, 1989, Abbie said he'd like to be remembered as "An American teacher. Teaching by the act."

On April 6, 1989, six days before he died, Abbie spoke to a crowd of students at Vanderbilt University and delivered a powerful message about how people who care enough can bring about change:

"In the 1960s, apartheid was driven out of America...We didn't end racism, but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you can send a million soldiers ten thousand miles away to fight in a war that the people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. The big battles that were won in that period of civil war and strife you cannot reverse. We were young, we were reckless, we were arrogant, silly, headstrong...and we were right. I regret nothing!"

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SEAC, Energy Independence and Corporate Accountability (by Ericka Kurz)

What's Going On, and What Does It All Mean?

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), pages 14-15, May 1991

by Ericka Kurz
SEAC National Campaign Coordinator

Things are zooming along with our Energy Independence Campaign, as are other Corporate Accountability campaigns such as Coors, Hydro-Quebec, and British Petroleum.

Corporate Accountability is really about democracy and decentralized decision-making in all aspects of society. It's actually a very "American" idea, in the original Constitutional, Declaration of Independence sense. We must make every effort to display the way in which the original ideals that founded this country have been abused and practically redefined - ideals like the "free market," which is about balanced, competitive economics accountable to citizens; not about big business monopolizing resources and claiming the right to do whatever it wants. Adam Smith probably rolls over in his grave when oil companies claim their right to drill the Alaskan Refuge (according to his "free market" principle), in spite of citizen opposition. It is the oil, nuclear, auto, and coal companies which are impeding a transition to efficient, renewable energy. With what sort of free market politics are they really operating?

Forbes Magazine in March called several members of the SEAC National Council (our 17 regionally elected representative schools) and the National Office to ask about our Corporate Accountability Campaign. They had seen the report MBD (an investigative agency for corporate interests in Washington, D.C. - see the Jan/Feb. issue of Threshold) had written up on SEAC and the Catalyst Conference that had phrases sort of like "SEAC...restructure Capitalism...bla bla bla" in it and made us look a little bit like the New Youth Red Fascist Centralist Leninist Party. Anyhow, Forbes was curious (and as we know pro-business - they tore Ralph Nader apart in one of their issues); so we tried as best we could to explain that we're not anti-business or anti-corporate, but pro-democracy and pro-accountability. We're more red, white and blue than Chevron or Amoco any day.

Democracy and Energy are the two most important issues which we as environmental activists can focus on, since more democratic political, economic, and social institutions will allow people everywhere to protect the natural resources they depend on, and since efficient, renewable energy will allow for more decentralized control of our energy production. Energy underlies everything: with an oil-, nuclear-, and gasoline-based energy system we have pesticide-based agriculture, air, water, and land pollution, nuclear weaponry, and centralized, powerful institutions which don't pay for economic "externalities" and manipulate our government with billions of lobbying dollars.

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SEACers Act for Energy Independence in D.C.

or, Young Lobbyists do that Democracy Thing!

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), pages 12-13, May 1991

by Jennifer Karson and Ericka Kurz
Coordinators, SEAC's Energy Independence Campaign

What happens when Thomas Jefferson, Betsy Ross, Benjamin Franklin, Uncle Sam, and a bunch of excited SEAC'ers demand Energy Independence? Read on...

Friday, April 12th, Energy Independence Day in Washington, D.C. brought together a group of college and high school student environmentalists that was small but committed, educated and ready to fight for democracy, efficiency, and renewables! The Energy Independence Campaign organized about 150 young revolutionaries from NJ, NY, CO, IL, PA, DE, CT, NC, VA, MD, and DC who took the message all the way to their Senators' and Representatives' snug offices on Capitol Hill: America's Youth want a Strategy, not an Energy Tragedy!

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SEAC members lobby against Bush's National Energy Strategy

"18 SEAC members travel to Washington to lobby against National Energy Strategy," Daily Tar Heel, 4/16/91

By Natarsha Witherspoon, Staff Writer

Eighteen members of the UNC Student Environmental Action Coalition lobbied on Capitol Hill on Friday against President Bush's energy strategy. Lisa Abbott, co-chairwoman of SEAC, said the National Day of Action involved students from across the country. "I think it was the first time many UNC students lobbied on the Capitol and said what they believed in and were listened to," she said. Ericka Kurz, SEAC's national campaign coordinator, said about 150 students attended the rally, which was part of SEAC's "Energy Independence" campaign.

Part of Bush's National Energy Strategy calls for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and coastal areas of North Carolina for oil drilling. Abbott said the strategy also includes deregulating the nuclear industry, which would take away the power of citizens to prevent the operation of nuclear waste dumps and sites. SEAC members want Congress to make energy conservation and finding renewable energy sources their priority, she said. "The strategy never mentions fuel efficiency," she said. "It is lip service. There is no specific funding for the conservation of energy." Randy Viscio, SEAC's national outreach coordinator, said the group wanted Congress to pass the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency Bill, which would raise the average fuel mileage of new cars from 26 miles per gallon to 40-45 miles per gallon.

Abbott said, "We asked our representatives to co-sponsor a bill in the House and Senate saying our country needs to reduce our dependency on oil. It was exciting to see students from all over the country," she said. A training session gave the students tips on lobbying, she said.

The students from UNC met with environmental aides of Sen. Terry .Sanford, Rep. David Price and Rep. Charlie Rose, all of North Carolina, Abbott said. Other students from UNC-Greensboro spoke with N.C. Sen. Jesse Helms' aides, she said. "The representatives were receptive and knowledgeable about the issues," she said.

"I think the strategy Bush has proposed, the National Energy Strategy, will be passed piece by piece," she said. "If it was to be adopted we could have one of the biggest disasters we could ever imagine in this country. It would destroy our land and leave us more dependent on fossil fuels and nuclear power." Viscio said the lobbying efforts included letters, phone calls and petitions. The rally was really a small part of the campaign, he said. Kurz said SEAC was considering holding a national conference that would concentrate on the energy campaign. "Students at UNC have done a great job locally, writing 30 letters," she said. SEAC has more than 200 chapters at colleges nationwide, with its national office located in Chapel Hill on Franklin Street.

Tell the Bush Administration what we think about his National Energy Tragedy!

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), pages 24-25 (centerfold), March 1991

poster designed by Ericka Kurz
SEAC National Campaign Coordinator

WE DEMAND:
conservation
renewables
energy efficiency
RIGHT NOW.

The Declaration of Energy Independence

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), page 23, March 1991

by Ericka Kurz
SEAC National Campaign Coordinator

Around the world and in this nation we face a crisis - a crisis of dependence on nonrenewable resources which threaten our health, defeat democracy and drive us to war. Oil and nuclear power as sources of energy pollute our neighborhoods with petrochemical waste and radioactive toxics. Oil and nuclear power as industries wield their tremendous financial influence to corrupt our government and undermine public interest.

Safe and democratic energy alternatives are as readily available as the sun and the wind. But their utilization will require the dismantling of the oil and nuclear oligopolies which currently control our energy production. The departure from limited and dangerous energy resources and the transition to sustainable ones, which will benefit the citizens of this nation and beyond, must be mandated and led by our highest elected representatives. But increasingly we see that our representatives no longer stand for the will of the people. They have been bought by oil dollars and industry lobbies.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, and as citizens of the world have the right to secure their freedom, independence, and destiny. That at the base of these pursuits lies the production of energy: with it we build our infrastructure, maintain our agriculture and express ourselves as creative beings; and that energy should benefit the many who use it, not the few who produce it. That to revitalize and sustain our economy and democracy, we must put in place a decentralized system of efficient, renewable energy.

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Saving Our Future from Oil (by Ericka Kurz)

Saving Our Energy and Ecological Future from Oil: Targeting BP and API

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), page 11, March 1991

by Ericka Kurz
SEAC National Campaign Coordinator

BP (British Petroleum) Campaign

BP is the Biggest Producer of American oil, is one-half responsible for the "Exxon Valdez" oil spill, owns a refinery and chemical plant in Lima, Ohio which produces more toxic waste than any other facility in the entire northeastern US (the death rates for cancer in Lima are way high), and ranks as the world's third Biggest Polluter. Combine that with their strong anti-environmental lobby, and BP is a Big Problem we can't afford to ignore.

The goals of the BP campaign are to empower folks to take on these important issues, to pressure BP to clean up their act, and to promote the transition from oil dependency to renewable energy sources...

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SEAC's Energy Independence Campaign (by Ericka Kurz)

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), page 10, March 1991

by Ericka Kurz
SEAC National Campaign Coordinator

Getting as many people as possible to sign onto the Declaration of Energy Independence (an economics and energy equivalent to the original Declaration of Independence) will serve as a petition for citizens' input into our National Energy Strategy (NES), which has been denied by the President and his administration...

NATIONAL ACTION FOR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
In D.C. plus other locations (Friday, April 12)
AND WEEKEND GATHERING (Sat/Sun, Apr. 13/14)

We SEACsters will be gathering in D.C. for some stunts, marching, speaking-out, and grassroots lobbying.

We'll be letting Congress, President Bush and the nation know that our generation demands an end to the oil and nuclear empires and the beginning of a system of democratic, efficient, renewable energy!

We'll present Congress with our Declaration of Energy Independence, then spend Saturday and Sunday in D.C. strategizing for the future of our Energy Independence Campaign...

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SEAC National Campaign Coordinator Report (by Ericka Kurz)

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), page 7, March 1991

by Ericka Kurz
SEAC National Campaign Coordinator

Hello, I'm Ericka Kurz, a senior at UNC with a very low grade-point. I'm sort of an old lady around here; I've been doing this SEAC thing since the spring of '89, when I became SEAC co-chair at the Campus Y. I was appointed campaign coordinator last June. It's been one hell of an experience witnessing this movement grow, and as you can imagine, I'm slightly burned out but still a true believer. When I graduate in May I'll probably do something a little more low key for a while like selling hot pretzels on a sidewalk.

To give you an idea of how the SEAC Campaign works (and how I as campaign coordinator fit into the picture), I'll outline the way in which our current Corporate Accountability Campaign came into being and how all of us in SEAC will continue to determine our campaign activities in the future...

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SEAC: a grassroots network and decentralized democracy

"New kids on the Earth," Sierra. Jan/Feb 91, p34.

By KEIKO OHNUMA

Not content to prepare only for a high-income future, many students are working today to improve the world.

TODAY'S TEEN AND "twenty-something" environmental activists are showing themselves to be low-key and coolly efficient. Demonstrations and rallies aren't really their style; these high-school and college students would sooner organize a tropical-hardwood boycott or produce a catalog of their school's "environmentally sound" courses than take to the streets.

Whatever their tactical approach to current issues, today's up-and-coming defenders of the Earth are eager to put a new face on environmentalism. Reared during the Reagan era, they pride themselves on their fusion of 1960s-style idealism with '80s-style practicality. With high spirits and boundless energy, they've formed an efficient nationwide student-organizing machine composed of a bewildering array of political and social-change groups.

Among the largest components of this new activist mechanism is the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC), which members call "Seek." Formed in early 1988 by two University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students who wanted to communicate with other green-minded youth, SEAC has grown rapidly. In October 1989 the organization's first national conference, Threshold, drew 1,700 activists to a three-day powwow at the Chapel Hill campus. Participation swelled to 7,600 at Catalyst, SEAC's second major gathering, held last fall at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. For that event students came from all 50 states, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Serving as an umbrella organization for more than 500 campus environmental groups, SEAC functions as a grassroots network, an information clearinghouse, and a spiritual resource for "empowering and enriching" its members, who may choose to undertake activities as politically neutral as promoting solid-waste reduction or as controversial as marching for animal rights. "We try to be a decentralized democracy, where ultimately the grassroots decide what their stance is" on any given issue, says UNC-Chapel Hill student Ericka Kurz, one of SEAC's original organizers. Coordinated, top-down policymaking is distasteful to the leadership, and member groups don't necessarily have to support any regional or national action, explains Lara Mears, a student at Texas A&M University who serves on SEAC's governing body, the National Council. The organization, she says, simply "brings together groups that have been working on a variety of issues, motivating them and giving them a voice nationally."

At Mears' school, for example, TEAC (Texas Environmental Action Coalition) has published a community recycling directory and set up company-sponsored recycling bins in the dorms. At Stanford University, SEAS (Students for Environmental Action at Stanford) is concentrating on getting environmental studies incorporated into the academic curriculum. And at UNC-Chapel Hill, students are looking beyond their campus, drafting a resolution challenging the state's road-construction budget.

So far SEAC has concentrated primarily on coalition-building. But at campuses where no environmental-action groups yet exist, SEAC promotes such politically inclusive and pragmatic activities as recycling. National Council member Lisa Abbott of UNC-Chapel Hill says recycling is one of the best tools an organizer can use to involve students, "because a large number of people have to work together. From there, it's easy to get them talking about other issues."

Besides the youth of its members, what distinguishes SEAC from most mainstream environmental groups is its attempt to incorporate a broad array of social issues into its agenda.

Soon after Threshold, where guest speakers represented what students saw as the predominantly white, male, middle-class environmental establishment, SEAC began to cultivate alliances with grassroots organizers of minority, labor, and consumer groups--the sort of people who provide what Kath Delaney of the National Toxics Campaign Fund calls the "new voice" of environmentalism. As a result, Catalyst speakers included Winona LaDuke, president of the Indigenous Women's Network; Cesar Chavez, president of United Farm Workers; consumer advocate Ralph Nader; and Physicians for Social Responsibility founder Helen Caldicott.

Behind this shift in emphasis is a definition of environmentalism that stretches to include "anything that impacts on a living organism," as National Council coordinator Beth Ising puts it. David Ball, student coordinator of SEAC's administrative office, says the term means protecting not only the environment but "the people who live in it," and thus working toward "eliminating sexism, racism, and homophobia, promoting peaceful and nurturing philosophies over militaristic and exploitative ones, and questioning why corporations have so much control over how common resources are used."

Such broad-minded thinking isn't found just among college groups. Creating Our Future, a Marin County, California-based organization made up mostly of high-school students, and its national offshoot, Youth for Environmental Sanity (YES!), have also wedded traditional environmental thinking to social concerns.

Creating Our Future organizer Joseph Pace, a 19-year-old high-school graduate, regularly visits schools to promote environmental awareness. He tells students they should be aware of how their actions affect the world around them. For him, concern for animal rights and social justice make up part of the "compassion for all beings" implied by the word environmentalism. YES! organizers are touring the country, bringing a similar message to hundreds of thousands of primary and secondary school students in 25 cities in 13 states. Sixteen-year-old Santa Cruz, California, resident Ocean Robbins, a YES! spokesperson, says students are doing "tons of things" to address such issues at countless schools throughout the United States.

While some veteran environmentalists might scoff at such all-inclusive idealism, many are enthusiastic about the new trend. "Some of these students have an awareness that I am just beginning to have myself," says the National Toxics Campaign Fund's Delaney, who has been active in the environmental movement for ten years. "They're very committed to a democratic process, very sensitive to gender and cultural issues, and beginning to develop a plan to bring in students who haven't historically been involved."

Environmental theorist Barry Commoner, who spoke at Threshold, views the students as natural allies of grassroots activists. While the big environmental organizations "are negotiators, litigators, lobbyists," he says, the students "are much more like community groups, oriented toward anti corporate activism."

Indeed, established grassroots organizations have begun to see a potential gold mine in SEAC and other youth networks. Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes believes SEAC'S influence will ultimately depend on whether its leaders can effect change. But their ability to turn out large numbers of activists, Hayes says, gives SEAC, Creating Our Future, YES!, and similar groups "de facto political power." Hayes, like Commoner, notes that students, dismissed by activists during the Reagan years as "investment bankers on the make," have become increasingly sought after by some of the major environmental organizations - "not just as foot soldiers, but as allies."

KEIKO OHNUMA is a freelance writer in San Francisco.

Catalyst was a thunderclap of inspiration

"Catalyzing student action," Environmental Action, Jan/Feb91, p7

By BARBARA RUBEN

Maybe it was the realization that the fate of the environment is becoming more dire with each passing semester. Perhaps the promise of burgeoning campus political action after two decades of apathy enticed them. The lure of Robert Redford, Billy Bragg and Jesse Jackson may have had something to do with it.

Whatever the reason, 7,600 students converged on the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in October for the Student Environment Action Coalition's (SEAC) national conference, more than doubling even the most optimistic forecasts of its organizers and quadrupling the impressive attendance at the group's first conference the year before. Dubbed Catalyst, the three-day conference drew students from 1,100 schools in all 50 states and 11 countries.

Catalyst focused on organizing skills and networking among students, including an ambitious array of workshops, ranging from the basics of campaign planning to an introduction to environment justice.

"It was a thunderclap of inspiration," says Ericka Kurz, SEAC's national campaign coordinator. David Ball, SEAC's co-coordinator, adds "Catalyst has given us a ton of momentum."

Not that the movement had been exactly snail-paced before Catalyst. Founded with 200 students in 1988 after two University of North Carolina students placed an ad in Greenpeace Magazine, SEAC now boasts supporters from nearly every college campus in the country. The group recently moved its national office from a cubby hole in the University of North Carolina's student union to a rented office suite in Chapel Hill. In the last year, SEAC has hired five full-time employees and organized a national council with representatives from 17 districts around the country.

While encouraged by the sheer numbers that turned out for Catalyst, some student leaders are hesitant to call the conference an unqualified success. The big-name headliners overshadowed student networking, and a portion of the interest could be attributed to the "Grateful Dead effect" of students showing up primarily for the music and atmosphere, says Eric O'Dell, editor of SEAC's newsletter, The Network News.

SEAC is now broadening its work by tying the social justice issues of race, poverty and peace to the environment. At Catalyst, much of the discussion focused on building diversity within the movement, and SEAC plans to establish an advisory board that cuts across the lines of race, gender and sexual orientation.

SEAC also launched an on-going corporate accountability campaign on campuses across the country in November. Activities range from demanding environmentally sound university investments to protesting employment recruitment by Mobil. In an effort to draw attention to the connection between the nation's energy policy and the continuing military escalation in the Persian Gulf, students at Texas A & M University organized what may have been the first protest ever at the university, says SEAC member Lara Mears.

"A & M is notorious for non-activism. I was very encouraged that people are taking the time to get involved and to talk about the issues," says Mears of the 200 students who attended the rally.

Meanwhile, some national environmental leaders are applauding the waning of campus apathy. Denis Hayes, who heads the Green Seal labeling program and organized Earth Day campaigns in both 1970 and 1990, says that his environmental lectures on campuses a few years ago drew only 50 to 60 students even at the biggest schools. Now the lecture halls are routinely filled to overflowing. And unlike their peers a generation ago, today's campus activists have a more sophisticated understanding of the science and politics behind the issues, Hayes says.

"I think it is healthy for any social movement to have a strong youth component," he says. "The students are often the folks who arrive at the scene with a passion and state the issue in terms that demand action.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Nearly 7,600 students converged on the University of Illinois for the SEAC conference.

SEAC talks to OCAW, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers' Union (by Ericka Kurz)

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), page 36, Jan-Feb 1991

by Ericka Kurz
SEAC National Campaign Coordinator

Several SEAC representatives met with Tony Mazzocchi, Secretary-Treasurer of OCAW and publisher of New Solutions, a journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy. At New York City's Labor Institute in late November, they discussed common interests between OCAW and SEAC. The meeting consisted of three main topics:

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National Campaign Update (by Ericka Kurz)

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), pages 6-8, Jan-Feb 1991

by Ericka Kurz
SEAC National Campaign Coordinator

Oil and energy are very much on everyone's minds these days, and fortunately for us, we've been focusing on these issues since fall. Much is going on within SEAC on the local level, and this spring we'll see some action on the national level. What we need to do now is to solidify the campaign strategies which have been developed on every level, link organizers working on the different levels and in different parts of the country together more effectively, and in the meantime, strengthen our documentation of goings-on in every nook and cranny of SEAC. This article is an overview of what's been going on and what's being planned for our campaign on national, regional, local (and international) levels.

It's time for a battle of grassroots grit against the million dollar muscle of the oil and nuclear lobbies on Capitol Hill...

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In hopes of a more peaceful future (by Ericka Kurz)

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), page 4, Jan-Feb 1991

by Ericka Kurz
SEAC National Campaign Coordinator

(originally written 1/29/91, on night of George H.W. Bush's 1991 State of the Union address)

This war is hitting home for a lot of people. Many here in North Carolina have daughters and sons in the service and are doing all they can to give the troops moral support, my little sister Elizabeth just got arrested in an anti-war demonstration in San Francisco, and I'm working in the office for safer energy resources and stronger democracy in hopes of a more peaceful future...

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Winona LaDuke speaks at Catalyst, 10/7/90

Network News (SEAC national magazine), page 19, Oct-Nov 1990

by Erik Ose
UNC-Chapel Hill SEAC

Winona LaDuke, who is president of the Indigenous Women's Network, laid it on the line concerning the basic flaw of our modern day industrial society, from an indigenous perspective...

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8,000 SEAC members from around the globe gather for Catalyst conference

"8,000 SEAC members from around the globe gather for Catalyst conference," Daily Tar Heel, 10/10/90

By MARY MOORE PARHAM, Staff Writer

They came from 50 states and 12 countries. Armed with little more than tents and the desire for environmental change, about 8,000 members of Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) gathered at the University of Illinois last weekend for Catalyst, a three-day student convention with an agenda as varied as its participants. Panel discussions, benefit concerts and workshops were held at the Champaign-Urbana campus for Catalyst, the second annual national SEAC convention.

The first, Threshold, took place at UNC last year. This year's convention included a march and a rally as well as 5,000 more participants. Among those present were 49 students from UNC, the second largest group coming from outside of Illinois.

For SEAC co-chairman Alec Guettel, the convention was akin to being at a football game extended for an entire weekend. "All that energy was there, not for football, but for something a lot of these people have dedicated their lives to," he said. "It was totally inspiring." The UNC contingent made the 14-hour trip to Illinois by van, arriving Friday at the county fairgrounds where they set up camp.

At the time of the convention, only 2,700 students had registered. However, as SEAC members quickly realized, their numbers were much greater. "Because Catalyst was such a new concept, we had little to go on in terms of estimating the number of participants," said SEAC co-chairwoman Lisa Abbott. "But as we arrived, it was clear that we had about 4,000 people, and by Friday night, almost 8,000. It was phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal."

Indoor housing for SEAC members was limited, and most students chose to camp at the fairgrounds in tents or simply under the stars. A tent city emerged, complete with portable latrines and four showers per 3,000 people. Free mass transit was arranged to get students to and from the campus. At night, bonfires dotted the fairground, and spontaneous outbursts of guitar and drum playing filled the air, sophomore Ruby Sinreich said. SEAC members woke in the morning to small bands of students playing flutes and tambourines.

Catalyst was more than a small-scale Woodstock, however. The program opened with speeches by consumer and environmental advocate Ralph Nader, actor Robert Redford, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Dr. Helen Caldicott, president emeritus of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Each addressed his or her personal concerns as they related to the focal topics of corporate environmental responsibility and environmental justice.

The first session targeted the oil industry and other corporations responsible for environmental transgressions caused by off-shore drilling or excessive product packaging. Freshman Stephanie Jayne explained the need to attack corporations directly to reach a lot of people. "Although attack may seem a strong word, I believe that when a corporation is targeted, it reaches more than just their executive board," she said. "Employees, stockholders, advertisers and the government will begin to take notice." In addition to corporate accountability is the need to conserve resources for future generations. "We're going to be giving this earth to someone else, and what people don't necessarily realize is that oil is a finite resource," Jayne said. "We can use it for only so many years and then it's gone."

Sunday's session on environmental justice dealt with the issue of minorities in the environmental movement. The movement has been criticized for lack of racial diversity. Students and speakers focused their attentions on diversity, not only of the movement's participants, but of its agenda as well. Part of this diversity came in the form of a new committee within SEAC called the People of Color Caucus, which will elect a representative to sit on the national SEAC board. "There was a lot of anger, and for a while, it looked really scary,” Guettel said. "But I believe that if the environmental movement alienates a minority, it is an immediate failure and will cease to grow."

Part of this growth is dependent on the actual definition of environmental-ism itself. Catalyst also addressed the issue of defining a term previously synonymous with rain forests and the ozone layer. "I think environmentalism is beyond trees and sky and is taking on a more universal sense," freshman Kirti Shastri said. "The environment is also about the people we live with and how we are all interrelated." Jayne said environmentalism needed to be treated as a social issue. "Especially if you consider that the majority of toxic waste dumps are in low-income, minority neighborhoods."

In addition to the two panel discussions, SEAC members planned a march and rally to culminate in the main quad of the campus. "We took up five blocks of street, and it really made you feel that we were large enough to effect change," Sinreich said. "To have so many people committed to making a difference was incredibly uplifting." Abbott agreed. "We would pass people on the side of the street and yell out for them to join us," she said. "The whole march was very symbolic of the movement. It was about reaching out to people, saying, 'Come join us, this is the direction we've got to head in.'" During the rally, foreign students spoke about their own involvement in environmentalism. In the forefront of discussion was the 1992 United Nations conference in Brazil, where many decisions will be made about the status of international environmental policy.

SEAC, in association with other student coalitions, is already planning two parallel youth conferences to take place worldwide. The first would be held two months before the Brazil date and would draw up a list of demands to be presented during the U.N. conference. The second would take place during the U.N. meeting. "If decisions aren't made here in 1992, they will never happen," Guettel said.

As Catalyst came to a close, the most often heard criticism of the meeting was its brevity. Smaller student discussion groups had to be cut out to make room for speakers and student workshops. What the convention lacked in time was compensated for by the empowerment for change brought home by its participants. "I left with an understanding that students are more ready than expected to take serious and definitive steps toward action," said UNC senior Ericka Kurz, national office coordinator. "There are a whole lot of people around the country ready to do something. They see the environment as more than just trees, but as people."

Students interested in joining SEAC should attend Thursday's meeting in room 217A of the Student Union at 5:15, or stop by the SEAC office in the Campus Y for more information.

SEAC to participate in Mobil protest

"SEAC to participate in Mobil protest," Daily Tar Heel, 12/7/89

By JEFF D. HILL Staff Writer

About 100 UNC students, primarily members of the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC), will take part in a protest tonight against the proposed Mobil Oil Corp. drilling off the N.C. coast, SEAC co-chairwoman Ericka Kurz said Wednesday. The protest will precede a public hearing at the Velvet Cloak Inn in Raleigh. Kurz said Greenpeace, the international environmental protection group, was organizing the protest. Organizers expect about 1,000 people to be at the 6:30 p.m. protest. The hearing starts at 7 p.m. The public hearing is to determine whether Mobil's plan is consistent with the N.C. coastal management program and whether it can be done safely, according to J.D. Ferguson, an office manager at the office of Outer Continental Shelf in Raleigh.

Safety considerations are the primary reason for the protest, Kurz said. "There are so many problems caused by gas and oil exploration. There's everything from oil spills to water quality and air quality. Then there are reasons that citizens can be concerned for the fishing and tourism industries." Offshore drilling and exploration rights are controlled by the Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of Interior because the offshore acreage belongs to the federal government, but the state of North Carolina can fight the issue in court if it is not satisfied with Mobil's proposal, Ferguson said.

Jim Martin, director of Mobil's N.C. project, said in a telephone interview that the drilling would take place about 45 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras. He said there was a 10 percent chance of finding natural gas off the N.C. coast and a "one in 1 percent" chance of finding oil. The rising oil and natural gas costs have made such oil drilling cost effective, Martin said. "If this project and other projects like it are prohibited, this country will continue to have to import more and more of it (oil) from overseas, and that oil comes to us in tankers."

Kurz said the recent Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska would work in SEAC's favor. "The Valdez accident has caused a political reaction in the Congress of the United States that we see causing some very unwise decisions about offshore oil and gas drilling," Martin said. He said prohibition of offshore drilling increased the likelihood for oil spills because more tankers would have to be used to meet U.S. oil needs. According to Martin, less than 0.05 percent of the oil spilled into the earth's oceans has come from offshore oil production, whereas 47 percent has come from transport-related accidents. "Mobil has an excellent record for safety operations around the world. In particular, in the Gulf of Mexico Mobil has twice received from the government the annual Safe Award." Mobil is the only company to have won the award for environmental safety more than once, Martin said. "I believe that is an indication of the kind of serious intention Mobil places on safety of operations and on our environmental covenant, which is taken very seriously by the corporate officers, every operating manager and everyone that works for Mobil."

Kurz said, "It would not make a difference what company is doing the drilling because they all have the same technology." In addition to oil spills, oil rigs produce high amounts of pollution daily. Kurz said the dirt and sludge displaced by the drilling contained chemical and radioactive material. Marine organisms absorb this material and smother, she said.

Threshold called success, chance to reunite the student movement

"Threshold called success," Daily Tar Heel, 10/30/89

By SARAH CAGLE and STEPHANIE JOHNSTON, Staff Writers

This weekend's historic Threshold conference, sponsored by the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) of the Campus Y, closed Sunday as participants voted to work over the next months to protect forest lands in the United States. The three-day national student environmental conference, heralded by organizers as the first of its kind, drew more than 1,600 people from 43 states as well as from several foreign countries. Events included internationally renowned speakers, workshops and discussions on how to better organize and succeed in environmental action.

Participants spent about two hours discussing various short-term campaigns at Sunday's assembly at the Forest Theatre and decided that upcoming congressional action protecting the Tongass National Forest in Alaska should be their most pressing concern. "The forest is a representative issue of the fundamental concerns of everyone here," said Alec Guettel, one of three SEAC co-chairmen. Both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have voted on a bill to protect the Tongass Forest, which developers are destroying. Threshold participants said the House bill would provide stronger protection. Participants will write letters to their Congress representatives to ensure passage of the House bill and organize a simultaneous march on their state capitals to raise environmental awareness. A date for the march has not been set. Other ideas considered in the vote included targeting for major campaigns multi-national corporations that are harming the environment.

Organizers of the conference said the Tongass campaign gives Threshold participants an opportunity to further develop the network the conference has helped create. "I hope it's just a start," said Blan Holman, co-chairman of SEAC. "I hope people will meet the challenge." Ericka Kurz, co-chairwoman of SEAC, said Threshold participants were eager to keep the momentum from the communication going. "The conference wasn't strictly environmental. There was a sense of strong desire to reunite the student movement as a whole. The most amazing thing is there's more to come."

Threshold organizers said they were pleased with how well the conference went. "Students came away with clear ideas," said James Langman, conference chairman. "They're ready to work together and start a unified student movement on a local and a national level." Guettel said the participants fulfilled the goals for the conference. "It was better than expected. One of our objectives was to educate people about the most effective methods of grassroots activism. We went over them here. Another objective was to build a new student movement and campaign. That was the greatest success of this."

SEAC member Sharon Wells said she had received a lot of compliments on the organization of the conference and the selection of the speakers. "I think it went very well. The discussion groups allowed everyone to really talk. Everyone will go back with a goal to work towards."

Students who attended Threshold said they learned a great deal at the conference. "The conference got a lot of environmentalists with different priorities together," said Dana Hollish, a sophomore at George Washington University. "We want to do something for all the concerns, but we have to choose one. The conference will have a lot of aftereffects. It will bring about more big conventions like this more often." Paul Haught, a sophomore at Georgetown University, said he was pleased to see people show they wanted to do something about the environment. "I like the fact that people want to do something specific, but there are a lot of conflicting views," Haught said. "I expected a low-key, moderate conference of maybe 300 people," said Heather Fuller, a sophomore at UNC. "It was enormous. To see all the passion from so many students was incredible. It was almost shocking."

International spotlight on Threshold, SEAC's first environmental conference

"International spotlight on environmental conference," Daily Tar Heel, 10/17/89

By KENNY MONTEITH, Staff Writer

A national student environmental conference to be held at UNC Oct. 27 to 29 has received much national and international publicity over the past few weeks, including an article in the Russian newspaper Pravda. Threshold, sponsored by the Campus Y's Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC), has been mentioned in magazines such as Mother Jones and Greenpeace, and also on MTV. Michael Stipe, lead singer of R.E.M, has even recorded a public service announcement for the conference. Other newspapers such as The New York Times will attend, as well as the Associated Press. Some major news networks, including CBS, may also cover what is considered to be the biggest student environmental conference ever.

"The response is incredible," said James Langman, conference chairman of SEAC. "It's really weird because people in L.A. could hear about it from four or five different sources. "There are students coming from Seattle; Dallas; Lincoln, Neb.; and St. Paul, Minn. They want to join and be a part of something big." According to organizers, the conference is expected to bring more than 1,000 students from more than 200 universities in 43 states. Langman said most of the people attending would be college students, although he has heard from some high school students and even one sixth-grader. "I got a call from a girl in Mississippi who saw it advertised on TV, and she wanted to know more about it."

SEAC Co-Chairwoman Ericka Kurz said some local universities were planning to attend. "We have a good committee at Duke and two or three people at State." Alec Guettel, co-chairman of SEAC, said the group hoped to educate students from all over the country on how to have an impact on environmental issues. "We also want to consolidate SEAC and come up with some major campaigns. This is the beginning of a national student movement. There's never been a unified student voice." Threshold marks a major accomplishment for SEAC, allowing the group to bring environmental awareness not only to the campus, but also to the nation, members of the organization said. Although many students from other universities are attending, Kurz and Langman emphasized that these universities were not involved in the planning stages of Threshold, and that SEAC was the only environmental group organizing this conference.

Threshold will showcase speeches by environmental leaders from around the country. The topics will include the disappearing of tropical rain forests and global warming. The conference is holding workshops in recycling, governmental regulation, urban ecology and grassroots activism. The Indigo Girls will stage a benefit concert at 9 p.m. on Oct. 28 in Memorial Hall.