Hello world. We’re Amanda and Chris and this is our blog.
We’ve known each other since 2008 and got married in 2012. We have a happy marriage, but do get stressed out at times. We’re middle-aged, and never had kids. We’re writing this blog as a bit of a personal catharsis and to chronicle our adventures together.
She’s a political science major with a minor in international relations and he’s an animation student turned web developer. We’ve both read up on science and politics and all that stuff most of our adult lives, which started close to 20 years ago now. About a year after we got married, we figured it was time to have kids or….not. At that point, we’d read enough science about the state of the environment and where we were headed as a globe. We considered the evidence and arrived at the conclusion that the state of things isn’t just far from perfect, it’s alarming. Given that there are friends and family whose kids call us aunt and uncle, we figured our time might be better placed in working with others to try to fix some of these problems, at least in our local area, which is Northern Virginia outside of Washington, D.C.. Kids or adoption might come later if it made sense, we thought at the time.
We started looking for groups and organizations that are acting to preserve the environment for future generations, because even back then the government wasn’t, at least not adequately. At first, we were armchair activists. We’d sign petitions, donate money and post articles about destruction of the natural world on Facebook. It was probably the articles showing the graphic horror of the whaling industry or the harmful effects of plastics in the oceans that lost us Facebook “friends”. Around the same time, we realized that we were decreasingly seeing our existing friends. It seemed like a natural result of their recreation time moving from bars to babies as most of them were having families and devoting their time to their wonderful children.
The moment we became volunteer community organizers in the climate movement was probably late June, 2016. We were asked to captain a bus to Richmond by organizers with Sierra Club, and Chesapeake Climate Action Network for a protest. We thought about it, realized that we had everything we needed to take it on, and said yes. After some initial trepidation, we managed to do a pretty decent job (we hope). We made phone calls to help fill up the bus and thought that every seat would be full. On July 23rd, 2016, the temperature was 99 degrees and an air quality warning was in effect. The bus left mostly full all the same and Loudoun County, Virginia showed up in Richmond and joined around 700 others to protest against two massive natural gas pipelines, toxic coal ash storage, and rising sea levels. We stopped traffic (with help from truly fantastic Richmond local law enforcement and first responders) and sent a message to the Governor of Virginia that we didn’t want a monopoly energy company running roughshod over Virginians. We both got overheated and varying degrees of sick, as did a lot of other people. But, we did it and every one of our passengers got home safe.
Over the subsequent years, we were asked to fill in as co-chairs of our local 350.org affiliate group, 350 Loudoun, which we did for roughly a year. We still remain extremely active in that group, as well as with Sierra Club, and CCAN. We started getting into local politics and joined our local Democratic Committee. We started meeting elected officials. We looked at local fossil fuel infrastructure projects and met with county Supervisors to try to bring research, and explain the problems with various projects like the Dominion Loudoun Compressor Station.
We did a lot of work on Peoples Climate March. On April 29th 2017, over 200,000 Americans protested in Washington for Climate, Jobs, and Justice. We were bus captains on that one, too, and brought 86 of them from Loudoun County on buses. Hopefully our other organizing efforts brought others as well.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, we both worked on the Democrats’ campaigns, even though we both voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary. Amanda was canvass captain in Ashburn and trained every canvasser covering 13,000 homes. Virginia went blue, but it was the only southern state that did. Waking up on Wednesday, November 9th, 2016 was a gut punch. At that point we knew that we would be ramping up our efforts and that we wouldn’t be alone. Amanda got a bullhorn for Christmas that year and we joined well over 550,000 in DC for the Womens’ March on January 21st, 2017. Loudoun County exploded with progressive energy the following year and, thankfully, Virginia went pretty hard left in 2017. Loudoun County is amazing and don’t forget it.
In Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12th, 2017, white supremacists killed a teenager who was there protesting their white nationalism demonstration. We had tried to make the environment our primary focus until that point, and it still is, but we couldn’t sit by and watch white supremacists disenfranchised, intimidated and killed people in our State. We joined our local NAACP chapter shortly after and are hoping that we are proving helpful to their efforts (incidentally, your local NAACP chapter needs you, too. It is intimidating to join a new group, but if our experience is any indicator, you will meet some of the most lovely neighbors you might not have known you had.).
We find some interesting intersections between grassroots environmentalism and politics sometimes. In the late summer of 2017, we helped write and introduced a resolution calling on Governor Terry McAuliffe to stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) at the Loudoun County Democratic Committee.
So now…. we still do organizing work for the environment. We still work with the Democrats and support candidates as we see fit and we’re thinking about what’s next. We’ve built a network of some absolutely incredible people in Virginia that inspire us every day. We’ve gotten a little bit thick skinned. We’re comfortable with disagreement and public speaking (although, both honing that skill, still!). We’ve been involved in Virginia’s fight against the ACP and MVP since mid-2016. If there are stories from that effort that are compelling, and don’t harm the effort against the pipelines, or the people involved, maybe this will turn out to be a place to share those.
We’ve learned over the years that people are powerful and can change the world, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. If our own thoughts, projects, and whatever else can help people do that, that would be great. We’re not perfect, and we don’t expect anyone else to be, but being perfect isn’t the point. To you dear reader, may your life be full of joy and electrifying purpose.
To close with a quote:
“One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.”
-John F Kennedy