Eileen Flanagan
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I am a leader of a grassroots group that uses nonviolent direct action to work for a just and sustainable economy. We fight climate change through civil disobedience and other nonviolent tactics, taking on large corporations, and training others to do the same.
I am also an author, whose new book Renewable: One Woman’s Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness, and Hope tells the story of how I turned my own life around by doing this work.
I started questioning my whole life at 49 and felt very alone. I had a nice husband, two great kids, and a beautiful house – everything I was supposed to want. I had so much that I felt guilty for feeling something was still missing.
What was missing, I eventually discovered, was a venue to use my leadership gifts since my main work had been writing and teaching. I also felt alone in my worries about global warming and my children’s futures, but the more I learned, the more I knew I had to do something.
Through serendipity, I ran into a bold and creative protest led by Earth Quaker Action Team aimed at ending mountaintop removal coal mining, a horrific practice that contributes to both climate change and high rates of cancer in Appalachia.
I loved the group’s joyful spirit and decided that was where I wanted to put my energy. I moved quickly into leadership roles and now serve as head of the board.
Earth Quaker Action Team recently won our campaign to get PNC Bank to phase out financing of companies engaged in mountaintop removal coal mining. It is a total David and Goliath story, a group with a budget of $100,000 moving a bank that netted over $4 billion last year.
By limiting the financing available to the companies engaged in this practice, we believe we have contributed significantly to the wider movement against mountaintop removal and extreme energy extraction more broadly. I am using my writing to spread the good news that we can actually make a difference – a message I find many people are hungry to hear.
Earth Quaker Action Team includes people from their 80’s to people in their 20’s. We all learn from each other, which is part of the richness of our group. Often the older people bring a sense of history, remembering earlier social movements, and what has or has not worked in the past. Often they do not get thrown by the little things and keep the long view.