Operation Pittsburgh: Anatomy of a Climate Action

By Kristiane Skolmen and Morgan Goodwin, DC Action Factory Fellows

"Ooooh, its hot in here! There's too much carbon in the atmosphere!" rang loudly over the 10,000-strong protest in downtown Pittsburgh.

With our huge banner reading “Copenhagen or Bust”, the 11 climate activists that are the Climate Action Factory were right in the thick of the G20 action.

Getting to this rally with a banner in our hands and the 300 person strong climate contingent we had helped to organize was the result of weeks of work, dozens of sleepless nights, long planning meetings, and an unbelievably intense drive to get a fair, ambitious and binding global climate treaty.

The Action Factory, or AcFac, is sponsored by Avaaz.org, a global campaigning network advocating for a wide range of social justice causes. We are a group of climate activists who plan and execute actions — anything that will get us a better climate treaty in Copenhagen.

Our work in Pittsburgh was part of Climate Week, the global mobilization for climate action hinging on two major meetings of world leaders: the UN General Assembly special meeting on climate and the G20 meeting on global economic recovery. With both of these events, global civic society hoped for major progress toward the road to Copenhagen and a global climate treaty.

Our home base for Operation Pittsburgh was an old church, rented on the cheap. Thanks to the previous owner, the place was a visual assault on the senses. Stacks of large tupperware filled with clothes and knicknaks teetered against all 4 walls. The space turned out to be ideal. The church was huge — a key criteria for making banners and signs, as well as housing lots of fellow activists. The stuff inside also proved inspirational. A dozen buckets? Great, drums for a march. Stacks of racy posters for an army surplus store? Instant material for all the signs and posters we could ever need.

Day 1: Global Climate Wake-up Call

The Action Factory kicked off the G20 protests in Pittsburgh by hosting a climate wake up call on Monday, Sept. 21, the first major action of the week.

Our Pittsburgh wake up call was one of over 1,800 events held worldwide. The action plan entailed scores of people gathering on the corner of 7th and Penn in downtown Pittsburgh, all with their alarm clocks set to 12:18pm (the last day of the climate talks in Copenhagen). At that time the alarms would ring, and the crowd would rush forward to "wake-up!" the sleeping leaders.

As a rapid-response group, we’re used to plans changing at the last minute. The previous day, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown upped the ante by committing to attend the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen, being the first major head of state to do so. We excitedly amended our action to feature not just President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but also threw in Brown. Suddenly our wake-up call was both a big stunt, and a breaking news conference!

As it approached noon, more people gathered on the corner. The media, initially 3 TV vans, had grown exponentially.