Let's Spend a Day in Jail with Al Gore

Al Gore should be arrested.

And I want to go with him.

Like many, I am so glad to see the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Gore and the International Panel on Climate Change. Gore has become a global warming hero, and I applaud his work to inform the public about the global climate catastrophe.

As the executive director of Rainforest Action Network I was particularly impressed when I read that Al Gore told the New York Times, "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants."

Gore is right. Let's take him at his word. I would like you to help me invite Al Gore to join thousands of supporters November 16-17 for 24 hours of nonviolent direct action targeting the banks, Citi and Bank of America, that want to finance more than 150 new coal-fired power plants in the U.S. But I don't just want you to ask him to show up. I want you to ask him to get arrested with me!

I want to spend a day in jail with Al Gore.

You can help. Sign this petition telling Al Gore that you want him to get arrested, Nobel Prize in hand, for blocking the construction of coal-fired power plants.

But tell him to do it strategically.

By the time the bulldozers are on the ground, it is already too late. We need to stop these projects before they start and the best way to do that is by preventing them from being financed in the first place. The coal industry depends on Wall Street. That's why a coalition of organizations is targeting the biggest funders of coal and climate change: Citi and Bank of America.

What could make a bigger statement than Nobel Peace Prize-winner Al Gore following the grand tradition of Martin Luther King and Gandhi by using civil disobedience to help create a clean energy future?

Let's make it happen.

Winning the Nobel Peace Prize is an amazing accomplishment. I am impressed and inspired. Now I hope that Al Gore will take his own advice and join us as we take a stand for the future.

Comments

[TimmySlagle]

Not only do I wish you success in your quest to be arrested, I hope your jailers have a sense of humor.

It would certainly be justice if you had to spend your incarceration in a dark, unheated cell, using a bucket rather than plumbing. Perhaps then you would recognize the need for electricity, rather than taking it for granted.

Modern civilization requires electricity, and the demand put on the grid by the technological revolution, requires even more. Without electricity, who would even be reading this right now?

[1will]

Well said.

[Tubby]

When we were growing up, somebody like Gore was called a "flim-flam man".

[TommyMcCarthy]

If I WAS ABLE TO INFLUENCE MR. GORE TO DO ANYTHING IT WOULD BE TO BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.......tm

[Merg]

I have a question for whomever has this knowledge. I recently responded to a poll about 'clean coal technology' which claimed that there is newer technoloy that reduces emissions to something like 10-15 percent of what old coal factories used to emit. This poll also,(correctly) points out that the US has probably the largest coal reserves in the world and that possibly coal could be utilized thru newer tecnologies as a substitute for some uses of oil, thus helping the US to achieve some modicum of indepence from foreign oil.
I have no way of evaluating this claim and I hope someone reading this can enligten me (us) about the veracity of such claims and there affect of the environment relative to continued use of oil.

[Javani]

I think Gore is intelligent and will stick with his present paradigm - he'll sell carbon credits to the coal plants, not protest their existence.

[backhandpath]

Dear Albert Gore,
while Jimmy Carter was the first President I voted for, you both remain my big heroes in your work around the world.
Congratulations on being awarded such a high honor!

Can you now, call the other Nobel laureates to gather together in Burma en mass to meet with fellow imprisoned laureate Aung San Suu Kyi?
You must be prepared to remain in Burma until she is released, the monks are released, the people are free and Democracy is restored.

This is a situation which surely requires direct action from the Nobel community.
We must be able to respond faster than this or we will forever be on the defensive against such oppression.

You guys have the world watching and need to strike now.
I know that you must have each others telephone numbers.

As a fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is under intense pressure by the brutal junta to meet with them under their conditions, ergo legitimizing their massacre of the people. The junta continues to spin and deny this heinous assault on human rights with rallies and expensive PR.

What is the point of having the Peace Prize if y'all can't come to the aid of a fellow laureate who is imprisoned for being democratically elected?

If this illegal junta can get away with this then why can't any other regime imprison any one of you any time and place they want for however long they want, as evidenced with Aung San Suu Kyi?
If you don't believe me then go and ask them. Demand a meeting with your fellow Nobel Laureate. Now.

Please gather together all of you Nobel Laureates and go to Burma and visit Aung San Suu Kyi,
demand justice for the people there, before we have to demand justice for all of you over here.

I don't mean to sound flippant but if you guy's can't stand up to this now, then we are all lost...Foxtrot Uniform Bravo Alpha Romeo!

Thank you again for your hard work,
écrasez l'infâme
from the back hand path!

[oldpotsmuggler]

I think that the concert Gore organized speaks voulmes about his understanding of the creative use of social activism. Civil disobediance is cool, but he is better suited than most to know if that is the most effective use of his efforts. No one person can do everything.

[TommyMcCarthy]

Yes, actually you DO mean to sound fippant.................tm