The Pledge of Reason
Tuesday, 23 Aug 2005
DETROIT, Mich.
Yesterday evening, the Road to Detroit team of organizers joined up with our brave Drive the Future weekend attendees to deliver the tens of thousands of signatures that we had collected on our Clean Car Pledge to representatives of the United Auto Workers, and, in turn, received their commitment that they would take the message straight to Ford management.
Signatures and promises change hands.
If you recall, our organizers have been traveling the country this summer on a big, weird biodiesel bus. Thanks to 3 Phases Energy, our entire bus tour was carbon-neutral, and thanks to NativeEnergy, our events here in Detroit were offset as well. But don't let all that fool you: this bus is dirty. After two trips around the country on smoggy highways, gallons of spilled vegetable grease, and weeks of ferrying around eight sweaty organizers, no matter how clean the bus gets, there is a pervading feeling of grit. Even when you're off the bus, the bus is still on you.
We wanted our culminating events to have that same sticking power. Most people we talked to assumed that our signature delivery would take place at Ford headquarters. It seemed like the obvious place, but all along we felt it wasn't quite right. It was too much on their turf, too corporate and polished, the clean interior of a truck, not the dirty tailpipe.
Back in June, we thought we had found the perfect spot: the old, now abandoned Piquette Model-T plant complex. We called up the caretaker and pitched our idea as a sort of historical revival. I think the exact words were, "We want to summon Henry Ford's spirit of innovation!" They ate it up and we thought we were in. The next day we got a call from an "outside consultant" for Piquette. The consultant said that he had been curious about our campaign so he had emailed his cousin who works closely with Ford CEO Bill Ford Jr. In response, his cousin forwarded him a chain of about 20 emails back and forth between "higher-ups" at Ford discussing our project. Bill read these emails and made a quick decision: he and the Piquette plant could not be involved.
Aha! Now we're getting somewhere, we thought. After many congratulations about the stink we were making over at Ford and a few worries that corporate thugs were going to meet us at the airport, we went on to find ourselves an even better, grittier, and more abandoned location where we could deliver the signatures: the factory where the Model-T was first mass-produced, Highland Park.
The Highland Park Model-T factory is the most important factory in the history of this country. It was here where Henry Ford implemented the assembly line, where the $5 workday began, and where millions of Model-Ts were produced in the early 1920s. Thousands of families migrated to Detroit in that era to work at Highland Park and take part in the new American Dream of prosperity and consumptive living. In one day, the factory produced over 9,000 Model-Ts -- more than the total number of hybrids Ford has ever produced.
Now, the place is in complete disrepair. The only way for us to direct people to the site was to tell them to look for the CVS billboard at the corner of the Model-T Plaza, a glorified name for an exceedingly average strip mall. The plant's windows are boarded up, broken bottles are strewn on the lawn out front, and the only other foot traffic past the plant, besides ours, was a construction worker from a project down the street relieving himself by the front door as we drove up. The polish and charm of the suburban Ford headquarters was distinctly absent from this site in downtown Detroit. For Ford the place was a publicity nightmare. For us: perfect.
One of the major goals of our campaign was to work with the United Auto Workers. All of us were incredibly inspired by the recent work of the Apollo Alliance and wanted to emulate that in our campaign. We liked the idea of giving our signatures not to corporate executives, but to the people who would be making the hybrids and zero-emissions vehicles we so desperately need. We also wanted to have a chance to dialogue with them about how these changes were going to affect their lives and the potential that we saw for job creation from an investment in fuel efficiency and green technologies.
Many people questioned our involvement with the UAW, while some refused to sign our Clean Car Pledge because of its third requirement that new clean cars we're calling for be "made by union workers." The union had opposed CAFE standards and has not been supportive of other environmental initiatives in the past. At the same time, they had been some of the strongest voices in this country against apartheid in South Africa. When Nelson Mandela first visited the U.S., the only industrial site he visited was the River Rouge Plant, whose workers are members of the local union chapter which we chose to approach, the 30,000-member UAW Local 600.
As usual, we were in a bit over our heads. The president of the local, Jerry Sullivan, opened up our meeting by asking, "So, you kids on break from high school?" Ouch, we thought -- high school was over two years ago. In the end, it was our youthful appearances and general goodwill that secured the union's participation. Jerry knew just as much about the importance of hybrids as we did, and with gas prices so high and increasing public interest in fuel efficiency, he said he could work with us.
A banner day.
The delivery itself was a major success. With our Road to Detroit banners and one that said, "Ford: Innovate! Green cars now," behind us, we spoke about the history of the plant and its current state of disrepair. We demanded that Ford (which had declined our numerous invitations to come to the event) reclaim the innovation that made the company great and start producing more than a token thousand cleaner cars, but an entire fleet of fuel-efficient and eventually zero-emission vehicles. Sarah Connolly, from the Jumpstart Ford Coalition, talked about their accomplishments of the summer and continuing work.
To conclude, the vice president of UAW Local 600, Bernie Ricke, gave an excellent speech that clearly demonstrated his grasp of the issues at hand and commitment to bring our message straight to Ford. "What you guys are doing just makes sense," Bernie said. "No one can argue with clean air, more jobs, and a safer future for our communities."
Now, it's back to school for many of us. The classrooms and libraries of our respective college campuses will be a big change from the cramped interior of our bus or the abandoned lots of Detroit.
Yet, no matter the societal scrubbing and polishing we are put through to try and prepare us for corporate jobs and cubicle futures, we are confident that some of that grit and grime will remain. This fall, Energy Action is gearing up for the Campus Climate Challenge, with the goal that Energy Action and 500 campuses across the U.S. and Canada will leverage 8 million metric tons of global-warming pollution reduction measured in equivalent CO2 by Sept. 27, 2008. We have a feeling a certain biodiesel and veggie oil bus might be involved. Hit the road!
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