Step by Step

Bill McKibben is spearheading the Step It Up 2007 campaign. A scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, the first book for a general audience on climate change, and the forthcoming Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He serves on Grist's board of directors.

If we'd known what we were getting into ...

Last week the Step It Up odometer turned past the 1,000-rally mark, which is so far beyond what we'd expected when we began that it boggles my mind. But in a good way.

I spent last night in the small town of Hamilton, Mont., deep in the beautiful Bitterroot Valley. It's one place in a thousand around the country, but let it stand for what's going on.

In this conservative Republican county, 250 people turned out to hoot and holler -- literally. One of the local organizers was recording a radio commercial that he'll be airing to build support for Step It Up in Hamilton and nearby Missoula, and he had everyone singing and clapping in unison. The Bitterroot is a musical place all around: one of the main local Step It Up actions will take place at the Corvallis Grange and feature the Crested Hens leading a contra dance to demand reel change. Get it?

I had come to Montana from Seattle, where hundreds of people turned out at Town Hall to pledge their support for April 14. In Seattle, several satellite actions (neighborhood fairs, a drum circle, etc.) will flow into a mid-afternoon march through downtown.

Today I'm on to Colorado, and then Wisconsin, where organizers in the town of Fort Atkinson are trying to put their neighbors on a low-carbon Atkinson Diet. And on and on and on.

This is what politics can look like when it's not constrained by the narrow conventions of Washington, when we're able to supplement our letter-writing and petition-signing with all the good humor and good will that we can muster. We grow a little giddier with every passing day, fully aware that all this has almost nothing to do with our organizing, and almost everything to do with people's deep desire for real change.

If we'd known what we were getting into ... we'd have done it long ago.