 Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here today with 350 Vermont and with so many other amazing organizations. Give yourselves a big round of applause for showing up today. I'm C, so I'll introduce myself just a bit. My name is Grace Palmer. I came to Vermont. Thank you. It's my friend. I came to Vermont four years ago, excited to be in a state where I thought climate action would be a top priority for our legislators. I come from a small farm town in Connecticut, known as Tobacco Valley, where cow farming is the main industry. In my lifetime, I watched the farms merge, moving free-range cattle under an acre-wide tin roof, where they're in small stalls 24-7 until they're rotated every few days for dairy production. In the hot summer months, the stench from the barn, even 15 miles away, is inescapable and overwhelming. The pesticides they spray on the cornfields pollute our streams and contribute to the stench. When I came to Vermont, I wanted to find people who cared about local issues that affect local communities like these. I was surprised to find Vermont also struggling with issues relating to clean water and clean air. I felt an increasing anxiety about the climate crisis as it becomes more and more apparent the people in power are not taking the aggressive actions we need them to, to protect Vermonters. I am so proud to be here today with 350 Vermont, with all of you demanding that those in power pay attention to the growing movement of people calling for a better future for all Vermonters. Highlight and celebrate all the incredible work so many of you are doing and have already done to create a more and just thriving Vermont and world. We are the leaders that we have been waiting for. We want to call on elected officials to take action to protect communities and help us create a better future for everyone. A broad range of organizations co-sponsored today's rally. They're doing incredible work across the state and we want to recognize all the work that they've done. I'm gonna do a quick roll call of all the amazing groups that are here today. We have Acorn Vermont, Bethany UCC Randolph, Bridge to Rutland, Champlain Valley Sunrise, Climate Action Collective, which is a student group, Free Hair, we got Jewish Voices for Peace, Middle Bay Sunday Night Environmental Group, Regeneration Corps, Rights and Democracy, Trees, Stop Vermont Biomass, Thetford Hill Church, Third Act Vermont, Vermont Climate and Health Alliance, Vermont Environmental Justice Network, Vermont Healthy Soilers Coalition, Vermont Interfaith Action, Vermont Interfaith Power and Light, Anti-War Coalition, Vermont's Poor People Campaign, Vermont Worker Center, Voices for Vermont's Children, those folks as well. Speakers now, and we're gonna start off with a land acknowledgement from Earl Hatley, a Lifetime Environmental Justice Organizer, member of Abenaki Nation and Ms. Qua and Shawnee and Cherokee Heritage, and a member of 350 Vermont's Campaign Team. Welcome, Earl, thank you. Quiet, everyone, and welcome. It's an honor to be here with all of you. And as we acknowledge, louder, okay, it's a bit better. As we acknowledge that we are here on ancient Abenaki territory, ancient Abenaki lands, the Al-Nyo-Bak peoples, the Wobanaki, the peoples of the Donland, here in our land in Dakinah, which includes all of Vermont, on the banks of Manushtik, which is also called Manuski River, or Onion River, which is known for our ramps that we all like to collect and eat in the spring. And that's how it came to be named long time ago before settlers came. And so we honor this land, and we pay our respects to our ancestors, elders, and relations of Abenaki peoples present and emerging. All of us here together, indigenous and non-indigenous, pledge our hearts to support and protect this land for future generations, all of us together. We'll leave any cold. Thank you, Earl. I'll now call up Emily Boyles, who's an Abenaki land steward involved in the White River Land Collaborative. Ti Buku Ta Uliuni Udzi. Get up real close. Udzi Baudzi Wongian Yonali Bami Skok, and Ulizi Emily. Hello, good afternoon, and thank you for coming here today. My name is Emily. It is clear we will no longer pretend that continuing down the current path is safe, sane, or smart. It is time to live in balance with the Earth again. To do so will take fundamental changes to how the dominant society operates. The truth is that the same beliefs and actions that cause these problems and climate change cannot solve them. We cannot use technology or renewable energy to prop up a feeling system of extraction and control of nature. Perhaps some people fear change because they believe equates with a diminished quality of life for humans. As though living disconnected from nature and each other, facing a climate crisis, global wars, and struggling to have economic housing and food security as many face today, is somehow the peak of human society. No, there are better ways in many cultures have the experience and wisdom to guide efforts if listened to and respected. The Earth herself must also be heard and viewed as the most complex, wise, creative, and successful living system to ever exist. As students of Earth's knowledge, we need to have humility and gratitude. When we shift our priorities from making money by depleted ecosystems to healing the ecosystems of the sustain all life, communities will also be sustained. Children won't have to wonder if there will be a livable planet left when they become adults. We as a people can be a keystone species that plays a positive role in ecological systems. I have seen more resolve by people throughout Vermont this month to make positive change happen than ever before. Yet there is still a lack of leaders and governments and institutions taking real steps towards stopping business as usual and accepting the responsibilities they have to the people and world. So now more than ever, it is up to us, the citizens of Earth to reach consensus and heal the planet and by doing so ourselves. May we all have the health, strength, understanding, compassion, and responsibility needed to succeed. Thank you, Uliumi. Thank you, Emily. We'll now bring up Earl again. Are you two kind? One more time. And so in facing climate change, we must face climate justice. Climate justice not only includes disproportionate impacts from climate catastrophe, weather events, ongoing climate changes, but also social, economic, health change, climate changes, but also social, economic, health injustices. These issues produce and are woven together as environmental justice here in the United States. This is why so many seemingly diverse organizations are present here today as co-sponsors of this event. Groups fighting for straightforward renewable energy standard bill that is now before the House are backed by groups fighting to protect our forests from clear-cutting and logging for biomass energy and other wasteful practices instead of removing carbon from the atmosphere. Regenerative agricultural groups working to restore carbon-healthy organisms to our depleted soils. Social justice groups working to bring love to our society, showing compassion to those who are homeless, need food, and the basics of life for children who need a head start rather than punishment, degradation, and incarceration later in life, which actually costs society less taxes than upfront care does. All of these injustices are linked to our climate crisis, to our fossil fuel addiction, the health issues that fosters and economic systems that fosters it, the fossil economy. In addition, the wars in Palestine and Ukraine are examples of our continuing oil and gas wars for dominance. The European U.S. proxy established in the Middle East to help safeguard the oil shipping lanes Israel is practicing colonization techniques learned by its allies on the Palestinian peoples. Russia's war with Ukraine has much to do with natural gas pipelines to Western Europe, and with that war ongoing, the U.S. is now the world's largest exporter of fracked natural gas. By 2030, the U.S. is on track to double its output of gas and oil production. So what happened to our climate goals? Here in Vermont, we find that state government is struggling to bring us to 100% renewable energy by 2050, while at the table with utility companies striving to become monopolies of Vermont's power systems. For two years now, the federal government under the IRA has been giving large rebates for solar energy to homeowners while here in Vermont, utilities convinced our leaders to keep laws and regulations in place regarding net metering that made it impractical for us to participate, especially low-income BIPOC Vermonters. And now those are beginning to expire. Communities and local Vermonters should have the right to generate our own power and not have that right taken away by the powerful utilities. We deserve community solar and net metering. We also require a rate payer protection for low and medium income Vermonters so that we can ensure a just transition to low-carbon electricity in this state. We need to pass House Bill 668, the Rate Payer Protection Bill, and we need to stop burning our forests for energy. Humanity is walking down the road that will lead us to destruction. It is a road that is not sustainable. We must take a new path available to us now while we still can that will bring us to a low-carbon energy future where we can learn to live within our Mother Earth's capacity to sustain us. We must live, love, and work together for the future of our next generations. Thank you for being here. Thank you for allowing me to speak to you. We'll leave any for you. Thank you, Earl. As I was walking through the crowd earlier, I heard someone say, I'm so excited to be here today because it's about all the stuff. And I really felt that sentiment ring true. On that note, so we are lucky enough to have Jose Ignacio de la Cruz, who is a leader with Migrant Justice, who will now say a few words. Give him your round of applause. Hola a todos, mi nombre es Jose Ignacio y pues me conocen como Nacho. Soy parte del Comité de Coordinación de Justicia Migrante. My name is Jose Ignacio and I am a member of the Coordinating Committee of Migrant Justice. My friends call me Nacho. Pues yo trabajo en una cooperativa que se dedica a hacer casas igual y pues quisiera igual que supieran de eso antes de contar mi historia para que miren qué estamos haciendo también para el cambio climático y poniendo nuestro granito de arena. And I want to say before I start that I work at a cooperative construction company, building houses. And I wanted to let you all know that so that you know that what we're doing to fight climate change. Y bueno pues yo emigré hace ocho años aquí al estado de Vermont y pues quisiera contar un poquito de mi historia porque emigré pues antes mi familia se dedicaba a sembrar maíz, melón y sandía. So I emigrated here to Vermont eight years ago and before I get into this more I want to tell you a little bit about where I came from and why I emigrated. So my family is dedicated to agriculture especially growing melons, watermelon and corn. Sí pues al principio que yo recuerdo pues era como todo bien cosechamos a los tres meses después de sembrar y pues nos daba para pagar y las semillas que ocupamos siempre para sembrar. And from the beginning everything was good. We harvested three months after we sowed the seeds and we had more than enough, like we had plenty of money for the tractors, for the seeds, everything was good. Sí pero pues después entraron personas queriendo explotar el petróleo en mi pueblo y pues después de ahí pues empezaron a caer muchas plagas a las plantas que sembrábamos y fue algo pues muy difícil poder cosechar pues ya no cosechábamos el 100% sino menos de la mitad. But that all changed when an corporation came in to exploit the oil in my town. Suddenly there were plagues killing the plants and we were harvesting not 100% of what we had but less than half. Sí y pues de ahí pues a veces temporadas que llovía a veces que no había tampoco lluvia y pues a veces que hubo temporadas que no cosechamos nada y nos quedamos con la deuda también para pagar las semillas y el tractor y todo el trabajo que habíamos hecho pues fue tirado a la basura. So the rain patterns changed in times where there should have been rain, there was none and when there should not have been rain there was and because of this our harvests failed and all of the work that we had done went straight in the trash and we went into debt because we couldn't pay for the tractor, we couldn't pay for the seeds. Sí pues fue cuando decidimos salir del pueblo y probar suerte en la ciudad a trabajar a una compañía igual que es para refinar el petróleo. So it was at that time that we decided to leave our village and try our luck in the city and we got a job with an oil refining company. So I began working at this company at the age of 18 and I worked there for three years. But then there was an explosion and many of my friends and family died, two cousins to be exact died in that explosion at the gas company. So with that my family decided that we couldn't continue working there and that's when we decided to come here to the United States. So I want to highlight this connection that climate change is what forced us to migrate. So I want to be here talking to the, like calling on the state government and saying that the people demand new laws. And I want them to remember that they work for the people and the people are demanding change. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Jose. That was wonderful. So we got a little call and response real quick if you guys are down. Yeah, OK. All right. It's like a song once, like warm up a little. The words are nothing's going to change if we don't change it. Want to repeat after me? Yeah, OK. Here we go, OK. Nothing's going to change it if we don't change it. Nothing's going to change it if we don't change it. Nothing's going to change it if we don't change it. You guys sound so great. You should get up on the mic, too. It's wonderful. So now I'm going to bring up Graham Unstruffenacht, who is a rural Vermonter here to share a bit of their testimony. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Graham Unstruffenacht. This is my daughter Juniper. I'm policy director at rural Vermont. A nearly 40-year-old member-based organization working for Food Justice and Food Sovereignty. Through our membership in the National Family Farm Coalition, we're also a member organization of La Via Campesina, one of the largest social movement organizations in the world. Inherent to food sovereignty is an explicit focus on climate justice, human rights, democracy, the rights of peasants and indigenous peoples, territorial rights, internationalism, and solidarity. 2023 brought hardship directly to many farms and communities across Vermont and across the world, flooding, fire, and other climate change-related disasters, farm closures, and crop and equipment loss, loss and damage of housing and shelter, contamination of land and waters, food insecurity, economic and political marginalization related to dramatically increasing economic inequity, and corporate consolidation, making land, health care, and many essential needs further out of reach of the working class. People work to recover here as they do globally. Do you want to come up? Someone wants to come up. Mutual aid networks, sorry, let me find here where I am. Mutual aid networks among community members and local organizations grow into the spaces of need, farms redesigning, rebuild with aid from neighbors and farming organizations and agencies, municipal governments and state governments do what they can with little public resource that remains after decades of neoliberal policy, which has impoverished the public sector and enriched private corporate interests. How do we bring the hundreds of thousands of acres into production that we need to regionally to be even marginally food resilient, according to New England Feeding New England, when most farmers can barely stay afloat, and when housing and land and agricultural training is out of reach to the vast majority of people? Oxfam reports, quote unquote, that far from being accidental, this power has been handed to monopolies by our governments. They report that the world's richest 1% own 43% of the global financial assets and emit as much carbon pollution as the poorest 2 thirds of humanity. These lines of economic, climate, and political inequity fall disparately based on race, class, gender, legal status, and whether you live in the global north or the global south. And this undemocratic inequity of power has significantly influenced the terms for our policy debates and our cultural imagination related to climate change and a just future. The world's military, some of the tools of violence used to protect this power, are estimated to be responsible for more than 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, the US military reported a limited estimate of emissions higher than the annual emissions of 150 individual countries and territories. Yet the Paris Agreement gives government's discretion to report on emissions. And under the Kyoto Protocol, militaries were exempt from setting emissions targets. Such that the enteric emissions of my cattle on my farm are giving greater weight than the US bombs being made and dropping on Gaza right now. The Guardian reports that emissions from the first two months of the most recent escalation of the long war against the people of Palestine were greener than the annual carbon footprint of the more than 20 of the world's most climate-vulnerable nations. Other studies suggest the true carbon footprint could be five to eight times higher. And this does not include the cost of rebuilding Gaza. It does not include accounting for the fact that much of the farmland, fisheries, healthcare, educational, cultural, energy, and water infrastructure has been destroyed or permanently polluted. Beyond any abstract or direct environmental impact of war, we must see in this US partner genocide that the fears we have for our own children, our own families, the places we inhabit as a result of climate change, environmental degradation, racism, patriarchy, economic inequity, they're being manufactured and perpetrated in unimaginable ways upon the children and people of occupied Palestine as a matter of UX task fund tax-funded policy. So we are here for each other as people, our neighbors and family locally and globally, building a better future together based on real needs and accurate assessments of accountability, while dismantling the systems of oppression and inequity, which are the greatest contributors to the injustices we face. Thank you all and thanks to the other speakers here today. Thank you, Graham. We will now be led in another song by Julia Ostrov. Yes, you all sing so beautifully just before that we're gonna give you another can to join in. So my name's Julia and this song that I'm going to invite you to join in on is called The Tide Is Rising. It was written in 2015 by a Massachusetts-based rabbi named Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman and her husband, Yotam Shachter, for an interfaith climate justice service that took place that year at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. And since then, it's become somewhat of a climate movement anthem. You may have heard it before. It's been sung at protests, at blockades, and at marches and rallies across the country. There are several verses and each one has a phrase that repeats several times. We have a giant lyric sheet right here and I'll also call out the phrase in advance of each verse. We'll start with a call-and-response. How are you feeling about a call-and-response again? And may our collective voices echo and resound and energize and sustain us in our work for this planet. I am ready. It is rising, the task. I'm going to ask Michelle Edelman McCormick, who's a part of Cooperative Vermont, to come up and give her testimony. Sorry for that in about three minutes. But my name is Michelle Edelman McCormick. I am an organizer with Cooperation Vermont, Regeneration Corps, and the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation. And I wear a bunch of different hats, but the hat that I'm here with today is to talk about the climate fallout when it's quick, fast, and violent, right? When we have these climate-related disasters, I came into my particular perspectives in politics after responding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and my project area being the Lower Ninth Ward. And then over the course of the last 20 years, responding to, even in my own community in Southwest Florida, natural disasters caused by climate change, right? And I was sitting in my office in a meeting about our land trust and our land stewardship committee on July 10th, when my phone starts blowing up and I realized that all hell is about to break loose. And once again, after having migrated to Vermont to start a project in this bio region to seed something for the future for this place to be more prepared for the inevitability of climate migration and political migration, because that's getting real. I don't know if you've noticed, but people are coming, and is Vermont gonna look like the US-Mexican border right now? Is that what it's gonna look like in the next generation? Or are we gonna get ahead of it and create a more humane future? Right? One, where we're actually able to work cooperatively together to meet the needs of our own communities where we are. Right? All of us and our peoples were indigenous somewhere at some point, right? When did we have to move off our land? Was it centuries ago during the enclosure movement? Was it more recently? Was it Nacho who very recently had to move off of his land? And now climate and the realities of places that are just not going to be habitable are gonna be forcing more rapid migration into the future. And we have to set the ethic, the culture, the spiritual grounding, the grounding in humanity for that to be a real thing into the future. Those folks having responded to various disasters and then right here and more recently, because I'm also the general manager of the worker-owned cooperative at the Marshfield Village Store. And, right? Woo-hoo, great pizza. So when the floods hit, it was communities like ours and communities in the Northeast Kingdom that were just completely forgotten by institutional response, the state and the federal government. The Northeast Kingdom didn't even get an emergency declaration for weeks. The state of Vermont and their emergency management team didn't know that my community didn't have any, not just not potable, any water for almost two weeks. So what did we do? NICO, Northeast Kingdom organizers, us, Cooperation Vermont and Marshfields. And what did we do? We did what we know to do, which is mutual aid. And I'm gonna say this, right? The system is working exactly the way that it's designed to do. We can talk about interventions, we can talk about how it's not working and it's a failed system, but I call purpose on that. It is working exactly the way it was designed to do. To accumulate capital for the ruling class, right? We have to name the system that as, is it the root of all of this devastation of the climate change, of these sacrificed communities. It is capitalism, name that. And so what does it mean for us to be actually anti-capitalist anti-imperialist where we are? It starts with becoming in right relation with the land and with the people who we live right around us, right? And it starts with growing those things that we're already doing, that it's, there is no project that is too small, right? Our food co-ops, our community gardens, our food shelves, our tool-ending libraries, all of the little projects that we do as a community, what would it look like if each community across the state, each village, each town had a resilience hub? And then each of those resilience hubs were organized more formally around their watersheds and then across the state and then across a larger bio region. What could that actually look like for us to be creating the systems for the future that we need in order to overcome this capitalist system of this is killing us? And I'm pretty sure I've talked too long so I'm gonna shut up right now. And thank you all for being here today. I love each and every one of you and stay strong. Thank you. Okay, and now we're going to hear from Matthew LaFleur who is a Vermont Leagues of Cities and Town Equity committee member. Give it up for Matthew. First of all, can you hear me? Are we excited? Okay, greetings to everyone. My name is Matthew LaFleur. I use he and pronouns. I live in a small town called Alberg in Grand Elk County, the last town before Quebec, New York. And you know, what brought me here today is climate justice. What does that mean about climate justice? Climate justice is an environmental justice but it means everybody in Vermont around the world can collaborate and cooperate with each other, including our elected officials. We're all human and we deserve to be treated as such with respect, dignity, acceptance, and understanding. And also sense of belonging. Because that what makes us great is cooperation. And within the climate, you know, catastrophe crisis that, you know, this state endured, it's, we can't no longer ignore it anymore. We gotta do something. And what I like, you know, the elected officials know of Vermont to understand, just be your authentic self. Be true to your word, be true to yourself and be true to your neighbors about what you feel. How do you react? How can you communicate in your very way that there's a big message that I'm trying to say here? And that is, you know, trying to understand that climate change, climate crisis, climate justice is important to us all and collaborating with each other is the best way to solve the problems within our home, which is the Green Mountain State of Vermont. And having that ideology moving forward helps other states realize that Vermont is leading a way of economic justice for us all. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. We'll now hear from Shawna Trader, Director of the Rainbow Bridge Community Center and very up. All right. Give it up for the previous speakers in Earl, please. It's not always easy to tell your story, but we know how much it matters. I'm gonna start with some words that my friend Blue Jay just shared with me. Climate justice means revolution. Climate justice means revolution, period. And we say revolution now. After two weeks of working flood relief with the Rainbow Response Team at the Rainbow Bridge, I went camping at Elmore State Park. At the park on the trail, there was erosion damage and detritus from the same storms that had destroyed our central Vermont spaces and turned our lives upside down. I couldn't help but notice a difference in the debris, however. After two weeks of sweating and PPE, inhaling aerosolized sewage and muck to our elbows, the detritus of the forest was still nature. It was still nature. Our debris was toxic. It was flammable and carcinogenic with bones of microplastic and blood of poison. When our lives were ripped up and scattered along with our neighborhoods, the mess was biohazardous. We should take note of nature, the place we once called home and work to bring our created environments into harmony with it. Are the people of Earth not also nature? Are the people of Earth not also a part of the life of Earth? We should be concerned about the missing balance we once had, because in the end, if there is such a thing, life will go on with or without us. We ought to want to see that balanced future just as we hope to see ourselves when we look into the mirror. But hope is not a method. Hope is how we survive the ways of the world. It is not the way. We must wage the war in our minds that keeps us enduring the status quo. We must fight the battle in our hearts that narrows our love to logic. And we must hold those that prioritize profits over people accountable. We cannot hope our way to being loved and cared for. We cannot hope our leaders to care about this state or this planet. Decolonized city planning and restoration means listening to the rivers and the life that we've through our spaces. Our ecosystem is telling a story. Our people fighting as they are for the bare minimum to keep their heads above water. Their story, their truth, is streaming live. Are we watching? Are we listening? The sustainable community is co-designed. There is no evolution without co-evolution. The resilient community is diverse and inclusive and as a result, regenerating. It heals quickly after injury, being limber of body, heart, and mind. It uplifts life because it is built upon a network of joy which it knows is only possible through justice. Behind us, atop this golden dome in ancient goddess of grain and motherhood, watches and wonders, how are we okay with hungry people and unhoused children? We take care of us. We take care of us. We gotta act like we know that and we gotta act like we know our leaders are legally accountable to us. The constitution of Vermont says, and I quote, all power, all power is derived from the people and therefore all officers of government, are the people's trustees and servants and all times in a legal way accountable to them. End quote. If our leaders are accountable to the people, then they are also accountable to nature. So we say here and now, act accordingly or get out the way. Okay y'all, so we got two more speakers left for you but before we do that, I'd like to play y'all a little song. Let's get along. I wrote this a few days ago specifically for this rally. I had a chance to play it on your hand for last night. The jacket's big, you know. I'm excited to play it for y'all. It was intended for y'all, so I hope you enjoy it. It ain't just thinking we won't sleep us. Thinking we won't make it any crazier. A system that screws us. How do I pull up the place and leave the rest of us dry? How do I go to the neighbor's right? So what's right? How do I, most of the sister? I am so proud to call her a friend. I mean, I'm so incredibly proud of the amazing climate work that she's done. Give it up for Ashley Winter. Ashley Winter, and I'm a junior at the University of Vermont. While I now consider myself a proud Vermonter, I spent the first 18 years of my life living in the beautiful Salt Lake Valley of Utah. Growing up in Utah, many of my peers spent their Sundays confined by the four walls of a church, while I spent mine in a different sort of church, the outdoors. Exploring every corner of Utah, every landscape from Red Rock Desert to flat plains to flowing rivers. I know Utah like I know the freckles on the back of my hand. My home state has cornered my passion for environmentalism. Utah is currently witnessing the disappearance of a beautiful landmark, the Great Salt Lake. This is a unique ecosystem with some of the saltiest waters in the world. Home to hundreds of thousands of migratory birds. It is a rare and fragile ecosystem. Our Great Lake is threatened and it is almost all dried up. The bottom of the lake is caked in a fine layer of arsenic. When the water dissipates, my home will be covered in a fine dust of cancer causing chemicals within the next five years. Truthfully, this issue keeps me up at night and is one of the reasons I am here in Vermont today. My first two years in Vermont were really hard. I really struggled to connect to my broader community, feeling disconnected from the land and its people. I began to question my reasons for coming to Vermont and even my passion for environmentalism. I was depressed and I struggled to get out of it. Until this past summer, I did a little research and I found 350 Vermont. I emailed Connor and Maeve and I was lucky enough to be introduced to two incredible students, Nora Thomas and Grace Palmer, who just sang that absolutely beautiful song. We launched our student group, the Climate Action Collective, this past fall. Through my work with 350 Vermont, I attended a meeting with Connor, a 350 Vermont organizer and a few veteran activists, Ashley Adams, Nick Persampieri, Kim Horne Marcy and Pike Porter to name a few. To discuss the expansion of the McNeil Biomess plant, I was thrilled to be in a room with people so experienced and willing to share their knowledge about this issue. I'd been taught at UVM that biomass was sustainable and I was quickly learning that was not the case as McNeil is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the state of Vermont. Boom. As I learned more about this issue, I felt that students needed to weigh in and be part of this decision for the whole state. The timing is right. Though we are only a month old, in just a week we organized a rally outside of City Hall, a constituent meeting with Councillor Hannah King and a press release with the news outlet Seven Days. 25 students showed up to the meeting with Hannah King. Most of us had not engaged in local politics before. On the night of the vote, Councillor King voted against the expansion. She attributed her switch to our advocacy. While the expansion did pass by one vote, our impact on City Council was clear. Many of us are here for a variety of different reasons and you may be wondering what brings us all together. Our shared reality is that our elected officials are not taking the action we need them to. We are already surpassed crucial climate thresholds. We are facing a housing and economic crisis and our world is divided over brutal and devastating genocide. And it is so deeply depressing. But I truly believe there's hope because you are all here today. Look around you, see all the love and the passion, the care. This is a community that wants a better future for everyone. But we can't do it alone. We need to demand that our elected officials act on our behalf and stop letting business and corporate interests drive our policies. Let's not stop here. We all need to keep showing up and demand the change we need. As I learned with the McNeil campaign, this is how change happens. Take a minute right now and think about what my generation's future will look like if you don't. But what if you do? What if you leave this rally today and work with the 24 organizations co-sponsoring this rally? Although our group is young, we came together and were able to make an impact. Don't let fear and experience, age, field of education hold you back from getting involved. As Gandhi said, be the change you wish to see in the world. For your neighbors, your loved ones, the new faces on the bus, the animals we coexist this earth with, and for yourself. Thank you. Give it up for Ashley. Love that girl. Our last speaker for the day is Reverend Joan Javier Duval. Hey everyone. So I'm Reverend Joan. I'm with the minister of the Unitarian Church of Montpelier here with the Vermont Poor People's Campaign and Vermont Interface Action. Karisha Longacre of the musical duo, Momuse shares these words in a song I imagine many of you know. It is time now that we thrive. It is time we lead ourselves into the well. It is time now and what a time to be alive. In this great turning, we shall learn to lead in love. In this great turning, we shall learn to lead in love. Indeed, we are leading in love today. There is a grounding of love that brings us all here on this cold January afternoon. Now love I know can sound like a trite word, overused, devoid of meaning, but I believe that love can also be a powerful word and a powerful way of acting in the world. Love can be fierce. Love can be revolutionary. Love can be transformative. And given what we've heard this afternoon, I think we can all agree that we need a fierce, revolutionary and transformative love to create the kind of Vermont that we know we deserve, the kind of Vermont that we need to thrive. A Vermont that can weather the climate disasters that now devastate our mountain tops and river valleys. A Vermont that honors the wisdom of the land and the peoples whose ancestral practices have always recognized our interdependence with the land. A Vermont that leaves no one without a safe and warm place to sleep at night. A Vermont in which the people who labor unrecognized behind closed barn doors and for an unlivable hourly wage are treated with dignity and justice. Despite what some people might say, the future we are striving for is not unrealistic. It is not unaffordable. It is not unwinnable. The fact that we are all here together demonstrates that there is the will to build a better future together. We can and we will come together across our differences of age, gender, race and geography. We can and we will break down issues silos and find the intersections of what we have at stake and organize, organize, organize. The moral imperatives to live sustainably on our planet and ensure economic dignity for all Vermonters go hand in hand. Any chance for a future in which all of us thrive requires us to come together in solidarity and make our voices heard. What we are doing today and what we will continue to do. So let us make it clear to our elected officials to the rule makers and money allocators of the state that we, the people of Vermont, are here to call for a future grounded in justice, mutuality and interconnection. And we will continue to speak up and show up. And so five weeks from today on Saturday, March 2nd at 10 a.m., you are invited to show up again in strength and solidarity for the mass poor peoples and low wage workers state house assembly and to the polls. This March and assembly are being organized by the Vermont Poor People's Campaign, a moral fusion movement of poor people, low wage workers, people of faith and moral allies. And we invite any and all of the organizations present here to sign on. We hope that all of you will show up once again and make it clear that this is our democracy. It is the people and not corporate interests and lobbyists whose voices and real life experiences should matter most to our policy makers. So let us keep moving forward and not one step back. Thank you all so much for coming out today. Give yourselves a big round of applause. If anyone wants to head over to Bethany Church, which is 115 Main Street, we'll have snacks, pizza, you're all welcome to join in, grab some food. We also want to give a special thank you to our event organizing team. We got Laura Simon of Standing Trees, Judy Laurie of Third Act, Liz Steele volunteer with the 350 Vermont Communications Team, Henry and Duncan Nichols of Vermont Peace Anti-War Coalition, Katie Allen for Rights and Democracy, Ashley Adams of Stop Vermont Biomass, and a huge thank you to Cecilia Anderson who designed the beautiful poster and logo and everyone who organized an art build. Thank you to all of those special folks. Yeah, yeah. The sun came out to bid us farewell and before you go, if you'd like to join up everybody behind me on these steps to just get a massive group photo, please feel welcome to come on up.