March News & Views
March 16, 2023
IN THIS ISSUE
Service of Solidarity
3.21.23 Day of Action News
A Must-Read before March 21
Faith News: Congrats, Jim Antal!
Did You Know? Facts to Take to the Bank
Resources
Is There Activism After 3.21.23?
A Service of Solidarity for 3.21.23
Dear Spirit, We know that we too often make choices that separate and destroy. Forgive us our selfish ways. Help us to be servants of Justice, to do your will, and to walk humbly with you as we seek a life that is more simple and centered on you. Help us to join joyfully in your continuing purpose of bringing life and love to a broken world. (Quaker Earthcare Witness, "Earthcare for Friends")
By Jane Ellen Nickell
TAF Co-Facilitator
As Third Act Faith (TAF) considered what it could bring to the national 3.21.23 Day of Action, we realized that our unique contribution could be the spiritual underpinning of the day. To that end, we will hold a virtual Service of Solidarity the evening before on Monday, March 20, at 8:30 p.m. EDT (5:30 p.m. PDT). Working with other TAF members, the Rev. Jerry Cappel and the Rev. Jane Ellen Nickell have coordinated an interfaith service that seeks to connect us to each other, to the sacred, to the earth, and to those who are bearing the brunt of the climate disaster.
Other Third Actors, including the lead national organizer Bob Fulkerson, will join them in offering readings by Wendell Berry, John Muir and TAF member Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, along with prayers and blessings from Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity. TAF member Kathleen Dickson, a church musician in Oregon, and a singer from her church, Diane Smith, are recording music especially for the service, and participants will be invited to offer laments, seek healing and commit to action.
For additional information and to register, visit ThirdAct.org, or register directly using this link. Please note that there were problems with the link we originally announced for this service, so use one of the above links to be sure you are registered.
Unable to attend? We invite you to create your own time of spiritual reflection by listening to Marvin Gaye’s classic “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)” and then offering the Dedication of Merit, a blessing from One Earth Sangha shared by TAF member Mark Rasmuson:
May all places be held sacred.
May all beings be cherished.
May all injustices of oppression and devaluation be fully righted, remedied and healed.
May all who are captured by hatred be freed to the love that is our birthright.
May all who are bound by fear discover the safety of understanding.
May all who are weighed down by grief be given over to the joy of being.
May all who are lost in delusion find a home on the path of wisdom.
May all wounds to forests, rivers, deserts, oceans, all wounds to Mother Earth be lovingly restored to bountiful health.
May all beings everywhere delight in whale song, birdsong and blue sky.
May all beings abide in peace and well-being, awaken and be free.
The reading from Rabbi Bernstein’s work, “A New Year for the Trees,” speaks to the healing and transformative power of gratitude and blessings: “When we recite a blessing, we subliminally train ourselves to appreciate the gift (the bread, the wine, the rain) that we have been given. The power of this simple act cannot be overestimated.”
With that in mind, please join us on March 20 to express our gratitude for the many gifts we share with all creation and are pledged to protect through our actions.
3.21.23 DAY OF ACTION NEWS
For details and to register for a Day of Action event, check out Third Act’s interactive map.
We are Coming Down the Home Stretch
By Chris O’Keeffe
TAF 3.21.23 Liaison
Just six days away! Months of planning by hundreds of concerned citizens across the country will culminate in our national Stop the Dirty Banks Day of Action on March 21. As of Tuesday, 93 actions (and counting!) with 2,500 people registered (a figure that doubled since last week) are being planned in cities and towns in 28 states. The number of partnering organizations also grew to 50.
Your involvement is now more important and appreciated than ever. In addition to attending the Service of Solidarity, here are some ways you can help:
Take the pledge to boycott the Dirty Four Banks. It’s OK if you need time to make other financial arrangements. The important thing right now is to join our voices in a bold collective statement, and signing the pledge is a great way to do it.
Show up! Find an event near you on the map and sign up. If you can’t participate in a local event, read the next story or watch TA Educators’ “Power of One” video.
Promote the Day of Action event to others through church bulletins, newsletters, and your own social media. Check out the 3.21.23 toolkit for sample messages.
Let’s have a Fax blast!
During this week’s 3.21.23 planning meeting, lead organizer Anna Goldstein spotlighted an action using new and old technology — the fax machine — to disrupt business as usual at the banks on March 21. And the best part: NO FAX MACHINE REQUIRED!
The action was recommended by Third Act Educators (see the next story). So that we can all do this action together on 3.21.23, Third Act will be sending out an Email Blast with a sample letter and instructions. It will be a one-click action via a link that will convert our actions into “faxes sent.”
Educators Share “Power of One” Actions
If you are not close to any organized actions, there is plenty you can do on your own. Just check out the video recording of Third Act Educators’ webinar, “The Power of One,” last Sunday. They offered a number of actions that could be taken by one or two people:
Pass out information about big banks’ complicity in fossil fuel expansion near a bank branch or at a place that is vulnerable to climate damage. Handouts for use on the Day of Action may be found in the Events toolkit.
Cut up your credit cards or use the Arts toolkit to make a giant pair of scissors and a giant credit card to cut up (with a buddy) and post pictures on social media.
Play songs and chants from the Arts toolkit on your phone and sing along.
Get some kids to help you chalk messages on the sidewalk. Check out “Chalk Art for Climate Justice” in Arts toolkit.
Write letters to bank executives, using sample letters found here. Or better yet, join the collective action on March 21 to send messages to the banks’ fax machines, described in the above story.
Post anything you’re doing on your social media and invite friends to join you, or use the posts in the Social Media toolkit.
Write a letter to the editor or Op-Ed of your local paper, using samples in our Communications toolkit.
Sunday School Puts Oak Ridge on the Map
By Dan Terpstra
TAF Faithful Banking Committee Chair
Oak Ridge is a medium-sized city in East Tennessee. At the end of WWII, when the wartime development of nuclear energy was at its peak, it had a population of 75,000 and was the fifth-largest city in Tennessee. Five years later, the population had shrunk to 30,000 and was still the fifth largest. These days, still hovering around 30,000, Oak Ridge doesn’t even make the state’s top 25 cities. In spite of that, it’s an eclectic and scientific community with an active and engaged population. And we’ve got a dirty bank! Even here in little Oak Ridge, there’s a Bank of America branch office.
There’s no regional Third Act working group near Oak Ridge, or anywhere in Tennessee. Even if there were, it would probably be focused on Nashville or Memphis or nearby Knoxville, not Oak Ridge. But that isn’t stopping Oak Ridge residents from focusing on our own dirty bank! All it took was one member of a Sunday School class, where we talked about the Third Act Day of Action, to help us decide we had to do more than talk. She signed us up and got us on the map. And now the map is attracting others to our event. We’re posting flyers on church bulletin boards and in the local Panera; we’re sparking conversation in local continuing learning lectures; we’re even making a Facebook event page; and we’re hoping to have a dozen or more people turn out next Tuesday.
It’s yet another reminder of the famous quote attributed to Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, [and one could add prayerful] citizens can change the world…”
A Must-Read Guest Editorial for March 21
The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jones, an Episcopal priest and climate activist, has just published an eloquent and inspiringly personal guest editorial in her hometown newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, explaining why she and others will be gathering in downtown Northampton on March 21 for a rally and march to the site of a future Chase branch bank. Their protest, of course, is part of the nationwide 3.21.23 Day of Action.
She makes it clear that their action is personal and a matter of faith and conscience. Massachusetts and New England have just had one of the warmest winters on record, she notes. Then there is the constant stream of news stories making all of us aware of the “relentless pace” and destructive impact of climate change. Given this, she convincingly explains why it is so “appalling” to have Chase open a branch in her city. Of the four big banks being pressured to stop funding fossil fuels, Chase is the worst offender, even though, she notes, it “wants us to believe it’s committed to going “green” by citing its pledge to support of the Paris climate accords.
Before March 21, make time to read “Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is.” People of faith have a particular obligation to stand up to the banks. As she points out, “whatever our tradition, we know that laying waste to the Earth and destroying the web of life violates our values... We express our religious identity when we commit ourselves to mending a broken world.”
Send Us Your Photos and Stories
“It is so important to lift up all the hard work that everyone did and celebrate the community you are building and whatever was achieved!” (3.23.23 Toolkit)
With our members scattered across the nation, we can’t have an after-event party as recommended, but we can share and celebrate our contributions. We just need your help to do this, so please send us your favorite photos and your personal story about your participation on the Day of Action or soon thereafter. We need them for posting on social media, and for the April newsletter. You can upload pictures and upload personal stories to our Google files directly, or send them by email to thirdactfaith@gmail.com
FAITH NEWS
Congratulations due!
The Rev. Jim Antal, a United Church of Christ minister and national climate leader (who is also a TAF member), will be honored by his denomination during its inaugural Earth Day Summit on April 22 when he gives its first “Jim Antal Keynote Lecture.”
The annual keynote address is being named after him because of his “unwavering” dedication to climate justice and his public leadership on climate issues, according to denomination leaders interviewed by the UCC News Service. Jim is credited with first leading the UCC’s Massachusetts Conference and then its General Synod to endorse divestment from fossil fuel companies, making the UCC one of the first denominations to do so, according to the March 14 news article.
We are all welcome to attend the zoom meeting on April 22, which begins at 11 a.m. EDT (8 a.m. PDT). Register at this link. Jim’s book, "Climate Church, Climate World: How People of Faith Must Work for Change," is a must-read for clergy and laity of all denominations. The new, revised and updated edition is just out.
DID YOU KNOW?
Facts you can take to the bank(s)
Since the Paris climate accords were signed in 2015, Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo and Bank of America have loaned more than $1 trillion to the fossil fuel industry.
If you have $125,000 in a “mainstream” bank, your money in all likelihood is being lent to the fossil fuel industry, according to a Bill McKibben interview (June 22, 2022). “That money is producing more carbon than all the cooking, flying, driving, heating, cooling that the average American does in an average year…” he said. “It’s like buying four Cadillac Escalades, parking them in the driveway, turning them on, and leaving them running all year.” But there’s an easy fix: just “switch to a bank that takes the climate seriously.”
“Sun and wind don’t fit Exxon’s business model. Exxon makes money—a record $59 billion this past year—by selling you stuff that you burn so then you have to buy some more” (Bill McKibben, Feb. 13, 2023).
Here’s what the scientists are saying
The eight hottest years on record are the past 8 years (Grist, Jan. 10, 2023). Our oceans are warming at a rate almost half-again-as-fast as we thought only five years ago. (New York Times, Jan. 10, 2019)
A quarter of the world’s population is one drought away from running out of water (New York Times, Aug. 6, 2019)
The Greenland ice sheet is now melting seven times faster than it was in the 1990s. (Washington Post, Dec. 10, 2019)
The world’s 20 major economies (G20) account for 78% of global greenhouse gas emissions (United Nations Facts & Figures).
Take heart from the following words of wisdom and hope from Third Act Faith member Jim Antal, who shared most of the above factoids from the climate scientists:
“Because ‘we are living in an age of loss disguised as plenty’ [Nathaniel Popkin], it’s difficult to face our current reality. And yet more and more people are paying attention! 80% of Americans now accept that human activity is making the planet warmer.”
RESOURCES
“Wake Up, World!”
Having moved to a new community during the Pandemic, Bob and Anita Dygert-Gearheart decided they would devote 2021 to learning about the climate crisis. He is a retired United Methodist minister, and she is a clinical social worker. So they formed a virtual book club of “socially conscious friends and family,” and by the end of the year, they knew they had to create a curriculum to engage and move faith communities to action.
The result is “Wake Up World: A Curriculum on the Climate Crisis for Faith & Community Groups,” a nonpolitical, ecumenical/interfaith curriculum based upon science. It begins by examining those things that call us to action: our values and sense of morality, our faith statements, and our appreciation of the world. Next, it looks at basic science and the impact of our choices and actions on the climate, explores creation justice issues and the roles that technology, faith groups, governments and other partners are playing in finding solutions. Finally, it looks at creating plans for action.
Recognizing the “emotional rollercoaster” they experienced in their study, the authors say the curriculum is designed to deal with the depression and anxiety that may arise, and to help move students to “a place of agency.”
The free curriculum is available for download at www.wakeupworld.earth. Book versions are on sale through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Is There Activism After 3.21.23?
A new addition to the Taklng Action webpage shows we are not finished with our “Banking on Our Future” work: Check out the new calculator to determine the carbon footprint of our bank deposits and “Choose a Bank that Banks on the Climate.”
Third Act organizers and partners are already in conversation about next actions. The toolkit identifies three action areas under discussion.
Earth Day, April 22: Nationally and locally, activities are being considered in conjunction with an Earth Day theme of “Invest in People and the Planet.” You also can keep the momentum going by taking part in Interfaith Power and Light’s annual Faith Climate Action Week, April 14-23. Order their toolkit today.
Annual Shareholder Meetings Season. Third Act partners will have ready actions to support climate-related resolutions presented for consideration during the banks’ annual April and May shareholder meetings.
Institutional Reform/Bank Campaign: Third Act and its partners are planning a campaign that essentially will take this year’s banking campaign to the next level, involving large institutions (e.g., universities and large companies) and their banks.
Also on the action agenda will be democracy work related to elections and other civic concerns.
Third Act Central repeatedly reminds us that the 3.21.23 Day of Action is to be seen as an exclamation point in our climate work and not the period. There is just too much to do, and too much momentum not to be lost.