Over the years since she’s been her own act, Amanda has taken the formula that worked for The Dolls and parlayed it into a successful solo business. I’m skipping a lot, but the most important thing to know is that she has worked TIRELESSLY not sleeping, writing blog posts, responding to comments and emails, putting up videos, appearing everywhere that would have her, and all that time she’s been consistently doing one thing: giving to her fans. Amanda gives and gives and gives. She is open-hearted, honest, true to herself and her beliefs, and gutsy, and it has all paid off.

A couple of weeks ago Amanda started a kickstart campaign to support her first solo studio record (she’s made other ones as a solo act, but none this professional). She asked for $100,000 and got that in seven hours. Read that again if you need to… I’ll wait… By the end of the second day she had $200,000. The numbers kept climbing. The longest one number has stayed a bit still in the campaign, in fact, was $600,000 but that was burst in the last week as well, and today the campaign has over $700,000. THIS IS A MOVEMENT. Here’s the link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/amandapalmer/amanda-palmer-the-new-record-art-book-and-tour

So, why, I’m sure you’re asking, is an environmental documentary filmmaker obsessed with air pollution writing about a nouveau-punk rock musician? Because this campaign, and the way Amanda has been communicating with her fans since the beginning, is a perfect model for how we can all change the world. The keys are passion, communication, commitment and honesty. Commitment is the hardest because it asks that we stick to what we’ve started, and sometimes doing this kind of work is exhausting, but if you look at those folks who are conducting people-powered initiatives (the Occupy movement!), you can see that it’s worth it because these initiatives are making a fucking dent!

An eco-activist example who mirrors Amanda’s effectiveness is Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org. This man couldn’t stand it anymore that the fossil fuel industry was winning because so many people were just staying home and grumbling rather than doing something. He stood up and hasn’t sat down for years. As a result, he administrates a now global movement that, among other successes, stalled the progress of the proposed Keystone Pipeline. Read THAT again. THE MAN CHANGED LEGISLATION.

If you look around you’ll likely see people-powered initiatives going on all over the place. What I’m calling “people-powered initiatives” can be something as small as a group of parents working together in the community to raise funds for new computers at their kids’ schools. The initiatives only have to be as large or small as they need to be or as you want them to be, but the existing ones need to continue and new ones need to be developed…because in this way the people are finally winning.

Little by little, y’all, we are all seeing that our one, lone voice makes a difference. It makes a real difference. It’s that passion you’re feeling well-up in your heart right now as you’re reading this: it’s YOU. YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

When I was working closely with Occupy Boston I came to understand this first-hand for myself. Nothing I want changed will ever change unless I have the guts and commitment to stand up for what I believe. With this film and the Screening Guide, I am doing just that, and I am so proud.

Next week I’ll meet with a local rep of The Sierra Club. He wants to use the film for a campaign he’s running. Read that again. No, wait, I’LL read it again. This is why I made this film. I want to effect change, and with this dude’s campaign, I might actually do it.

Amanda Palmer’s kickstarter campaign is not something the recording industry can ignore. She has opened the flood gates and created a precedent. Bill McKibben has an army of people worldwide willing to stand up in public to support initiatives that support the Earth and, consequently, humanity. No legislator in the U.S. government can shove him aside any longer. Alexia Prichard is taking a small film around the country that changes the way people see smoke stacks at coal-fired power plants. Our passions are fueling change like water fuels a flower. Come with us.

My goal for the night, other than taking in the film, is to meet the representative of the Sierra Club MA chapter who organized the screening. I think at 30mins and focusing on two MA coal-fired power plants, my film can help his efforts with respect to air pollution education. We’ll see!

Another next step is a chat with the EPA’s department of Environmental Education. They and their target audience are also my target audience for THE DIRTY TRUTH ABOUT COAL. The more people who realize that the air they’re breathing EVERY DAY is polluted, the sooner we’ll be rid of coal-fired power plants.

Next, next step… I’ve got a pal at AAAS (the American Association for the Advancement of Science) wanting to chat with me about presenting the film there to 200 of their fellows! That would be humbling and deeply, deeply badass. Fingers crossed!!!

Laaaaaastlyyyyyyyy….I need to make a follow-up film to THE DIRTY TRUTH… It needs to be about what to do with the sites of coal-fired power plants once the plants are closed. There are so so so so many things to consider, but they are all pretty wonderful things and I think such a film would produce itself. For this one, however, I seriously am going to chase funding, cuz, heaven-bless-me, but self-funding has strapped me.

Pollution Is Personal!

In person, Alexia

The event this past March at Loyola was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. What started out as a simple film screening became the passionate development of an actionable set of goals so simple and powerful that it has become part of the DVD.

So, what happened, you ask…?

We started with lunch at around Noon. Mary had setup a nice spread, and students were expected to come in and out as their schedules and interests allowed. My goal that day was to give the students something actionable to walk away with. I knew that after seeing the film they would understand that coal-fired power plants were pollution factories that need to be shut down, but leaving the discussion at that is irresponsible, and so with the help of a few smart friends, I came up with a new mandate: get the students to think. Why? Because shutting coal plants down is one thing, dealing with the aftermath of a closed coal-fired power plant is another…

As soon as Noon rolled around students started coming in, and what began as “lunch” quickly became an energetic and highly productive discussion. The students, mostly women, each introduced themselves, and, per my request, told me what their major was and a bit about what had brought them to the lunch that afternoon. Their responses were so varied that I was blown away and immediately curious. So I started asking questions of each student. “You’re studying math? What does that have to do with the environment?” “You’re a graphic design major but you volunteer at a local prison–why? And how does that tie-in to why you decided to come here today?” I’m re-telling this part badly, but it was an incredibly exciting part of the whole event-I’ll say the most exciting!-and it was out of this discussion that my “Pollution Is Personal” Screening Guide was born. The “Pollution Is Personal Screening Guide” is below at the end of this post…

Without any help the students came up with the three most important concerns that arise once a coal-fired power plant is closed:

1. What is to be done with the site/the building?

2. What’s to be done about/for the plant workers who have just lost their jobs?

3. If necessary, how is the lost energy going to be replaced?

POLLUTION IS PERSONAL_Screening_Guide

Hey y’all, last week I completed the sound mix for the film at Heart Punch Studios in Allston, MA. The sound mixer, Greg, was very impressed with Molly‘s score and actually asked for her contact info because he wants to suggest her to producers in the future! The mix sounds amazing-Greg and his business partner, Geof, did an amazing job with sound effects and really “getting it” about the vibe I was going for. So much of the visuals don’t need literal ambient sound and we did a great job in the session playing with what would be best to convey certain messages. I am very, very pleased with the mix.

DVD EXTRAS

Loyola MD is really stepping up for the upcoming event in late March. I’ll go down there for two days and will have three groups of students and faculty. We’ll screen the film and do a Q&A on the first day, then at the end of that session I’ll teach them an Alternate Reality game–whichI’ll explain later… The students will go off and work together in pairs, and then the following day wil come back and present their results from the game. I’m very very very excited about this phase of the film’s life because what we do together-the Loyola group and I-will create a framework for how to best deliver/package the game as a DVD Extra so that the DVD can be a stand-alone asset. ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) are an incredibly effective of way of getting people to understand something. The concept of “Play it before you live it” is invaluable, and this is exactly the kind of outreach piece I needed to partner with the film. So I’m SUPER excited.

Hopefully, my explanation of the game and the students’ presentations will be able to be filmed soI can include them as “tutorials” on the DVD, and if so, I’ll put up some videos here once we’re done.

This time around, some of the faculty is helping me to craft an outreach strategy for future college and university screenings by using the students after the screening. I can’t say any more until the whole thing is solidified, but it’s going to be GREAT! STAY TUNED!

POSTED: OCTOBER 19, 3:30 PM ET | By JEFF GOODELL

“Lots of people talk about how committed they are to taking action to solve the climate crisis – but few people have as much skin in the game as Tim DeChristopher. Last July 26, DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in federal prison for disrupting a federal auction for oil and gas leases back in 2008.  He spent a few days in the county jail before being moved to a private prison in Nevada.  Now he’s doing time at Herlong Federal Correctional Institute, a medium-security prison in Northern California.  If all goes well, he will be released on April 21, 2013.  DeChristopher has limited access to the phone, but I was able to reach him the other night and talk with him about his life behind bars, as well as what the emergence of the Occupy protests mean for the climate and environmental movement.

How are you holding up?
I feel like I’m doing pretty well. I get a lot of time to just read and reflect and write letters, and I feel like I’m recharging myself, and refocusing.  I just finished reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography A Long Walk to Freedom.

What’s your living situation like?
It’s a big open room.   It’s like a cubicle instead of a cell, with seven-foot walls around it.  We have a desk, a chair, a couple of lockers. I have a job working in food service for breakfast and lunch – that takes up about two hours of my time each day. I’m finished with that shortly after breakfast, which is at 6 a.m. Then I usually walk a couple of miles as the sun is coming up. Then I read for a while. Lunch is at 10:30. In the afternoon, I work out. Then more reading and writing.  Then I take a walk again around sunset.  That’s about it.

Are you able to keep up with the news from the outside world?
Yeah, they keep the TV news on here pretty often. And I’m able to get magazine subscriptions, and other folks here get the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, so I am able to read those.

What’s your take on the Occupy Wall Street protests?
It’s been very exciting to watch.  It’s one of the most promising developments we’ve had in a long time in this country. Most of the things that activists have done for as long as I’ve been involved have been very contained, very controlled.  This is the first time in a long time that we’ve had protests that no one person or one group is really controlling or pulling the strings on – and that’s part of why the Establishment is so scared of it.

Environmental and climate activists have tried to organize major protests that command people’s attention but have largely failed.  Why has Occupy Wall Street succeeded?
I haven’t seen the environmental movement try this kind of thing.  I’ve never seen an environmental group launch something that didn’t have an end-date or that they couldn’t completely control.  Nobody knows if anyone in the environmental moment could have done anything like this, because most of the leaders in the movement were too afraid to try.  That’s really a lot of what has defined the strategy of the environmental movement for the past decade or so – it’s the fear of making a mistake.

So what are lessons in this for the climate movement?
I think what’s important is that these protests are not one-day actions.  From the perspective of those in power, when there is a one-day action, no matter how big it is, no matter how many towns it’s in all across the country, those politicians or executives know that all they have to do is keep their head down for that one day and it will pass by, the news cycle will move on, and everyone will forget about it.  But this is something that’s not going away, and that’s also what’s inspiring people to join in.

It’s hard not to contrast the Occupy protests with the demonstrations in Washington D.C. against the Keystone pipeline last summer.  The Keystone action was very buttoned-down, very respectable.   That’s not at all what is happening here – there’s lots of anger on display.
That’s true – and it’s true about the Left in general. And I think it’s why the Tea Party had so much success – they were the only ones expressing outrage about where the country is heading. They didn’t have any intellectual argument to back it up, but they were the only ones who were expressing the way that people were actually feeling – which was pretty angry. So a lot of people followed them, not with their heads, but with their hearts. And I think that’s something that is often missing on the Left.

So in your view, what does the climate movement need to do right now?
I don’t know – campaign for Jon Huntsman?  [laughs].  I actually think he would be far better on climate issues than Obama. (I don’t think I had hopes of radical change from Obama, but even so, he has been phenomenally disappointing, especially on climate change.)

But a big part of what the climate movement needs to do is get behind the Occupy protests.  Everybody in the activist world is looking for that soft-spot.  Everyone is charging the wall, and most people get repelled.  Most actions don’t really go anywhere because they run up against that hard wall. The Occupy protests have hit a soft spot. They have found that little crack. And now they are pushing, and they are making that crack grow. The rest of us need to keep pushing and break that hole in the wall.

One of the things that’s been made clear in the last few years is that we’re not going to deal appropriately with the climate crisis under the system of corporate rule that we have right now. We can’t deal with the climate crisis without overthrowing that corporate rule – and hopefully the Occupy protests can hold out until we do that and establish a democratic government in this country.  Because that’s what it’s going to take, not just to deal with the climate crisis and reduce emissions, but also to try to prepare for the inevitable changes that we’re already on track for.  I think we have to return power to the citizens if we’re going to have any hope of holding on to our humanity through the rough period that is inevitably ahead. “

and here is a shameless screenshot:

In other news: ECONOMISTS SAY EVERY $1 OF ELECTRICITY FROM COAL DOES $2 WORTH OF DAMAGE: