The Road to Detroit campaign is run by 11 student organizers from around the U.S., one big, beautiful biodiesel and veggie-oil bus, and many friends and allies. Road to Detroit is a campaign of Energy Action, a student and youth clean-energy and global-warming coalition.

Friday, 19 Aug 2005

DETROIT, Mich.

We know you know about fuel-efficient cars. You may even own one. Peak oil, the rising price at the pump, and new car technology have made headlines from coast to coast and back again; you’ve probably even considered naming your first born “Prius.” This summer, a group of student organizers have taken to the road in an attempt to build and strengthen the growing clean-car movement around a word that you probably don’t often think of: Detroit.

The Road to Detroit campaign’s beginning is reminiscent of a French film: a dark café, snow falling outside, a group of students huddled around a map suddenly point to the same spot and with a wild look in their eyes whisper, “Detroit!” The idea was simple. Cars are the major contributor to global warming. Cars are made in Detroit. We’re going to go there.

And then it all got a little more complicated. How? Who? We don’t have any money. My parents told me to get a job. Etc., etc. “Don’t get so caught up in the details!” someone said. So we didn’t; we got right down to the vision. It goes like this:

We see America’s dependence on foreign oil costing us jobs, polluting our air and water, and making our country less secure. We also see an incredible opportunity. By dramatically increasing the efficiency of our vehicles, moving toward alternative transportation fuels, and investing in a transportation system for the 21st century, we can put the city of Detroit and all of America on a more stable and prosperous path through a new national energy vision.

After a few months, about a hundred conference calls, tremendous help from the student clean-energy coalition Energy Action, and many missed homework assignments (sorry, Professor Dry), we got Road to Detroit moving … literally. In early June, our biodiesel and veggie-oil tour bus was on the road with the ambitious goal of logging 12,000 miles before the summer’s end.

We’re happy to say the bus and its brave crew of eight student organizers — despite a few breakdowns (of both the bus and the organizers) — have achieved that goal with flying colors. In their journey crisscrossing the country, the Road to Detroit bus activists educated citizens about state clean-car bills, supported the Jumpstart Ford coalition, and talked to people in more than 35 cities and 26 states about the need to revitalize the auto industry with a more sustainable and socially responsible energy vision.

Throughout, they remained focused on the key task at hand: gathering signatures on Road to Detroit’s Clean Car Pledge. The pledge asks people to agree that the next car or truck they buy will get at least 40 miles to the gallon, meet California’s superior air-pollution standards, and be union-made. We’ve collected 12,000 signatures so far and are hoping to hit 15,000 by Aug. 22. Make sure to sign!

The bus finished its final leg last night, from Chicago to Detroit. For the last two weeks, another group of Road to Detroit organizers has been working in the Motor City, preparing for this weekend’s “Drive the Future” events and getting to know the lay of the land here in Motown.

The Supremes, race riots, Henry Ford, urban decay, Eminem: these are the things that most people tend to associate with the city of Detroit. Today, the auto industry that made the city great has all but left the most isolated pockets of downtown, its factories relocated throughout the Midwest and the wealthier suburbs where its executives live. The signs of post-industrial decay are everywhere: abandoned homes and factories, men and women without work slowly ambling up and down Woodward and Cass Avenues, and tired business fronts revealing mostly empty shelves. Just to give you an idea, the “Natural Foods Co-op” here in the city is nothing more than two metal tables with a few bottles of organic vitamins and granola bars in the front room of an otherwise empty building.

But in the midst of it all, there is an incredible amount of hope, activism, and commitment, and a sense that big changes are coming. Grace Boggs, a 90-year-old activist, sharp as a tack, is pulling youth together to revitalize their community of western Detroit. Over on Cass Ave., Back Alley Bikes gives free bike-repair lessons to youngsters, educating them about further possibilities in the community. A few blocks away, the Trumbleplex lights up at night with anarchist and youth gatherings, sharing music and information about upcoming events, like an environmental-justice poetry slam happening this month. Across the city, hundreds of abandoned lots are being transformed into community gardens and children’s centers, while plans have been drawn up to create a self-sustained urban farming community in one part of town.

As we pressure the Big Three to change their ways, we must remember this city and its potential. The auto industry is the enemy du jour for many environmentalists, yet, while San Francisco, Seattle, and other coastal meccas are havens for visionary urban planning and sustainability efforts (and the funding and support they require), Detroit is often forgotten.

This weekend, Road to Detroit will begin to bridge that gap. On Saturday, our biodiesel and veggie-oil bus will make its victory drive in the Woodward Dream Cruise surrounded by 60,000 muscle cars and almost 2 million spectators. Sunday, we will bring together car experts, environmental-justice advocates, musicians, and students from around the country to dialogue about both the city of Detroit and the growing movement for fuel-efficient and zero-emissions cars. On Monday, we are expecting close to a hundred people to join us at our Drive the Future Signature-Delivery Rally. There, in partnership with the UAW Local 600, which represents the majority of Ford workers at the River Rouge Plant and many others, we will deliver our thousands of signatures to representatives from Ford, the biggest gas guzzler of them all.

Over the summer we’ve learned many important lessons and are looking forward to learning many more in the coming days. Remember to sign our Clean Car Pledge — and next time you’re looking for a vacation spot, think of Detroit.

What’s All the Bus About?

Monday, 22 Aug 2005

DETROIT, Mich.

In the madness of classic cars and signs reading “Burn Out,” “Light Her Up,” and “Drive It Like You’ve Got a Pair,” a big and beautiful solution emerged onto Woodward Ave. on Saturday. A ’91 Blue Bird school bus, bedecked with a cornfield paint job and a banner reading “Cruisin’ Ain’t Easy at $3 per Gallon,” coasted by millions of Detroit spectators, spreading the gospel of alternative energy and biofuels. It was 40 feet of dreams for the future in a sea of more than 70,000 classic cars of the past. Dream Cruise onlookers shouted with excitement and disbelief, the word of our veggie-oil propulsion traveling down Woodward Ave. faster than our bus.

All aboard!

At 2 miles per hour, the Road to Detroit bus cruised up and down Woodward Ave. throughout the day, finally getting a rest after an entire summer of road tripping with the pedal to the floor. It is, after all, a school bus. We kept our door open to allow interested spectators the chance to jump on and chat as we cruised. Onlookers became participants as they stood up from their lawn chairs and hopped on board, some hanging out with us for a good two hours or more. One older man, eager to help preach the good word, took his own concise approach to it. To those we drove by, he would hand a flier, saying simply, “These kids are great. Save gas money. Check out their site.”

Our crew was set up at the epicenter of the Cruise in Memorial Park, tossing around hot dogs and burgers on the grill, Frisbees and soccer balls on the fields, and ideas for clean transportation to each other and anyone else who would listen. We lured passers-by in with witty signs and whiffs of our cooking to spend some time talking about oil independence, fuel efficiency, and revitalizing the big “313.” (Detroit. It’s the area code. We’re hip to the city.) The sky periodically opened up, dumping rain on the crowds, but car buffs are cars buffs rain or shine and still came out about 1.7 million strong.

And of course, with the Dream Cruise crowd being gear-heads, we had record numbers of questions about the specifics of the dual-fuel system. Answers ran the gamut from “No, no modifications are necessary for biodiesel,” to “Well you see, what we did to run straight vegetable oil was redirect excess heat from the radiator through the alternate fuel tank, dropping the viscosity of the veg to the point where it becomes thin enough to run through the engine normally.”

Then came Sunday, the real nitty-gritty of our Drive the Future weekend. For entertainment, Joe Riley, a Michigan activist and musician, kicked off the day by teaching us our de facto theme song — “Where you goin’? Michigan, man I can’t even wait!” — and belting out melodies concerning the cultural devastation of suburbanization and corporate takeovers. He’s awesome.

The gathering also witnessed an environmental fashion show from the Matrix Youth Theatre Group, in which one young actor came out wearing a human scarf, his younger cast mate sprawled across his shoulders. (Yes, this skit was satiric.) We were finally graced by the incredible brilliance of the Raging Grannies, complete with their colored straw hats, instructing us in the art of environmental song derived from the likes of “Clementine” and “Give Me That Old-Time Religion.”

Our group of eight bus members shared personal stories from the road: the process of gaining a feeling of ownership and responsibility for the campaign; the funny and sometimes fairly awkward experiences of collecting veggie oil; the open and inspiring communities all over the country such as Asheville, N.C., and Butte, Mont.; the overcoming of mechanical hurdles and mountains (those two being related); and the diverse people to whom we conveyed the idea of more fuel-efficient vehicles. We also got edification on some of the finer points of the auto industry from Jen Krill of Rainforest Action Network, the viewpoint of the United Auto Workers from UAW organizer Rich Feldman, and info on scientific studies from professor Walter McManus of the University of Michigan.

Our final activity was a sort of eco-justice tour of Detroit, highlighting some of the sights of hope for this downtrodden community — places where passionate activists are doing amazing things to rebuild and organize a more sustainable Detroit for the people of the Motor City.

We wound down with a final musical set in a city garden, with locals joining people from California to Maine, Canada to Australia, living it up in the 313.

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!