Members of the student−based environmental group Leadership Campaign are in warm beds tonight after nearly six weeks of nightly sleepouts. Their activites resulted not only in a bill to push for clean energy in Massachusetts, but also in a number of court dates for trespassing on public property.
Members of the Tufts chapter of the Leadership Campaign have slept outside every night since Oct. 25 to promote the introduction of a bill that would commit Massachusetts to using 100 percent clean electricity by 2020. They resolved to sleep outside until the bill's introduction or the start of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which began Monday.
On that day, their efforts were finally met with success.
State Rep. William Brownsberger (D−Belmont) and State Sen. Marc Pacheco (D−Taunton) filed the bill "An Act to Create and Repower Massachusetts Emergency Task Force." The bill is in line with the Leadership Campaign's 10−year timeline for clean energy in Massachusetts. Brownsberger is the vice chair for the State House Global Warming and Climate Change Committee.
Though not precisely what the student group demanded, the bill calls upon the state legislature to create a task force to research the feasibility of Massachusetts' complete transition to clean electricity within the next decade.
Junior Sally Sharrow, the campaign's Boston community outreach coordinator, called the bill "exciting."
"It's not what we started out with, but it still has the essential message that we need to get 100 percent clean electricity by 2020," she said. "We think the fact that it is creating a task force means that there is not going to be any reason why it shouldn't happen now."
State leaders were not the only officials taking notice of the group's efforts; their presence attracted police attention as well.
Many of the students in the Leadership Campaign, including those from other university chapters, have received court summonses from the Boston Police Department for their sleepouts at Boston Common. The students slept on the Common every Sunday since beginning their efforts in October. On weeknights, Tufts students in the group slept out on the Academic and Residental Quads.
Sharrow estimated that between 20 and 25 Tufts students received citations.
All of the summonses are for trespassing. Trespassing charges do not just apply to private property but depend on the jurisdiction of the police, according to Urszula Masny−Latos, executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
"Boston Common is a public space, but anyone who is asked by the police to leave a public space must obey," Masny−Latos told the Daily. "Otherwise the person can be charged with trespassing."
The National Lawyers Guild will represent the members of Leadership Campaign charged with trespassing in court. They have been notified of about 60 summonses, according to Masny−Latos, all with court dates in late December during winter break.
"Except for the first Sunday, the police have taken down our information every sleepout and told us that we will receive court summons in the mail," said senior Sarah Yoss, Tufts' campus coordinator for the Leadership Campaign.
Students are not the only people to receive court summonses for trespassing on Boston Common. Sharrow estimated that the police cited over 200 people in total, including Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, a campaign devoted to mobilizing support for solutions to climate change, and James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA. Both McKibben and Hansen are vocal supporters of the Leadership Campaign and have stayed overnight at Boston Common with the students.
In spite of the trespassing charges, group members of the Tufts' chapter were pleased with their efforts to lobby for the bill and take active role in protesting climate change.
"The sleepouts have been effective in gaining media attention, and every week they've been growing. We've had consistently about 15 [Tufts] people for Sunday nights," Merges said.
The Leadership Campaign has until Friday to find co−sponsors for the bill, according to Dan Abrams, the Boston and new media coordinator for the Leadership Campaign. Abrams is a fourth−year student at Northeastern University.
Abrams said the bill does not need other state legislators to co−sponsor it in order to move forward, but added that such support would "make it a better bill."
The State House will discuss the bill when its next session begins next year, according to junior Jason Merges, campus recruitment coordinator for the Tufts chapter.
"When they come back in January they will go into it in detail," Merges said. "We'll renew our efforts and lobby to support our bill."
