Z Magazine – Capitol Coal Action – the story behind the photographs

Below is an extract from a magazine article that Joshua Kahn Russell wrote on the Capitol Coal Action in Washington in March. Joshua is a good friend of mine and when he requested some of my images for the article and I was happy to provide them.

‘On March 2, 2009 around 4,000 people came to the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, DC, with over 2,000 risking arrest through civil disobedience. The vast majority had never been to a demonstration before, let alone engaged in non-violent direct action. People from communities most directly impacted by coal’s lifecycle—from Navajo reservations in the Southwest to Appalachian towns in the Southeast—led the march. With multicolored flags depicting windmills, people planting gardens, waves crashing, and captions like “community,” “security,” “change,” and “power,” we blockaded five entrances to the power plant that fuels Congress (the belching smokestacks just two blocks from the Capitol building made a fitting national target). We called the whole thing the Capitol Climate Action (CCA).’

Read more here