Artists for the Climate – Sunday in Alexandria

( – promoted by lowkell)

This Sunday, April 17, at 7 p.m. in Old Town Alexandria, Chesapeake Climate Action Network and the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club will host Artists for the Climate, a dynamic program of poetry, music and speakers, including, among others:  

• Bill McKibben, celebrated author of Eaarth, The End of Nature and other books
• Tim DeChristopher, a climate activist who recently gained international fame after an act of civil disobedience in Utah
• E. Ethelbert  Miller, a poet and literary activist
• emma's revolution, an award-winning musical duo
• SongRise, a local all women social justice a cappella group

After the main program, attendees will be invited to walk together to GenOn's Potomac River Coal Plant, a 61-year-old dirty power plant just three blocks away. There we will hold a candlelight demonstration in support of the call to turn GenOn off. 

For almost a decade, residents of Alexandria have been fighting to retire this plant. Those efforts have forced the company that owns the plant, GenOn (formerly Mirant), to set aside $34 million in an effort to contain some of the plant's pollution, but this is not enough.  A growing group of concerned citizens is calling for the company to set a retirement schedule for the coal plant this year.

Help fight this dirty coal plant by joining us at Artists for the Climate April 17th, followed by a candlelight protest at the plant.

GenOn gets much of its coal from mountaintop removal mines in Appalachia. Coal ash waste, which has been known to contaminate drinking water, has been dumped at sites in Virginia and Maryland. And each year hundreds of thousands of tons of burned coal worsens the climate crisis. 

It's time for all of us throughout the DC region to join together in action to tell GenOn it's time to turn off! This Sunday evening will be our opportunity to do just that.