Ted Glick, Policy Director
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Ted Glick has devoted 40 years of his life to the progressive social change movement. After a year of student activism as a sophomore at Grinnell College in Iowa, he left college in 1969 to work full time against the Vietnam War. As a Selective Service draft resister, he spent 11 months in prison. In 1973 he co-founded the National Committee to Impeach Nixon and worked as a national coordinator on grassroots street actions around the country, keeping the heat on Nixon until his August 1974 resignation.
For the last four years Ted has played a national leadership role in the effort to stabilize our climate and for a clean energy revolution. He was a co-founder in 2004 of the Climate Crisis Coalition and in 2005 coordinated the USA Join the World effort leading up to December 3rd actions during the United Nations Climate Change conference in Montreal. In May 2006 he became the national coordinator of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council. For three and a half months in the fall of 2007 he ate no solid food as part of a climate emergency fast focused on getting Congress to pass strong climate legislation.
Between the mid-70's and 2005, Ted was actively involved in community organizing efforts around environmental, tenant rights, community development and racial justice issues in Brooklyn, N.Y. and northern New Jersey. On a national scale he has been a leader in coalition-building and independent politics efforts. From 1995 to 2005, he was the National Coordinator of the Independent Progressive Politics Network.
He has participated in and led hundreds of actions. He has been arrested fifteen times for acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, including four times between October 2006 and December 2007 on climate issues.
As the national coordinator of the People's Alliance, he helped to organize the 1980 People's Convention of several thousand people on the devastated Charlotte St. area in the South Bronx and a march of 15,000 people to Madison Square Garden just before the Democratic Convention. In 2002 he was a primary organizer of the April 20th, 80,000-person march in Washington, D.C. against the militaristic and repressive response of the Bush administration to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Also in 2002, he was a Green Party of New Jersey candidate for U.S. Senate.
Over the years, Ted's commitment to social justice has led him to partake in 18 extended fasts, four of which were for more than a month, including the climate emergency fast in the fall of 2007.
His prolific writing on the movement to which he devotes his life includes his 2000 book, Future Hope: A Winning Strategy for a Just Society, and his column, "Future Hope," which has been distributed nationally since 2000.
Blog Posts by Ted Glick, Policy Director
I can’t remember ever participating in so many actions on an issue organized by religiously-based groups over such an extended period of time. It is a very hopeful sign that among people of faith, many different faiths, there is a clear stirring into action on this huge moral issue, this threat to human civilization and the ecological systems that have allowed for its development over the last 10,000 years.
Water makes its way, through fields, hills and mountains
Water makes its way, it has its ups and downs
Water makes its way, it ends up in the oceans
Water makes its way, it really gets around.
I must make my way, no matter what life throws me
I must make my way, must do the best I can
I must make my way, my faith and hope they guide me
I must make my way, together we all must stand
It's like one of those horror movie zombies, the thing that just won't die. Yes, once again the Republican Party, joined by some Democrats, all doing the work of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, the American Petroleum Institute and all the others, are trying to force through approval of the Keystone XL pipeline in Congress.
On January 21st over 100 people ran into the cold Potomac River as part of CCAN’s 7th Annual Polar Bear Plunge. We braved the ice and snow (about an inch worth) that came down the night before, and leftover light rain, to do the first of these seven plunges with precipitation on the ground.
Lo and behold, at 5:15 pm, as the light was rapidly fading and a beautiful ¾ moon appeared in the sky over Lafayette Park, as Bill McKibben was wrapping up, speaking about the wonder and power of the day’s event and this movement, a motorcade appeared at the top of Lafayette Park. Someone pretty reliable said, “It’s President Obama!,” and Bill proceeded to lead the thousands of people still there in a chant of, “Yes We Can Stop the Pipeline” as hundreds streamed toward the cars with their flashing red lights. If, indeed, it was Obama in that motorcade, there is no way he didn’t hear us.
This was just one of many amazing things that happened yesterday.
On Monday, October 31, speaking about a possible permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, President Obama’s press secretary Jay Carney told the press that “this is a decision that will be made by the State Department.” On Tuesday, November 1, speaking during an interview at the White House with a reporter from Omaha, Nebraska-based TV station KETV, President Obama himself said that he will be making the decision. What has gotten into the President? Are we seeing the reappearance of the person who campaigned in 2008 as a strong proponent of action to “end the tyranny of oil” and address climate change?