Green Party Candidate
for Mayor of St. Paul
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Green Party Candidate |
Environmental Warriors: by Leora Maccabee, Minnesota Women's Press, April 24–May 7, 2002
Elizabeth Dickinson followed her nose into the environmental movement. "I noticed a terrible, burning, acrid, chemical smell when I was coming home from work every evening," she recalled. Dickinson thinks she was probably getting a whiff of Xcel's High Bridge coal plant, so near to her West Side St. Paul home she can see the smoke-stacks out the window. Dickinson joined the West Side Citizens Organization's (WSCO) environmental committee and began mobilizing her neighbors. She helped to organize a forum about the health effects of coal-burning power plants. But she felt she needed to do more. She targeted the legislature, testifying in hearings on behalf of a 2001 POWER Campaign bill that would have reduced mercury emissions from coal plants. Although supported by 50 different environmental and consumer groups, "the bill got decimated," Dickinson recalled. "I saw that if anything was for the environment, they were voting it down." Frustrated with legislative inaction, Dickinson decided to return to grassroots organizing. She worked with WSCO to form a metro-wide coalition called "Clean Energy Now" to clean up coal plants. The group mobilized a massive lawn sign campaign kickoff on April 13 to raise awareness of the health risk of Xcel's coal plants. "If I don't take a stand against coal-burning in my neighborhood, then I am tacitly giving the polluting corporations my permission to continue," she said. "Xcel is never going to voluntarily completely clean up their plants. It's the citizens who have to stand up and make a lot of noise."
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Elizabeth
Dickinson