Keystone XL Lesson: Get Specific, Occupy Statehouse, White House, Congress

Last updated on 2011.11.18

I like the Occupy Wall Street movement. Its greatest success so far is not in the physical occupation of public parks and street corners. Its greatest success so far is the occupation of public thought and discourse. Without any apparent hierarchy, without any big money from corporate interests (unlike the Koch-funded Tea Parties), without any initial boost from any well-placed corporate media mouthpieces (cf. Rick Santelli), the Occupiers have encapsulated a huge, complicated, problem—the seizure of democracy and the economy by wealthy elites—and given it top-of-mind awareness with a single sharp slogan: "We Are the 99%!"

That messaging has clearly occupied the right-wing screamers, who are so terrified of this growing movement supplanting its cherished astroturf as the voice of "real" America that they can't stop writing about it. The rhetoric of the Occupation has been so successful that even the bad guys (i.e., TransCanada) are trying to co-opt the message.

Occupy Wall Street can talk the talk, but the folks who helped stop (or at least near-fatally delay) the Keystone XL pipeline show how to walk the walk. That walk is political, and you walk it straight up to the statehouse, the White House, and Congress.

In fighting TransCanada's tar sands pipeline, folks like Jane Kleeb and Bill McKibben took on big corporate power. They had no big-money backing, no unifying network or national party. But they rallied thousands of people around a very specific, measurable goal: stop Keystone XL.

Keystone XL opponents then took their fight to the decision-makers who could hand them victory. No, not to TransCanada. A corporation is not a person. It won't listen to reason or protest. It has money to make. Instead, they lobbied local, state, and federal officials. Daryl Hannah and hundreds of others didn't get arrested picketing TransCanada Tower in Calgary. They staged very visible protests on President Obama's doorstep. They made clear to the decision-makers that making the wrong decision on Keystone XL would have political consequences.

And the decision-makers listened. Governor Dave Heineman changed his mind as a result of the "ongoing conversation" and called the Nebraska Legislature into special session to consider new pipeline regulations. That change cascaded into a flip-flop from South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard, who has relatively little to fear from greenies and Daryl Hannah but who changed his mind and called for increased safeguards from TransCanada. Then President Obama himself, who had seemed distressingly tone-deaf on Keystone XL, started to pay attention to the protests and send signals about the right priorities. Then this week the President issued his order to study alternative routes, a crafty and imperfect compromise, but a clear sign that Kleeb, McKibben, and the rest of us got our message across. Mission accomplished.

Naomi Klein says Occupy Wall Street made our victory against Keystone XL possible by changing the conversation. I can see Klein's point. But the Keystone XL protests are an essential lesson for the success of the Occupy movement. Helping people learn how to use non-hierarchical, open-space, open-source principles is great. But once we've gotten lots of people to come to the protests and learn those principles (dare I say, done?), we need to turn their new awareness and skills to specific policy objectives. We need to turn changing the conversation into changing the rules.

The Keystone XL protesters defined and accomplished a measurable mission. They grabbed the policy bull by the horns and steered it their way. Occupiers, do the same. You've Occupied the streets. Now it's time to Occupy the decision-makers. In 2012, Occupy the statehouses. Occupy the White House. Occupy Congress.

Update 2011.11.18 01:55 MST: Elizabeth McGowan reports on the nuts and bolts of the successful, multi-track activism against Keystone XL.

Lisa Song reports on how two Nebraska ranchers became activists against the pipeline.