A Call to Conscience: Rev. Nelson Johnson speaks at Cliffside Climate Action Rally

by Rev. Nelson Johnson

Apr. 22, 2009

[On Monday April 20, 2009, Rev. Nelson Johnson joined with the Charlotte, NC community and a hosts of others who came to Charlotte to attend the Cliffside Climate Action Rally.  Over 300 people were at the rally and 44 of those persons were arrested during the non-violent protest. Protesters rallied in opposition to Duke Energy building another coal-fired plant.  Rev. Nelson Johnson made a simple yet powerful plea before rallying protesters and to Duke Energy.  He said, "We seek a written agreement to stop now the construction of the Cliffside coal-fired power plant and to turn all your efforts towards climate protection through clean, efficient, energy production".  Read more from his speech A Call to Conscience below.]

A Call to Conscience by Nelson N. Johnson
Talking points from speech delivered during Cliffside Climate Action March and Rally in Charlotte, NC on April 20, 2009

Photo Credit:  Eric Blevins, Melanie Smith

Beloved Brothers and Sisters:

I come to you today as a son of the Southern Civil Rights and black liberation movements.  I join you today bringing the experiences, including the scars and wounds of that great movement, with me.  I first commend each of you and all of you for caring enough and taking the time to gather in Charlotte. 

We, the people gathered in this city, and joined by millions of others around the nation and the world, have embarked on a great mission.    On the one hand our immediate goal is to call Mr. James Rogers, President and CEO of Duke Energy to accountability and to a proper stewardship.  Our request is simple.  We seek a written agreement to stop now the construction of the Cliffside coal-fired power plant and to turn all your efforts toward climate protection through, clean, efficient energy production.  That is our immediate goal.  There is no shortage of scientific data or common sense to justify this request.   Mr. Rogers, the time has come to change your course. That’s our immediate goal. 

That goal is inextricably bound up with an even greater mission.  We have gathered in Charlotte as grassroots ambassadors to declare to our state and to our nation that the issue of climate change and global warming with all of its implications is an urgent task and we must band together now across old lines of movement rivalry and across all previous lines of distinction and often divisions to change the direction of our nation and the world so that we can have a future.  That’s the larger mission.

So today we are called by conscience to take our stand in Charlotte.  There comes a time when ungrounded arguments, political maneuvering and the politics of fear must be faced squarely and fully.  There comes a time when concern for the welfare of the earth and the welfare of all of God’s children must take precedence over the drive for more profits and more money.

Beloved, there comes a time when truth, undergirded with all the compassion God can give us, must be spoken to power, with power. There comes a time when we must present our bodies as a living sacrifice for the greater cause of the earth and all humanity.  Beloved, that time is now and that is why we are in Charlotte.  Going to jail for this cause is a great service and a privilege.

On the great clock of humanity, there is such a thing as “too late.”   We must act now before it is too late.  We are told by the United Nations’ climate panel that we have only about six years at the current pollution levels before crossing a point of no return.  Our book of faith teaches us that we must work now while it is day for night cometh when no one can work. 

Inspired by your example, I make a commitment today to do all I can to bring that part of the movement to which I am connected into full partnership with the great quest to change our way of life and to join the movement to preserve our planet as a safe, sustainable place for human life and all other forms of life.

We are standing on the threshold of a long, bleak and disastrous night. The human clock is ticking and it is headed towards a time called “too late.” So we have not come to this place today just to be oppositional or to blow off some movement steam, as some suggest.

No, aware of the fierce urgency of now, driven by conscience, and rooted in our faith traditions of compassion, we have come to take our stand before the clock says too late. 

So do not be deterred by those who have put on blinders and refuse to acknowledge the obvious impending disaster.  Let us not be moved by those who would mock us and reframe our great mission as merely actions by unemployed environmentalists seeking a cause.

Let us be like the trees planted by the rivers of water, declaring that we shall not be moved.  So our immediate mission is to ask and then demand that Mr. Rogers and Duke Energy cease the building of this unnecessary plant that will only hasten the clock towards the hour of too late. But our larger task is to make sure the clock never strikes too late.

So, we go forward today, knowing that our mission is just, the time is short and the task is urgent.  One of the great prophets of the 20th century so eloquently proclaimed that the “arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” So I conclude with the words of an old black spiritual sung by my ancestors seeking relief from the dark night of slavery. They sang with inspiring harmony

Walk together Children and don’t you get weary
Walk together Children and don’t you get weary
Walk together Children and don’t you get weary

There is a great camp meeting in the promise land
There is life on the other side of slavery
There is light on the other side of darkness
There is victory on the other side of Cliffside

Let us dare to cross the river called Cliffside knowing that the challenging Ocean lies ahead. But our faith inspires us to keep on believing that we shall overcome. 

Visit the Stop Cliffside Organizing Web Page Here for full press coverage, photos, and video!

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