Spirit in Action
Stopping Mountains Into Molehills
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And my lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ You know, one of the things I love to see is the combination of wide-open, compassionate hearts. Those that see no one as the enemy. That combined with determined, resolute, unstoppable determination pointed to the causes of peace, justice, and care for creation. Today, for Spirit in Action, we have two women who are doing that as part of EQAT, pronounced Equate, which stands for Earthquakeer Action Team. My guests are Ingrid Leakey and Lola George, both on the board of the Earth Activist Organization Equate, and they join me in person at the Friends General Conference Gathering held this year in the city of California in western Pennsylvania. Ingrid and Lola, I'm delighted to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Thanks for having us. Yes, thank you. I'm especially delighted because last night I heard Eileen Flanagan talking about her experience with the Earthquakeer Action Team. It got me really revved, besides the fact that you were up there Ingrid singing. So I want to start with something that's a little bit out of order. We'll go back to the origins of the Equate Earthquakeer Action Team, but I want to start with your action yesterday. You went into Pittsburgh and you gave them, or what did you actually give them? We gave them prayer in action, actually. We took six buses of Quakers from California, Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh. There were six different bank branches that we went to. The intention was for each group to go into the branch and actually have a Quaker style meeting for worship in the lobby. The short version is that three of the groups actually made it into the bank and had their Quaker meeting for worship in the bank. And three of the groups actually got locked out. The bank decided to close and lock their doors instead of letting friends into the bank to pray. It was quite an event and then we all gathered together at the PNC headquarters right by this enormous green wall. Like a living wall, they've got plants and stuff with the PNC logo in it. And so we all gathered in that space together to share stories of what happened and also to leave messages in chalk on the ground. Leaving messages for PNC to make a different choice about their investment practices. So currently, they're one of the largest finances of mountaintop removal coal mining in America and we have some serious problems with that. And you keep saying PNC, although the folks over in California and in Washington state who are listening, may have no idea what PNC is. PNC's origins are as a Quaker bank. It was founded as the bank, Provident Bank. And over the course of the years, it's been acquired and sold and things like that. But it is Quaker in its heritage and it does claim to be a green bank, even though it's investing in mountaintop removal coal mining. So PNC doesn't really stand for anything anymore because it's sort of several banks that ended up merging. So at some point, I think it was Pittsburgh, National, something, you know, so at this point, the PNC doesn't really stand for anything. It's just PNC bank. It's actually, I think at this point, the fifth largest bank in the country and it's been in a really serious expansion mode. In fact, as we've been at this Friends General Conference gathering this week, I've talked to several friends and I was talking to one who lives in Indiana who said, actually, I'm a PNC customer. The bank I opened my account with was a different bank and then there was like sort of a merger or whatever and now he finds himself to be a PNC customer. So he's excited to go home and have a conversation with his local bank branch manager. You said that there were six banks that you went to, six of the branches. Three of them closed down. What does that mean? They closed down for an hour. I mean, they kicked all of the folks out. Is it only you that weren't allowed in and everybody else had to get in with a pass or something? So one of the banks was in a mall and in the mall, they got wind we were coming. So they put a big sign on the bank that said this branch was closed due to an emergency and they just locked the doors to anyone coming in. They're customers as well as people from equate. They're one of the branches. They were sort of checking PNC bank cards or something to prove that you were a PNC customer to let you in. So different branches handled it a little differently, but the bottom line was that three of the branches they were not letting our groups in. And our purpose again was to go in, sit down in a circle and conduct a quicker meeting for worship. Praying that the bank will make different decisions, will make a decision to bank for a sustainable future, not just bank for profit, which is what they're currently choosing. And you mentioned Providence Bank was one of the banks that's at the beginning of all of this, which was Quaker established, Quaker principles involved in it, hence the provident. So Providence Bank had these principles at its base. I interviewed someone just a month or two ago, Rob Pearson, he had written an article about Quaker originated businesses like Barclays Bank is one of them. He was saying that so many of these businesses, even though they're not controlled, I mean, Quaker's has a tiny percentage of the population of the entire planet that we don't have many numerical effects. That's still the ethos from those days as you generally carried forward. Is there any ethos that we can find in PNC? Are you going after PNC specifically to mend their ways because they have this little piece of the inner light in them? Well, let me back up for a second and just sort of explain how we chose PNC Bank as our target. The impulse for earthquake reaction team was that a group of Quakers had gathered and were searching for how can we deal with this reality of climate change, the reality that we have global warming. How can we deal with that in a powerful and bold way, recognizing lots of efforts are happening. There's lobbying going on. There's people taking shorter showers and changing their light bulbs, recognizing that that's not enough. We have to do more. And so there was a gathering of friends in Pennsylvania. It was a Philadelphia yearly meeting. And so there was a group of Quakers and one of them stood and said, you know, show me the way. What do we do? And so in Philadelphia, a group of us started gathering and said, okay, we need a nonviolent direct action campaign. And we realized that we had an opportunity. There's already a movement around mountaintop removal coal mining. There has been for quite a while a lot of work to end mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, which we can talk a little bit more about what that actually is. But that's been happening. We realized we have a local connection to that. In Philadelphia, we're not in the Appalachian Mountains where they're doing coal mining, but our local connection is in fact a very important one. Mountaintop removal is very capital intensive. It takes a lot of money to blow up a mountain because it takes a lot of equipment. So the banks are a critical part. They're a pillar of the industry. PNC Bank is one of the largest funders of mountaintop removal. We also, in our research, found this reality that they were going back the Providence Bank called the Quaker Bank. And that they called themselves the Quaker Bank. They still referred to their legacy as something to be proud of. They also called themselves the greenest bank in the business. So we, as friends with a testimony around integrity, said, okay, you are using both your Quaker roots and calling yourself the greenest bank in the business, those two things do not work when you're also blowing up mountains in Appalachia, when your money is making that possible. So that's really how we chose PNC Bank as our target of this campaign because it was, for us at that time, a local connection, even though PNC Bank is a national bank, and actually just this past week, the earthquake or action team is becoming a national organization as PNC expands, so do we. You mentioned this piece about them having Quaker roots. I can't say that I see particularly their Quaker DNA showing up in their investment practices right now. I guess you could make an argument that there are aspects of what they do in communities, other communities, not in Appalachia, but in Philadelphia, they do a lot of work around supporting the arts, or they have a program called Growing Up Great, where it's about supporting children's education. Those are certainly things most Quakers would be like giving a thumbs up to, but again, the question of integrity. How do you fund projects called Grow Up Great, and we want to support children to grow up great? What about the children in Appalachia? That's our question. What about the children in Appalachia whose wells and stream water is poisoned? Babies born in Appalachia have a higher rate of being born with birth defects than women who smoke throughout their pregnancy. So the instances of cancer, of tumors, kidney disease, all of that is way higher in Appalachia, and we think the people of Appalachia deserve better. And so what you did yesterday, and I'm going to focus again on that, 200-some people, six buses, you're going to six branches, you're going to get there, and you're going to go into their lobby, and you're going to sit down and worship Quaker style. Now, for those who are listening who have no idea what that means, it means we're going to be quiet. We're going to center and find our center, sink down to the seed, kind of traditional language, and we're going to be in the middle. So what difference is that supposed to be made to them? I mean, don't you have to yell and curse and throw things in order to get some kind of reaction? Actually, I was in one of those branches where we did exactly that. So we walked into the branch door. There was a security guard right there. He knew we were coming in. He watched us come in. He kind of stepped aside and let us walk into the branch lobby. So there were about 20 or 25 of us who did that. Many of us wearing our equate shirts. We had pictures, big billboard pictures of what a mountaintop removal looks like and how devastating of a landscape it is. We had pictures of sinks where water's running red with toxic chemicals, and we took all these photographs that we had, and we took ourselves, and we just sat in a circle in the lobby and began to worship. And it was a beautiful thing, and I will tell you, one of the most amazing things for me is how silence, Quakers, we are used to sitting in silence. But people who aren't used to sitting in silence recognize when silence has been established, that is the sacred and holy thing. All the people in the branch themselves lowered their voices. The customers walked more slowly. Everybody was looking at what was going on, but their behavior had changed significantly. So we were making a statement without making noise. And I was wondering, Lola, have you been part of these actions before? Do you have a history of actions that made you know that worship in the middle of a bank was going to be a powerful thing? I have been a part of actions before where that has happened, yes. But in this particular case, I think the security card, it was funny. I think he was a little bit on our side because he said, well, you know, you really can't sit here. And then he said, well, okay, we'll let you do this. And we set worship for about 15 minutes before the branch manager came over and said, if you don't leave, we will call the police. And we didn't leave. And so then he told the security guard to call the police. And the security guard took his time in doing that. He walked very slowly, and he took his time making it over to the phone. But I'm still wondering, Lola, why did you think that worship would be a positive thing? Have you had experience of violent, angry protests that work differently? Or was this just other people telling you that this is the way to act? I just don't think violence is part of my nature. I would never want to be a part of a demonstration or anything that included violence. So I've tended to stay away from violent demonstrations before. I mean, I need to know that it's a nonviolent action before I will actually participate. And have you been an activist in the past? Recently, it's been a new thing for me over the last five or six years. And what about you, Ingrid? Now, I happen to know you have some genetic influence going on here. There's this guy named George Lakey, who really is a paragon of action for many of us. He's been inspirational. I've interviewed him before for the Spirit and Action Show. Why do you believe that silent worship is a good thing to do as opposed to sending up fireworks in the lobby? I think part of it is that people have gotten pretty used to seeing people standing around with signs and like at a rally kind of thing or sort of standing around doing a protest. That's not an uncommon thing, particularly since Occupy, you know, around the country. Different communities had different experiences of the Occupy movement. I don't think actually just going somewhere and shouting a whole lot of stuff is particularly effective because it's very easy to get defensive around that and just shut it down and sort of say, if you're the person that's being targeted at, just getting into a defensive posture and sort of shutting yourself down to that person, you know, shutting your heart, shutting your mind, you know, being in a defensive posture. So I don't actually think that that's necessarily very effective. There may be times that that's effective, but for Earthquake or Action Team, there's a reason the cue, the Quaker, is a part of this. We actually have a tool available to us. Many people don't remember that except sort of on Sunday morning in worship or in specific kinds of Quaker contexts. But the reality is Quaker, meaning for worship, is always available to us and can be especially effective and powerful when it's not expected. So banks are places that there's an expectation of order. There's an expectation of sort of things put in exactly their place. Bankers like things done in a very certain particular way. Part of what we need to learn as a society at this point is that we can't actually do business as usual because climate change is here. We have to change lots of things in our personal lives. We have to change things on a corporate level. It just can't be business as usual anymore. So it's actually time for us to go and do unexpected things like sit in a circle on a bank lobby and have worship. I don't think that's all we need to do. But one of the reasons we really wanted to do that with this group of friends that has gathered from around the country at this time is that we're calling on an experience that all of these Quakers have in common. We all know how to worship. So we can call on this common experience and take it to an uncommon place and there's power in that. And as Lola said so well, people around you cannot ignore that silence when it's in that context. Even when it's in a different place or if we were in there just like sort of just chanting, people can tune that out. We're used to tuning out sound. It's amazing how hard it is to tune out silence when it's being held in the sacred way. I did a question popped into my mind. If a Quaker worships silently in a library, does anyone change? It would have a very different kind of effect, wouldn't it, right? I'm trying to think of what this scenario would be, but it would have a very different effect because silence is the expectation of a library. I mean, just even sitting on the floor of a bank is rather unexpected, you know, but then holding a sacred space is really unexpected. But my question is it's not only that you're being silent because there's people standing in line who are being silent. There's this thing called worship and from the outward aspect, people looking in. These people are protesters. These people are bringing moral witness into the bank, but they're not saying anything. What were the two of you, Lola and Ingrid? What were you doing when you were worshiping? Were you just listening to other people in the bank? Were you going inward? Do you remember what you were doing inwardly? Well, definitely I was trying to keep a centered presence, and one of the things I noticed to be quite frank is that music was playing. I don't think I ever worshiped before with music in the background, and I remember noticing that and thinking that that was kind of unusual. But there were some messages and meeting for worship, and some of them were very, very heartfelt about what the bank is doing, about what mountaintop removal call mining does, not only to the communities and to the environment, but to the earth itself. It's really horrific if you think about it. It's just we don't need the coal that bad. We just don't need it that much. But the worship itself was very, very sweet. I actually was playing a different role on that day, and I can get back to that, so I didn't get to have the experience of doing the worship yesterday. I have actually done that in other actions. But there were a couple of stories that I heard today that were very powerful. One was from someone who did make it into a branch and was sitting in worship, a woman who actually very last minute decided to join the action. She was sitting in silence and then felt moved to speak and shared about how her grandfather was actually, I think, the first investment banker for PNC Bank. She stood and said her grandfather would be embarrassed that PNC Bank is using the millions of dollars that he managed to make for PNC Bank. At that point, it was, I think, the provident. But it was his work that helped to make PNC Bank a wealthy bank and that they would then use that resource in this way. He would be embarrassed if he were still living. That's pretty powerful. Another person I ran into last night who has been an activist for a long time, has gone to many, many demonstrations and protests. We touched base and I asked him how it was. He said it was just so powerful to be sitting in this bank lobby. What he said is that he really centered and started thinking about the mountains. This is someone who loves the outdoors. He just thought about the mountains. Then he thought about the children in those communities and what it means to have your mountain blown up. And he wept. He wept. But what he said about the power of that worship space is that he left that action with hope. So instead of being sunk into spare, which so many of us feel despair around climate change, he was able to feel the sadness and the despair that is available and also feel that being able to take space where you're not wanted, being able to take that space and pray together had power and that gave him hope. So he his feeling was, I think this is important in terms of what PNC experiences, you know, it has an effect there. But he said, we have been changed by doing this work. We 200 Quakers who've been here today, we have been changed as well. And that's part of what earthquake action team is up to. That's part of what we're about. Did you have any sense that any non Quakers, just observers or something joined you that they got the message and became part of your witness? Oh, absolutely. And in so many ways. First of all, in the bank branch that I was in, there was a photojournalist that came by and she was just so amazed at what we were doing. But some of the people in the bank lobby gathered around where we were sitting in worship. And when we left the bank and we were walking towards the green garden, I think is what they call it in Pittsburgh, the big green wall that Ingrid was describing previously. People were asking us, what's going on? What's going on? And we were talking to them about mountaintop removal coal mining and they gathered with us at that PNC Plaza. And there were little children came by. I'll never forget this little girl. We were holding up the photograph of the red water coming out of the sink. And she was going, oh, oh, and I said, yeah, that's what some people's water is like. And she's five years old and she totally gets it. The other thing I thought was interesting is when we started writing in the chalk outside the plaza, how many people joined in on that from just off the street? This is fun. Now we had the chalks out. I mean, how often do you see grownups chalking on a sidewalk? And then because of what we were doing and this day and age and cell phones, people were taking out their cameras and taking pictures. And then they were taking selfies of themselves in front of the bank and all the chalk. And then they were joining in with us and drawing and getting pictures of their friends outside the bank. So that was really great. I think several people from the street. I don't know how many, but lots of people had lots of questions. And we talked to lots of people who got just as enthusiastic, motivated as we are. And, you know, many of them said, well, I have an account of PNC and we said, move your money. Well, definitely the vast majority of the folks who were part of the action and who like had intended to be part of the action were Quaker. There were definitely other allies who were part of it. I know that someone came from the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh. The Mullins family who lives in Appalachia who the father of this family was there. And he has come from, you know, generations of coal miners and I believe he was a coal miner himself. And they've turned into activists around ending mount top removal coal mining. So they joined us for the action and joined in to the worship. When we were here last October, the earthquake action team led the largest day of bank actions in U.S. history where we had 16 bank actions in one day. We did a similar thing where we had worship at all these different sites. And we actually had a number of people at that time who were not Quaker. And it was amazing how quickly they got it, what it is and how powerful. Again, and we had some families joining us who got into very deep worship and were so deeply moved at this approach. I think it does have something to do with, it's not just accessing the angry place. And by the way, I think actually anger is a hugely helpful emotion. I'm not anti anger at all. But if we only bring anger, there's only so far you can go. So when we can also bring love, which is is part of worship in my belief. Love is part of that. It helps us connect with each other. I mean, that's how it's most basic to me being able to open myself to love, you know, loving everyone around me and those I see and those I don't see. That is a very powerful place to be. So folks who've been sort of joining equate actions through over the last five years, Quaker and non Quaker have felt very, not just comfortable in silence, but deeply grateful for it when we can get it. I have my own experiences about that. Ingrid, I want to throw in later, but first I want to remind all our listeners out there in radio land and via the web that this is spirit and action. It is a northern spirit radio production on the web at northern spirit radio dot org. That's org as an organic not COM like in commercial on that website. You can find nine years of our programs for free listening and download. You can subscribe to RSS feed via that website. You can also get us via iTunes on that website. You also find links to organizations like earthquake or action team. That's E Q A T pronounced equate dot org. There are also organics not surprisingly on that site. You'll also find a place to leave comments. We love two way communication. So please when you visit site post a comment, let us know what you like what we need to be doing. What's important to you? There's also a donate button. You help us do this work with your donations. I want to remind you even more so though to support your local community radio station. They provide an invaluable slice of news and music that you get nowhere else on the American landscape. So start by supporting your local community radio stations with your wallet and with your hands. Again, we have two folks who are on the board of the earthquake or action team with us here today. Ingrid Lakey and Lola George. Both of them were part of an action just yesterday facing down PNC trying to lead them to their better angels of their nature to stop their investments in mountaintop removal. I've got a number of questions about that. But first I wanted to go to one part that you mentioned and then you didn't follow up on. You said the security guard in the one bank branch. He was Lolly Gagan his way to the phone to call the cops at the order of the branch manager. He wasn't doing it enthusiastically but he did call the cops. So did the cops show up and what happened? And do we have a lot more Quakers now serving time in jail? No, I think we decided we organized yesterday's action for no arrest. We had no intention of getting arrested yesterday. So when the police were called they did come and when the police came they asked us to leave and we did leave. No one was arrested. One thing that's important to know about this gathering of friends. It was about friends capital F and lowercase F. It was about 200 people who participated in this action and a lot of them were families. So we ranged in age from 4 to 85 years old. Huge range. Which was one of the most beautiful things. We had I think it was about 50 high schoolers participating in this. We had a whole group of middle schoolers participating in this. We had a bunch of children on mom and dad's shoulders at this action. That's not the kind of action you designed that includes risking arrest in our view. So we were really making clear that what we were there to do was to go have meeting for worship. We weren't there to disrupt business. We weren't there to shut down a bank. We weren't doing any kind of blockade. We have done those things but that was not what yesterday was about. Yesterday was really about inviting friends from around the country who have come together around this idea that let love be the first motion. That's the theme of this week of Friends General Conference Gathering. We wanted to invite those friends to have another experience of love and motion. And that's worshiping in a bank. And I think we were successful. I want to ask a little bit more about PNC Bank. You said that they describe themselves as a green bank or the greenest bank even was the phrase. In what way are they green? Do they deserve this name or is this just fiction that they're purving to the public? Well PNC right now is building a new tower headquarters down at the Plaza. And outside that tower headquarters they have a big sign that says the greenest sky rise in the world. And they tout it with solar energy and all kinds of other things. But our point is that the greenest skyline in the world includes mountaintops. And that's very important. So I think they're talking out of two sides of their mouth. They're doing one thing and trying to build themselves as the greenest bank. But then on the other hand they're investing in these really destructive practices. I just want to add that a couple of things that when we started this campaign they were calling themselves the greenest bank in the business. They no longer say that. In fact now you have to actually kind of search for that kind of language. So they've really pulled back on promoting themselves that way. So now they get much more specific and say things like we're committed to green building design. So one of the things that they've done is their branches or their buildings have been some of them I think lead certified or are pretty low environmental carbon footprint for their building. So great. But as Lola said you can't really be saying like whoa we have you know a really great low carbon footprint for our building. But we just help blow up two mountains that they don't really equal out. Along those lines I just want to mention that a couple of years ago earthquake or action team has also been going to the PNC shareholder meetings over the past several years. And two years ago the shareholder meeting was held in Pittsburgh and we were there. There was also a shareholder resolution that was put forward by another group actually social responsible investment firm called Boston Common Asset Management. They put forward this resolution that was to get PNC to not just count the carbon footprint of their buildings but also the carbon produced by their investments. This was actually historical historic shareholder resolution because the SEC the Security Exchange Commission required that they bring it to their shareholders. They didn't want to and sometimes they don't have to bring shareholder resolutions forward and especially ones that are kind of around climate or environmental stuff. The SEC said no actually you have to bring this one forward because climate change the effect of climate change now needs to be considered by investors. We have to see this as a business investment issue. We have to start counting that in the risk. So this was a pretty big deal. It did get voted down. It was not approved. This year was put forward again again got voted down. But it's interesting that we're working on several levels. There's like the insider track of doing shareholder resolutions which actually even got started because somebody from Boston Common Asset Management read about an earthquake or action team action. And thought oh well we have a way at this issue too. So there are people who kind of work at it in different ways but earthquake or action team has decided our way at this is going to be through nonviolent direct action. I've been interested in what's been going on at the shareholder meetings for PNC last night when Eileen Flanagan was speaking. She said some pretty powerful things about what's happening. The last couple years my understanding is that the presence of earthquake or action team at those shareholder meetings has led to record rapidly done business. Could you share or give us a thumbnail sketch of what Eileen talked about and I assume you were part of Lola. So the shareholder two years ago at the shareholders meeting they shut down because earthquake or action team was there. They shut the meeting down in 17 minutes. So this year they decided to move their shareholders meeting to Florida, the state of Florida. And that's because in the state of Florida it's illegal to interrupt a meeting. So they move their shareholders meeting to Tampa. I'm a known to PNC Bank. We have a large number of young people that are involved in equate that aren't from Florida. Those young people once we found out the meeting was moved to Tampa, several equate action team members and I was not one of them went down to Tampa to the meeting. And because we had shareholder cards we could get in or so we thought they all wore t-shirts that said we're praying for PNC and then over those t-shirts there were business jackets. Due to a technicality about the shares and how they were purchased in PNC Eileen was the only one who was able to actually get into the meeting. And then she didn't know what she was going to do at first. And so she decided when the time was right and I don't think it took her very long to decide to just stand up, take off her jacket, have her t-shirt on that was said she was praying for PNC Bank and to stand in silence and in prayer at the bank. She did do that and very quickly the bank shut down the shareholders meeting. In fact the meeting only lasted 15 minutes which was two minutes shorter than the prior year. And that was because Eileen was standing there and bearing witness and not just praying for the mountains but praying for the people PNC who are making the decisions. And you mentioned Lola that there were some folks down there in Florida who were joining in on this. When Eileen mentioned that they happened to be holding this meeting in the only other place where there was a group of people just begging to be part of this. And I think earlier Ingrid said that it's now a national movement. It used to be center right out of Philadelphia that is to say earthquake or action team. And now it looks like you've got a branch done in Florida. Who were the people who were asking you to come down there and to be part of the earthquake or action team work? Well there was one student I think she's a middle school student who was so moved by what earthquake or action team was doing. She actually went to her meeting and got a minute of service to support her and her work with earthquake or action team. And she was the one that helped convince some of her friends and some of the members of her meeting to get involved. Now they closed down these shareholder meetings in record time, 17 minutes, 15 minutes, and I presume they usually go far longer than that. The question is, what were you doing that was so disruptive? You said that in the second case, whereas only 15 minutes, Eileen was standing there in silent prayer with a t-shirt on. And that was it. And that's so frightened them. Is that kind of thing that happened in the first meeting? Yes, it is the kind of thing, but I don't think it frightened them so much as they didn't want to deal with the earthquake or action team or deal with the issues that we're trying to bring to their attention. So instead of talking with us or having us participate in the process, they chose to stop the meeting so that we could not participate, even though some people are shareholders in PNC for exactly this reason to be able to participate in the shareholder meetings. I get totally that mountaintop removal. We want to stop it. I mean, this is perhaps maybe the worst way they could do it. Other than fracking, I suppose, which is the other horrible alternative. What is the alternative that PNC could be supporting? What should they be doing with this money? What should they be lending it to? Could they give it to the coal miners? You mentioned that there was one person who was a coal miner who's part of your action. Is OK to support coal as energy? Well, that's a big question. I think the answer to that is we can't necessarily afford to continue to use coal the way we're using it on a global scale, let alone on a national scale. So the investment that we would hope PNC would be making would be in renewable energies, investing in companies that are doing solar technology or wind technology or some of the new technologies that are out there. It seems to us that a long-term viable investment strategy. So this is kind of my thing. I think companies are spending too much time looking at short-term profits instead of looking at long-term corporate viability. And if they actually really did look at their long-term corporate viability, they would recognize that coal is a short-term option. And so we would prefer to see them investing in these more long-term energies that are going to really help us with the planet and address these issues in the long run, in 50 years, 40 years, 30 years. So your idea is about investment. Is this something that Lola George has because she is the treasurer and she's dealing with the finances for earthquake or action team and because you're the director of finance for Pendle Hill Retreat Center, finances your expertise in some way? Are you bookkeeper? Do you have a master's in finance for all I know? I have no idea, Lola. I do have an MBA from Penn State, yes. I also have another master's degree in pastoral care and counseling, so I have two of them. But in any event, yes, finance and nonprofit financial management has been my career for 30 years. I think when you talked about investments, I think it's important for us to think about where do we invest? And when I use just the truncated form of that word invest, I really mean that. How do we invest in each other? How do we invest in our meetings and our meeting members? How does God invest in us? You know, these ideas of investment are very important when we're talking about time and treasure and talent of people. And to make an investment in my mind, you should really be looking at the long term and not the short term. I'm impressed to hear this side of you, Lola, which I hadn't known before. You said you hadn't been an activist before, that there's something about this issue I think that has propelled you forward. Or maybe it's the vehicle for this issue, the earthquake or action team. What is it? Why haven't you been involved before? I'm just so captivated by the idea of a person who is carrying equal parts concerned for finances and concerned for spirit and seeing them both in the same view. There are an awful lot of activists who would rather just ignore the financial implications of their actions. Well, I really think that where we spend our money, how we use our money, reflects our values. And in reflecting our values, for me personally, a lot of Quakers like to talk about the word integrity. That doesn't really work for me. I like more authenticity as a word, and that's part of who I am. But to be our truly authentic selves, we need to deal with the hypocrisy of doing one thing and espousing another. And so when we're talking about that in our own personal lives, in the lives of our meeting, in the lives of the greater Quaker Fellowship in the world, there's so much that we're doing that's incongruent there. And that's part of why it's important for me that both sides be melded. It's not just about making money. It's not just about investment, but it is about what you invest in and how you do it. It's not just to make money. I think it's like I said before. It's the long-term viability. I think so much of one of the reasons why we're in such tough financial situations today is because many, many people are making these decisions just looking at short-term profits. And did that have anything to do with why you got involved on this issue? I wanted to do something in relation to the climate and be involved in climate change. And quite frankly, I wanted to do something instead of sitting around talking about it. You know, this is Earth Quaker action team. What drew me to it is the word action. I wanted to get a little bit more of your perspective, Ingrid. And that is because, you know, Lola, with an MBA, she has a perspective that can look at a bank and understand how their investments are working. I don't think your background is financial. No, no, no. And I'm not even sure you can balance your checkbook. I didn't want to call it on national radio. But I did want to get your perspective of why you're involved in this, what talents perspective you bring to talking to a bank about telling them they should invest their money elsewhere. Well, first of all, I had a PNC account. So the way I actually got involved here is that five years ago, I had a baby. So I had been able to work it out that I could take some time off when I had my child. I was sort of in the midst of a career shift. And I had a PNC account because I had actually been employed at the University of Pennsylvania, and their sort of their bank was PNC. So I just sort of had a PNC account. So when my daughter Ella was about five weeks old, I went to a meeting that was sort of this group that was starting to form around concerns around climate change and what could we do, what could be a campaign. So one evening, we decided to get together and watch a movie called Cold Country, which is a movie about mount top removal coal mining and what's happening in Appalachia, which honestly, I didn't know about. I don't think of myself as somebody who is clueless about such things, but I actually really didn't know about mount top removal coal mining, and I was astonished. And I'm sitting there watching it with my very new child, and one of the stories that just changed everything for me was hearing a mom in this film talking about when she in the evening puts her child in the bubble bath. She has to worry about the fact there might be arsenic in that water. And I thought, I don't have to worry about that in Philadelphia. Our water might not taste great, but it's actually really clean. I don't actually have to worry about there being poison in the water that I bathe my baby in, much less try to drink. And I thought, how can this be happening in America at this time? You know, we sometimes can think, "Oh, maybe that happens other places." But this is happening actually not all that far away from me. PNC is funding it. I have a PNC account. I have this new baby. I don't have a job. I need to figure out some way to get involved here. And so I ended up being part of the group that founded Earthquake Action Team. And it's been an incredible gift in my life, and I think it's been a really good match actually with my skills. I certainly do not bring an NBA to the table, but I do bring a lot of other kinds of experiences, including sort of a lifetime of being part of activist stuff. And I also have a certain kind of warrior spirit that is handy. I'm not actually someone who's afraid of conflict, and that is also a gift in this particular kind of work. And you also have the skill that you're a beautiful singer, and people should tune in and listen to my song of the soul interview with Ingrid, and then Jonathan Snipes as well, about Tribe 1. So just search Tribe 1 on the NortonSpiritRadio.org website. I just want to actually add, since you just mentioned singing, music is a huge part of what we do. I mean, as you've been hearing us talk, maybe you think all we do is go and sit in silence all the time. We actually sing a huge amount of the time, even in our general meetings in Philadelphia, or in our board meetings, or certainly at our actions, singing is a very big part of what we do. And last year, when we were here for a big national gathering called PowerShift, which is a gathering of college-age students doing environmental justice work, we led this massive action. And we were singing it. The final action of that day was at a branch where seven folks got arrested for not leaving and actually having a very powerful, quicker meeting for worship. And they were arrested. As they were brought out through the back of the building, we all knew that's where they were going, so the big crowd went to kind of sing to the folks who had gotten arrested as they were taken out. My dad was among them. And so as they were being led out and taken to the police fans, we were singing to them. And we sang, I don't even remember what song, but we were singing, and it was a very spirit-filled time of singing, and we were singing as we were waiting for them. And as people were being loaded onto the police fans, there was a young man who fell to his knees crying. And so I went over to him, along with another weight leader, and we just knelt down next to him to see if he was okay. We didn't know what was going on. So we just went to check in with him, and slowly he sort of was able to start breathing a little more regularly, and he stood up, and we said, "What's going on for you?" And he said, "I've never sung before." And he said, "I feel cracked open." And I don't think he meant like he'd never sung "Happy Birthday" before, but he had never sung before. And so this was a huge moment where his heart was cracked open by this experience of singing in community that was full of hope, as seven people are being led into police fans. That was really powerful, and that's part of what I think the earthquake action team has to offer right now. Ingrid, you just used the word "hope." You're feeling hope in these actions, which is not often the response you have. You feel beleaguered, people are hauled away, you're closed out, people didn't rise up altogether, but you're walking away with hope. How big is the hope that PNC will see the light and will turn towards the light? I have huge hope, and I think it's a matter of time. There are other banks, actually, JP Morgan Chase is the most recent, that are actually making much stronger policies around mountaintop removal coal mining. So I think actually the banks are starting to figure out that it's a losing game. So other banks are changing their policies, because I think they're realizing the risks of investing in mountaintop removal coal mining are just not worth it. I think the number at this point is something like of the coal that is taken out of the earth in America, 7% of is mountaintop removal coal. So it's not even like we rely as a nation on coal from mountaintop removal. We really don't. It's a very small percentage. They could easily stop doing that, and it wouldn't devastate the country. It wouldn't even devastate the coal industry. So I think it's just going to need to be riskier and riskier, and PNC is going to finally say, "You know what? It's just not worth it." The other thing is, at most, there's like 20 years, I think it's closer to 15 years of mineable coal left in Appalachia. This is a big deal. So by the time my daughter is 20, there is no mineable coal left in Appalachia. What is going to happen to Appalachia, to the places where they're doing coal mining, where that's been the only industry? What happens to the people now that their mountains are blown up, now that their natural resources are taken away and they're left with pollution? What happens to those communities? So PNC could actually say, "Let's invest in a sustainable economy that's also a sustainable, environmentally sustainable." And that's our challenge to PNC. It's not just cut and run from mountaintop removal and leave Appalachia. It's, "How about investing in Appalachia?" And there could be some significant gains if they were to do that. I'm really glad to hear that piece. I was wondering about it because when you were speaking earlier, Ingrid, you were talking about loving those around you as you're doing these actions. And I was aware that mainly you're giving them the negative message about mountaintop removal, but you're not saying to them, "Here, I'm glad you're investing in this. I'm glad you're investing in this." And maybe they can swallow the message more easily if it was mixed with, "Yes, you're doing this." "Well, sorry you're screwing up on this. We'd like you to get straight A's on your report card." Something like that. One of our actions actually a couple of years ago, this was in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia headquarters, we actually went in and built two windmills in their lobby. As a suggestion of, "Hey PNC, here's an idea. You could actually invest in renewable energy instead of blowing up mountains. How about putting some windmills on the mountains?" There's wind up there. How about working on that, which actually has long-term jobs. When you take off the mountaintop, it's no longer effective to put a windmill up there. So that was one of our actions of saying, "Actually, let's invest in jobs. Let's invest in renewable energy here. You could make that choice. Here's one option of wind." And at that action, actually, five of our friends were arrested at that. We called them the windmill five. And they were arrested for building windmills and not leaving until they wanted to talk to the head of PNC, the Philadelphia region. It's wonderful to hear both what you've done and where you're going. I sense a firm resolve that will not be stopped. We shall not be moved. I'm just looking really forward to hearing the future of the earthquake or action team. Again, EQAT pronounced equate, EQAT.org. You'll find more about them. And I'm so thankful to both of you, Ingrid and Lola, for joining me today for Spirit in Action. Thank you so much for having us, Mark. Yes, thank you. That was Ingrid Leikey and Lola George of the earthquake or action team, two of the resolute, steadfast workers of that group. And in honor of Ingrid and Lola and all of the dedicated strivers for our world, we'll close out today's show with a song by an absolutely wonderful singer-songwriter, Carrie Newcomer. So we'll see you next week for Spirit in Action. Here's Carrie Newcomer in her song, "I'm Still Standing." Across this town, standing up on a solid ground. Voices carry to tell the tale. Rising up in one great voice in one great way. I will not be ashamed, walk away, shift the blame. I'm right here inside my shoes, saying I will not be moved. I'm still standing. Let's get this straight, let's make this appear. I'm still standing, I'm still standing here. I will share the dollar for every time that you were caught in. Another life is so damn sure you have no doubt that I am said and done and I'm down for the count. I will not be ashamed, walk away, shift the blame. I'm right here inside my shoes, saying I will not be moved. I'm still standing. Let's get this straight, let's make this appear. I'm still standing, I'm still standing here. And I don't care if I'm a fan who don't matter, I'm still standing. This is proofless and taught. I'm stronger than you thought. I'm still standing, I'm still standing here. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world alone. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world alone. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. [MUSIC PLAYING]
Ingrid Lakey and Lola Georg are board members of Earth Quaker Action Team, doing their bit to fight Climate Change, featuring their campaign to get PNC Bank to eliminate its investments in mountain-top removal.