SEAC-pronounced "seek," as in "seeking" -is a student and youth run national network of progressive organizations and individuals whose aim is to uproot environmental injustices through action and education. We define the environment to include the physical, economic, political, and cultural conditions in which we live. By challenging the power structure which threatens these conditions, students in SEAC work to create progressive social change on both the local and global levels.
SEAC's history began in
the spring of 1988, when students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill placed a notice in Greenpeace Magazine asking to hear from
student environmentalists interested in forming a network. Since then, through campaigns,
conferences and a lot of hard work, SEAC has grown to hundreds of junior high school, high school
college, and community groups throughout the United States and Canada.
In the last year, SEAC has been working on the following:
SEAC was a huge part of making last March's Mountain Justice Spring Break happen. One of the most powerful things that happened at MJSB was a protest where youths stood with, learned from, and were arrested beside people living with mountaintop coal removal demanding justice in West Virginia. www.mjsb.org
SEAC played a key role mobilizing youths during the No Coal Days of Action where thousands of young people exposed Citibank's and Bank of America's support of destructive coal companies.
SEAC was a major mobilizing force in October for the No War No Warming action that shut down Capitol Hill. More than 25 students were arrested for blockading independence avenue while demanding an end to war and global warming.
A SEACer in Shepherdstown, WV was successful in winning an election onto the town council and played a huge role in fighting gentrification as well as signing the town onto the US Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement
As SEAC and the movement has grown, so has the list of success stories:
In the first six years of SEAC, SEAC groups started recycling programs at over 200 high schools
and college campuses across the country.
In the spring of 1994, SEAC activists forced Pitt and Michigan State to withdraw from
the Mt. Graham telescope project in Arizona, which threatens endangered red squirrel habitat
and sacred Apache land.
New York SEAC united over 120 schools in 1992 to stop the construction of Hydro Quebec II,
a dam in Canada that threatened to flood an area the size of Connecticut and destroy the
homeland of the indigenous Cree Nation.
Before the 1992 Earth Summit, SEAC co-founded an international network to articulate the
voice of youth to this historic meeting. The network grew to include over 65 countries.
Recent Actions of SEACers!
In fall 2002, in Kentucky, Berea HEAL and several other local groups celebrated a dramatic milestone in a very long debate over chemical weapons disposal when the Pentagon released a memorandum stating that neutralization and supercritical water oxidation -- not incineration -- is its preferred recommended technology for destruction of chemical weapons stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot.
Out in Oregon, Lewis & Clark SEED passed a resolution with an 83% majority vote at Lewis and Clark to raise student fees by $10 to pay for a transition to greener energy.
Down in Florida, Miami-Dade Community College Student Organization for Animal Rights promoted awareness of a ballot initiative to help the dire situation of factory-farmed pigs, the first initiative of its kind nationwide, which was passed!
Up at the University of Wisconsin at Madison Greens 180/MDE organized resistance to the National Mayors' Conference and put together Madison's annual Earth Day to May Day Festival, which brought Frances Moore Lappe, Kevin Danaher, Dana Lyons, and Road Rage (anti-GMO road show) to campus to compliment the Labor Sing-a-Long, the TV smash, a fair trade conference, an Agracetus (a Monsanto subsidiary) protest, and other entertainment and educational events.
More than 35 SEAC groups took direct action in a two-year campaign targeting Staples, the world's largest office supply store. Finally, on November 13, 2002, the company announced a commitment to phase out paper products originating from endangered forests and dramatically increase its sale of recycled paper products!
Join the Movement
What makes SEAC unique is that it is led and supported by its members. By
joining SEAC, you step to
the forefront of a powerful movement for change where as youth, we speak for ourselves.
Although environmental destruction grows and injustice thrives on a large scale, these problems
are finding their match in the energy of students and youth willing to fight for their future.
Directing this energy, organizing those eager to fight, and empowering this generation to secure
a healthy planet today, and tomorrow-these are ambitious, but essential, goals to which SEAC aspires.
And we expect to succeed.
