* Hi res, rights free photos available at Flickr.com/powervote*
Power Vote Brings Some Green to the Vice Presidential Debate Today
Area students put clean energy, green jobs on the agenda in St Louis
ST LOUIS, MO– For the Vice Presidential debate, Washington University's campus will be a sea of green as over forty Power Vote student volunteers demand a bold new vision for our nation’s future. Power Vote, a youth-led nonpartisan initiative is working to energize one million young people voting for clean energy, green jobs creation, and solutions to the climate crisis in the 2008 election.
Starting at 5:30 a.m. today, Wash U Power Vote student leaders will be roving the campus with twenty windmills, each approximately 9 feet tall, holding rallies, and talking to other young voters with the goal of getting 1,000 new Power Vote pledges today.
"Our group here in St Louis represents hundreds of thousands of other young voters around the country who will be watching the debate tonight, voting on November 4, and demanding real political leadership on clean energy and green job creation," said Melissa Legge, a junior at Washington University and leader of Green Action, the campus group that is running Power Vote.
After a long day of pledge collections and impromptu Power Vote windmill installations on campus, the Wash U students will hold a 6 p.m. rally outside the Danforth University Center, and then march to the "Public Viewing Area" to meet Power Vote student leaders who have come from all over Southern Illinois to demonstrate their support for clean energy. The whole Power Vote crew will then head to the Rock the Vote debate viewing party at Pageant Hotel.
The Power Vote windmill tour started last week in Oxford, MS at the first Presidential debate as a visual representation of the clean energy future young voters demand. Between each debate, the Power Vote Presidential Tour Bus will be stopping at college campuses to mobilize students to take the “Power Vote Pledge” to “vote for clean and just energy.”
“Our landscape ought to be dotted with wind turbines and solar installations instead of coal and nuclear facilities,” asserts Jessy Tolkan, Director of the Energy Action Coalition's Power Vote campaign. “These windmills are a monument to the clean and just energy future that youth deserve and demand.”
Power Vote is a project of the youth-led Energy Action Coalition. The Coalition and its more than forty partner organizations are supporting hundreds of local Power Vote efforts on campuses and in communities across the country. On the eve of the first scheduled Presidential debate, over 180,000 young voters have already taken the Power Vote Pledge.
“Young people are already successfully fighting for a clean energy future on their campuses and in their communities,” says Reagan Richmond, a Power Vote student leader at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. “We need an economy that moves us beyond dirty energy, creates green jobs for all, and secures our climate. As we head to the polls in record numbers this November, that’s what we’ll be voting for.”
For more information, contact Brianna Cayo Cotter at 415.305.1943 and visit PowerVote.org.
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