Dear friends,

Despite recurring episodes of dealing with fascism, we’re still fighting fossil fuels. Sometimes that looks like disrupting NEPOOL, the body that allows oil and gas corporations to retain their disproportionate hold on New England’s electric grid. We come up against them a couple times a year. Usually, they seem as baffled by the things we do as they would be if they were joined mid-meeting by a troupe of opinionated juggling raccoons. We’ve been pestering them for a while now, but the stage for our current dynamic was largely set in summer 2024. I hope you enjoy the tale!

On June 26, 2024, I got engaged at Bretton Woods. 

So, Bretton Woods is an absurdly expensive resort in NH at the foot of Mount Washington – think 27-hole golf course, shining silver lobster trays, spotless carpets and orchid vases. The hotel was the founding location of the World Bank and IMF, and is the fanciest place I’ve ever been. Not a place I’d usually find myself, much less end up proposing at. But anyway, here is what happened: 

In June, the New England grid stakeholder process (otherwise known as NEPOOL) held its annual in-person retreat at the Bretton Woods Hotel. NEPOOL is the secretive alliance of businesses that controls the New England Grid, shaping grid operator ISO New England’s policies though a series of closed industry-insider meetings. For the past several years, the Climate Disobedience Center has been working with No Coal No Gas to pressure NEPOOL and ISO New England to cease their funding of fossil fuel power plants. This past spring, we submitted dozens of comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) opposing ISO’s role in propping up otherwise defunct oil and gas generators. In response, FERC told us to take our concerns to NEPOOL. 

So we did. Over the three days of the retreat, we were a constant presence haunting the hotel. We handed out flyers before meetings, filled ornate hallways with our conspicuous activist shirts, and peered through conference room windows into secret proceedings. We even showed up at the evening NEPOOL lobster bake with our own tupperware dinner and costume lobster claws. Sure, we were kept out of the banquet by security but the facial expression of our grid operators as they walked by our cheerful picnic were priceless. Think a mixture of confusion and discomfort and curiosity, and an occasional deep yearning for our type of community. (My partner Julie was the one rocking the lobster claws most of the time, and watching that wacky power move made me laugh so hard.)

By the second day, we had caused enough chaos to earn a meeting with the leaders of NEPOOL. We selected Marla as our collective representative – she is uniquely talented at explaining movement power to regulators in language they can understand, simultaneously managing to connect with them, rattle them, and establish activists as a serious challenge, relatable and caring community, and respectable threat. But her meeting wouldn’t take place until the next evening, and we weren’t finished with our antics yet. 

The next morning, it was time for the annual NEPOOL golf tournament. While electricity prices skyrocketed and Vermont braced for devastating floods, grid regulators and corporate representatives took to the Bretton Woods green for several hours of camaraderie and golf. Meanwhile, several teams of mischief makers hid in the nearby woods, ready with gifts of sassy poems and packets of coal. I spent the morning hiding in a tree as a lookout, signaling to my partner whenever the coast was clear. Between competitors, they’d run out onto the green and fill the hole with goody bags and loose change. The next few hours were a silly fever dream – clinging to the pine bark as power plant employees zipped by in golf carts, laughing about the stock market. My partner lay on their stomach in the tall grass, a bag of presents in their hands and their socks knit with burrs. Eventually, after a particularly large party of industry folks found a pile of zines in their hole, we got the alert. “Security is looking for you. They want to kick you out of the hotel. Go, go!” I dropped from the tree and we ran into the woods. 

For the next sixish hours, my partner Julie and I hid in the swamp at the base of Mt. Washington, slowly circumnavigating the golf course on the way back to the hotel. At times, the golfers were less than 40 feet from us, fully hidden by a thick curtain of briars and shrub. Out on the paths, security swerved around with their golf carts and walkie talkies, radioing about us. We could go back out onto the course, but that would mean a quick escort to the exit, and Marla still had a meeting later! So instead we sloshed through puddles of ferns, scrambled over downed logs whacked through blackberry vines and dense sticks. Along the way, we texted with the other team (who had made it back to the hotel unscathed), took pictures of mushrooms, and ate handfuls of trail mix. And it was beautiful. Throwing distance from the golf course was another world – one of golden spiderwebs and mossy trees, of sunlit mushrooms and golden leaves. I remember thinking we had entered fairyland. Julie and I laughed and joked about all the other times we’d run through mud together, hidden in the woods from officers or been kicked out of events. And I remember thinking I want to do this forever. 

There are certainly a lot of people who have gotten engaged at Bretton Woods, or been married there. From what we heard from folks at the resort, it’s somewhat of a tradition in certain wealthy New England circles. I’ve been reassured, however, that no one else has proposed while hiding from security in a hemlock grove, standing on a mushroom log covered in sticks and dirt and mud and a bit of blood. But that’s what happened! (Julie said yes). So we spent the next few hours of bushwhacking planning our wedding – it’ll be a direct action of course, whenever is strategic. What’s a better excuse for obstructing something than “oh sorry this is our wedding venue?” And what are better registry items than walkie talkies, a megaphone, and some hi-vis vests? I’m so grateful to have someone who will do schemes with me, and who, after getting engaged was then willing to hike for several more hours, intercept the CEO of the New England grid operator and his wife on the resort footpath, run from some vigilante golfers, traverse a cliff, ford a river, and climb up roadhead where our friends could rescue us. It was a great adventure! 

After our teammates managed to smuggle us (soaking wet and covered in bruises) back to the hotel room, we heard from Marla, who had just finished her incredibly successful meeting with the leaders of NEPOOL. While we were causing ruckus in the woods, she had expertly informed NEPOOL of our strategic goals, organizing priorities, and movement power approach. She explained to them that the “runway for escalation with NEPOOL is extremely long,” and that while we don’t intend to cause disruption without a strategic purpose, the days of grid management as an insider-only club are over. During her meeting and subsequent conversations, she gathered incredible intel, established alliances with some of the friendlier NEPOOL constituents and industry reporters, and spread campaign messaging to a much wider audience. That night, we held a celebration dinner on the hotel porch, just outside of the NEPOOL closing banquet. I think our cozy gathering was a beacon to some of the more community-minded NEPOOL attendees – representatives of end user (ratepayer) groups kept coming over to talk with us! The next morning, we supported some of our CLG representatives in their own meetings with NEPOOL officials, before dropping a banner at the hotel entrance that read “FERC sent us.” Overall, a very strategically successful weekend, and a lot of fun!

I wanted to tell you all this story because it captures the elements of CDC work that are most important to me. The accomplishments of NEPOOL week would not have been possible without Marla’s communication and negotiation powers, and the strategic vision and messaging held by her and the rest of our ISO working group. They also wouldn’t have been possible without a ragtag group of (mostly trans) miscreants who were more than delighted to play pranks in the woods. This combination of ungovernable mischief and incisive strategy is what makes our work so powerful and dangerous to the status quo. 

Most of all, this work wouldn’t be possible without deep relationships, without the connections of love and trust that allow us to take risks and be brave, to do wild things like run from security or get engaged in a swamp. The entirety of NEPOOL week, whether someone was meeting with the grid operators or tying a banner to a guard rail or doing emergency pick up at a trail head, we all knew that we had each others’ backs. I’m so grateful for everyone I’ve come to know through our work at the CDC – our community members are the best people I’ve ever known, and a special type of chosen family. And yes, some of them will probably get arrested at my wedding.