During the spring semester of 2014, students occupied the steps of Brookings for 17 days around the clock in protest of Washington University’s direct connection to Peabody Energy Corporation. Peabody - the largest private sector coal company in the world, has been headquartered in downtown St. Louis since 1955. Over this time it has been the target of many, many, nationwide and international protest campaigns over its human rights violations, occupation of indigenous communities, exploitation of labor,
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contribution to climate change and destruction of the environment. The list goes on. Meanwhile, Peabody’s CEO, Greg Boyce,
sits on WashU’s board of trustees and makes financial and development
decisions for the university. Student resistance to Peabody is as old
as Boyce’s tenure on the board and the adjoining creation of the
Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization created by WashU in 2008.
Students Against Peabody formed at the start of the 2014 sit-in, and was the one of the largest sustained direct actions organized by WUSTL students in many years. Below is a short history of some SAP’s actions and events.
Students Against Peabody formed at the start of the 2014 sit-in, and was the one of the largest sustained direct actions organized by WUSTL students in many years. Below is a short history of some SAP’s actions and events.
- Direct action training facilitated by MORE prepares a group of students to take Brookings and occupy steps outside of administrative offices.
- April 9th: Occupation of Brookings steps starts. 30-40 students march with anti-Peabody banners and signs to Brookings, then gather for speeches and chants. Later, they set up tents and sleeping supplies.
- Teach-ins around Peabody coal and strategy sessions are held multiple times daily. First set of demands for the university are drafted.
- Students ask for a meeting with the Chancellor and stage a student rally to publicly reveal demands.
- April 12th: A 5-person student delegation meets with the Chancellor, demanding the removal of Greg Boyce from the board and the Chancellor to attend community-led tours of Black Mesa and Rocky Branch (two Peabody extraction zones) and issue a public statement. Students walk out of the meeting when Chancellor Wrighton said, “I could, but I won’t” when asked if he has the power to take a stand on the University’s relationship with Peabody.
- The day after Saline County officials voted to hand over Rocky Branch Road to Peabody, thereby expanding their mining operations, students at WashU and SIU Carbondale took direct action using tactics like blocking roads in solidarity with community members from Rocky Branch.
- Students call out Chancellor Wrighton’s response to St. Louis NAACP president’s letter of support for SAP as condescending and offensive, noting our university’s inability to recognize or speak to the injustices inflicted upon communities of color.
- SAP, still occupying Brookings, organizes community rally with 100+ attendance including speakers from Show Me $15, Labadie Environmental Organization, residents of Rocky Branch, IL, and a WashU faculty member.
- SAP works with student poet and indigenous support groups in Black Mesa, Arizona, honoring 40 years of resistance in the making of a video about Peabody’s coal extraction in Black Mesa. Video goes viral via Upworthy. (https://vimeo.com/92741169)
- In final negotiations with Provost Thorp, Chancellor Wrighton and Rob Wild, WUSTL administration rejects all demands. Having previously conceded to visit one extraction site—the rural white community of Rocky Branch, IL—the Chancellor, when pressed to visit the indigenous community of Black Mesa, declined all invitations.
- Students end occupation in a massive banner drop from Brookings, transitioning focus to upcoming Board of Trustees meeting on May 2nd.
- MORE facilitates direct action training and planning session for SAP organizers and participants.
- May 2nd: SAP hosts rally where 100 students march from Mudd Field to Board of Trustees meeting to deliver a letter of resignation to Peabody CEO, Greg Boyce. Upon being barred from entering, students blockade door. Police bring riot gear into the building. Administration orders WUPD, STL County and STL City police to arrest 7 students. Students are charged with trespassing on their own campus and disturbing the peace.
- May 8th: Marshall Johnson, Black Mesa resident, travels to St. Louis to meet student and community anti-Peabody organizers. Johnson and Rocky Branch residents attempt to enter Peabody shareholders meeting and are shuttled into secondary “overflow room” to limit them from publicly voicing grievances. After leaving, 11 other STL community members are arrested for trespassing in protest on the curb of the Ritz-Carlton, where the meeting was held.
- Students visit Rocky Branch IL in April 2015, witnessing impacts of Peabody coal extraction and the expansion of a strip mine alongside many resident’s homes. Hearing about resistance efforts there, SAP revives for a month. Students create a political satire campaign around Chancellor Wrighton’s refusal to visit even Rocky Branch to generate energy around upcoming vote for re-election of Peabody CEO Greg Boyce to WUSTL Board of Trustees.
- SAP organizes alumni call-in to Board of Trustees members to ask them to stop re-election of Boyce.
- Partnering with prison abolition organization, Decarcerate STL, students host a direct action at Board of Trustees Ritz-Carlton cocktail hour, demanding the removal of St. Louis power elites Greg Boyce and Andrew Taylor (of Enterprise Holdings, director of private prison commissary and communication service company Keefe Group).
- At the Spring 2015 Board of Trustees meeting, a few students flyering at the North entrance of the Knight center are met with police who react to student flyering by carrying in riot gear, setting up barrier fencing and calling in backup.
- In response to the re-election of Boyce, the 2015 commencement disorientation guide is created.
Participation on the Students Against Peabody planning committee trained 40+ students in mobilizing over 2000 members of the WUSTL community to rallies and events. Petition signatures gathered totaled 680, including 30 faculty members’ public signatures of support. Students Against Peabody attracted media attention further emphasizing frontline resistance to Peabody in 66 articles including media outlets such as the New York Times, Huffington Post, Upworthy, and Rolling Stone. Online videos have 15,000+ views as off August 2015.
SAP strove to encourage accountability and strength in its organizing structure through building a leadership base of students working in tandem with Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment as well as residents and organizers of frontline communities in St. Louis, Rocky Branch, Illinois and Black Mesa, Arizona. SAP attempted to emphasize the effect of Peabody’s actions of low income communities and communities of color, and actively resisted falling into a whitewashed environmentalist approach to change - taking the stance that a just transition or divestment from fossil fuels couldn’t happen at WUSTL without removing the corporate stronghold over education.
Student protests are often testing grounds for newly politicized young activists; WashU and St. Louis have not seen the kind of Ferguson Uprising political moment currently happening in this city in many years, and for the WUSTL student body, SAP conducted and organized a radical campaign within a campus that had little recent experience with direct action. Many students—who have gone on to organize beyond Brookings—grew through lessons learned in SAP organizing and actions; developing working commitments to being held accountable when standing up for justice were central to this learning process. In turn, Students Against Peabody would not have been made possible without mounting organized political responses to WUSTL administration in previous years along axes of race, class, and climate justice. These struggles all remain vital and connected to one another, both on campus, in St. Louis and in the wider world.
Media, press statements, more details on Peabody’s assaults and connection to WUSTL, etc. can be found online.
Facebook: WashU Students Against Peabody
Twitter: @WUStopPeabody
Tumblr: StudentsAgainstPeabody.tumblr.com
Facebook: WashU Students Against Peabody
Twitter: @WUStopPeabody
Tumblr: StudentsAgainstPeabody.tumblr.com
“I want Greg Boyce off our board of trustees because I want Washington University to start considering how its profits and prestige are predicated on the extreme violence of Peabody’s corporate colonialism and the active displacement and disruption of rural communities and communities of color. This school needs to identify itself for the prestige industry it is and take steps to recognize its fundamentally unethical behavior in continually buttressing the Peabody corporation, defending their false "clean coal” rhetoric and disregarding the health, homes and livelihoods of the people they profit from. I stand with indigenous communities against neocolonialism, and with every community experiencing environmental and political injustice at the hands of Peabody corporation. I don’t want to be embarrassed by the violent apathy of my university to these very real struggles for survival. WashU has the opportunity now to be leaders in a project of justice within the academic industrial complex, and it is deeply troubling that they do not see this as imperative.“
– Georgia M., Students Against Peabody
– Georgia M., Students Against Peabody