During spring break my freshman year of college something happened that changed my life forever. While backpacking in the serenity of the Great Smoky Mountains I heard the news from a fellow hiker: our government had just invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq. I knew immediately that things would never be the same for me. Powerful corrupt forces were defining my future in dangerous ways. I knew when I returned to campus at the University of Kansas that it was time to take a stand. I started organizing.

I organized peace rallies, teach-ins, debates, and movie screenings. In short doing everything I could think of to spread the “awareness” on campus about what was happening. But it soon became apparent that basic awareness wasn’t going to end the Iraq war and so I started asking the deeper question of why were there in the first place. I kept coming back to one answer: oil. The more I learned about the dangerous national security implications of our oil addiction the more I began to understand the disastrous oil consumption and fueling climate change. Since that fateful day almost nine years ago I have dedicated myself to breaking our addiction to oil and building a movement for a 100% clean energy future.

There’s one key difference between what I did as a student activist in Kansas and what we are seeing today: the presence of a vibrant youth movement. Everything I was doing at KU was trial and error. There were no Power Shifts. No big grassroots trainings. No national organizations investing in my red state. The movement we have built in the Midwest in the last several is remarkable.

As Midwesterners we have a unique role to play in the climate movement because our way of life and culture is uniquely threatened by climate impacts and we have the solutions right here in the heartland to meet our energy challenges and rebuild our economy. In less than 10 days all of this will converge in Cleveland, Oct 21-23 when we come together for Midwest Power Shift. We’ll come together to build political power, move beyond coal, stop natural gas fracking, and pioneer innovative solutions for the green economy.

Every election cycle these “fly over” states make their way back into headlines. You start seeing red and blue maps of the Midwest appear on CNN and suddenly everyone cares what voters in these states are thinking. It’s no coincidence that Ohio is known as the “Bellwether State” and sets the political tone for the rest of the country. Iowa caucus… need I go on? As Midwesterners we have a powerful role in shaping the political landscape of our country. We have an opportunity to shift politics away from the polluting influence of big polluters and back to “we the people.” Look no further than the Ohio primary elections last year when students with Ohio Student Environmental Coalition put youth clean energy voters on the map with their campaign to “Make Green a Primary”. Not to mention their innovative organizing for the general election that made clean mass transit a defining election issue for youth voters.

Despite this burgeoning Midwest movement we remain grossly dependent on dirty energy like coal and natural gas extraction. However we have a wealth of renewable resources to be the engine of the new clean energy economy. For example my home state of Kansas ranks 3rd in the country for wind energy potential. Imagine beautiful wind turbines built in a Cleveland steel mill and turning power across the rolling Kansas plains. Homegrown energy right here in America’s heartland. What could be more patriotic than that? To accelerate this transition students across the Midwest have been tackling coal and fracking head on. Students at Washington University in Missouri have been running a robust Beyond Coal campaign that has hosted the nationally watched event “The Great Coal Debate”, gotten the attention of a US Senator, and taken hard hitting tactics to get coal CEOs off of the University Board of Trustees. Not to mention the recent collaboration with Ohio students and communities to stop fracking in its tracks. When we move the Midwest beyond dirty energy we are shifting the core machinery of the US economy into the future.

It couldn’t happen at a more important time. From the ashes of a dying industrial Midwestern infrastructure young people are pioneering a new green economy that is rising to meet the needs of communities left beyond in the old failing dirty energy economy. Youth leaders in Detroit are weatherizing low-income homes, growing their own food, and training the next generation of change agents through the Green Economy Leadership Training. In Minnesota youth leaders with the Summer of Solutions have been building energy cooperatives with under-served immigrant populations to pioneer clean energy that will create jobs and provide affordable energy to meet the communities’ needs. Similar approaches have been springing up across the Midwest and promise to exemplify the world we want to live in.

I feel a little old saying this, but when I was a student I didn’t have Power Shift. There was not a burgeoning network of leaders across the region. Think about it, in a relatively short amount of time we have nourished the heartland and grown a rolling prairie of grassroots organizing across the Midwest. All of these powerful forces will converge in less than 10 days at Midwest Power Shift. This is our opportunity to come together as Midwesterners, to build the necessary political power, to share our skills with others running hard-hitting grassroots campaigns, and to celebrate the solutions we are pioneering to move toward that 100% clean and equitable energy economy that works for everyone. See you in Cleveland!