Interview: Activist Stephanie Dunn

Image via Youtube screen grab.

Stephanie Dunn staged a hunger strike last week on Daley Plaza to advocate the Chicago Clean Power Ordinance, which would require Chicago’s Fisk and Crawford coal-fired power plants to slash emissions of asthma-causing soot and carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Dunn sat in a lawn chair beside a tomato trellis dressed up to look like a coal plant, complete with burning sage atop its smokestack. That is, until someone stole her gear — mock-power plant and all — in the middle of her five-day fast last week.

While she isn’t affiliated with any particular environmental group, the Chicago resident has participated in the World Naked Bike Ride and a May Day protest for immigrant rights.

“This was one of the most extreme acts I could do that was nonviolent,” Dunn said. The 23-year-old activist delivered petitions signed by passersby to the mayor’s office each day. She said she collected about 1,000 signatures over the course of the week, before breaking her fast Friday. “This is really Mayor Emanuel’s chance to follow through,” Dunn said. “It needs to happen now.”

34 of the city’s 50 aldermen sponsor the ordinance, which was re-introduced to City Council last month. The original ordinance, introduced in April 2010, was never given a formal hearing.

Those opposing the ordinance say the pollution controls would force the plants to close, killing 200 jobs. The plants are subject to state and federal regulations, which they say should be enough. Both were built before the passage of the Clean Air Act and were grandfathered in under the law. That means they don’t have to meet the same pollution standards as plants built since.

Dunn, a graduate of DePaul University, said she was surprised that many Chicagoans she met during her hunger strike had never heard of the coal-fired power plants, or the controversy surrounding them. “To some people I feel like I was a passing dream,” she said. Ultimately, though, she said her strike was a success.

“There’s a lot that an individual can do,” Dunn said. If hundreds can organize on Twitter to gate-crash Lollapalooza, she added, environmentalists should be able to make themselves heard.

— Chris Bentley

Contact the author of this article or email tips@chicagoist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Staff in News on August 9, 2011 10:00 AM

Comments [rss]

Scott Frazer

I saw her on my way to work every day, but I'm always late for work, so I never figured out quite what she was protesting.

Her choice of location was probably a bad one because that's the corner I always see the other hunger-striking guy on, and I kind of thought maybe she was taking over for him.

JayP123

In the first place, a hunger strike that only lasts five days isn't a hunger strike, it's a diet.

In the second, a hunger strike to protest coal power generation makes no thematic sense. She protested slow, accumulative poison to one type of ingestion by... abstaining from healthy and necessary nourishment through a completely different kind of ingestion? Or was it that she temporarily, minorly inconvenienced herself to emphasize the slight, marginal, unnoticed discomfort of a fractional difference in air quality? It's a totally artless performance.

In the third, this protest also made no practical sense. I saw her last week at Daley Plaza; she looked relaxed and completely unaffected. Lazing in a chair during summer does not connote urgency, about a cause or anything else. If that's the "most extreme" nonviolent act she could come up with, maybe she's not very clever.

ChicagoD

Well, it says that she had previously participated in something called World Naked Bike Ride. Would that have been more extreme? Besides, how does one urgently not eat?

She may be a goof (or not) but she accomplished what she meant to. She raised awareness and collected some signatures.

Thursday, with the crepes guy and cookie guy at Daley Plaza must have seriously sucked for her.

aaroncynic

Yeah, she should've stayed home and wrote about it on the internet instead.

" The 23-year-old activist delivered petitions signed by passersby to the
mayor’s office each day. She said she collected about 1,000 signatures
over the course of the week, before breaking her fast Friday."

Sounds like a pretty decent week, with at least somewhat of a positive result. Maybe it doesn't move a mountain, but it's more than just handing out a stack of flyers to be thrown away at the gates of Lollapalooza or getting arrested for a day. What would have been a better act instead?

JayP123

Maybe it doesn't move a mountain, but it's more than just handing out a
stack of flyers to be thrown away at the gates of Lollapalooza or
getting arrested for a day.

I'll bet she would have gotten more signatures just by going to Lolla and talking to people, no pointless "hunger strike" required. And if "raising awareness" is the only important goal, she'd have been better off holding a gangbang. Just as pointless, but more shock value.

As for a protest, I would have gone with a balloon launch outside the power station -- one for every signature collected, or some such. Videotape the whole process, put it up on YouTube. At the very least, putting things in the air knowingly to stand in for things we put into the air into the air unknowingly (to the public, that is) has thematic unity. Use an "X blue to Y red" format to represent the amount of reduction of pollutants a clean plant would produce. Something like that.

ChicagoD

Woo, you are an environmentalist. Release latex balloons into the atmosphere to protest a coal power plant! Thematic indeed.

As for "And if "raising awareness" is the only important goal, she'd have been better off holding a gangbang" try googling Eva Angelina. Similar look, just as pointless. In the meantime, just ignore Dunn if you want.

JayP123

I did ignore Dunn. What I didn't ignore is this story -- you know, the one with the comments section, linked to a social media site, inviting responses and opinions.

ChicagoD

You should take the google recommendation. Seems like you could stand to relax a little.

Navin_Johnson

This dude's a blinkered troll. He was the same guy who couldn't get the concept of a 'picket line'. It's obvious that there would be no kind of protest that would have satisfied him, because he's against any kind of activism period, whether it be environmental, or for labor reasons.

JayP123

Missing the point, as usual, Navin.

Steven Vance

There's another project to build awareness around this issue. It's called Community Voicebox.
http://communityvoicebox.com/

They were in Stearns Quarry for a couple hours on Saturday gathering interviews with passersby.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/j...