Interview: Activist Stephanie Dunn
By Staff in News on Aug 9, 2011 3:00PM
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