The picture above comes from Hanoi, in 2009. It’s one of 5,100 demonstrations that took place in 181 countries on the same day in October—a kind of coming out party for the global climate movement and, CNN reckoned at the time, “the most widespread day of political protest in the planet’s history.”
All the pictures that streamed in over Flickr that weekend moved me, but some almost to tears: Americans still think “war” when they think Vietnam, and they think so with guilt. It was astonishing to me to be collaborating with people who could easily have spurned anything that originated in America.
The reason we had a demonstration that day in Vietnam was Hoang Thi Minh Hong. Hong, like so many other people around the world, seized the opportunity to try and raise awareness about the climate crisis. And she’s never stopped. The definition of a good organizer is someone that people like to be around, and tiny Hong is effervescent; every picture I have of her, including a couple from friends who visited her this spring, show her beaming. She made it to to the US where she spent time at Columbia, and as an Obama fellow; she made it to Antarctica, and onto lists of the most influential women in Asia. Here’s the picture of when she was named a hero of the climate.
But she kept on telling the truth, which in Vietnam is a hard truth: few countries face more chaos and trauma from a changing climate, because the Mekong Delta is low to the sea; already rice farmers are trying to deal with rising salt levels, and many are failing. And yet Vietnam’s rapidly growing economy has kept burning coal, and Hong kept pointing that out. And now it’s caught up with her.
She was arrested last week on “tax evasion” charges after the offices of her CHANGE NGO were raided—she’d actually shut the group down after the arrests of other environmentalists on similar charges. They are, of course, bogus. Two decades ago Vladimir Putin started figuring out how to make sure that NGOs, especially any with foreign ties, were kept under his thumb; impenetrable bureaucratic rules were the key. Similar tactics have been adopted by other would-be autocrats from India to Turkey to, of course, China, and many more. We could not hold that global demonstration that we held in 2009 today; simply speaking the truth is too dangerous in too many places.
Including, of course, some places in this country. Last week that three activists fighting the Cop City project in Atlanta were arrested on charges of money laundering. When they were arraigned on Friday, their defense attorney said, “My real concern here is if you look at these warrants ... of what they’ve done with the money that prompts both the money laundering and the charitable fraud, I mean, $37.11 to build yard signs. What could be more First Amendment activity than getting materials to build yard signs?” Their offense, clearly, was telling their truth, loudly.
If you’re powerful enough, of course, you can tell the truth and nothing happens. Last week State Farm and Allstate both made it clear they wouldn’t be selling new home insurance policies in California—the cost of rebuilding homes after wildfires had gotten too high. As a result, more Californians will get to rely on the state-offered insurance plan, a last resort. But truth-telling actually isn’t in the blood of the insurance industry—the real news last week was one big company after another dropping out of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance. As Reuters put it, “the group has been buffeted by growing political opposition from some Republicans in the United States, who say the group could be violating antitrust laws by working together to reduce clients' carbon emissions. This month 23 U.S. state attorneys general told NZIA members that the group's targets and requirements appeared to violate both federal and state antitrust laws.” Cowards, all.
Hong had a lot more backbone than that. She got the signals from the government, but she didn’t shut up. Here’s what she tweeted out in early May, on a day when Asia was suffering through a record-breaking heatwave:
“Yeah, I am melting like a piece of butter on frying pan. Climate change is happening no matter what we do. But we should still do everything to not make it worse. I had to shut down my NGO due to pressures, but I’ll find another way.”
We need to help her. So far the UN human rights office has issued a powerful denunciation, and the State Department a shorter and more muted version. But the U.S. can do much more. John Kerry, our global climate envoy, last December negotiated an important $15.5 billion climate transition deal with Vietnam, even after the country had jailed another activist. At that moment, the head of the Goldman Prize Foundation said, “It’s really time for the U.S. to take the gloves off and make it very clear to Vietnam that this won’t be tolerated.”
But apparently the U.S. never made that clear, and now Hong sits in a Vietnamese jail and her family waits for her release. It’s time for Obama to do some tweeting, and it’s time for Kerry to get on the phone, and if necessary on the plane; please write to the State Department with that message (look down to the bottom of this form for an easy way to do so). That Vietnam was willing to make this kind of climate deal resulted directly from decades of advocacy by brave people like Hong. Abandoning them is wrong in every way.
