Steven Wickham, Guilderland Coalition for Responsible Growth

Steven Wickham last week undertook a spontaneous act of civil disobedience. As chairman of the steering committee for the Guilderland Coalition for Responsible Growth, he got a call last Thursday afternoon that Pyramid was clear-cutting trees to make way for a Costco before the project had gone through the state-required environmental review process. In this week’s podcast, Wickham tells how he ended up sitting on the blade of the tree-cutting machine. He also talks about the way civil disobedience, over the centuries, helped in founding our nation and in moving it forward. When he was in second grade, Wickham says, he wanted to quit school because his teacher insisted her students color in the lines and believed no one could get a perfect score. After he moved schools in high school, his chemistry teacher, who had become a friend, told him the school was warned that Wickham was a “troublemaker.” His teacher came to understand that Wickham is someone who would stand up for himself and others who were wronged, he said. Wickhasm believes that now, with climate change and the severe decline of birds and insects, that we need to think differently about where and how we build. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.