from the Chicago Tribune, June 28, 2001

One man's role in the 'Roll Your Own Blackout"

It was barely an hour into the blackout, and already I was out of unrefrigerated food.

It was dark: I live in a basement, and any more than two candles sets off the smoke alarm. And it was hot: The central air had been off as long as the lights, the mugginess outside had been seeping in ever since.

I was participating in the "Roll Your Own Blackout," a voluntary, three-hour electricity-free evening last Thursday. Around the country, people were turning out lights, unplugging TVs and stereos, and spending the evening in the dark. Some were protesting President Bush's energy plan, others wanted to show how independent Americans can be from energy. Others just wanted to show commiseration with California and the energy woes of other Western states.

Me, I just easily succumbed to peer pressure.

I first started hearing about the "Roll Your Own Blackout" in mid-May. An e-mail, forwarded by a friend, called for the the blackout on June 21 to show support for energy "efficiency, conservation and alternative fuels." The e-mail advised turning out lights, unplugging appliances, and instead of watching TV "light a candle, make love, tell ghost stories . . . have fun in the dark!"

As I live alone and am easily frightened, I wasn't immediately inclined to join in. But I did follow the final command of the e-mail: to forward it as widely as possible. And in that, I wasn't alone.

The idea came about when David Aragon, a computer programmer in Berkeley, Calif., suggested that folks who couldn't make it to a nearby political march in May could show their support by turning off their lights. A Los Angeles artist named Monica Rex read the posting and applied it to her concerns over California's energy crisis. That her e-mail to 50, 100 friends would become an national phenomenon was a surprise to her.

"I send out e-mail all the time, often jokes, good ideas," Rex explained. "This one just really took off. I caught people's imagination."

It wasn't until I received the e-mail for the fifth time that I decided I'd try it too. I have a lot of friends in California, and I have heard them whining about their energy crisis for months. A friend from Sacramento taunted: "Let's see you handle it!" Never one to back down from a juvenile dare, I decided to flip my circuit breakers.

Part of why the e-mail covered so much ground was liberal groups such as Moveon.org, Democrats.com and others that have been protesting the Bush Administration's environmental energy policies on their Web sites for months. Peter Schurman, executive director of Moveon.org, picked up the e-mail and sent it out to their quarter-million subscribers.

"The message is if we have a policy based on energy efficiency and renewable energy, we wouldn't be facing any kind of energy crises," Schurman said. By Thursday, more than10,000 people had registered their participation on his site.

According to Schurman, there were as many plans for the blackout as participants. Some planned to spend it alone, others held discussion groups and political salons. Most popular were "blackout parties," with barbecues, dancing and tiki torches, with many planned in the Chicago area as well as around the country.

Two hours in, food was still an issue: I have no barbecue, and my stove is, surprise, electric. I would have used my fireplace, but it's just a lightbulb inside a fake log. I tried cooking a hot dog under the hot water in the sink, but that was really gross. I even thought of calling for pizza, but my one phone is cordless and needs electricity to work.

I was also getting bored. With hardly enough candlelight to read by, and the flashlight left over from my Y2K paranoia flickering and fading, I went outside to watch the sunset. The last hour of my blackout was spent blacked out -- I fell asleep until just before midnight.

In the eyes of the organizers, the event was a success, even if it was impossible to judge participation or reaction.

"Some people were hoping there might be a blackout across the planet," Schurman explained, saying he never expected that. "It's just a great opportunity to make a simple symbolic statement."

As for my statement, it came later, when I heard from my friend in Sacramento. Bragging about my adventures, I asked if she cut her energy too. "I'm all for energy conservation," she wrote. "But it's 105 degrees out. If you think I'm voluntarily turning off the air conditioning, you're crazy."