- chloe maxmin is the fabled political unicorn of these times. coming from a background as a progressive activist from an early age, she won her 2020 race for maine state senate against a formidable opponent, the incumbent republican leader of the state's senate. she did so in district 88, that also voted for senator susan collins. chloe first spoke at bioneers in 2014 when she had recently launched, divest harvard.

starting with just a handful of students, the campaign rapidly ballooned into one of the biggest in the country. it helped spur the local divestment movement from fossil fuels that now has moved or committed $14 trillion in assets worldwide. born and raised in rural maine, after college, chloe was determined to return to her beloved home to serve that place and her fellow mainers. in 2018, she ran for the ate house of representatives and won. in 2019, she introduced the state's green new deal legislation, carefully customized to what her constituents had told her they most needed and wanted for their place. she did so with the notable backing of the state afl-cio union.

how did chloe accomplish all this? that's what she's gonna describe for us. and now, the remarkable chloe maxmin, who's now reached the expectation defying age of 28. - hello everybody. my name ishloe maxmin, am cominto you from nleboro, ine toda i've been in and out of the bioneers community since i was in clege quite a few years ago and i always led the gaerings and i'm grateful at least to be participating virtually this year. just got eleed as a state senator here in maine. we took on t highestanking republican in the ste and we flipped aistrict from red to blue. today, i'monna talk about why it's so important to be investing progressive energy intoural conservative places, and how that really contributes to o fight on imate. but i'm gonna do it through the lens of my story and hoi got to that place because it certainly took me a while to understand the importance of politics

in the climateight. i'm shing you this picture of the maine house of representatives becae it represents a political ace that i have spent so much of my li being angry at. i have been angry at the lobbyists, at the people that we elec the corruption, the la of courage, the weak votes and the lack of progress on climate change. but it's a broken system, politics is, and 's also a system that we speratelneed to work for us. so, i spend mo of my time in spaces like this today to try and turn it aund. i grew up on my family's farm in nobleboro, it's a small town of 1600 people in the mile of mae. anfor as lg as i can remember, i have just loved my homend my commity more than anything, 's alys been, given knowledge of myself and my life that i would devote myself to fighting for mae. as i started to grow up, i began to understand

that climate change is really the biggest reat to ine, it threatens to totally undermine our econy, our culture, our way of life, everything that we know and love. so, i started to take action when i was 12 and en i got to high school, i started this group called the climate action clu we really focused on individual behavior change to talk to our community about our impact on the planet. i thenent to harvard for llege anafter myirst yeathere, i learned about this project calle the trailbreaker pipelin it's a pipeline that goes from portland, maine, to montreal, used to carry crude oil northward. buthere was a proposal to reverse the flow ofhis pipeline and bring tasands from alberta, to montreal d down through new enand and maine into portland's cao bay. for so many reasons th was a very bad idea. but the biggest kicker for me is that exxon mobil owns 76% of this pipeline.

i had no idea that the foss fuel industry and these big corporations had such aresence in mhome state. so, i went back to rvard that fall d i stard a campaign call divest harvard. i'm not gonndig too much into the ecific story of divt harvard, it's a powerful story. we started with three people and within two years we had0,000 people who had signedn to our campaign. but during divest harvardays, saw the por of young people to build really deep movements that were focused on systemic change. in high school i was focusing on using reusable bags, and then at harvard, we were focused on building movements to change how the fossil fuel industry interacts with our society. we werusing climate change as a way to talk out the importance of divestment. but we were also trying to say that we need to really look at the fossil fuel industry

and their stranglehold over o political system. we werbuilding a movement for a better politics rough our universities. so it s a little bit convoluted but that was our theory ochange. at harvard, we rallied, we marched, we had forums, we did everything humanly possle. while the administration didn't really lien to us, although oneay they wi, we built a massive movement. it was also duri my days at divest hvard that i met a young man named canyon, who you can see highlighted in these photo and he grew up in rural red, north carolina. and it was almost immediately a friendship beuse we srted to talk about w we were ilding these really exciting movements in an urban space around an issue, but we couldn't even fathom bringing those to our hometowns. the language, the tactics, it just wouldn't fit where we grew up and at always puzzled us, but we really loved organizing on camp. t, as ouwork at dive harvard cameo a close,

as i ce nearer to graduation, i had been working on divestment foalmost three years and i'd seen the divestment movementake off, trillions of dollars get divested, thousands of students getting involved, hure of faculty members taking a snd, thousands of alumni. anit was really incredible, but it was also becoming so clear that we were unable to take all of this energy that we had built through divestment and pivot it towards our stated goals whi was gettg better people in office, getting good climate policy, holding public officials accountable. we were awesome issue movement organizing, but we couldn't do anythi with potics, the infrastructures just weren't there. and that was super puzzling to me so, when i graduated harvard, literallthe day after i came back to nobleboro and i started to ink and write about what it would take for the climate movement

to become more politically powerful. we were plenty powerful people wise, but not powerful enough politically. and it wasn't too long befor i deded to run for office. i had been working on different campaigns and i felt like they just reallyeren't rching beyond the choir, kind of electing the same kinds of people and mostly losing. so, my hometown state rep district is district 88. and it's very rural. it's thr and a half tos in ruralaine, and most of these towns are in the most rural county in the state, and maine is the most rur state in america. district 88 has a 16% republican advantage. so it les very hard r. it's a really intesting community. but i think most importantly when i was tnking about how to really rebuild a different type of politics, i recognized that rural communities we being so left out

of the progressive equation, and alsohat state level races were not being talked about in the climate movement as well. if you take divestment, for example, we had built all of this power basically 2010 to 2015. and then in 2016, the rural communits elected donald trump, and republicans won almost twice as many state legislative seats as democrats. despite people's climate march and the hundreds of thousands of people who were talking about climate change. , i decid to kind of go right to the heart of everything, which is a very conservative rural state rep mpaign. i coinced canyon to move up to nobleboro with me and to t and figure out how we could win district 88. i was nning as a democrat, but district 88 had never been won by a democrat before. but we were in this to do it differently, to not replicate politics as usual. so, off we went.

usually when you run for office, the state parthelps you like g your people out for "get out the vote" and go dr knocking and stuff. but we d it all ourselves because we recognized that politics as usual and the democratic party as usual was not really serving rural conservative places. i had a primary that we wowith 80% othe vote. and then afterhe primary, i started to talk to almost all republicans and indepeents for months and months and months. and it was so eye opening that there are all these people who are not on our side, who are ting republican, who are voting ainst the climate, but not necessaril beuse they want to but just because we haven't been there, we haven't listened to people who have a differe rspectiv who are coming from a different place. and it was through our campaign that we re able to connect withhese fol. the other thing that we did that was really important is t and take kind of the ethic of a movement organizing model and bring it

into electal politics. and one of the biggespies of that is buildinactual relationships, which is one of the beauties of local politics. we wonn 2018 with 52.4% of the vote by18 votes. i was the first democrat to represent district 88, and for the pa two yea, i've been serving as a state rep. i've really been tryin to do it differently. every month i've hosted constituent office hours, all of my bills have ce directly from coersations with mconstituents. i sponsored the maine green new deal which was the first state level bill to be endorsed by a state, afl-cio and the country, and really just trying to think differently abouhow i can interact with my constituents. but, amidst all of that, i still felt like, we made the biggest strides working for a new kind of politics when it cameo the campaigneason. so, about halfway through my time as a ste rep,

the opportunity came up to r for state senate. and i took it beuse to me the work that you do on a campaigtrail lasts far bend a candite or an eltion d. and that kind of movement building is so exciting to me, it is thheart of where things are at these days. thstate sena district really interesting. i call it, it's district 13 but i call it lucky district 13. most of it is in lincoln county, maine, which is this very rural county in a very rural state. we were going up against a man named dana dow who had been in and out of office for almost 20 years. he hadever lost general election before in his life. he is also the senate minority leader. so, the highesranking republan in the state. he was susan collins's guest at the state of the union this year. and, yeah, it was a lot to gup again. he owns local business and everybody knows who dana dow is.

he also won by less than 400 votes in 2018. so, we knew that we could do it. district 13 islso ally intesting. instead of a 16% republican advantage, which is district 88, e senateistrict has a 1.6% republican advantage. so it leans republicanbut it's almost a third democrat, republican and independent. so it's, feels like a much mor representative cross-section of the different political dynamics that we're experiencing today. the hill ned lincolnounty, one of the top 10 counties in the us that would define the 2020 election. and it's about 38,000 people in district 13. so, i say all of this just to give you a litt bit of context for this race and hochallenging it was, and also to show that waed to bring everything that we learned in 2018 to a ste senate race and show that itould work when it was scaled up.

so, we launched in january with an awesompotluck at the north nobleboro community center with like 100 folks, it was beautiful. i started knocking on doors, buinstantaneously covid hit. and we put our campaign on pause and devoted our entire volunteer infrastructure to supporting seniors through covid. so, we le in aural community with no transportation access, and we found that, well, we literally found zens andozens of seniors whwere stuck at home with no food, no way to get their prescriptions, no way tget to the doctor, people who are jusstranded and we ended up using r campaign as a public service to bring together 200 volunteers to make 13,500 phone calls and make sure that every single senior in our community was contacted and had access to the resources th they need. but eventuallywe had to transition back to normal campaigning. and at was reay tricky with covid. but weried to do it in kind way

thatas really cented around a politics that was by and for our counity. we had letters to the editor, we had morbeautiful hand pnted signs. we had these really beautiful social disnced odoor gatherings all summer long to bring our volunteers together. we were very public and proud about running a 100% sitive campaign ich was so important with the susan collins, sara gideon race happening, that usenate race was inedibly loud annegative. so we were realltrying to show that there is a better way. we were really lucky to receive two huge endorsements fromnlikely ales. one was the lincoln county sheriff, todd brackett, who was a big supporter of our campaign. and the other one was a guy named, les fossel, who was a former republican state senator for lincoln county. and both of them were really proud to support our campaign 'cause we were focusing on values and not pay.

i also did my own canvassing this year. sowe knocked on 10,000 doors total in 2018. this year alone, i persolly knocked on 13,314 doors. we also did a lot of phone banking, we made 6549 phone cas this yr to peoe. so, in tot, our direct voter contact was at 86,486 people. that was the highest voter contact of any senate caaign in maine. the send highe was 34,600 people. so y can really see the scale of our campaign and whate did by bringing a differt perspective to it. and what'snteresting is that this direct voter contact was to a very targeted grouof people who re kind of in the middle, they might vote dem, they might vote republican. and that universe was about 5000 people. so it's just crazy to think about almost 90,000 contacts to try and sway 5000 people. it'seally, really interesting uff.

we also didn't use any of the support from the democratic party. so we did all our own graphic design, we produced and worked with the local paper to send out all of our mailers, we created our own canvassing universe. so, our volunteers and myself went to hses that had trump flags out there, and those trump folks were voting for us. and it was really incredible to see whawe couldo when we just reach beyond the choir just a little bit. and we won. we w by 600 votes, which is 51.1% othe vote, about 24,000 pple voted. so, itas a closene, but we always kn it would and it was incredible. we are trying so intentionally to run a campaign that looks like a social movemen but has the fect of electoral politics. we are trying so intentionally to bring a different kind of thinking to what the democrats

and progressives need to do in rural communities. and i think we were trying to prove that our taccs and our way of thinking can work. canyon managed my state senate campaign as well, and i just wanna meion his name again because everything that we do is together. i'm going to augusta tomorrow to ele our secretary of state and then on wednesday i'm getting sworn in, december 2nd. so, 's all hapning very quickly. but, once you get elected that is just the beginning of the work. it'seally when the bills come and the guments happen a the nversation start to begin about what real climate policy looks like. and so, going back to those days in e climate action club when i was just focused on using reusable bags, now the work feels a little bit bigger and a little bit more structural, but kind of the same thg of just doing what you can as one person to get the world where it needs to go. and that's my email on the scen right there.

so, please feel free to reacout if i can ever be of any support for your work anthank you r all that you do.

exçñ#■x■x unñú c7gvsdsm9,x,x=÷=÷,>,ßxxo o @8@88 if i can anchor: of any heo and a warm welcome to one of the stories that maden. headlines this year was the fires that ravaged the mediterranean this summer. the blazes were triggered by a series of prolonged heat waves. the greek island of evia was one of the worst hit areas. massive fires scorched vast swathes of forest, as well as hundreds of houses, leaving many residents homeless. experts say that climate change contributed to turning evia, which is northeast of athens, into a tinderbox.