More than one month after island activist Bill Moyer presented a book he co-authored about electrifying the nation’s railroads, he has organized an event to draw supporters to the campaign.

On Saturday, Jan. 7, Moyer, executive director of Vashon’s activist organization the Backbone Campaign, will hold a gala at Tacoma’s Union Station to launch a new campaign called Solutionary Rail.

“This event is a launch of the campaign while still recognizing there’s a lot of work ahead,” Moyer said. “We need a large coalition of stakeholders to lock arms and bring this proposal to decision makers who can help implement it.”

It’s an idea being pioneered by him and the team of environmentalists, laborers and other stakeholders who worked for three years to complete the book “Solutionary Rail – A People-Powered Campaign to Electrify America’s Railroads and Open Corridors to a Clean Energy Future.” The book calls for railroads to be cleaned up and modernized to draw freight and people off highways and onto trains which, in turn, would reinvigorate many of the small communitites along railways. By electrifying the railroads with renewable energy (wind and solar), Moyer believes the country can begin to break its reliance on fossil fuels and kickstart the shift to clean energy. Moyer continued to say that while there was a broad collaborative effort by environmentalists, activists and laborers to create the Solutionary Rail book, the next step is to let a “people-powered campaign … manifest this vision across the country.”

“The thing that’s so beautiful about Solutionary Rail, especially at a time like this, is that railroads are a place where interests intersect. So whether you’re in agriculture, labor, an environmentalist or part of a tribe, there are interests that intersect with railroads and have a shared benefit for Solutionary Rail vision,” Moyer said.

The event will consist of a video greeting from author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, who authored the book’s foreword, presentations about Solutionary Rail and the strategy moving forward and testimonials from stakeholders. Drinks and hors d’oeuvres will be served.

“It’s not often you see a genuinely new idea — here’s a path forward both for rail service and for clean energy transmission that could really change the way our nation works,” McKibben said in a Monday email.