More than a thousand protesters occupied several blocks of Broadway in Manhattan’s financial district for over eight hours today in an action called “Flood Wall Street,” protesting what organizers called “the role of corporate power in climate politics.” While the NYPD had been very restrained during the day — even when protesters surged against barricades at the entrance to Wall Street — after night fell, there were reports of pepper spray being used, and according to organizers, as many as 100 were arrested.

The day had begun with a 9am rally in Battery Park, at the lower tip of Manhattan, where speakers warmed up the crowd and organizers coached participants in the plan. Hundreds of people drank coffee, made last minute adjustments on banners, and did interviews with the milling press corps, who numbered nearly a hundred.

Participants practiced the gestures for “surge,” meaning that the crowd should “flow forward like water,” and “sit,” to occupy the space. Three groups were established, with the last one comprising those who did not wish to risk arrest. Then, shortly before noon, they headed north out of the park and out onto traffic on Broadway.

They ran into trouble almost immediately. There were two 15-foot silver-and-black mylar balloons, dubbed “Carbon Bubbles,” that the group was carrying, threading them among the busses and trucks at the intersection of Battery Place and Broadway. In an unintentional but ironic twist, one bubble was punctured by the anti-pigeon spikes on an ornamental lamp on the wall of the Citibank at One Broadway.

Traffic was brought to a stop as the group made its way nearly as far north as Morris street, just past the famous statue of the Wall Street Bull. It was unclear whether they were unable to progress further due to the traffic or the NYPD, but the group made a 150-degree turn down Whiehall Street which meets Broadway at that point forming the narrow triangular island where the Bull stands.

And that’s as far as things went for five hours. The NYPD had already deployed steel railings on both sides of the street, and now closed off both ends of Broadway, flushed out the remaining vehicles, and settled in to let the protesters have the space. Occasionally, police would take responsive action — chasing a group of indigenous protesters down from a window, or deflating the second “Carbon Bubble” when the group tried to bounce it onto the Bull. But for the most part, they hung back behind their perimeter fencing, watched, and waited. The strategy paid off: as the clock ticked through the afternoon, protesters visibly drifted away.

Before the closing bell, this reporter headed up to Wall Street. Security had been established at each of the entrances, with steel fencing augmenting the existing bollards and anti-vehicle devices. It was striking to see business as usual, with brokers exiting the white security tent set up as a checkpoint in front of the stock exchange as if nothing were happening a few blocks away.

Then, just before 4pm, the protesters, numbering in the hundreds now, surged up Broadway toward the entrance to Wall Street, where they were stopped and pushed back as police expanded the perimeter fencing to create a twenty-foot semicircle  around the intersection. The protesters sat down, the police expanded the frozen zone several blocks north, and things seemed headed for another stalemate, which is when this reporter left. Subsequent reports on Twitter and in New York media  indicated that an hour or so later, police arrested those still in the street.

More pictures from the event are up on Flickr stream and multiple, minute-by-minute accounts on Twitter under the hashtag #FloodWallStreet.

Text messages as the People’s Climate March was unfolding on this historical day, 9/21:
10:36 AM

[…] People flooding in from all streets. Buses are backed up waiting to get into […]

10:33 AM

manhattan – it’s huge! -Matt

11:41 AM

MattLeonard: And we are moving! At the front – but huge crowds packing the whole march, and more on spilling over on sidewalks.

12:31 PM

At 12:58 we’re holding a moment of silence while linking hands overhead in honor of those already suffering in the face of climate change. Spread the word.

12:36 PM

At 1:00 we’ll break the silence and sound the climate alarm that’s been ignored for too long. Be REALLY loud.

02:52 PM

BREAKING: initial count for the People’s Climate March: 310,000. Thank you all for being part of a beautiful, historical day.

03:36 PM

This march is so big that we’re asking people to disperse just before they reach 11th Ave. and 42nd St.

Because of delays at the beginning of the march, South County’s delegation to the March missed its 10:30 AM opportunity, ‘Educating Sheldon.’  An email had gone out to the RI-PCM hub listserv, last week — yes, you can still sign up here:

Here is a communication from Emily Enderly in Senator Whitehouse’s office:

Thanks again for all the info and proposing a meeting time and location.  10:30am on Sunday at 71^st and 8^th Ave works for Senator Whitehouse.  […]

This is a unique chance to let Senator Whitehouse know that his position on natural gas as a bridge fuel is misguided.

Specifically, our congressional delegation should withdraw its support for the AIM project for natural gas pipeline expansion, which will disrupt Green Power for The People.  Senator Whitehouse has the credibility to get us off this path to perdition.

See these links for public statements about this:

1. New England Senators support AIM project
2. RI congressional delegation supports bridge fuel myth

For more detailed information about what’s wrong with this “Green” Bridge to Hell see:

1. Tomgram: Naomi Oreskes
2. See “The Myth that Gas is ‘Clean Energy'” (June link)

–Peter

PS
For dedicated readers only:

• If you want to read the real science, look at this
• This will tell you what’s known about the dangers for public health associated with fracking

Surely, our congressional delegation consists of honorable people, but they are part of a system that has lost its way, a system without ethics, empathy and compassion, a system that tramples on vulnerable communities and treats life on Earth as a disposable commodity.

We need system change.  It’s really not that hard to understand the words of Jeb Saño, climate negotiator of the Philippines:

Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in my family’s hometown and the devastation is staggering. I struggle to find words even for the images that we see from the news coverage. I struggle to find words to describe how I feel about the losses and damages we have suffered from this cataclysm.

Our system can no longer take in the meaning of these words.  It ignores what happened in the Philippines.  Listen to our Senator Jack Reed.  Undoubtedly he is a decent, well-meaning person, but all I can say is when I hear him talk about sea level rise in Bangladesh while he focuses only on how it will threaten US national security is this:

Shame!  Shame!  Shame!  Shame on a system that robs people of their ability to show their sensitivity for human misery!

This lack of morality is what we heard from the organizers at “PCM Central” — read everywhere— on the days before the march.  It resulted in a last-minute email to Rhode Island riders to the People’s Climate March:

Please participate in the 1pm moment of silence; text ALARM to 97779 for a signal.  This is to honor those on the front lines, those in humanity’s sacrifice zones.

Fossil Free Rhode Island and our legion allies have been trying to get this message across for a long time.

Naomi Klein sums up the problem as follows and she adds yet another ingredient to the mix:

And I think part of the responsibility for this, you know, is shared by the environmental movement in the United States, because there is this sense that:

• That is a political no-go zone. You can’t talk about any kind of redistribution of technology or wealth between North and South;
• This is toxic.

In her interview with Robert Malin, Vandana Shiva has the looters of Earth and their governmental flunkies stand naked.

VANDANA SHIVA: The issue is so urgent in my part of the world.  We just had one monsoon season last year, where the extreme climate events washed away 20,000 people.  We’re having extreme climate events in Kashmir right now, which affects both India and Pakistan, and more than 500 people have been washed away and died.  We are talking of hundreds and thousands of people dying in every part of the world, every year.  This is no more a theoretical debate.  It is a human emergency and a planetary emergency.

ROBERT MALIN: So, what we are talking about is the genocide that is a socially committed one.  What kind of responsibility does the United Nations have to put an end to that?

VANDANA SHIVA: The United Nations gave us the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Copenhagen was going to give us the post-2015 commitments.  Sadly, President Obama flew in, got China and India and other polluters together and said: “Let’s continue to pollute and let’s not have a legally binding commitment.”  So, I would say that the UN is being blocked right now, which is why Ban Ki-moon is coming here to the streets.

ROBERT MALIN:  I’ve heard you talking about the corporations structure.  How are people that fighting against corporate power, union people fighting for labor, and people fighting for environmental justice are all fighting the same fight?

VANDANA SHIVA: Well, we are all fighting the same fight, because the same corporations are giving us climate havoc.  The same corporations are giving us poisons in our food.  The same sets of corporations and the same logic of a globalized free trade, which gives them freedom, is dismanteling the hard-won rights of workers to live a life of dignity and justice.  Everywhere in the world, workers’ rights are being dismanteled, and the corporations like a system where workers live in misery and can be super-exploited.  The Planet can be exploited and nothing should come in the way, but that is both ecocide and genocide.

Our politics is about national security and more bombs and submarines. Have we no decency?  Of course, we do;  let’s continue to change everything.

Green Power to the People!

Four solid miles of people — 400,000, according to organizers — marched through the heart of New York City to show that climate change is no longer an abstract threat, and to demand action from national and international leaders.

They carried signs and banners, made music, rode bicycles, pushed kids in strollers, and made noise in a line so long that when lead contingent arrived at 34th Street and 11th Avenue, the tail of the march had just begun to move from 86th Street and Central Park West. It made the usual crush of people in Midtown Manhattan seem sparse by comparison. Imagine roughly half of the people in the state of Rhode Island marching together.

There were plenty of Rhode Islanders there, including a half-dozen busses with folks from groups including the RI Sierra Club, Fossil Free RI, the RI Progressive Democrats of America, the Humanists of RI. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was in the march, we spotted him as he stopped to talk with students from Brown and URI.

The march was timed to coincide with Tuesday’s UN Climate Summit, which aims to build international support for action before the next round of climate talks, and in an unusual move, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon himself joined the marchers. RI Future caught up with former Vice-President Al Gore, and he expressed his hopes for action at the Summit.

The People’s Climate March was grouped into six sections, who each had a several-block stretch of Central Park West where they began marshaling early this morning. The weather had been predicted hot, but an overnight rain left the streets cool and damp when people began assembling around 8am. Leading the march at Columbus Circle (an irony acknowledged by the organizers) were the people on the “Frontlines of Crisis” — indigenous people, climate justice groups, and impacted communities. Next was “We can build the future,” comprising labor, families, students, and elders. Following them was the “We have solutions group,” with renewable energy people, food and water justice groups, and environmental organizations. Then came “we know who is responsible,” with anti-corporate campaigns, peace & justice groups, and others. After them — and we were up to 81st street now — was “The debate is over,” featuring scientists and interfaith organizations. Finally, the last group, “To change everything, we need everyone,” included NY boroughs, community groups, neighborhoods, other cities, states, and countries.

Each section had its own floats, banners, and themed signs, and each began the morning with a mini-rally at the head of their staging area. Not only was the street packed, solid, for those twenty blocks, but the sidewalks on both sides and slowed to a crawl as people moved up and down the line to find their contingent.

The tone, energized and upbeat throughout was notable. There was definitely plenty of anger — at corporations, at international leaders, at the system — but from the youth contingent near the front enthusiastically chanting “This is what democracy looks like” to the many folks who had clearly been at this for a while, there was a positive energy.

Sallie Latch, with the group globaljusticecenter.org, held a sign on 81st Street saying “I can’t believe I’m protesting this crap after 60 years.” Smiling, she told RI Future, “More than 60 years. We need to do something. We can’t wait for our politicians and corporations. This is about system change, not climate change.”

Although the march stepped off on time, it still took hours for those in the final groups to begin to move, as the line snaked across 59th Street, down 6th Ave, then across 42nd to 11th Avenue, where they headed south to a post-march celebration/block party between 34th and 37th. This reporter had walked north along the entire staging area to get a sense of the groups (see the photos on Flickr) and was able to catch the subway and get to Times Square in time to meet the frontline group headed West on 42nd Street.

The final marchers made their way along the west side about six hours after the event began. This reporter grew up in NY, and cannot recall seeing anything with this scale since the anti-nuclear protest back in 1982.

With a display of the full-throated, unabashedly leftist critique usually absent from American policy discussions, the NYC Climate Convergence conference kicked off last night at St. Peter’s Church in Midtown Manhattan with a diverse lineup of speakers who all sought to reframe climate change as a social justice issue. Through the two hours of talks — which often prompted prolonged applause from the more than 300 attendees in the hall and a video overflow room — ran a deceptively simple theme: “System change, not climate change.”

“We need to connect the dots,” said Jill Stein, the 2012 Green Party presidential candidate, who served as emcee and introduced the five speakers. It is impossible, Stein argued, to address climate change within a context of neoliberal capitalism and unfettered corporate self-interest, but that through building a collective, human-focussed movement change is possible. “The moment we get together we are an unstoppable force. The name of the game is coming together and overcoming this framing of divide and conquer.”

That’s the aim of Climate Convergence, which has leveraged the People’s Climate March on Saturday to bring together hundreds of scholars, unionists, artists and activists from around the world for a two-day series or talks and workshops exploring how communities around the world are building transformative alternatives and, according to their web site [convergeforclimate.org], to “build and strengthen an environmental movement that addresses the root causes of the climate crisis.”

The evening began with an introduction by the Indigenous Environmental Network and a blessing delivered by water walker Josephine Mandamin, who focused on the link between the water she ceremonially carries and the health of the Earth. “One day, the earth will be clean,” she said. “This is the work that has been left for us to do.” The climate comprises every drop of water, and, “That little droplet of water unites us all.”

Ann Petermann of the Global Justice Ecology Project stepped through the history of failed efforts of previous United Nations conferences to achieve meaningful international agreements. Outside pressure, she argued, was the only way to push for change. “I’m very excited about what’s going to be happening this week around the UN Summit,” she said, citing the Flood Wall Street action planned for Monday. “Direct action is the antidote for despair.”

Hip-hop artist Immortal Technique (Felipe Coronel) talked about his personal journey from Peru to Harlem, and the critical need to be “proactive in our progressiveness” across all the intersectional oppressions that contribute to climate change. “We are human beings who have been conditioned to believe in a non-sustainable system,” he said, “The people who are ruining our planet are not going to be the people who fix it.” He closed with a devastating rap, “Sign of the Times.”

Erica Violet Lee of Idle No More stressed the very direct threat to indigenous people from tar sands work in Canada. “To get to the oil-rich lands, they need to move our families out of the way,” she said. “The intent of Idle No More is to draw awareness to the legacy of colonial and paternalistic policies.”

Nastaran Mohit, a New York labor organizer, challenged attendees to move beyond conferences and marches, and drew pointed illustrations from her work with the people of the Rockaways, an 11-mile long peninsula in Queens devastated by Hurricane Sandy. “Some of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City had the roofs ripped off them,” she said. “Sandy was the first time that Occupy activists had the opportunity to connect with low-income and marginalized communities. As beautiful a movement as Occupy was, it lacked that connection.” She described the difficult, sometimes painful work that volunteers had to do.

“As a labor organizer,” she said, “I look at unions. The New York State Nurses Association sent out hundreds of volunteers, canvassed hi-rise buildings, met some of the most frightened residents. What those nurses came back from that experience knowing, they saw first-hand how frightening it is when a climate catastrophe hits New York.”

“What did you do to help?” She asked attendees; not, she said, to induce guilt, but to prompt consideration of what meaningful action requires. “Am I willing to be uncomfortable? Am I willing to really go out and connect with these folks who are on the front lines of climate change?”

The evening’s final speaker, Oscar Olivera, talked about the work which won him the 2001 Goldman Environmental Prize: building a coalition which successfully overturned the privatization of water distribution in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third-largest city. He drew a parallel to the United States: “Cochabamba is in Detroit right now.”

There are two interlinked challenges, Olivera said, communication and organization. “When the water was privatized,” he said, “There was a law, there was a contract, and the people did not understand anything. Our biggest challenge was how do we make this technical economic language simple for people to grasp.” Second, he said, “We have to have new means of organizing against that whole cadre of business that are threatening our environment. The only way to prove to those in power that we exist, the only way they will understand us is by mobilizing.”

In Cochabamba, he said, “We didn’t just recover water as a public good, we recovered politics, and for us, politics means our collective capacity to make decisions for today and the future.”

He urged attendees to recognize their responsibility, as people from the North who maintain the largest military, the largest transnational corporations, and the highest consumption. He closed by asking attendees to “Commit not only to resist, but to re-exist.” “We pledge to be like water, transparent and in movement,” he said. “We promise to be like children, joyful and creative. We promise to believe that the power is within us — without leaders, without parties, without bosses. Hasta la victoria.”

After the event, a group from FloodWallStreet.org conducted a training outside the church for a group of about 30 activist volunteers for a direct action that will take place on Monday morning at the New York Stock Exchange. Aiming to spotlight the threat to Lower Manhattan from climate change, the group plans to dress in blue and mimic the flooding that crippled the area in the wake of Sandy. Watching the volunteers “Surge and sit” offered an eerie, powerful echo of Olivera’s call to “be like water.”