Texts, video from People’s Climate March

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!