Confessions of a Reluctant Climate-Change Marcher

What was the impact of Sunday's massive People's Climate March? Was it, as 350.org founder and march instigator Bill McKibben claimed, "the most important day" in the history of the climate movement?

September 25, 2014 | Source: The Villager | by Sarah Ferguson

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He’s got the whole world in his hands at Sunday’s People’s Climate March.
Photo by Milo Hess  

What was the impact of Sunday’s massive People’s Climate March?

Was it, as 350.org founder and march instigator Bill McKibben claimed, “the most important day” in the history of the climate movement?

I confess when I first heard about the march, it seemed like another big protest parade to nowhere through the canyons of N.Y.C. With slick subway ads pledging to unite “hipsters and bankers” and even a glossy promo video celebrating the organizers and their mission to “make history,” the march sounded more like Live Aid for the planet – with no central demands on world leaders or threats to corporate power to give it teeth.

Having walked through the soles of my boots at marches to stop Bush’s Iraq War, I’ve experienced the limits of simply putting our bodies in the streets.

But after marching with my six-year-old, and running around to various panels and plenaries hosted by climate groups all weekend, I’ve emerged energized, if overwhelmed, by the depth and urgency of the grassroots organizing here and around the world.

While the media focused on the spectacle of 400,000-plus bodies jammed along Central Park West as far as the eye could see, it was the networking that took place between all these grassroots groups and the connections made at events leading up to the march that gave it its real power.

Scores of workshops and gatherings were held in East Village community gardens and other parts of Lower Manhattan as part of the New York City Climate Convergence – which coincided with the annual Lower East Side Harvest festival – creating a synergy of art, music and activism that I haven’t experienced here for some time.

There were people from Cochabamba, Bolivia, schooling Detroit activists on their succesful campaign to stop the privatization of public water, and Canadian tar sands activists mingling with bike advocates and African Green Belt activists on Avenue C.

“Like cramming for the apocalypse,” quipped one organizer.

You couldn’t walk into a garden without hearing about some environmental crusade.