Carrie Madren, a freelance journalist, filed this dispatch from the International Climate Action Day event in Washington, D.C.
You had to be pretty dedicated to complete the 350.org march climate action march in Washington, D.C. That’s because participants had to slog down the streets of the nation’s capital in a deluge.
Participants in the D.C. rally gathered at Malcolm X Park at noon; skies were gray but all was dry. The crowd swelled as speakers offered up short speeches and musicians—in genres ranging from an eco-rapper to an all-women’s African drum corps—performed a couple songs each. Dark skies threatened rain, but drops didn’t fall until the moment that rally-ers turned to march down the park’s grassy expanse, White House-bound.
By the time the march got going, the crowd was numbering some 500 to 600, by my estimates, was made up of an eclectic mix of college-age kids, Generation X-ers and baby boomers, with a few dozen young kids, hippies and seniors tossed in.
Speakers included Denmark’s ambassador to the United States, who spoke about the need for America to support action in Copenhagen at December’s international climate conference. Environmental activist Sheila Holt Orsted recounted her experience with environmental injustice—the Tennessee county where she lived failed to tell her family and other black neighbors about contaminated groundwater, even while they informed white neighbors; Steve Ma of Live Green conveyed that we need more businesses focused on the future, not just focused on today. Chesapeake Climate Action Network’s Mike Tidwell pumped up the crowd before the march with a short but impassioned rally speech.
As the march began, umbrellas popped up as the crowd sought to avoid a drenching from a driving rain storm. The marchers headed south on 16th Street, occupying up all southbound lanes. Cars passing by honked and cheered. Marchers carried a 350-foot-long banner with climate change messages, pictures, signatures and notes scrawled across the entire banner.
A solar-powered bus (Solarbus.org) led the way, followed by a fleet of bicyclists, then climate change foot soldiers.
The riving rains poured down, creating huge puddles (and under a bridge, a foot-deep lake), but accompanying police kept the marchers moving along with right of way to traffic.
At Lafayette Park in front of the White House, marchers formed a “circle of hope,” chanting messages to President Obama—and even singing “This Land is Your Land” (a suggestion shouted from a Baby Boomer). Wet protesters slowly slogged away as the rally died down about 4:45 p.m., tired, yet empowered.
Climate groups grapple for a path forward from Copenhagen
Comments
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Billhook Posted 2:25 am
25 Oct 2009
With a mere five or six hundred turning up in the nation's capital, with no agreed policy demands to present, why exactly should any politician take any notice at all ?
To be clear, it maybe needs pointing out that for 350 ppmv of CO2 to become part of global policy, it needs both an agreed delivery date, and agreed mechanisms for its achievement, logically including an annually declining global emissions cap, an equitable framework for the allocation of national rights of output under that cap (without which no cap will function)and the structuring of trading of national emission rights to maximize the rate of change out of fossil fuel dependence.
And if all this seems a bit dry and technical, well just keep chanting 350 and telling us how historic it is - who knows, maybe next year there might be even more people turn up to the demo . . . .
Regards,
Billhook
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Keith Harrington Posted 9:39 am
25 Oct 2009
Agreed that the crowd should have been larger (and it would have been in the thousands if not for the rain) but I have to say that the kind of negativity you've expressed in just about every comment about this great day of action is exactly what our movement does not need in order to grow.
Moreover I think you're really missing the point that this day of action wasn't about a march on Washington or a march on a single location. It was a global day of action - the first truly global day of action on any issue(as I wrote here on Grist the other day). If the goal of the 350 day of action had been a huge march on Washington there would have undoubtedly been tens of thousands with us in DC yesterday. But that wasn't what yesterday was about. As it happens, the DC rally and march was a locally organized event (and a really great locally organized event) whereas huge marches on DC are usually nationally organized affairs.
The Big March on DC is coming, Billhook. We do have the power. As an organizer, I'm always open to any constructive ideas you may have on how to make it happen, or at least some thoughts on how to keep the rain away.
Cheers
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randino Posted 12:36 pm
26 Oct 2009
If from now on we hear someone saying "Bah humbug!" you will know who it is.
Randy Cunningham
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Billhook Posted 3:42 am
27 Oct 2009
thanks for your response - I do see that the aim was to generate thousands of small unfocussed demos worldwide, which was very successfully fulfilled.
It is that aim that I question, since such small and unfocussed demos in capitals around the world can tend only to encourage the status-quo propagandists to further erode support for requisite change.
If there were large numbers drawn to capitals (which is where most countries' national media are centered) or if there were clear credible constructive policy demands, I'd not be so concerned as to critique the action.
Yet without those clear credible constructive policy demands, 350.org is asking for a blank cheque of popular support with regard to just what its policy will be. I'm unable to find anything resembling a forum on the site, so policy formation seems to be totally lacking in participatory merit or even transparency, even down to a list of its participants. This seems grossly undemocratic and, strategically, unwise.
We know at least of Dr Hansen's participation, and of his seriously destructive proposal regarding global GHG management : that the US should formulate its global plan, get it endored by some western allies, and then coerce developing nations into compliance under threat of a trade war.
That this proposal is patently delusional as a reliable option for the next 4 decades seems pretty obvious.
But, more seriously, it is being taken up by Congress and quite possibly Senate members too, and has strong potential as a means of derailing the UN FCCC negotiations, since developing countries are already responding very badly to it even being discussed in US legislative bodies.
I suggest that this is the antithesis of what is required to help achieve a global treaty under present conditions. So perhaps 350.org needs to make clear its repudiation of Dr Hansen's proposal ? And to declare instead its support for the global right to convergence towards per-capita parity of GHG emissions-entitlements under an annually declining global "cap" [i.e. GHG-output budget] ?
Randy - sorry I sounded Grinch-like to you - I have indeed been to some demos - the first being against the Biafran War back in '68 I think, and the latest being recently at a Climate protest in London.
My concern re 24/10 is over policy and, in its total absence from 350.org, the potential for a worldwide sink of activists efforts from having any discernable effect whatsoever on the negotiations in Copenhagen.
The idea that we should help promote an unstructured, utterly remote, lofty, aspirational goal, while saying nothing coherent about how binding national emissions-rights will need to be shared out in 2012, seems to me truly Bush the 3rd.
Regards,
Billhook
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randino Posted 4:50 am
27 Oct 2009
The decentralized actions sponsored by 350.org do have precedent in one of the most famous days of activism in US history, which was the old Moratorium against the war in Vietnam - forty years ago this month - which Bill - was my first activist experience.
Unfortunately, people seem to feel it is much easier to register their outrage through e-mail. They are hiding behind their computers. I can't think of anything that has ever been accomplished that hasn't involved hitting the streets. Our communications technology is a wonderous thing, but it is no substitute for demonstrations which are not only a democratic practice, but one that builds relationships and contests for terrain with the powers that be. It is good for you, and good for your cause. And we won't save our butts without lots and lots of it.
Randy Cunningham
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