Join the People’s Climate March

New York City is getting ready to make history. On Sunday, Sept. 21, beginning at 11:30 a.m. at Columbus Circle, the world’s largest climate change event is going to happen in our front yard. Welcome to the People’s Climate March!

Here is why every reader of The Riverdale Press should march:

If you don’t turn up, you’re going to hate telling your grandchildren you missed this one. The march is going to be massive, important, family-friendly and full of amazing sights and sounds. Because it’s being organized by the grassroots, it will include everyone — people of all sizes, shapes, colors, ages, you name it. People of faith and non-faith, workers, retirees, families, students, organized labor. It will be led by young people and by front-line communities from Red Hook, the Rockaways, Staten Island and around the country, those first and worst affected by Hurricane Sandy and other extreme weather events caused by climate change.

For weeks, folks across the U.S. have been organizing buses and trains to bring people to New York. There will be a People’s Climate March in London, Delhi, and many other cities on the same day. This is going to be an epic event, one of joy and hope and urgency. The march will be a chance to make your voice heard on the most urgent issue of our time, one that is connected to ALL the other work we do in our lives.

Why a climate change march in New York City in September? When the U.N. meets this month, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will convene a climate summit of global leaders, asking for urgent international action in preparation for the next big round of global climate talks - — COP 21 — in Paris in December 2015.

To make the societal changes needed to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change — and to reverse it as much as possible — we need people everywhere to demand change from our leaders.

The People’s Climate March will show global leaders that hundreds of thousands of concerned people are willing to raise their voices to demand renewable energy economies that works for people and the planet — economies that provide good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy ecosystems and communities. 

In issuing a call to march in the May 21, 2014 issue of Rolling Stone, Bill McKibben, leader of the global climate organization 350.org, wrote, “In a rational world, no one would need to march. In a rational world, policymakers would have heeded scientists when they first sounded the alarm about global warming 25 years ago. But in this world, reason, having won the argument, has so far lost the fight because the fossil fuel industry has been able to delay effective action.”

Like Bill McKibben, I believe it is not too late to create a greener, saner world for our children. But only if we act with great urgency, and in solidarity with each other. This is truly the fight of our lives.

In decades of environmental activism, I have never seen anything like the passionate dedication of today’s climate movement. The wonder and the terror of climate change are one and the same. People are awakening to the reality that climate change is such an imminent threat that it no longer makes sense to say, “Me? I don’t go to environmental protests.” People are realizing that this fight is about EVERYONE. Because it turns out that everyone who breathes air, drinks water, eats food, and depends upon healthy ecosystems for their and their loved ones’ survival, is an environmentalist after all.

In the last few months, people from all walks of life have been galvanized into planning this big event — literally electrified by its potential to lay essential groundwork for the struggle going forward. At the first public organizing meeting for the march on May 20, 250 people showed up at SEIU Local 32BJ downtown, impatient to get to work. Organizers had expected a fraction of that number. 

The largest group that evening? Young people of color. Just five weeks later, on July 1,500 people participated in the second public organizing meeting at the New School, roaring their approval when a union leader declared that workers would no longer believe industry leaders who say they must choose between jobs and the environment.

Systemic change doesn’t happen without mass mobilization — think of the abolition movement, of labor struggles, the civil rights movement, the movements for women’s rights and gay rights. Think of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, of Gandhi’s satyagraha. It is going to take that level of concerted courage and hard work, of insistence on speaking truth to the power of the fossil fuel overlords and their political minions, to create a world that is safe for life on earth. As Nelson Mandela said, working together creates a “multiplication of courage.”

Come, march, be a part of the history of New York City, and the climate justice movement. Join the newly-formed “Riverdale-Kingsbridge Coalition for Climate Action” (look for us on Facebook), and after you march, be a part of the community-building work we will do here and with our neighbors in “Bronx Climate Justice” and countless other groups in Kingsbridge, Marble Hill and around the borough, to make change.

The fossil fuel companies are banking on your staying home on Sept. 21. Let’s show them that the Bronx is part of a rising tide of history in which our species finally achieves “right relationship” with the earth and the seventh generation.

For more information go to. www.peoplesclimate.org.

Jennifer Scarlott is a Riverdale resident. Point of view is a column open to all.