Posts By This Author
A 300-Mile Ride for Climate Justice
Cyclist at sunset, maradonna 8888 / Shutterstock.com
I just completed my first Climate Ride, journeying 300 miles by bicycle over five days with 200 other climate activists. Climate Ride began five years ago, and the riders raise money for organizations that work on sustainability and climate change. They’re also a way to spread the word about the growing and increasingly determined climate movement. For those of us who take part – by now, thousands of us have – the rides have a deep and lasting impact.
These are my reflections from the last day of the ride; you can read reflections on the first four days of the Climate Ride here.
An International “Occupy” Manifesto
Glynnis Jones / Shutterstock.com
Several days ago a document, the “GlobalMay Statement,” showed up in my email inbox. In the statement, it is explained that “this is an attempt by some inside the [occupy] movements to reconcile statements written and endorsed in the different assemblies around the world. The process of writing the statement was consensus based, open to all, and regularly announced on our international communications platforms, that are also open to all. It was a hard and long process, full of compromises. This statement is offered to people’s assemblies around the world for discussions, revisions and endorsements.”
One of the things which struck me was how strong the statement is on the climate and environmental crises. The first sentence of the first general point says that, “The economy must be put to the service of people’s welfare, and to support and serve the environment, not private profit.” Four of the ten bullet points under that first general point deal in some way with environmental issues.
Occupy Wall Street Lives!
#OWS protesters march in lower Manhattan on Tuesday. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
As I walked around Union Square in NYC yesterday between 4 and 5:30, waiting for the march down Broadway to begin, memories of occupied Zuccotti Park came to mind. Handmade signs about a very wide range of issues were everywhere. There were drumming and musical groups doing their rhythmic things and people dancing as they did so. There was Reverend Billy performing, and an incredibly well done colored chalk piece of artwork on the sidewalk near 17th and Broadway. People everywhere, mainly white folks but diverse, lots of young people but with a significant number of non-young people.
And a spirit of hope, a spirit which declared: “we are here, we are organized, we have not been defeated and we are not going away.”
November 6: More Than Just the Climate Movement?
This Sunday (11/6), is precisely one year from the 2012 General Election where the next U.S. President will be elected, and to mark the date, thousands of people from across the country plan to gather at the White House.
But we're not gathering to celebrate, have a sit-in, or even march in protest. Instead, we plan to surround the White House -- literally -- in a Circle of Hope that could be as large as a mile or more in circumference.
From our Circle of Hope we will call upon President Obama to reject the dirty-oil, Keystone XL pipeline Big Oil wants to build from the Canadian tar sands in the Alberta province 6,000 miles south -- straight through the American Heartland -- to the oil refineries along the Gulf Coast of Texas.