By this time most people are aware of the 400,000 strong Climate Change March in NYC, that even exceeded the high expectations set for it. Not because network news covered it.
CLIMATE WHAT? TV networks drop the ball on Climate March
Of course not. Luckily, we no longer depend on telievision. Just check your own sources: alternet, commondreams, truthout, truthdig, etc.
Here’s two pics of the parade which, apparently stretched 25 NYC blocks.
Here in Bloomington, as I approached the courthouse, where all our protests are held — underneath the proverbial statue to honor all the war dead; tell me, please, why are there so many monuments to war in every town I’ve ever lived in or visited? —
— this one was bigger than usual. Besides quite a number of young people, the usual serious, dedicated silver and white-haired suspects were present, of course, including the intrepid Lucille Bertuccio, grandmother of the Center for Sustainable Living, which she started back in 1992.
Despite the drastic situation that we’re all facing if climate change doesn’t let up, we still managed to find our sense of humor, as in this homage to the “kraken” (a mythical sea monster):
Meanwhile, not everyone was excited about the marches. For example:
How the People’s Climate March became a Corporate PR Campaign
And I find it interesting that the Rockefeller heirs decided, on the very same day as the March, to announce that their foundation was going to join the divestiture movement.
Rockefellers, Heirs to an Oil Fortune, Will Divest Charity of Fossil Fuels
Huh? Talk about a rollout! I mean, yes, I’m glad, and I’m also mad. It’s either a p.r. crock, or it doesn’t matter, given the urgency of our planetary situation. Or maybe it does matter. Maybe everything matters, especially, to me, it matters that all solutions be both drastic and local, everywhere, local. Decentralize. If something calls for centralized solutions, it’s part of the problem. Steer clear.
In any case, here are two very different but, I’d say, complementary assessments of the larger picture:
People’s Climate March: How We’re Sharpening the Environmental Justice Movement
It will take a mass ‘movement of movements’ to counter the power of money and corruption that prevents the change we need in regard to climate.
and
Chris Hedges: The Coming Climate Revolt
Excerpt:
When acts of mass civil disobedience begin on Monday morning [that’s today, September 22] with Flood Wall Street and later with Occupy the U.N., the face of the corporate state will, as it did during the Occupy movement, reveal itself.
If the response of the corporate state is repression rather than reform then our strategy and our tactics must be different. We will have to cease our appealing to the system. We will have to view the state, including the Democratic Party, as antagonistic to genuine reform. We will have to speak in the language of … revolution. We will have to carry out acts of civil disobedience that seek to cripple the mechanisms of corporate power. The corporate elites, blinded by their lust for profit and foolish enough to believe they can protect themselves from climate change, will not veer from our path towards ecocide unless they are forced from power. And this means the beginning of a titanic clash between our corporate masters and ourselves.
