Demand Action on Climate Change in NYC on Sept. 20

[flamingdem]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/a-call-to-arms-an-invitation-to-demand-action-on-climate-change-20140521

* How about a DU contingent?

Earlier this spring the chaplain at Harvard joined students sitting-in outside the Harvard president’s office to demand climate action. He took the bullhorn for a minute, and thanked the organizers for “giving me the chance to be the person who I purport to be—a person who gives a damn.”

We’re all going to get that chance Sept. 20 and 21, when the biggest demonstration in the history of the climate movement takes place in New York City. We need you there, you and everyone you can think of to bring. Here’s the somewhat more formal invitation that I wrote out for the current issue of Rolling Stone. Please share it—it’s the most important call we’ll send you this year. And if you’re ready to say you’ll be there, RSVP on Facebook.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has summoned the world’s leaders to the city in late September to consult about climate change. Because we think those leaders have done a lousy job, and because we’re tired of fancy words and ready for real action, we’re going to go to New York too, in our thousands and tens of thousands.

Marching doesn’t solve anything by itself. But movements can shift political power—in fact, little else ever does.

[flamingdem]

1. Bill McKibben issues a call to action

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/21/1300945/-Bill-McKibben-issues-a-call-to-action#

My friend Bill McKibben, founder of the climate change organization 350.org, has a 25-year history of environmental writing and activism that began with his inspiring and disturbing book, The End of Nature, in 1989. It was the first of a dozen books he has written on the environment. In books and speeches the soft-spoken McKibben electrifies audiences. But he doesn't just talk the talk. He walks the walk. Even when the walk ends in zipcuffs and a police van.

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Tell Everyone.

If you're saying to yourself you can't afford to go to New York, or your boss won't give you leave to go or something else is holding you back, there's an alternative. Organizing local protests to occur at the same time as the one in New York. If 100 or 200 towns and cities held their own actions—say, at city hall or the state legislature—not only would that make it easy for tens of thousands of other Americans to participate, it would bring more media attention to the event and generate a residual momentum to advance other local actions in the future.