Things to Do: Walk the Talk and March

Sculpture on the grounds of Scaligero Castle, Malcesine, Lake Garda, Italy.

On March 1, 2014 a group of Climate Activists will leave Santa Monica, California and begin their trek to reach their destination, Washington D.C., nine months later. They are seeking volunteer marchers now for the full journey or part time at their website: The Great March for Climate Action.

This 3,000 mile trip will wind through Phoenix, Des Moines, Chicago and Pittsburgh with the intention to raise awareness of Climate Change.  Ed Fallon, a former Iowa politician, is leading the march and hopes to convince the politicians in Washington of the great need to take action now on this crisis.

Marching on Washington is not a new thing but it is a peculiarly American thing. If other countries gather groups of like-minded people and march and/or travel hundreds of miles in buses to stand together and speak loudly as one voice at the halls where laws are made, I am not aware of it. The demonstrations held in Egypt's Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring were directed at its country's leadership but the organized traveling over a long distance was missing. There was of course Gandhi's March to the Sea to make salt and it was quite well attended, gathering throngs of people as it moved through the countryside. But the Salt March involved a purposeful action taken together at the end of the march and held an indirect though very revolutionary message to the leadership.

Does a march to the capital have social value still? There are some who think it's a tiresome everyday thing now and nothing will match the significance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington so why do it? What purpose does it fulfill?

Why commit yourself to a cause? Why try to make a difference? Why hope that others will see what you see and work with you toward a better tomorrow for our kids and their kids? Why get up off the couch at all? It is so easy for a journalist to say that even the smallest march has little to no meaning if one is not involved in it. Marching, like all acts of commitment, enrich the marcher and enrich the viewer. The more miles a person commits to walk, the greater effect the act will have on them. The more press the march receives, the more people witnessing this action, the more people will talk about the topic of Climate Change and its possible solutions.

There is an audio of author Jean Shepherd and his story of the March on Washington. You can hear in this great storyteller's voice, from his retelling of it, what this march meant to him personally, what a profound effect it had on him. And he marvels that no journalist reported on the amazing tenor of the crowd, the kindness and support all exhibited toward each other - marchers, policemen, bystanders alike. And then he also notes that no journalists that he knew of or had read of had actually made the journey on a bus, that most had arrived the night before the marchers arrived on the buses so they missed out on this significant emotional undercurrent. It's a great and riveting listen if you have 20 minutes. This had to have changed his life and there is no way of measuring how that effect affected others. For all we know, the ripple he started in his own sphere of influence may still be going on.

The enormous historic impact of  King's I have a Dream speech at the March and Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha, could not have been fully anticipated at the time they were planned. I am sure both men were surprised and pleased that the reception of their actions brought meaning to so many people's lives. These actions still do. Their actions and those who followed them spoke of a very basic human truth. We all want to be free to live our lives in peace. It is that truth that makes these moments in time so very dear to us.

This Great March on Climate Action could be one of those moments in time. Climate Change is this generation's challenge and is the most difficult challenge that any generation has had to face.

People concerned about Climate Change are speaking out today  
despite the extreme social pressure to not talk of it,
despite the extremely negligent and misguided media that, for the most part, is denying that it is happening and despite the fact that it is a very sad thing to contemplate.

Much of what we love about our planet will be lost due to our refusal to act before today.
Much MORE will be lost if we continue this silence.

Please join in The Great March for Climate Action or if you can't walk, please donate to defray their expenses.

Myth Busting

Chicago CR 07312013. Photo by Gabriel Zurita Holder / Photoshop by Lilia Villa

  
Humans put a man on the moon, cured smallpox, and created a computer that can fit in your pocket. 

Deniers claim it’s too hard to build a clean energy future, but that’s a myth you and I can destroy.     

~ Al Gore



I attended a three-day Climate Reality training earlier this month and officially joined a global movement of volunteers who are determined to get us all talking about solutions to the Climate Crisis. Former Vice President Al Gore led the training and started out the morning referencing Mahatma Gandhi’s term – Satyagraha. Gandhi based his entire life’s work around this term - loosely translated it means "insistence on truth’ or ‘Truth Force’. This word is a combination of two Sanskrit words that Gandhi linked together.

Gandhi wrote:

I have also called it love-force or soul-force. In the application of satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and compassion. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself.

That term was at the core of his non-violent actions that changed the British Empire and gained India her independence. 

And so our training began with the insistence that we tell others about Climate Change with kindness, patience, and to always tell the truth. If we do not know the answer, we must say so and get the up to date information back to whoever asked the question.

I am not, as many of you know, a climate scientist or a specialist of any kind. I am a human, like you, living on this planet. I, like you, have a role to play here addressing this issue. And I am 100% convinced that we must act together to solve this problem starting now - if you haven’t personally started already.