Protest Reports
NEW YORK — The massive People’s Climate March, the most hopeful, diverse, photogenic, energizing, and often hilarious march I’ve joined in 52 years of activism — and one of the biggest, at 400,000 strong — has delivered a simple message: we can and will rid the planet of fossil fuels and nuclear power, we will do it at the grassroots, it will be demanding and difficult to say the least, but it will also have its moments of great fun.
With our lives and planet on the line, our species has responded.
Ostensibly, this march was in part meant to influence policy makers. That just goes with the territory.
But in fact what it showed was an amazingly broad-based, diverse, savvy, imaginative, and very often off-beat movement with a deep devotion to persistence and cause, and a great flair for fun.
Because what must happen most of all is organizing from the grassroots against each and every polluting power plant, unwanted permit, errant funding scheme, stomach-turning bribe, planet-killing frack well, soon-to-melt reactor, and much much more.
Two vans and a big bus filled with truly great people—the new Climate Riders—on their way to New York City for the People’s Climate March pulled up to the First Watch for breakfast this morning in Columbus, Ohio.
Twenty-four hours on the road each way to march for a few hours against the corporations that are killing our planet.
Kansas/Missouri Climate Riders stop for breakfast in central Ohio on their way to NYC. Local author Harvey Wasserman is kneeling in front in his “Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth” t-shirt. Photo credit: Samantha Allen
“I hate the Koch Brothers,” one of them tells me over pancakes. “They are wrecking the Earth for all of us.”
Another, Chris, borrows my bike to ride down the street to a bakery, then does it a second time to feed the drivers.
Organizers from Columbus and the OSU campus communities brought hundreds of protesters to the Ohio Statehouse on Sunday August 18 to show solidarity with the people of Gaza currently under siege by the Israeli Defense Force. The rally brought people from around the state and as far away as Pittsburgh and Kentucky.
Some protesters expressed a general support for the people of Palestine while for others the rally was more personal. Reema Al-Waritat, an organizer with family still in Palestine, spoke about what they have been through: “I stand in front of you today on behalf of my family who resides in Hebron, Palestine. On behalf of my mother, my brothers and my siblings, all of them. I stand in front of you on behalf of my husband who was kidnapped by the Israeli police, excuse me soldiers, brutally beaten and imprisoned for months at a time and starved.”
On March 17, 2012 Occupy Wall Street veterans gathered in Zuccotti Park to commemorate the six month anniversary of the beginning of the Occupy movement. What followed was a mass of New York police in riot gear with batons marching in to crush the protest. Some protestors left, others sat down or linked arms. The results were extreme even for the New York Police Department (NYPD), which has acquired a reputation for brutality. Reported injuries among the protestors included a broken thumb, a broken jaw and at least one protestor struck repeatedly in the back with a nightstick as he fled the park. Multiple witness accounts claim that officers used their boots to hold protestors’ faces to the ground while handcuffed and awaiting the pre-arranged bus to jail.
Veterans For Peace chapters are participating in events on or around this November 11th in over 50 U.S. cities, many of them honoring the tradition of Armistice Day, the earlier name for what is now called Veterans Day.
Veterans For Peace has participated in the Auburn parade every year since 2006.
Auburn rejected VFP's application to march in the parade this year, saying that other applicants more closely met the parade's goals and purpose. Among the applicants accepted are a motorcycle club, a Corvette club, the Optimists and Kiwanis International, the Sons of Italy, and a Daffodil Festival float.
The suit asserts that the City of Auburn is discriminating against Veterans For Peace because of the group’s viewpoint, and seeks a court order to allow VFP to march.
Yesterday, October 24, Leslie Harris of Dallas, Texas and I visited the “boys” in the trees, the great activists who have been living in the trees along the Trans Canada Keystone XL pipeline that is carving a terrible scar in the countryside of East Texas. Earlier in the day we had been meeting with dozens of Tar Sands Blockade (TSB) activists who are preparing campaigns in East Texas and Houston to challenge the XL pipeline.
Activism in the Air
The Tar Sands Blockade (TSB) fellows are living in tree houses built high in the branches of tall oak trees next to the piles of sandy soil that has been dug up and mounded 30 feet high. Huge green pipes lay on the side of the trench sliced deep into the Texas soil.
Having already shuttered two of its three manufacturing sites in the USA, the company is in the process of outsourcing 170 well-paying jobs to China from the remaining plant in Freeport despite record profits. Sensata began the terminations last Friday and they will continue through the end of the year. The job loss at the plant will result in the loss of $7.7 million in wages that feed the local economy according to Stephenson County Chairman John Blum.