Hey Everyone! This is Julie, the new sustainability writer for Team Green Facilities and Services! I am excited to be in this new position, learning about sustainability locally and globally, and excited to be posting for the first time on our blog!
Last week, Leslie mentioned the People’s Climate March happening in New York City on Sunday September 21st! This is not just an ordinary rally. It instead hopes to be the one of the biggest events in the environmental movement: a culmination of efforts, an abundance of people, a giant push to go green. Caroline Murray, the field director for the march, told LA times that their “goal is to [be] the largest climate march in history.” Their website writes that “over 1,400 (!) businesses, unions, faith groups, schools, social justice groups, environmental groups and more” have been collaborating to make this event huge and impactful. The march has even prompted the creation of a pop up office in Midtown Manhattan.
Neil Rudin, local Rochestarian said he knew about the march because of the art, banners, signs, and posters the climate march organizers have made to publicize the event. “The way to get people’s attention is visually,” Rudin claims, and they’ve done that. Even Shepard Fairey, a famous street artist who designed the viral Barack Obama “Hope” poster, which eventually entered the Smithsonian, designed a poster for the People’s Climate March. It is lined with the slogan “To Change Everything, We Need Everyone.”
They have also seized the perfect timing, as this weekend, the U.N. climate meeting is in NYC. It has rejuvenated the movement, creating an air of optimistic urgency to bring the environmental movement back into the political, social, and public domains, and with a bang at that. With a ton of hype, publicity, word of mouth, and social media, news of this march has exploded and people are gearing up for it.
Many of my friends, from whom I had never heard environmentalism discussed before, are attending this Sunday. I don’t know how organizers did it, but they’ve made this climate march trendy. On Facebook, the People’s Climate March has been a trending topic for about a week now. Murray continued to tell the LA times that “traditionally, you think of climate change as the cause of more traditional environmental groups, but this is a much broader array of activists.”
Not only is our own Leslie Wolf going, but a whole host of Rochestarians are going! The Sierra Club, with help from Metro Justice, the largest activist network in Rochester, has organized a huge bus, which has already been filled, to take people on a 24-hour excursion to New York and back, Sunday-Monday. But don’t worry! If you’re interested in attending its not to late! Metro Justice is also organizing large vans to drive people down on an as needed basis. Call their office at (585) 325-2560 if you want to go and support environmentalism!
Written by Julie Elliot, class of 2015