Full voice

My poster is made and my pack is stuffed with reading material--check!--sandwich--check!--notebook--check! and all the other things I can think I'll need for the bus ride to New York, the march, the journey home. We set off at 6:30 in the morning, bus after bus of us, heading down for the People's Climate March which starts off from the southwest corner of Central Park.

The theme of the march?  'To Tell the Story of Today's Climate Movement'. To this end it's organized in six sections. In the front, Frontlines of Crisis, Forefront of Change with indigenous peoples, Sandy-affected people, farmworkers, etc.  Next, We Build the Future with unions, public health advocates, parents, women, elder, students (I guess I'm in this group). After that, We Have the Solutions with political organization, musicians, renewable energy activists, and so on. Fourth in line, We Know Who is Responsible with veterans, mountaintop removal opponents, tar sands resisters and similar groups. Next to last, The Debate is Over with scientists, beekeepers, faith communities... At the end, To Change Everything, It Takes Everyone, with representatives of NYC boroughs, other cities, states, countries. So well thought out. Also, I have to say it's been well-organized even at this end, considering the number of update emails I've received and even a phone call making sure I'm going.

Of course I'm going. I remember as a college kid participating in the October, 1969 March on Washington against the Vietnamese war. I traveled down in a crowded van from Brandeis. There were two million of us. One of us, later be a famous cosmologist, was tear gassed, but the rest of us simply walked many abreast, through the city, marveling at our numbers, confident that they would make a difference. We were wrong. The country's investment in the war didn't end, or even slacken.

That war poisoned our politics for a generation. Even today, we see the black POW/MIA flag flying just below the national flag, the bowed, silhouetted head I take to be emblematic of what that war did to us, did in us. This issue, climate change, is on another scale altogether: sea and sky gone rammy, populations of people at risk, plants and animals on the move, changes playing out over decades, centuries, ancient systems spiraling out of control.

There won't be speeches by the powerful or famous. The only noise is to be the shout-out at 1 pm. I have my whistle and intend to blow it. Listen, you participants in the UN climate change conference starting next week. Listen, world leaders. Listen, Congress. Listen, deniers and delayers and despairers. We want to make a noise you all will  not be able to not hear.

If I get to choose the bus for the trip, I hope it's a singing one.