Dear friends,
The People’s Climate March on Sunday, September 21, in New York City will be the largest demonstration yet for climate sanity. We hope you can join us there that day. Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) have been working in coalition with hundreds of other groups to make this important event an impactful assembly of those who do not want to stand by passively while our global environment is being destroyed. We at the NSP believe that there are three things that can be done right now to begin the process of preventing global environmental disaster: 1. Plan local and national demonstrations to call attention to the urgency of the problem 2. Launch local initiatives to stop the wide variety of ways that the climate and the earth are being assaulted and undermined. 3. Campaign for an Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment To The U.S. Constitution(ESRA), which would dramatically reduce the distorting impact of super-rich donors and global corporate capitalism on elections by banning not just corporate money but also all private sources of funding in elections. The ESRA would instead mandate that national and state elections be driven only by public funding. The ESRA would also require large corporations (those with incomes over $50 million a year) to get a new corporate charter once every five years. To renew their charters, corporations would have to prove a satisfactory history of environmental and social responsibility to a panel of ordinary citizens whowould receive testimony from people around the world impacted by those corporations. The ESRA would also prohibit corporations from moving their assets and resources and jobs from any community where they have functioned in the past without first paying reparations to that community for any damage their moving those assets and jobs would cause to the people of that community. And it would mandate environmental education at every grade level from kindergarten through college, as well as in graduate and professional schools. You can help by getting your local church, synagogue, mosque, ashram, civic organization, political party, social change organization, college or university, elected officials, city councils, state legislatures, or congressional representatives to publicly endorse the ESRA. 4. Campaign for a Domestic and Global Marshall Plan, which would eliminate poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, and inadequate health care, as well as repair the parts of the global environment already destroyed by corporate avarice. We cannot expect people facing extreme poverty and diseases caused by malnutrition to choose to preserve the environment at the expense of the immediate survival of their children. Only when we show real caring for the well-being of all people will it be possible for all of us to collectively prioritize the environmental survival of the planet. Hon. Keith Ellison has introduced a house resolution endorsing the GMP (Global Marshall Plan), and we need your local elected officials to do so also. Sadly, the organizers of the climate march have not created a space for a community discussion of strategies of this sort to become well known even among the demonstrators on Sept. 21. This was a large opportunity lost. It’s a similar opportunity as has been lost at anti-war rallies throughout the decades—it’s important for people to come together at these large rallies, but if the protest space does not transition into an organizing space, many people go home afterward with few ideas about what national strategy to pursue. That’s why it’s important to join the NSP and become active with us in encouraging this kind of discussion as well as in implementing our specific strategy articulated in the above paragraphs. Now the details: the “Communities of Faith and Spirit” contingent will gather on 58th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues before joining the March. If you come at 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. there will be an interfaith service. The Faith and Spirit contingent will join the larger march sometime between 1:00 and 1:30 p.m. And now, a note from peace and climate activist Rae Abileah, who will be speaking at the Beyt Tikkun High Holiday services in Berkeley: The Manhattan Coastline. Next year’s harvest. Clean air and water. Toxin-free communities. The bees. The future of your children’s children. What do you love most in your life that you stand to lose—or, maybe, have already lost—to Climate Chaos? In preparation for the People’s Climate March, thousands worldwide are sharing their stories. Here’s how you can, too: 1. On a ribbon about two feet long, write what to you is most #worthsaving. Consider recycling old ribbons from gift wrapping, or ripping an old sheet or piece of fabric into strips (ideally, the less imported new materials, the more eco-friendly, the better). Pick a ribbon that is wide enough to write on. On the far right side, add your name, where you live and your age. Some examples we’ve received: “The coastline of Manhattan. Andy, New York City, age 25.” “The hope that my children can live healthy lives. Jon, Milwaukee, age 34.” 2. Bring your ribbon with you to the People’s Climate March on September 21 in NYC, or mail your ribbon to: The Climate Ribbon
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Please Come to the Citizens’ Climate March Sept 21 in NYC
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