Our UN Climate Blogathon starts tomorrow -- and we have a great panel of guests, as well as some Daily Kos writers planning to post. This summit is a big deal. The US has been blocking international progress toward curbing carbon emissions in the past, and is making noises like their tune is changing a bit...
Participation in the march, in letter writing, in making as much noise as possible is really crucial today. Please visit our diaries, but if you do nothing else, please make some noise.
Tomorrow's schedule, all times Pacific:
9:00 am Sen. Boxer and Sen. Whitehouse
10:00 am Rep. Barbara Lee
11:00 am Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva
1:00 pm Ken Ward and Jay O'Hara lobster boat activists
3:00 pm Bristol County DA Sam Sutter
Also:
NYC Kossacks Meet-up Location for The People’s Climate March
The NYC Kossacks will be meeting at 69th Street and Central Park West. We will have a banner (and some will be wearing orange) so that you can identify us. Sidnora and joanbrooker will be there at 9:30 a.m. and we encourage anyone who wants to march with us to be there by 10:30 a.m. There are estimates of 100,000 plus marchers and if people arrive too late, it may be difficult to get through the crowds to our location. After the march, there will be an NYC meet-up at our usual haunt, Spitzer’s Corner @5 p.m. Here is a link to the diary from KathNY, who will also be updating with relevant information regarding the march.
Please check out KathNY's diary for location information.
Please see the guess list and a special thanks to Meteor Blades below the fold:
Barbara Boxer
Senator from California.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Senator from Rhode Island.
US Rep. Barbara Lee
Representing California's 13th Congressional District, and tireless voice for ecojustice, social justice, and the environment.
US Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva
Representing Arizona's 3rd Congressional District, a tireless voice for justice and frequent contributor at Daily Kos.
Kandi Mossett, Indigenous Environmental Network
"Established in 1990 within the United States, IEN was formed by grassroots Indigenous peoples and individuals to address environmental and economic justice issues (EJ). IEN’s activities include building the capacity of Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable."
Nikki Silvestri, Executive Director, Green For All
"Green For All is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through a clean energy economy. We work in collaboration with the business, government, labor, and grassroots communities to increase quality jobs and opportunities in the green industry – all while holding the most vulnerable people at the center of our agenda."
Emmanuel de Merode, Chief Warden of Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Plagued by confict, poaching, climate change, and the oil industry, Dr. de Merode and his talented staff of rangers risk their lives every day to protect an International Treasure -- Virunga National Park.
Van Jones
CNN Crossfire Host, Best Selling Author, Advisor, and longtime friend of Daily Kos -- a luminary voice in ecojustice and champion of green jobs.
Sam Sutter, Bristol County Attorney, Lobster Boat Case
DA who dropped charges against Ken Ward and Jay O'Hara for blocking a coal delivery with their lobster boat.
Ken Ward
Faced criminal charges for blocking a shipment of fuel to a coal fired power plant.
Jay O'Hara
Faced criminal charges for blocking a shipment of fuel to a coal fired power plant.
Washington State Representative Joe Fitzgibbon, 34th LD
Representative Fitzgibbon is a champion of curbing carbon emissions in Washington State, and is recently working on using emissions sales to fund education.
Jeff Conant, International Forests Campaigner, Friends of Earth US
The world's largest grassroots environmental network with 76 national member groups.
Bill McKibben, Activist, Educator, and Founder of 350.org
Tireless activist and longtime friend to Daily Kos, Bill is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and a respected voice on climate change impacts.
A number of regular community members at Daily Kos will be participating, as well:
jarbelaez, onomastic, citisven, rb137, remembrance, John Crapper, VL Baker, and James Wells.
The blogathon team would like to welcome two new members, jarbelaez, and Dont Just Sit There DO Something. You rock.
Look forward to working with you!
PDNC has written, on behalf of our DK Blogathon Team (JekyllnHyde, rb137, boatsie, Aji, citisven, peregrine kate, John Crapper, Kitsap River, jarbelaez, and Dont Just Sit There DO SOMETHING), a message of appreciation for Meteor Blades. Five years ago, Meteor Blades and PDNC partnered up to organize global warming, climate/eco justice and environmental blogathons at DK, and then recently Meteor Blades had the role of advisor to our blogathon team. This blogathon will be his last one as our advisor.
Over the past 5 years, each of our blogathons have been so effective and successful, exceeding our goals because we have an outstanding Blogathon Team, the best online community who have been so wonderfully supportive of us at DK, and because my partner in blogathons was Meteor Blades. Our blog team is comprised of excellent community organizers who help each other, work hard and are dedicated to community -- online and real world -- and bring such beautiful passion, energy and creativeness to our projects. But, today I want to focus my appreciation and thanks on Meteor Blades, who will no longer be our advisor.
I'd like to mention some of the many benefits from our blogathons. None of these would have happened without our partnership and our fantastic DK Blogathon Team.
One of our benefits is bringing new and exciting progressive/liberal voices to DK. Many stay around to post later and some times we welcome people like Democratic leaders Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi back to DK after not posting for years.
Over the years, we have been honored with incredible special guests at our blogathons. Tim and I wrote individual invitations for our special guests, and some, like Former Vice-President Al Gore (who I believe is the highest Democratic official to post at DK), took a few tries! Here are some of our special guests:
Former White House Officials: Vice President Al Gore, Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Special Advisor Van Jones; and
Lawmakers: Former Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Whitehouse, Sen. Boxer, Sen. Sherrod Brown, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Sen. Jeff Merkley, Sen. Ben Cardin, Sen. Al Franken, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, Rep. Edward Markey, Rep. Henry Waxman; and
Political Leaders: Gov. Howard Dean, Former Governor Jennifer Granholm; and
Climate Change Scientists: Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (UN Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Mike MacCracken (Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs with the Climate Institute in Washington DC and adviser to Clinton administration), Michael Mann (Professor at Penn State University and director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center), Dr. John Abraham (University of St. Thomas), and Amanda Staudt (Climate Scientist with National Wildlife Federation); and
Labor Union Leaders: SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO Executive VicePresident Arlene Holt Baker, United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez; and
Environmental and Justice NGOs: (Bill McKibben (founder of 350.0rg), Marty Cobenais (Indigenous Environmental Network), Nikki Silvestri (CEO of Green for All) and Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins (former CEO), Rev. Lennox Yearwood (President of Hip Hop Caucus), Jeff Mears (Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin), Jane Kleeb (Executive Director of Bold Nebraska), Ross Hammond (Friends of the Earth), Michael Brune (Executive Director of the Sierra Club), David Turnbull (Campaigns Director of Oil Change International), Tzeporah Berman (Canadian Environmentalist and Co-Founder of Forest Ethics).
Our blogathons enable community members to speak directly to our guests, like former Senator John Kerry, allowing our voices to be heard directly by lawmakers rather than filtered via media or obstructed by rich lobbyists. Even when staff is subbing for a guest, I know that our voices and comments are heard by our guests.
And I love working in coalitions with other eco and civil rights NGOs for certain campaigns, like being a part of generating millions of public comments opposing the XL Pipeline, knowing that our public comments must be read and responded to by the State Department and that public comments played a role in rejecting XL a few years ago.
I loved when Bill McKibben stated at NN how our blogathons successfully navigated around the MSM blockage of eco issues. I also love when I am told how our blogathons have motivated kossacks to engage in eco political activism. I love when the first diary posted by someone is in our blogathon. And I love when rb137 was approached by ACT for Congo and is now working for them because of one of her blogathon diaries, showing the international audience available at DK.
All of this started in 2009 when we organized our first official blogathon focused on the critically important Copenhagen climate talks. Tim and I decided our blogathons should have a mix of special guests (lawmakers, politicians, scientists, civil rights/eco NGOs) and kossacks to discuss a range of issues relating to global warming or other environmental issues. This blogathon included Senators John Kerry and Jeff Merkley, Dr. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, who is Vice-chair of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, and Dr. Michael MacCracken, who was also one of the advisors for former Vice-President Al Gore.
Meteor Blades and Susan Gardner posted comments expressing excitement about this community blogathon project.
So, a sincere thank you Tim for the years of our partnership, and past couple years as advisor, for the hours we've spent on the phone discussing guests, strategies and policies. Former Senator John Kerry expressed his thanks to you back in 2009!:
"And now I’m glad that the folks (special thanks to Meteor Blades and Patriot Daily) here are coordinating this period to try and focus discussion on an issue I’m working on hours and hours each week in the Senate -- climate change and the effort to build a new, clean energy economy to help address it."
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UN Climate Summit/March Blogathon
September 19-23, 2014
World leaders representing nations, industry and civil society are convening in New York City for the historic September 21 UN Climate Summit. The summit, announced by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon last September, is designed to bring all parties to the table to facilitate the 2015 UNFCCC passage of a global treaty to dramatically reduce global warming.
In what is being called a “movement of movements” moment, hundreds of thousands of marchers are expected at the NYC People's Climate March on Sunday, September 21. Other huge marches are occurring around the world, demanding what we all know is within reach: a world with an economy that works for people and the planet; a world safe from the ravages of climate change; a world recognizing the need for climate justice; a world with good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy communities.
Please join us for a blogathon September 19-23 in a campaign to inspire people to take to the streets and to tell the story of why climate change is the defining issue of our time that can no longer wait to be addressed in earnest.
To see the September 21 Climate March routes and sign up, click here. To find an event in your region, click here. To learn more about the UN Climate Summit 2014, click here. The complete guest list of diarists is in this diary by rb137.
Our Daily Kos community organizers are Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, boatsie, rb137, JekyllnHyde, citisven, peregrine kate, John Crapper, Aji, Kitsap River, Dont Just Sit There DO SOMETHING, and jarbelaez. Photograph/Graphic credit: Facebook - People's Climate March.
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