Yesterday there was a rally in Chicago at the Federal Plaza in support of strong climate legislation this Fall in Congress. The rally was organized by the 1Sky Chicago Chapter. 1Sky is an umbrella organization that aims to bring together different groups that are focused on achieving meaningful climate legislation that will also address our energy problems.
1Sky's platform is three main points:
- No new coal; reduce our existing dependence on dirty fuels like coal.
- Create millions of new jobs implementing clean technologies and better energy-efficiency standards.
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the potential effects of climate change from business-as-usual policies.
Below the fold is more info on the event, the speakers and of course some pics from the rally. There are 8 pics, if they are causing speed problems let me know. The link to the Flickr group pool is here, we should have more pics up in the next couple of days as I know some other folks have pics to upload as well. If you were there and took pics please join the group and add your shots.
The weather was great for the rally, about 65 with some sun. A totally unscientific count by me and one of the other planners estimated about 70 people at the rally. The 1Sky Chicago chapter that organized the rally came together at the weekend of August 1st during a grassroots organizing workshop put on by the national 1Sky group and Wellstone Action. If you're interested in what the workshop was all about and who attended it I made a more in-depth blog post about it here
Many different organizations joined in supporting and promoting the rally. It was a great mix of non-profit organizations, for-profit businesses, various activists, faith groups and academia. Special thanks should go to Dana Kenney, Paul Safyan and Ayo Maat for dealing with the majority of the red tape and scheduling issues the group encountered. One sticking point which I'm sure people will find irritating is that the city of Chicago forced 1Sky to purchase liability insurance in order to hold this rally on the Federal Plaza. Luckily 1Sky was able to meet this requirement in a timely fashion but it definitely struck me as a 'poll tax'-type of impediment that restricts the free exercise of our right to demonstrate.
At any rate the event did get planned and we were happy to have it before our Senators returned to Washington after the Summer recess. I've included links I could find for the speakers' organizations that have websites. The speaker lineup was great and included Executive Director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center Howard Lerner, Ron Burke, Midwest Director of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Jack Darin, Director of Sierra Club Illinois, Dr. George Nassos, Director of IIT’s Stuart School of Business Center for Sustainable Enterprise and President of Footprint Zero, LLC, William "Dock" Walls III, CEO of Committee for a Better Chicago, Family Farmed founder Jim Slama, Katie Jordan from Chicago Jobs with Justice, Veronika Kyle of Faith in Place/Illinois Interfaith Power and Light, James Thindwa of Sustainable Chicago 2016, Alderman Joe Moore representing the 49th Ward Green Corps and Stay Environmentally Focus’d Foundation’s Terina Cranshaw-Hodges, one of the youngest women in Illinois to run a green construction company and create and promote sustainable jobs in the green collar job movement. The perspective of entertainers was also provided – Pastor Cornelius Clark shared his perspective on alternative energy in his community and his gospel music with the crowd (as well as providing a great PA system) and Nora Dunn of Saturday Night Live fame shared the story of her passion for stemming climate change through her involvement with Our Spheres of Influence Salon on Climate Change.
The entire post-event press release can be found here
The message at the rally was clear - there is wide grassroots support across a diverse spectrum of private citizens groups that wants to end the business-as-usual arrangement of caving in to the dirty energy, agribusiness and financial lobbies. We were there to demand real action by Congress when it comes to passing strong climate legislation. We want to eliminate the free allowances to the coal industry, provide meaningful energy-efficiency and renewable energy standards that will reduce our use of dirty fossil fuels, push back on the agribusiness agenda of controlling ag offsets and ensure that any market for carbon credits is heavily regulated. Strong climate change/energy legislation is going to create new jobs for real people rather than destroy our economy and reduce our competitiveness. What might get destroyed are excessive profits for lazy energy industry executives and their army of lobbyists, which is why the astroturf push is so strong for doing nothing.
The 1Sky Chicago group is having a meeting with Senator Burris' staff later this week to explain our concerns in person. Senator Durbin and his staff have not responded to our requests for a meeting so if you could contact his office and encourage him to do so I think it would help.
Here's some pictures from the event, unfortunately my camera batteries zonked out about halfway through:
Ron Burke, Jack Darin and George Nassos
Sierra Club Illinois Contingent
Everyone arriving
Chicago 49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore and James Thindwa
Dana gets the rally started
Dr. Nassos speaking at the rally
Crowd Shot
Crowd shot
I think we will probably try to organize another event sometime during the Fall and hopefully we can improve on the turnout. Thanks to anyone who was at the rally and thanks to everyone else for checking out the recap. You can probably tell from my handle but Footprint Zero, LLC is my company and I crossposted this from my blog, so we have full disclosure.