Surely, you have felt it. Even if merely as a sense of a major upswing in the number of emails you are receiving about concerted, concentrated and collaborative events planned over the next few months to catalyze action on climate change and the rights of our Planet and her people.
Because, quite honestly, I can feel it in my bones. A huge and furiously gentle global giant is awakening this spring.
It is as if a young mother has awoken and the adrenalin which surges through her body when her child is in imminent danger has now been activated. We are no longer in adrenal overload.
The world's amygdala has switched from flight to fight.
In my heart, in my gut, gleaned from my experience in the streets, in meetings, in conversations, through social media, I sense we are about to move beyond this time of intense discontent. I see us mobilized by the hyper alert antennae of organizations like (bow your frigging heads, folks) 350.org, by the bordering-on-genius strategizing emerging from the Global Campaign for Climate Action, and Occupy Wall Street. Further fuel has been added to the fire by the perfectly syncopated catapult into action of the enormous network envisioned and assembled over five years by Paul Hawken's brainchild WiserEarth. (An organization which, by the way, in celebrating its fifth anniversary this Earth Day, has changed its name to quite simply "WISER!")
Everything appears to be operating in synch. In group think. A zeitgeist is emerging in which the siloed efforts of creative right-brained thinkers have slophed off their need for self-aggrandisement in sheer bald-faced humility to the enormity of effort which will be required to meet this moment unified in perfect pitch.
True, it might already be too late. But, finally, we have had ENOUGH!
We WILL own and fashion the future. Clean up the mess. Redesign the commons.
Give the world what breathing room left her so that she has the opportunity to clear her lungs and sing.
This movement into the real world of environmental activism is evidenced here at Kos, where, what at first limited sight appeared to be the 'unraveling' of our eco community, was, in actuality, the green room for launching singular movements into action by many of our key writers. They are now putting their skin in the game and battling on the front lines. Facing down police in protests against fracking. Being arrested in front of the White House. Traveling to the UN to engage in the unofficial talks on Rio+20's Zero Draft Document. To London to the Planet at Risk conference. Engaging in the political arena in elected and volunteer capacities as champions for local and national environmental rights.
For my own part, my random appearances on these pages has been due to great part to my understanding the need to transfer my passion and skills to real life environmental community organizing. In my small corner of the universe, I've kickstarted the launch of a Community Sustainability Center for nonprofits and concerned citizens to meet, strategize and recruit neighbors from around the SF Bay Area to awaken and respond to the knock, knock, knocking. I've forged alliances with NGOs and for-profit-groups to co-produce events in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. Our first major success occurred earlier this month with two powerful events in conjunction with Pachamama and Cinema Connect promoting the campaign of Earth's Lawyer Polly Higgins (This is Ecocide). Higgins was in Canada and NorCal to garner support for her bid at June's Earth Summit for the official ratification of Ecocide as the UN's Fifth Crime Against Peace. Last week, I launched WiserBayArea (the first WiserLocal in the US, although some 20 such groups now exist around the world) with our first community event RioRaps.
Like many of you, I am engaged in events with Spring of Sustainability, Connect the Dots, the 99% Spring ,The Transition Challenge, One Billion Acts of Green ...
This "unsilent' Spring is just the beginning. It was no surprise to me Wednesday night when a colleague emailed to reschedule a phone call because he was compelled to attend an event to watch clips from a movie about Gene Sharp.
At Thursday evening's RioRaps, where everyone expressed a shared vision of the important role of the UN negotiating process, not one person was willing to accept failure. At the very least, one participant said, the UN Secretary General believes in the face of political failure, one core thing must emerge from this meeting: the right of all living systems to a sustainable future and access to the means to achieve that.
The very process which defines the attempts of official bodies to address not only global warming but also the contingencies upon which all of life on Planet Earth rely, be it the emergence (and definition of) a green economy, the process designed to actuate the realization of the Millennium Development Goals, the public/private partnership models which time after time after time have relegated civil society to space outside the 'big tent' ... all of this is fracturing into apparent obsolescence.
We the people are emerging as the architects-in-training of our future. We cannot afford to fail.
The 'Unsilent Spring has launched. We are ready to take them on! It is just the beginning.
But oh it's roar!
Surely, most of you have heard it? And many of you have already picked up your brooms.
Share what you are doing.