November 5 , 2009 - Issue 349 |
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350.Org: Moving in a "Completely
Different Direction" |
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The world plans to send the West (in anticipation of the United Nations Climate Change Conference) a message on Saturday, October 24, 2009. While I did not watch the game between the Yankees and the Angels to see which team the Phillies would play in the World Series, I did look for news on the climate change protest. I imagined predominantly
young white environmental activists in cities throughout the Then on Monday,
I saw footage of those actual protestors. Multiracial groupings
of people in the According to former New Yorker writer and environmental campaigner, Bill McKibben, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere must be reduced back to 350 parts per million. We are already past 350ppm, and that comes with its own set of realities. We have to move much more quickly and much more powerfully than we are at the moment. We have, for example, to stop burning coal by 2030, (sic) and quicker in the Western world. In the Yet, it in the
U.S., according to polls from the Pew Research Center on the People
& the Press, only “57 percent of Americans [that’s U.S. citizens]
now believe the Earth is warming,” writes Lisa Bennett at HuffingtonPost.com,
down from “77 percent in 2006” while reports indicate that the effects
of “climate change are occurring faster than predicted.” Bennett thinks
President Obama’s appearance at the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference
this December in Has anyone noticed
that Obama has prioritized the “necessary” war in If this government does not turn its foreign policy around, if it does not focus its domestic policy on prioritizing the health care of its citizens, and if it does not halt an economic system that secures wealth for the corporations, everyone may lose against greed and violence. According to the website at 350.org, the call for an International Day of Action was intended to “lifting public awareness on the need for an international climate treaty to reach 350.” By “assembling a coalition of hundreds of organizations committed to this vision of a more sustainable world,” the organizers intended to connect communities across the planet, and provide “on-line resources and tools” that would “make pulling together an event” access to all. Ultimately the organizers of the International Day of Action intended to create a movement that would leverage “meaningful political change.” While I recognize
350.org? I have to put in a call. “The media will
not tell you but this was the largest climate protest in According to
350.org’s website,
the organization’s mission is “to inspire the world to rise to the challenge
of the climate crisis - to create a new sense of urgency and of possibility
for our planet.” Indigenous populations outside the “We started
off to elevate the voices of people who were not listened to in “We emailed friends from environmental groups. We called people. We contacted organizations and gathered names and [those individuals] gave us more names.” Along with emailing potential organizers, the initial organizers used Facebook and Twitter to amass people around the world who would, in turn, “meet with neighbors, fellow students,” local politicians, and elders. Those who agreed to participate took ownership of their own 350 event. Many incorporated their “own local issues.” In the process, these organizers “learned new skills.” One community
already at work rebuilding the 9th Ward in People throughout the world organized themselves, Henn says. “They know what is the best way” to organize their communities. “350.org. empowered them to be leaders.” Ultimately, 350.org. facilitated some 5,200 events in 181 countries! “350 is not only a scientific number but also a “metaphor: We are too high. We need to go in a completely different direction.” It remains to be seen if Western governments in particular bothered to take note! Governments, Wade Davis writes, can not afford to “ignore the magnitude of the threat or the urgency of the dilemma” facing the planet as we confront climate change. There is no way around it! No short cuts! To return to 350ppm would require “a reorientation of human priorities that is both historic in its significance and profoundly hopeful in its promise.” Website : www.350.org (See photos from around the world and contact the organization and become involved). BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer
for over thirty years of commentary, resistance criticism and cultural
theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of
cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance
narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she
has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects
that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community
and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia
for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American
Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class
narratives) from |
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