By: Alexandra Kramer
Leaving the house at 6:00am, I splashed a little bit of water on my face before grabbing a water bottle and a cliff bar and heading to New York City. Talking to some other marchers on the full bus I took out of the University of Maryland, College Park, we had big eyes when we talked about the possibility of having 250,000 other marchers imagining what that would even look like.
Naively I also thought that the DC metropolitan area to Manhattan was a far trip to make for this march. All expectations were blown away the moment I got to the march. Off the bus we ran into volunteers at every corner giving us signs, directing us to the right location, and reminding us to keep moving. The group of UMD students slowly meandered our way from 86th street to 75th street and Broadway through blocks and blocks of marchers all holding signs, singing, and ready to march for their specific cause. On that walk to the start alone we saw men, women, and children supporting Renewable energy, native American rights, protection of island nations, reducing GMO’s in crops, clean air and water for their children and grandchildren, ocean protection and a small, but vocal, group of socialists, Marxists and anarchists. That was just in the first 11 blocks. Maryland also seemed like a casual day trip, when we saw proud signs from residents of Michigan, North Carolina, Minnesota, Kentucky, Arizona, and California. A small group of the Californian’s had actually walked to the march from Los Angeles on a “March Across the United States for Climate Change”. One thing that I think should impress everyone skeptical about the event is that the march wasn’t made of the stereotypical environmentalist: a hippie, 20-something year old student, ready to protest anything for the experience. The diversity spread through all races, genders, ages, locations, religions, and political beliefs.
To move all the marchers from the Upper West side to the Lincoln Bridge took over four hours. When the group of UMD students had just crossed over the official start of the march at noon, rumors were spreading of the headcount being over 310,000 marchers. Over 100 Sierra Club busses alone had been deployed. By the morning after, final estimates were saying 400,000 and the march was the front page of the New York Times and featured on almost every other newspaper in the country including our local Washington Post and even the UK’s BBC.com. The success of our march brought me incredible pride, but the surprise came when I realized 400,000 was a rough underestimate when you factored in the other 2,808 events in 166 other countries around the world. I read articles about large marches from Europe to Australia, in different languages people chanting the same phrases, and men, women, and children marching the same way I was doing that day all calling upon the same cause: action to be taken by the UN at the climate summit on Sept 23.
It’s often hard to image so many people in one place much less gathering for a cause that you feel so strongly about. As a declared environmental science and policy major in my sophomore year, I often go unsupported or questioned by fellow students about what I’m going to do with a degree in that or what I want to study that for.
Even talking about the march the night before I was to head off, I was met by a sea of doubt. “Do you think you’re actually going to change anything?” They would ask. Though an optimist, I am not so quick to believe that even a million marchers in New York City would cause immediate action from any government, much less a global council. Legislature takes time and discussion that is often frustrating to wait for. This doesn’t mean that we can’t push. A march of 400,000 in New York and in thousands of other cities worldwide is a push. New polls, like one recently released by CBS, that almost 75% of Americans now believe in the danger of climate change is a push. Work that the Sierra Club and other organizations are doing dedicated to environmental conservation, preservation, and salvation is a push. One of my favorite signs at the march was one that read “There is no Planet B”, so we must not wait for complete global ecological destruction before we decide to make change. The People’s March for Climate Change has demanded that change. It’s up to our elected officials to follow through, and for now we must just continue to push.
