Back in February, a handful of organizations including Sierra Club, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Maryland Working Families, CHISPA de Maryland, Clean Water Action, United Workers, and local artists gathered to lay the foundation for what would become the "Baltimore Table" of the Peoples Climate Movement. We decided at our first meeting that the big march on April 29th would be a catalyst for bringing together formerly disconnected organizations, issues, and campaigns into an intersectional climate justice movement for Baltimore -- not to launch any new campaigns per se, but to ignite and infuse energy into ongoing work that aligns with the Peoples Climate Movement platform. Our coalition quickly grew to include over 25 Peoples organizations including representatives from the communities centered on: faith, labor, Latinx rights, criminal justice, workers rights, fair development, environmental protection, public health, students, transit equity, economic justice, and more. At our second meeting, our purpose emerged: “We are building the new energy and economic future by undoing environmental racism.”
With that purpose and the PCM Platform front and center at each weekly meeting, we organized into several "clusters" or working groups. The logistics cluster took on the massive task of coordinating funding, siting, and registration pages for 13 buses (6 sponsored by Sierra Club) and a handful of public transit teams along with developing a plan for the march itself (metro, line-up, etc). Our volunteer leader Cortez Elliot deserves high praise for his organizing of the logistics work. Cortez not only coordinated the 6 Sierra Club bus logistics, contracting, and payment -- he also lead several outreach initiatives, attended every planning meeting, and stepped up to support our partners on their own bus details.
The outreach cluster planned tabling events, flyering blitzes, phone banks, social media campaigns, and other tactics to fill the buses. And the “arts” cluster embarked on a journey to collect design input and slogans from myriad organizations, community members, and issue areas across Baltimore that ultimately informed the Baltimore PCM Art Guide -- an “open source” document that evolved over several weeks to lay out a vision for the Baltimore Contingent’s visual element and templates for anyone who wanted to contribute.
The art guide was shared with anyone who wanted to make signs for the Baltimore Contingent with the goal of collecting as many as possible after the march for future use in local campaigns. Then, over the course of two weeks and with a generous grant from the Town Creek Foundation in collaboration with the Maryland Institute College of Art and Black Cherry Puppet Theater (our art build host space), the arts cluster made over 100 signs, banners, and puppets that all together told the story of Baltimore. We had “seeds of promise” and flowers for our young people at the front, clouds to water those seeds for community leadership highlighting important community initiatives, suns to represent community clean energy solutions, crabs to represent the Chesapeake Bay we depend on, wind turbines to represent the new energy economy & jobs, rowhomes to illustrate the connection between fair housing and environment, buses & rail cars for transit equity, and grey “smog” clouds to show the pollution we’re ready to leave behind. A large Baltimore trash incinerator prop was also built to be worn on someone’s back with a large banner that reads, “Burning trash is NOT clean energy!”.
Concept Drawing From our Art Guide
Our final pre-march meeting was held at the Black Cherry Puppet Theater art build space so we could all make signs together!
One of my favorite parts of the organizing process was when the Director of the Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition came to one of our final meetings. He hadn’t been to a Baltimore People's Climate Movement meeting before, but our flexible agenda format allowed him to quickly come up to speed, understand what we were doing together, share why he was there, and see how we could work together. Within 5 minutes of hearing the story of his organization and its connection to climate justice, one of our arts cluster members sketched up a banner to represent his place at the table. I teared up when I saw him marching proudly behind his banner on April 29th because it was a demonstration of exactly what we sought to create when we started organizing for the march. We’re already laying plans about how we want to work together in the coming months on Sierra Club’s new transit-oriented campaign!
BTEC Director Samuel Jordan and his sign
The art merged with our outreach cluster when students at The Maryland Institute College of Art designed incredible posters that spoke to local concerns and hosted an exposition to showcase the artists involved. Those posters along with the posters from PCM in DC were plastered all over the city, placed on cars, given out through door-to-door canvassing, and highlighted at events.
Our partners at the Maryland Environmental Health Network also put on an amazing event that featured a short film, art exposition, art build for children, and panel discussion with local environmental justice leaders that was aired live on the Marc Steiner radio show. Marc Steiner was a champion of the march, and he mentioned it on his show often. He also attended the march itself to interview participants. Here’s a series of podcasts he did with local organizers and artists who worked with the Baltimore Peoples Climate Movement:
http://www.steinershow.org/podcasts/tengellas-take-global-warming-2/
http://www.steinershow.org/podcasts/soundbites-the-peoples-climate-march/
http://www.steinershow.org/podcasts/temperate-rising-climate-march-awareness/
One of MD Chapter's finest, Katie Mettle, also stepped into the VERY intense temporary staff role of Baltimore Campus Coordinator only two weeks before the march. Without Katie, we never would have engaged the nearly 200 students who joined the Baltimore Contingent from several campuses including Morgan State University, Johns Hopkins, Towson, Goucher, UMBC, Loyola, and others.
On the day of the march, my colleague Taylor from Chesapeake Climate Action Network and I drove a Zipvan loaded with all of our art, supplies, and water for the day down to DC. In a moment of serendipity, several Sierra Club staff appeared (totally unplanned) where we parked our van and enthusiastically helped us unload and stage our Baltimore meetup at 4th ST NW & Madison Drive on the Mall.
A few hours later, we had an energetic crowd of over 200 Baltimoreans chanting, hearing from community leaders tell their stories, and applauding for elected champions District 46 Delegate Robbyn Lewis and Congressman John Sarbanes. That 200 was only a third of the 600+ people we mobilized and probably a fifth of overall Baltimore turnout!
Delegate Robbyn Lewis, Congressman John Sarbanes, and Marc Steiner
The rest is history. It was HOT and at least one Baltimorean went to the hospital with severe dehydration, but our community took care of one another and almost everyone had an empowering, positive experience. AND, we reclaimed all of our banners, puppets, and over 50% of our signs for future use.
Here’s a video put together by MICA student Torianne about the Baltimore Contingent: https://vimeo.com/215538039
Now, of course, we have a long road ahead of us here in Baltimore. Debriefs with leaders and our support staff from PCM Central are underway. We have a rally at City Hall for offshore wind on Monday, and the next big mass action for fair development & housing on May 13th. The next two Baltimore Peoples Climate Movement meetings are set: a celebration on May 8th and a full debrief on May 15th where we’ll discuss our next steps together. But for now, we rest and reflect.
I’ll close with a reflection by one of our Baltimore Peoples Climate Movement spokespeople, Stephen Cleghorn, from Baltimore First Unitarian Universalist Church:
Yes, this movement is about the need for clean energy, but it is also about cleaning up and overcoming the environmental injustices that people experience in the here-and-now of Baltimore City, County and the Chesapeake Bay region. These include daily violence, mass incarceration, air pollution from incinerators, dangerous dirty oil trains rolling through the city, transit systems bypassing poor communities or not built at all, joblessness and inadequate wages, racism, and the desperate need for a just transition away from dirty energy jobs to a clean energy future where people are trained in jobs that yield a living wage.
All these ills can only be overcome by building a just society across racial and economic lines that divide us. This is the whole package of a new movement, the People’s Climate Movement, carried on the feet of every marcher and their personal story.
This march is about students at UMBC, Towson State, Morgan State and Loyola University acting to secure their futures and sustain the habitability of our planet.
It is about the marchers with children suffering from asthma in Baltimore City where asthma is the #1 cause of children missing school; or a marcher who suffers COPD from a childhood lived in Baltimore neighborhoods filled with poor air quality and toxic materials. In this movement the trash incinerator is an environmental injustice, not clean energy.
In this movement climate change is understood as having its greatest and first negative impacts on the poor and marginalized, because those who marched on Saturday experience that in our polluted and falling-apart neighborhoods, where 30,000 empty houses and 2,500 homeless people coexist.
In this movement are 40 members of one of Baltimore’s oldest churches, the First Unitarian Universalist, acting on their mission of “Building a Better Baltimore,” in solidarity with other faith groups and community-based organizations who will be marching. It is other faith communities like the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation filling a bus to express Jewish values of healing the world.
For Baltimore area residents this march is about planting seeds of change and building lasting relationships and coalitions that will sprout into and yield a new climate of justice across the neighborhoods of the city and in the halls of education from grade schools to universities, and new businesses.
The march is only a beginning. The Baltimore People’s Climate Movement is already planning its follow-up meetings to continue the work. In a real sense these follow-up meetings are the true excitement in the air, to be continued in the years ahead, pushing that wave of justice forward.
The Baltimore Contingent Banner
Baltimore Contingent on the Move!
The "Maryland Working Family" Puppets
Working Families Bus on the way home!
The effects of dehydration and a successful day: Seth goes Rambo after the march.