The Peoples Climate March will take place on April 29th, 2017 in Washington, D.C. and across the country. It takes place on the 100th Day of the Trump Administration and the goal is to stand up for our communities and our climate and to show the world and our leaders that we will resist attacks on our people, our communities and our planet. People are coming together from across the United States with solutions to the climate crisis they are also demanding that Congress act.
This effort is even more important in the context of the Trump Administration’s and the Republican Party’s climate denial. Congress must protect the gains made in recent years and move our nation to a new, clean energy economy. This is a moment to bring the range of progressive social change movements together. Pushing back against the Trump agenda and at the same time pushing forward on our vision of a clean, safe world where the rights of all people are protected and expanded. This means we all must work together and now, more than ever before, because everything is at stake.
Protestors are buoyed by the Trump administration’s failure to pass its health care bill and the legal roadblocks encountered by the Muslim Ban and they say Trump’s fossil fuel agenda is next.
The Six Goals of the March
- Advance solutions to the climate crisis rooted in racial, social and economic justice, and committed to protecting front-line communities and workers.
- Protect our right to clean air, water, land, healthy communities and a world at peace.
- Immediately stop attacks on immigrants, communities of color, indigenous and tribal people and lands and workers.
- Ensure public funds and investments create good paying jobs that provide a family-sustaining wage and benefits and preserve workers’ rights, including the right to unionize.
- Fund investments in our communities, people and environment to transition to a new clean and renewable energy economy that works for all, not an economy that feeds the machinery of war.
- Protect our basic rights to a free press, protest and free speech.
Core Principles
- Prioritize leadership of front-line communities, communities of color, low-income communities, workers and others impacted by climate, economic and racial inequity.
- Use the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing to ground our work.
- Build a coordinated but decentralized structure that lifts up a common platform and message while being flexible enough to create more opportunities for connection to local issues, ownership, and engagement in the movement.
- Work in a way that helps to strengthen and build the capacity of the local organizing.
- Develop opportunities for a range of organizations and social movements to work together and to us our joint efforts to give greater visibility to our common struggle. This includes, but is not limited to, putting people into the streets as we demand policy changes and bold action.
Brief History of the Peoples Climate Movement
On September 21, 2014 the Peoples Climate Movement organized the historic Peoples Climate March on the eve of the UN Climate Summit. As heads of state from around the world gathered, 400,000 people from every walk of life marched through the streets of New York City demanding bold and urgent action of the global climate crisis. That march — and the months of organizing that lead up to it — helped to re-boot the climate movement in this country, and laid the foundation for the growth of the Peoples Climate Movement. The months of organizing and the day itself helped to re-boot the climate movement in this country. We made visible the depth and breadth of concern about the climate crisis and the role the U.S. must play in meeting that crisis. We gave life to our understanding that our fight is a struggle for justice: securing climate justice means a commitment to the fights for economic and racial justice. That march laid the foundation for the growth of the Peoples Climate Movement.
In 2015 the Peoples Climate Movement focused its collective energy on strengthening the climate justice movement at the local level. That October we organized 200 actions in 48 locations mostly led by front-line communities, unions, faith groups, youth, and people of color organizations. These actions highlighted the on-the-ground realities in their cities, and tied those struggles to the national movement.
In 2016 the Peoples Climate Movement’s work shifted again as we began to focus on the fall elections. Our first step was the development of our Platform – a document that articulates our understanding of the climate crisis and what it will take to build a movement strong enough to meet the challenges ahead.
Peoples Climate Platform
- Directly and rapidly reduce greenhouse gas and toxic pollution to successfully combat climate change and improve public health.
- Mandate a transition to an equitable and sustainable New Energy and Economic Future that limits the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
- Provide a Just Transition for communities and workers negatively impacted by the shift to a New Energy and Economic Future that includes targeted economic opportunity and provides stable income, health care, and education.
- Demand that every job pays a wage of at least $15 an hour, protects workers, and provides a good standard of living, pathways out of poverty, and a right to organize.
- Ensure that in the New Energy and Economic Future, investments are targeted to create pathways for low-income people and people of color to access good jobs and improve the lives of communities of color, indigenous peoples, low-income people, small farmers, women, and workers.
- Make bold investments in the resilience of states, cities, tribes, and communities that are threatened by climate change; including massive investments in infrastructure systems from water, transportation, and solid waste to the electrical grid and safe, green building and increasing energy efficiency that will also create millions of jobs in the public and private sector
- Reinvest in a domestic industrial base that drives towards an equitable and sustainable New Energy and Economic Future, and fight back against the corporate trade-induced global race to the bottom
- Market and policy-based mechanisms must protect human rights and critical, native ecosystems and reduce pollution at source.
Week of Action Activities
There’s a form on the page to register events you’re doing in DC that aren’t already noted. We are designing a program for downloading, and printing some copies of it for local distribution. Not all events will make it onto the printed program, but the website will continue to be updated. Women’s Environmental Candidate Training: To harness the incredible energy of environmental and climate activists since the election, EMILY’s List, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), NextGen Climate, Sierra Club, Rachel’s Network, Emerald Cities, Environmental Defense Action Fund, Green For All Action Fund, GreenLatinos, Latino Victory Fund, NRDC Action Fund, and ROSA PAC will train pro-choice and pro-environment women who want to run for office on Sunday, April 30th from 9 am EST to 1 pm EST. To apply, fill out this form.
How you can Help
Become a donor to the People’s Climate Movement today and keep growing the resistance to the attacks on our climate, our communities, and our families. Support the Peoples Climate Movement by chipping in $5 — every dollar you contribute will be put directly into making this march as powerful as it can be. We’ve been doing a lot with a little so far and need your help to take this march to the next level.
Help to spread the word about this important event.
RSVP for the march on Facebook, then invite your friends — the resistance to Trump’s presidency has been huge and a lot of that momentum has been sparked on Facebook. We want to make this thing as big as possible, so help us let the world know it’s happening.
Share why you’re going — whether on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or anywhere else, write a message about why you think it’s important to march for jobs, justice, and the climate.
When you post, use the hashtags #ClimateMarch or #PeoplesClimate.
Email your friends about the march — you can turn your RSVP for April 29th into 5 or 10 or 20 more by sending the Peoples Climate Movement website to a few more people who care about protecting our climate, our communities, and our families.
Key Action Items for you and your members
Day of Volunteer Sign Up: We need 1,000 volunteers for the March. If you will be in Washington, D.C. on April 29th please sign up to Volunteer for the March. Ask your staff to sign up to volunteer at the March as well, and please share our need for volunteers throughout your larger networks.
Resistance Recess: During the April recess, we’ll be taking advantage of members of Congress being at home in-district by bringing the accountability to act on climate to their front door. We’ve developed this toolkit to help support people to plug into local actions. Check out https://www.resistancerecess.com/ and https://townhallproject.com/ to find Town Halls and events in your community. Email rfriedman@nrdc.org with any questions.
Sample tweet: Join movement leaders for a mass call about why the #ClimateMarch is so important right now. Apr 12 @ 8PM ET http://bit.ly/pcmmasscall
Sample Facebook post: There’s nothing Donald Trump hates more than mass protest – and he hates it because it works.
For more information or to sign up click here:
