Climate action day: The most beautiful day!

by Deborah Belle

It was the most beautiful day in the history of the world, or some reasonable facsimile thereof. The sky was the tenderest blue. The sun warmed the skin and created gorgeous deep shadows. Trees kept their green leaves, with only a few branches turned a brilliant red.  It was a wondrous day to be alive and to be on planet Earth.

There was a poignancy to all this beauty as the plaza at Boston’s Government Center filled with thousands of young people and their elders, everyone come to bear witness to the terrible threats facing our beloved planet and the urgent need to act now before we lose it all.

There were adorable children with their homemade signs. A contingent of folks protesting the fracked gas Compressor Station proposed for the South Shore to transport fracked gas to Canada. Folks from the Sunrise Movement helping to register new voters. Others stressing the need to protect our water, our birds, our biodiversity.

And this was only the beginning of only one of the 4,638 climate strike actions taking place today around the country and around the world. Will we act in time? The beauty of the day demanded it.

Note from KMM: Pegean says
“Tho I am just a cat forsooth,
I see the lies. I see the truth.
I want this world of ours to thrive.
Pease help me keep our earth alive.”

Tens of thousands marched. I was there.

March for Our Lives, Boston MA, March 24, 2018. Photo by Deborah Belle.

By guest author Deborah Belle

Such a mixture of pain and joy to see so many marching today. Joy in the incredible strength, wisdom, and commitment of the young people leading this social movement along with their equally passionate elders. Pain is the very reason for and topic of the march. Children with signs wondering if they will be next, or pleading, “Don’t shoot!” Teachers who did not sign up to be soldiers and carry guns. Reminders of the young people lost recently in Florida and also the young father killed only days ago in Sacramento, shot 20 times by police officers in his own backyard.

What a crazy dystopia we are forced to inhabit. When will we awaken from this nightmare? Along with the emotion today there was a focus on the future and on the next steps to take. Activists were out registering marchers to vote and reminding us that voting will be our best hope of purging our national political life of the deadly influence of the NRA.

Note from KMM: Please help with the voter registration process.