by Lilac / Earth First! Newswire
We arrived a little late to the Portland, Oregon, Peoples Climate March. Our friend was going to give a speech, and we had to rush the script to her after being told last-minute by the organizers that it had to be cut in half.
When we got there, a funk band played to a gathering of something like five thousand people. But what had they all gathered for?
According to most of the speakers, it wasn’t quite clear. Governor Kitzhaber who has allowed all coal and oil trains through Oregon’s waterways and communities on a quest to export as much fossil fuel as possible was the first speaker. As he took the podium, I noticed a 100-foot-long banner declaring “COAL OIL GAS: NONE SHALL PASS hanging off of the Burnside Bridge behind him.
My friends and I, struck by the mood, started chanting that phrase, to Kitzhaber’s chagrin. He started to deliver his speech, somewhat shaken, and we stopped chanting when we were approached by democratic party functionaries.
Kitzhaber takes the mic
“You know,” they said in quivering, angry voices, “he’s done a lot!”
Somewhat befuddled, we didn’t know what to say.
“Have you ever volunteered for him? On his campaign?”
They seemed as confused as we were, and soon left us in peace. Some of the speakers spoke of direct action, solidarity with migrants and Indigenous peoples, and in support of direct action. Speaker Adrielle Fuller gave a rousing speech in support of the normalization of mass direct action, and Mary Wood, author of Natures Trust followed those sentiments with a call to block fossil fuel shipments.
There was a stark difference, however, between the white males speaking about jobs, laws, and reforms, and the women speaking from the heart about direct action and solidarity. As I often like to say, “The women are always in the lead.” For example, one guy got up, started talking about how three million people died from climate change, and then said, “that’s why we need a carbon tax.”
The response from the audience was kind of like that feeling that a room gets after someone sits on a whoopee cushion.
The march, itself was stacked with a great band and an enormous “killer coal train” trailer, but was confined to the sidewalk of the waterfront for most of the time—a very boring locale. So the people took the street against angry drivers, snarling traffic, and the organizers, thanks in part to the support of the PDX bike swarm.
Over in Seattle, I heard they had a better time. They blockaded BNSF trains for hours to manifest the numbers and the radical sentiment of the march toward constructive civil disobedience. That marks the sixth time that a fossil fuel train has been halted in the Pacific Northwest in the last four months. It’s like the never-ending summer, climate justice style.
In the end, an important takeaway from this is that there is a relative autonomy (as Ruth Wilson Gilmore says) of the “people” from the “movement.” The “people” of the Peoples Climate March were largely disappointed, it seems to me, by the inane gestures towards new, stronger laws, reforms, carbon taxes; the “people” are tired of sustainability conferences. We can’t sustain “sustainability.” We want action, and our speakers, our “leaders,” are failing to take the radical measures we need.
That’s why the people need to take this movement back, starting local. No more standing around for an hour listening to “leaders” tell us what they think we want to hear. All they are tell us is that they are too afraid to say what’s necessary. Power to the people!
