This Is How a Movement Is Built!
After a viewing of the movie Disruption1 that I hosted on September 7, I asked the group of twenty at the movie if they were interested in a local rally. One person said, “Yes!” with conviction, and that was enough backing2 for me to take the lead and make it happen.
At first I felt like I didn’t have time to do more than send out a few e-mails to lists of potential people and show up with signs. But I quickly realized how the process of organizing this type of event is full of opportunity—to build connections, lead people, give information—and I ended up spending many hours over the next two weeks doing all of that and more.
I incorporated our local rally, and the larger marches in New York City (USA) and around the world, into many of my conversations. It was a great way to start or continue the conversation about climate change.
The person at the movie who had wanted the event to happen said, “I’ll do anything you want.” (One of the more significant things we’ve learned in RC is how to support leaders, including by helping them do the work. Let’s spread that idea far and wide.) I was able to check ideas with her, and that bit of contact kept me inspired to keep trying things. She offered to host a sign-making event, which ended up being just the two of us, together with my six-year-old and a young adult woman who was visiting us. We spend a lovely evening talking and making signs. I had met this woman six months earlier at my climate change awareness booth,3 and she is currently running for the local City Council. I was delighted to have a chance to get to know her better.
I wrote e-mails and sent them to my family, personal friends, a list I had of local people interested in learning more about climate change that had grown to over a hundred, the local Grange,4 and the school district’s union of teachers (over a thousand people). I also posted the event on the 350.org5 website and encouraged people to post it on Facebook.
I put up a few posters around town and a number at my daughter’s school. The school librarian made a display using the posters and talked to the students about climate change as each class visited the library during the week prior to the rally. The principal authorized sending information about the rally to the teachers. The assistant superintendent allowed me to distribute the flier as well, so if I’d had more time, I could have sent it to all the schools in the district.
I saw that there are countless opportunities to organize and that each step can be about connecting and informing. I am shifting away from seeing the steps as “hard,” unpleasant tasks to seeing them as important chances to reach people.
My husband encouraged me to contact the press, and I was interviewed for two local newspapers that published strong pieces before the event, connecting the local rally with the larger events in New York and around the world. I was pleased that they printed some of my statements about the disproportionate impact of environmental damage and climate change on low-income communities and communities of color.
About fifty people attended our rally. They were toddlers to elders, twenty Latinos/as, thirty white people, a woman in a wheelchair, and a woman who arrived by bike. Everyone was enthusiastic and left asking, “What’s next?”
A television crew arrived to cover us on the news. Two Latinas, including the woman running for City Council, spoke to the reporter. The next day the Spanish television channel contacted us and asked for Spanish-speaking Latinos/as to interview. We provided it with four names of people we thought would be terrific spokespeople, and two were interviewed and appeared on the news. Even though it was a short clip, once again the process was so valuable: our friends got to speak to reporters, the message about climate change got into the mainstream news, and so on.
All of this was a great reminder that one person can have a big impact. Just my deciding to organize the rally led to thousands of people being informed in advance about the week of actions around the world and thousands more reading about our local event in the newspaper or watching it on television. The fifty people who attended the rally were inspired and made connections, left hopeful about possibilities, and talked to friends, colleagues, and neighbors about being there. And, thousands of people drove or walked by us. They read our signs, honked horns in support, and got a little more informed about climate change.
We hope to arrange a report-back at which we show the movie Disruption again and have local people who participated in people’s climate marches in different places tell about their experiences. This is how a movement is built!
Postscript: The other day I met with the assistant superintendent of secondary education for our school district of about twenty thousand students. He is going to facilitate my contacting key teaching staff in the district (such as high school science teachers) in order to collaborate with them on climate change education. He believes the movie Disruption would fit in with Common Core Standards and be appropriate to show to high school students at school!
Nancy Faulstich
Watsonville, California, USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion
lists for RC Community members and for
leaders in the care of the environment
2 “Backing” means support.
3 See the article “A Listening Project and a Four-Week Class on Climate Change” on page 80 of the July 2014 .
4 The Grange is a national association originally consisting of farmers.
5 350.org is an organization that is working to build a global climate movement.