photo by Dave Bledsoe
I came into the climate march a secret pessimist. Maybe it was because we’d just charged across Central Park to get there and I was too tired to march. Maybe it was because I was running on a cup of coffee and half a muffin. Maybe it was because we spent so much time and energy looking for the Yale group that I didn’t have a chance to remember why I was there.
Either way, the march began with me in pretty low spirits. I looked at the hundreds of people that surrounded me and was overcome with the sense that it wouldn’t make any difference. The U.N. already knows, I thought, that the Earth’s people want to prevent their planet’s demise. But they’re still not going to do anything about it.
I thought about all the climate marches that have come before this one – the shaky video footage of marchers in the 70s and 80s. Those marches helped, no doubt. We’ve gotten some pretty critical environmental policy since those days. But it’s not nearly enough.
So as we began to shuffle our way almost painfully slowly, I couldn’t quite remember why I was there. There was some scattered chanting, so we did a little of that, but I spent most of the time maneuvering around the crowd to make sure that our sign wasn’t blocked. Then, someone shouted that in “t minus 2 minutes” there would be a local – and hopefully global – moment of silence. More chattering. More chanting. And then, there was silence. And I remembered.
On Saturday, a friend and I had taken the train in early to participate in the Improv Everywhere MP3 Experiment. If you don’t know what Improv Everywhere is, feel free to check them out here. Anyway, the way these experiments work is that thousands of people all put on headphones and start listening to the same MP3 at exactly the same time. For this one, we all ended up in a rainbow-clad horde at a park in Brooklyn.
At first, it was just fun. We ran around a little, hiding from invisible monsters, playing freeze tag, dancing, all that good stuff. But then, it became something else. I think the moment I really felt that other thing was when we all crouched down in the middle of the park and started a gigantic wave. As it moved across the crowd of people the first way, I was too focused on jumping at the right time to pay too much attention, but when it turned around and came back towards us, I turned around.
There was this gigantic wave of people, a whole crowd bursting out of the ground, rushing at me like a tidal wave. It was both terrifying and beautiful. Later, as I watched a thousand balloons bobbing and dipping in the air above the crowd, I was struck with that same unidentifiable feeling.
And on Sunday, when all of the noise stopped, and we were left in perfect, silent, togetherness, I felt it again. As our hands and signs extended toward the sky, I felt, suddenly, the group as a whole. I felt the group, as if that collective consciousness were filling in the silence around me. And then, we could hear a roar of noise building up from behind us. And it reached us. And we screamed and shrieked and shouted. And it was incredible.
I think my favorite of all the chants that day was one of the simplest. One person would scream, “Show me what democracy looks like,” and we’d all shout back, “This is what democracy looks like.” I don’t know if the march will be able to make the impact it needs to on environmental policy. I don’t know whether it was revolutionary or pointless, whether we gathered there for nothing or for everything. But I can say this for democracy: it sure is beautiful.
Either way, the march began with me in pretty low spirits. I looked at the hundreds of people that surrounded me and was overcome with the sense that it wouldn’t make any difference. The U.N. already knows, I thought, that the Earth’s people want to prevent their planet’s demise. But they’re still not going to do anything about it.
I thought about all the climate marches that have come before this one – the shaky video footage of marchers in the 70s and 80s. Those marches helped, no doubt. We’ve gotten some pretty critical environmental policy since those days. But it’s not nearly enough.
So as we began to shuffle our way almost painfully slowly, I couldn’t quite remember why I was there. There was some scattered chanting, so we did a little of that, but I spent most of the time maneuvering around the crowd to make sure that our sign wasn’t blocked. Then, someone shouted that in “t minus 2 minutes” there would be a local – and hopefully global – moment of silence. More chattering. More chanting. And then, there was silence. And I remembered.
On Saturday, a friend and I had taken the train in early to participate in the Improv Everywhere MP3 Experiment. If you don’t know what Improv Everywhere is, feel free to check them out here. Anyway, the way these experiments work is that thousands of people all put on headphones and start listening to the same MP3 at exactly the same time. For this one, we all ended up in a rainbow-clad horde at a park in Brooklyn.
At first, it was just fun. We ran around a little, hiding from invisible monsters, playing freeze tag, dancing, all that good stuff. But then, it became something else. I think the moment I really felt that other thing was when we all crouched down in the middle of the park and started a gigantic wave. As it moved across the crowd of people the first way, I was too focused on jumping at the right time to pay too much attention, but when it turned around and came back towards us, I turned around.
There was this gigantic wave of people, a whole crowd bursting out of the ground, rushing at me like a tidal wave. It was both terrifying and beautiful. Later, as I watched a thousand balloons bobbing and dipping in the air above the crowd, I was struck with that same unidentifiable feeling.
And on Sunday, when all of the noise stopped, and we were left in perfect, silent, togetherness, I felt it again. As our hands and signs extended toward the sky, I felt, suddenly, the group as a whole. I felt the group, as if that collective consciousness were filling in the silence around me. And then, we could hear a roar of noise building up from behind us. And it reached us. And we screamed and shrieked and shouted. And it was incredible.
I think my favorite of all the chants that day was one of the simplest. One person would scream, “Show me what democracy looks like,” and we’d all shout back, “This is what democracy looks like.” I don’t know if the march will be able to make the impact it needs to on environmental policy. I don’t know whether it was revolutionary or pointless, whether we gathered there for nothing or for everything. But I can say this for democracy: it sure is beautiful.