Postcards From the People's Climate March
We gathered with the rest of the Harvard students and alumni at the start of the march, surrounded by new parents and passionate divestors, Guy Fawkes-masked teenagers and shirtless “environment bros” (or so the body paint smeared on their bare chests proclaimed). A serenely smiling blond girl brandished a hand-lettered sign beside me: “More trees, less assholes.” A gray-haired alumnus nearby in the crush of people gestured to the sign with a smile. “That’s great,” she said. “Of course, it should be ‘fewer assholes.’ But still.”—Emma K. Talkoff
The marching crowds are not angry. They have stickers on their cheeks declaring, “This is what an ecosocialist looks like,” and hold banners aloft. They smile, pose for photo ops, accept bits of marketing ephemera. Every other sign has a URL and a Twitter handle inscribed beneath its slogan. The marchers are families, students, activists, lawyers, start-ups. As they round the bottom of Central Park, past the soaring towers of the Time Warner Center, past the liveried doormen and the carriage horses, going nowhere today, the crowds break into song. We shall overcome, they sing, and everyone, everyone, knows the words. —Marina Molarsky-Beck
There was the woman with a sprig of kale sticking out of her shirt pocket; the high schoolers who led the march with chants of “Justice!”; the musicians’ union playing and dancing across 59th Street; mental health workers carrying signs proclaiming that “Anxiety is Appropriate” when it comes to climate change. But best of all, though there aren’t pictures or videos to prove it happened, was the five-year-old girl marching behind me who turned to her mother and asked, earnest and excited, “So we’re making history?” —Amy L. Weiss-Meyer