Originally published on Acronym TV by Dennis Trainor, Jr. September 4, 2014
Beyond The People’s Climate March
Dennis Trainor, Jr. of Acronym TV in conversation with Timeka Drew, a grassroots organizer with the Global Climate Convergence.
In two weeks the Peoples Climate March in New York, organized by 350.org, is expected to draw as many as 200,000 people. The march is to take place only days before a special UN meeting called by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to discuss the November 2015 U.N. Climate Conference in Paris.
Christopher Hedges has called this march a “last gasp of climate change liberals;” and “a climate themed street fair.” Our only hope, according to Hedges, “comes from radical groups descending on New York to carry out direct action, including Global Climate Convergence and Popular Resistance.”
Calling for a Solution as Big as the Crisis We Face
The Global Climate Convergence is calling for AN EMERGENCY GLOBAL GREEN NEW DEAL including:
• Full employment with community-based small businesses, worker co-ops, small farmers & government jobs.
• 100% clean renewable energy by 2030. International binding treaty for swift, deep cuts to carbon emissions. Wealthy polluting nations pay for technology transfer & climate adaptation.
• Universal free healthcare & education through college. Affordable housing for all & a moratorium on foreclosures.
• Secure the global food supply: Support small farmers, our major source of food production. Put carbon back in the soil through restoration grazing and climate-smart sustainable agriculture. Ensure the right to land, food sovereignty and gender equality.
• Economic democracy: Replace “too big to fail” banks with public banks. Secure workers’ rights, support for co-operative enterprise & fair trade. Tax Wall Street & the rich. End third-world & student debt.
• Demilitarization: Cut at least 50% of military spending, freeing up resources for social programs & infrastructure. Foreign policy based on international law, human rights and diplomacy – not the military-industrial complex.
• End mass incarceration & deportations. Treat immigrant rights as human rights & drug abuse as a public health issue.
• Political democracy: All people, not corporations, have the right to self-government, to vote, & to have our votes count. Public financing, proportional representation & free use of public airways for candidates.
• Civil liberties: Restore the rights of free speech, protest, privacy, & internet freedom. Close Guantanamo, end torture/renditions, & pardon whistleblowers including Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, & Julian Assange.
• Support human rights, rights of Mother Earth, the call for peace & an end to colonialism & imperialism, as called for in the Cochabamba People’s Agreement & the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.