Today is a hard day. The man about to step into the White House represents a set of values we cannot support. He plans to attack the foundations of truth and justice that the climate movement (and so many of our allied movements) are built on.
But his responsibility is to be a leader for this entire country. When he fails, he will be met with marches and waves of creative resistance coming to his doorstep — they will be relentless, as will our efforts to build the world we want instead.
We can stop the rollback of progress and achieve important gains at a local level — but only if we organize together across movements and put forth a vision of a country that works for all of us.
Tomorrow, hundreds of demonstrations are planned nationwide under the banner of The Women’s March in what is looking to be one of the biggest days of protest in my lifetime.
The largest is in Washington DC but many more are planned in every state — we don’t even quite know what all these actions will look like. Here’s where to go to find and join a Women’s March tomorrow. There are hundreds planned, and more than a million people have signed up to march nationwide.
Since November 9th, there have been heartbreaking moments where I ask myself how things could have possibly gotten this bad. The planet is slipping away from climate safety — are we really going to have Exxon’s CEO as Secretary of State? Will a man who calls climate change a ‘hoax’ lead this country?
But other days I am buoyed by the brilliance of people continuing to build our movements. The Women’s March began as a Facebook post the night of the election, now it is a global phenomenon of epic proportions. People have been sitting in at banks and Senate offices, rallying in the cold and the dark — absolutely refusing to give up.
In the coming years, we will need to hold onto a complex hope that never forgets the damage being done, and keeps sight of the huge number of people stepping up to fix it.
Every one of the problems posed by the next President has, at its core, the same solution: people speaking the truth, without apology, in every way available to them. The Women’s March is open to all people who recognize the violence of the next Administration, and wish to speak out about it. It will be a history-making day — here’s where to go to be a part of it.
If you need today as a day of quiet reflection or mourning, take it. But tomorrow, let’s start this new chapter in our history off together, in the streets, building the hope we need to weather it with strength and unity.
May
P.S. If you’re marching this weekend, you can help recruit for the People’s Climate Mobilization on April 29th by using this site and following these simple instructions. All it takes is a smartphone – you don’t even have to be connected to the internet.