In two weeks, one hundred thousand people are expected to descend upon Washington D.C for The Peoples Climate March on April 29th – a full-scale mobilization, with 250 sister marches planned across the country, to fight for climate, jobs, and justice, and stand up against Donald Trump and his billionaire Climate Denial Cabinet’s fossil fueled agenda.
This gathering is happening on the 100th day under the Trump presidency and builds on the tremendous resistance by everyday people across the country – workers, students, communities of color, immigrants, Indigenous peoples, women, faith leaders, and more – who have consistently stepped up to defend and protect our civil liberties since Trump took office.
We saw this on January 21st, just a day after inauguration, when millions participated in Women’s Marches across the U.S and the world against the blatant sexism and misogyny spotlighted in the presidential election, and the ongoing lack of equal opportunities for women in almost every professional sector. The outcome: the marches drowned out Trump’s poorly attended inauguration, setting the precedent for four years of resistance ahead.
Just a week later, thousands dropped everything to head to international airports from JFK in New York to SFO in San Francisco to O’Hare in Chicago and beyond with the rallying cry, “No Ban, No Wall!” demanding that the hundreds of people being detained due to Trump’s Muslim Ban executive order be let into the country. The result: two attempts by the administration to push forward the Muslim Ban have been blocked by federal courts.
And in March, tens of thousands of people flooded members of Congress with calls, many also showing up at townhalls, to demand that their representatives save their health care. Again we won: Efforts to repeal Obamacare in favor of a healthcare plan that would strip reproductive rights and care options for the most vulnerable Americans was defeated on March 23rd, failing to come to a vote in Congress.
Our intersectional resistance is working. And the common thread is that communities are standing up for justice over exclusion, reductive policies, corporate lies, and deceit. It’s this same commitment to our collective future that is inspiring tens of thousands to head to the Peoples Climate March on April 29th to demand climate action.
With Donald Trump’s roll back of hard-won climate and environmental protections, and the appointment of a climate-denying cabinet deeply invested in the fossil fuel industry, it’s clear that he has no regard for the future of people of this country, nor the world.Time is running out to slow climate change-related catastrophe.
Meanwhile, temperatures across the world are rising, causing severe drought, famine, flooding, and further weather-based disasters. The rights of communities are being dismissed for the sake of myopic tactics that only put more money in the hands of the fossil fuel industry. The impacts here in the U.S are clear: those who are hardest hit by this irresponsibility and disregard are low income communities and communities of color who are more likely to live and work in areas most prone to climate impacts, the least protected from the consequences, and are less likely to have the resources to recover.
This is why we need you with us on April 29th. We may not be able to rely on the U.S government to secure our future, but as we’ve shown time and again, we will not settle for anything less than justice for all of us.
Together, we must chart another path: away from Trump’s shortsighted and divisive agenda, and towards a clean energy economy that works for all. We will make clear that just as we stepped up for women’s rights, immigrant justice, and healthcare for all – our communities want climate action now.
Together, we can change everything.