People’s Climate March – Youth Organizing Report (Updated)

(Updates added 7/7) Hopefully people are starting to hear about the plans for the largest climate mobilization in US history, which will take place the week of September 21-28, 2014 here in New York City. There are an entire week worth of events planned, built around the Sept 23rd UN Climate Summit to he held here at the UN Headquarters. The Sunday before this meeting, September 21st, is now the official date for the People’s Climate March, so mark you calendars!

With our future on the line and the whole world watching, we’ll take a stand to bend the course of history. We’ll take to the streets to demand the world we know is within our reach: a world with an economy that works for people and the planet; a world safe from the ravages of climate change; a world with good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy communities.

People’s Climate March Meeting at The New School.

This was the second meeting that has taken place so far this summer, with the first one happening in May. The meeting, which was held in the original Tishman Auditorium at The New School, drew a full house of people from New York and the tri-state region. After some opening welcome remarks from organizers, include Eddie Bautista (NYC Environmental Justice Alliance), Estela Vasquez (Senior VP, Local 1199 SEIU), Reverend Clinton Miller (Brown Memorial Baptist Church), and wrapping up with some organizational details and updates from Leslie Cagan and Tammy Shapiro. Although I didn’t get an exact headcount, I would say 450+/- people were there tonight.

A Full House for Climate Organizing at The New School.

Following the initial pep talk and general planning updates the group broke out into a variety of different themes, ranging from students and youth, labor, faith, senior citizens, immigrants, LGBTQI, and more. Each group then had about 2 hours to meet and brainstorm and come up with ideas, actions, strategies, etc for how to plan and organize for the the September 21 mobilization.

I went to the Student and Youth breakout group, which had about 60 or so people there from a number of different area universities and schools, as well as folks from various community organizations, and even some folks from the NYC Dept. of Education. We brainstormed different ways to get young people involved, possible events to organize, through about who was here in the meeting and who was missing–Staten Island being the big missing one! Oh SI.

There was in general three big groups of people we thought about throughout the meeting–high school students, college students, and young people not in any particular group.

(left-to-right) ) Eddie Bautista, Leslie Cagan and Reverend Clinton Miller Discuss the March.

Overall the meeting that I was in was good, and there was definitely a positive and excited response from the students present.We discussed ways to reach out to youth, such as going to summer youth programs, summer sports programs, and even trying to get in touch with the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts groups (apparently the Boy Scouts just added a “sustainability” badge this past year to their list). In addition, there was talk about the idea of green collar jobs and trying to reach out to youth around future career interests, with someone especially listing STEM-focused high schools in the city (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) as a good place to potentially outreach for this. Unfortunately I couldn’t make the facilitator reportbacks from all the groups afterwards, as I had a bus to catch, but there will probably be notes and updates soon on their website.

So exactly what the next steps are remain to be confirmed. There is now a Facebook group people can like and follow, and soon more things will be rolling out. The next Youth Committee conference call (which have been taking place bi-weekly) is confirmed for Tue, July 15th at 5pm. [Updated call details here]. If in doubt, check the People’s Climate March for the latest details, join the youth e-mail list (send e-mail to youth+signup@peoplesclimate.org), and don’t forget to browse the youth forum here and brush up on your Jemez Principles (Jemez Principles pdf).

From here we will continue planning, and start bringing together a coalition of more student groups and allies under the larger People’s Climate March organizing group. While things are still getting worked out, people that are interested in organizing with other student should check out the Youth Hub here. If you’re at The New School and want to organize, drop me a line, as we will be trying to get more TNS folks together in the coming weeks and months to help do our part.

Until next time…keep organizing!

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