Full feedMarching for climate justice in Copenhagen
Yesterday was the first time I've seen the sun since arriving in Copenhagen over a week ago. Literally. But that was not even close to the most exciting thing about the day.
The Greenpeace contingent of the December 12th "The World Wants a Real Deal" march was huge, lively, and — if you'll allow me to indulge in a bit of hyperbole — damn inspiring. I felt extremely fortunate to be there with so many passionate fellow activists. Despite the exhaustion from averaging 4 hours of sleep a night and the malnourishment from crappy convention center vegetarian food, their energy was so infectious that I was feeling great. And naturally I shot some video to share.
The march kicked off in Copenhagen's Parliament Square, where Kumi Naidoo spoke after the crowd had been warmed up by several other speakers, including "Mr. Green" and Vandana Shiva.
Once the march was underway, Greenpeacers stretched as far as the eye could see. We had three floats, several banners, a drum corps, and hundreds of shouting, dancing, marching activists. We'd made a few thousand yellow signs to hand out sporting various messages to world leaders, as you'll see. My favorite was "Bla bla bla - Save the climate."
I'd say the coolest part, though, was the "puppet master" float, which had a slick-looking, cigar-smoking business man controlling Obama, Merkel, and several other world leaders. I asked one of the activists pulling the float, Fidel, to explain it to us while he was pulling.
I shot short video blogs of a few other folks at the march, but I'll post those separately later.
Comments
Honest question: what is the plan to recycle the signage after march? I ask because that will at the top of the list of "hypocrisy" claims used to justify doing nothing.
Banners do get recycled, sometimes reused, or we decorate our offices/warehouses with them. Funny story - we almost got to reuse our 'Right city, wrong date' banner when Obama announced he would travel to COP15 on the 9th. The banner was originally deployed in Copenhagen when Obama showed up to make a bid for the Olympics to go to Chicago. Luckily, Obama rearranged his schedule and will be heading to Copenhagen for the 18th of December like all other world leaders. So, we didn't get a chance to reuse that one in the end!
Laura - Greenpeace International
Posted by: equilibrium | December 13, 2009 4:08 PM