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Date: April 20, 2010
Subject: Stand up for Mother Earth & Climate Justice - Locally & Globally
40 years of Earth Day... Where are we now?
Dear friend,
With people across the country and across the state gearing up for 40th anniversary Earth Day celebrations, I want to ask you a simple question: to what end? I don't ask this to be dismissive of the incredible grassroots efforts that are underway to reverse the course of environmental destruction by raising consciousness and awareness and promoting action. I ask this to make sure that we are taking the steps that are necessary to avert the worst of the ecological crises that are converging upon us. Please join the conversation here.
With that challenge in mind, we hope you are paying attention to an important conference happening NOW in Cochabamba, Bolivia. There are several opportunities to participate, including a live, interactive workshop TONIGHT, hosted at Encuentro 5 in Boston's Chinatown:
Cochabamba Climate Summit - Boston Interactive Workshop
April 20, 2010, 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave - 5th floor
Boston, MA 02111 (Chinatown)
What: Join organizers and activists in Cochabamba, Bolivia and New York City for a live interactive conversation as part of the Climate and Mother Earth Rights conference, hosted by the people of Bolivia (pwccc.wordpress.com). This global interaction is part of the Cochabamba Expanded conversation organized by May First/People Link (mayfirst.org)
The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth is taking place in Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 19 to 22, 2010, as a people's rebuttal to Copenhagen. Visit pwccc.wordpress.com
for more information.
Stay tuned to encuentro5.org for details on the Boston event.
In addition to these virtual meetings tonight, there are other ways to follow what's going on and to participate, from live broadcasts of plenaries to reports from working groups, Twitter conversations, and radio and television broadcasts. Please visit our Secure Green Future webpage for more information, and visit the official website of the Climate Summit to plug in.
We have also posted a number of great extended Earth Day events that are taking place in Massachusetts in the events section of www.masschc.org. Please send any more events you'd like to see posted to info@masschc.org.
Below is information about what we find to be the most important Earth Day event taking place in Massachusetts, and we urge you to travel to Boston to join the sleep out Wednesday night on the Boston Common.
Upward to a livable, just future for planet Earth and all her inhabitants,
Eli Beckerman, Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities
617.821.1453 | eli@masschc.org
Friends, Partners, Leaders,
The science is clear, we have already breached 350 PPM, the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and we must stop burning fossil fuels and emitting dangerous pollution into the atmosphere as fast possible in order to sustain life as we know it on this planet.
However, we have yet to see any serious policy from our elected leaders to begin to tackle this problem. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “It was the people who moved their leaders, not the leaders who moved the people.” Here in Massachusetts we have begun a movement. A movement composed of students, clergy, business people, and ordinary citizens who realize the critical importance of taking serious action now who have the courage to take a stand and are ready to lead.
Tomorrow, on the Eve of the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, April 21, we will gather on the Boston Common to rally, sleep-out, lobby, and lead Massachusetts, our nation, and the world to a clean, just, and stable future.
Join us!
We are asking the Massachusetts General Court to pass a bill that will put us on the path towards 100% Clean Electricity by 2020. Despite support across Massachusetts and in the statehouse itself, with 17 co-sponsors, the bill has not moved for months. So, hundreds of courageous individuals are coming together to show the legislature that citizens across Massachusetts want action now.
Tomorrow, April 21 at 5:30PM we will gather on the Boston Common in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse. We will rally with our supporters and to display our commitment and resolve we will refuse to sleep in our homes, apartments, and dorms that are powered by dirty electricity. In the morning, on April 22 the 40th, anniversary of Earth Day, we will wake up and present a few esteemed recipients with Climate Courage Awards. Finally, we will lobby our senators and representatives and ask them to find the courage to stand with us and help lead us towards a just and stable future.
Join your neighbors, classmates, and fellow citizens across Massachusetts in leading the commonwealth, the nation, and the world towards a clean energy future.
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of other, or strikes out against injustice, he send forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” -Robert F. Kennedy
Onwards and upwards,
Dominique McCadden
State Campaign Coordinator
Students for a Just and Stable Future
Nothing Less than 100%, Nothing More than 350.
www.theleadershipcampaign.org
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