Climate Strike, pt. 2

On December 6th, students led a National Climate Strike. In Charlottesville, our group, Extinction Rebellion, joined UVA students and local middle-and-high school students in their march from UVA campus to the Charlottesville Downtown pedestrian mall. What follows is the speech I delivered at the rally:

I stand here today as part of Extinction Rebellion. But more importantly, I stand here as part of this community and as part of our Piedmont ecosystem and Rivanna Watershed, and as part of this climate strike. I stand here to remind us that climate change is humanity’s wakeup call. As a doctor detects a fever as a sign of an infection, so should we recognize climate change as but a symptom of the larger disease.

That disease is our broken relationships with each other and with all of life. Projects like renewable energy are valuable symptom management, but in our zeal against carbon, we cannot lose sight of the underlying disease.

Scraping mountaintops to provide the materials to pave over our Piedmont forests with solar panels will not fix our broken relationships. Buying electric vehicles and reusable straws will not fix our broken relationships.

Our culture’s collective story and collective mission of unending economic growth is structured to break apart our relationships with nature and with our own humanity. Because only in isolation do I feel the need to consume, and only when I am removed from the consequences of our consumption, when I no longer carry relationships with the life we destroy, only then do I freely consume, consume, consume, to fulfill my mandate of economic growth. We need to change more than our buying habits. We need to change our story.

Many people ask “What is something I can do?” For too long, we have answered “Buy efficient appliances.” Instead, our answers should be: “Go to the forest, wander off the trail, be quiet, and listen. Pay attention to what the forest has to tell you,” or we can answer “Find a community garden and grow herbs and vegetables with your community,” or even “Be a good neighbor. Break the story telling you to buy your own of everything. Rebel in the joy of building community through sharing.”

Only through rebuilding our relationships can we change our culture’s story. Activism is essential and this is a beautiful group. But without relationships, it will be as empty as the culture it strives to upend. Let them say of us, people came out of fear but they stayed out of love.

I don’t know if we can think our way through this crisis. We need to provide space for ourselves and for each other to feel. To feel sadness over our ecocide. To feel gratitude that we live on this beautiful planet.

The beauty of this event is that it gives us a chance to feel together. And so I urge you to introduce yourself to someone here who you haven’t met before. Ask them why they are here. Ask them what is the more beautiful world their heart knows is possible. Go listen to the forest together. And join us in fellowship at the end of this event to sing together.

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?