The biggest climate change rally in US history
On Sunday, Feb. 17, despite chilly and windy weather, tens of thousands of people converged to Washington, DC demanding that President Obama block the Keystone XL pipeline and take action against climate change.
“This was the biggest climate change rally in US history,” wrote 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben. By his group’s account, 50,000 people joined this climate change rally near the Washington Monument. It took them more than an hour to march past the White House. A great majority of them are young people. Some college students came from as far as Maine.
350.org, Sierra Club and the Hip-Hop Caucus were among the major organizers for this event.
Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, who was arrested last week protesting the Keystone XL pipeline in front of the White House, said, “President Obama holds in his hand a pen and the power to deliver on his promise of hope for our children. Today, we are asking him to use that pen to to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and ensure that this dirty, dangerous, export pipeline will never be built.”
Rev. Lennox Yearwood, President of Hip Hop Caucus, compared the rally to Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington for civil rights, but, he said, “while they were fighting for equality, we are fighting for existence.”
