So when the Wall Street Journal and local network news shows and other media outlets said later today that "thousands" had marched, they must have been talking about the people we were among on 72nd Street and forgetting about the people packed like sardines into Central Park West from 59th Street to 87th Street waiting for the march to start, let alone the thousands like us waiting to feed into the march on many other cross streets...
We also noticed that the helicopter(s) that flew overhead every now and then that caused the crowd to wave their banners and hands at whoever was in them, most people assuming they were news helicopters, actually seemed to be police copters, which I would guess is correct since the news stations that covered the march, and most of them pretty cursorily, had no shots from above, which would have laid to rest any doubts about the march only containing "thousands" pretty quickly...
Fortunately there were other news outlets that called the crowd at closer to a hundred thousand...also off but at least more honest than most...and then there were the ones that said it was the biggest climate march in history, over three hundred thousand, which sounded much closer...
...if you were in that crowd from 59th to 87th (or for all I know even further north given the size of the crowds lower down Central Park West) with the pressure of the feeder street crowds making the crowd at that time packed solid, you could count for yourself...or just notice that it took two hours for the march to move on 72nd Street after it began moving at 59th Street, because there were that many people flowing in from the feeder cross streets, and that many packed into those thirteen city blocks...
(You can see just from the shot above of the beginning of the march how many people were there, that doesn't even show the width of the street and yet I can count close to forty people across and right behind them, pressing in on them at that point is another forty to fifty, and so on, every foot or so for almost thirty city blocks, and that doesn't count the thousands on each feeder street...I know entire families that left before they even got onto Central Park West because they'd been waiting so long, and many more who dropped out once they got to 59th from twenty or more blocks away after waiting for many hours and then slowly making their way down the parade route, etc.)...
But that wouldn't be what you'd most likely be paying attention to, that would be the jubilant and determined spirit of the crowd, of all ages and ethnicities and sizes and shapes and styles and etc. yet united in the belief that the time for talking is over and there needs to be action taken to stop the corporate and government abuse of the planet and it's atmosphere...(with so many great handmade signs—like "THERE IS NO PLANET B"—and costumes and musical instruments etc...)
...I know, easier said than done, but if history is any indicator, the next step will be to not just march in a festive if committed-to-the-cause spirit on a foggy, humid, but lovely last day of summer Sunday when the city is mostly at rest, but instead to march on a week day when it will disrupt the business of the city and the state, of the country and the world...tough thing to pull off but it will be necessary if things continue as they are...
For now, today's demonstration showing how many people care enough about the earth and what corporate greed is doing to it and all on it (though the 1% do get to avoid some of the worst effects of climate change and all that contributes to it, i.e. drought, fracking, factory farms, etc....) to get together to protest the lack of urgency in governments and corporations that thrive on the profits of the very industries that are destroying the earth and the atmosphere....
...and who came even from other countries, or joined equally committed and determined protesters in cities all around the globe (something every news report I watched tonight ignored) or just traveled longer distances than me and my teenage son and his mother and some friends did from Jersey (there were native Americans from reservations in the far and mid West, as well as poverty activists from urban centers in the East, etc.)....
...just to be among so many like-minded and like-spirited people was a joy and a privilege, for which I will be always grateful...just to have experienced the moment when every one of those more than three hundred thousand people stood in silence to mark all of our concern for the earth and its atmosphere and then to hear the distant roar of the crowd slowly moving up from 59th Street to where we were on 72nd until it passed right through us as we joined in it and could hear it moving further up the parade route...
...it's too late and I'm too tired, or my brain is, to describe that experience as accurately as I'd like, but it's an experience I have never had quite like that but would love to again...only next time let's make it a million people...
[PS: For a great shot of some of the march, from high up in a building on Central Park West, click here... and scroll to the bottom]
No comments:
Post a Comment