What really happened at the Global Climate Action Summit

Our final day in San Francisco was for the #CommunitiesNotCorporations action at the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS/ #GCAS2018). We’d already attended the Rise for Climate Jobs and Justice on Saturday, and an occupation of Gov. Jerry Brown’s forest advisory board before the summit.

At this last event, I was embedded with a group of frontline fighters during a tense stand off with police where we blocked the doors to the summit, and I had a front-row seat to the indigenous, frontline, and communities of color who were locked out of a summit where billionaires and mayors rubbed shoulders to congratulate each other on their elevated climate consciousness.

Before you celebrate the commitments made by Mayors of New York and London, or by corporations with billions in profits, check out our wrap up video – filmed live on the streets outside the Global Climate Action Summit, and edited in South Carolina as hurricane Florence makes landfall. And if you’re moved by our argument about what works, and doesn’t work about Jerry Brown’s market-based approach to climate change. Then chip in to support this kind of work if you can.

I also streamed live for a few hours from the action outside along with our friends at Rising Tide. You can see the street theater performance starting at about 22 minutes in, and you can see the tense stand off with police at about 1:10:00

Thanks again to all our partners and friends who helped organize – especially Beyond Extreme Energy which helped send me and Don to California; Rising Tide and Diablo Rising Tide, who did so much amazing prep and organizing for all these actions; And the It Takes Roots coalition including IEN and other allies who put on the amazing Solidarity to Solutions conference, and provided a ton of logistics for speakers, art, theater and frontline participation. It takes ROOTS ROOTS ROOTS, to weather the STORM STORM STORM – and y’all got mad roots.

Last – thanks to all the 198 methods supporters and everyone else who chipped in to get us to California, and home safe (just in time for Florence to make landfall in South Carolina, where I live). If you appreciate this kind of action, and the coverage before, during and after these action – please consider chipping in $1.98 or more to keep us fighting.

2 Comments

  1. Sandra Sarry 9-15-18
    Wow how did this all happen. No news of it here. Missouri here @ Macks Creek. I actually thought Jerry Brown was with us, voted for him back in the 70’s for Governor when I lived in CA. Remarkable what you were able to put together. I’ve sent it on to friends in CA hoping they know about this. I had forgotten there was to be a huge meeting of people around the world for climate change in CA. ( being 78 yrs old I feel pretty helpless). I hope the people from around the world who met there weren’t duped by big oil,coal & corporations & Big Money.
    Carol Noyes had a very good suggestion to have these events videotaped by a professional . Where is National Geographic when you need them?
    These demonstrations need more publicity so that every level of citizen knows about these problems. And to realize that Climate Change is real for the average & below average citizen too. People with money and people without money. This needs to be a subject everyone is talking about such as,at the grocery store,on the bus, passing your neighbor etc. If I didn’t have this computer this would have flown over my head. Keep up the good work, I feel like I’m back in the 60’s, 70’s again. KEEP STRONG-GOOD LUCK!

  2. As one of many very concerned about climate change, I was delighted to learn about this protest in San Francisco. I hope we see more of these throughout the country and beyond. With Trump as president, I fear that all corporations, certainly including those in oil and gas, will have carte blanche to do as they wish. I’ve never seen a worse time for the greedy corporations getting ever greedier and being blessed for doing so by Trump, who clearly thinks this is all just wonderful. Either he is unintelligent enough to realize what’s happening in the world re climate, or he just doesn’t give a damn.
    Anyway, keep up the good work. One suggestion – perhaps you could get a professional videographer to record these events.