Yesterday’s march was the single largest environmental rally in history, with Metro reporting estimated attendance of 310,000 and people traveling from all around the world to participate.
The United Nations Climate Summit will take place on September 23rd.
During the march, Governor Andrew Cuomo declared “Climate Week.” He was joined at the rally by several politicians and celebrities, including U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Al Gore, Chris Rock and Leonardo DiCaprio.
As one of the biggest public marches in New York in recent time, it was just one of 2,646 climate-change events taking place in 156 countries at the same time.
De Blasio spoke at the rally saying, “Summits sometimes spark great change; rallies, protests sometimes spark great change. Sometimes they don’t. Our mission is to make this a decisive moment and a turning point moment, and I felt today that I was seeing history starting to be made.”
The NYPD told the Guardian that there were no arrests or incidents during Sunday’s massive demonstration.
This morning, protesters are convening in Battery Park. They will begin to march at noon, heading for a confrontational demonstration on Wall Street. Flood Wall Street hopes to take a more aggressive approach by shutting down the New York Stock Exchange with a sit-in and highlighting the role of big business in climate change.
Many of the same organizers are involved, but this time the protesters will carry a 300-foot banner that says “Capitalism = Climate Chaos. Flood Wall Street.” Occupy activists and other Flood Wall Street supporters are explicitly seeking to combat climate change by disrupting capitalist institutions. They told MSNBC that they have at least 200 protesters who plan to be arrested.
Organizer, Michael Premo, released a statement saying that “Runaway climate change and extreme weather events… are fueled by the fossil fuel industry. We are flooding Wall Street because we know that there’s no greater cause of runaway climate change than an economic system that puts profit before people – and before the planet.”
(Photos: Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork)
