Anti-war politics and the environmental movement came together at a rally in San Francisco Saturday.
The event in United Nations Plaza was among 1,000 planned nationwide
as part of Step It Up 2007, a national day of action against climate
change. More than 40 rallies were scheduled to be held in California
alone.
Serious topics were treated with typically antic San Francisco
style. On the plaza, where the words of the U.N. charter are carved in
stone, the master of ceremonies stood at a microphone - wearing a
gorilla costume without the mask due to the unseasonably warm weather -
near where the charter promises "... to promote social progress and
better standards of life."
Rally participants carried colorful signage - "Draft Gore" and "No
Nukes! No Coal! No Problem!" Booths were manned by representatives of
Greenpeace - who distributed free fruit smoothies made in solar-powered
blenders - and other environmental groups, while the plaza was ringed
by an array of demonstrations of various forms of sustainable energy,
from algae to solar panels to electric cars to a truck that runs on
walnut shells.
The guest speaker, activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in 2004 in Iraq, addressed a crowd of about 100.
"I'm here because issues of war and the environment are intricately
connected," said Sheehan, wearing a black T-shirt bearing the message:
"Arrest Cheney First."
This summer, Sheehan announced her run for Congress against House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi. On Saturday, she announced the opening of her
local campaign headquarters, at 1260 Mission St. "If I am elected, one
of my first acts will be to make sure our country signs on to the Kyoto
Protocol," Sheehan said, referring to the 1997 United Nations treaty to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The first Step It Up 2007 rally campaign, held last spring, urged
Congress to pass legislation to cut the carbon emissions that
contribute to climate change 80 percent by 2050.
This time, national organizers have added two new demands: A moratorium on new coal plants and an increase in "green" jobs.
San Francisco organizer Jerry James Stone noted that the city added
its own twist, discussing the urgency of fully implementing the city's
Climate Action Plan and proposing a ban on new nuclear power plants.
"In April, we saw that Americans were really concerned about climate change," said Stone.
"Now, a year from election day, we are asking our leaders to tell us how they will address this global issue," Stone said.
"A stance against nuclear energy is part of the role San Francisco
is taking in this national effort," said master of ceremonies David
Jay, a community organizer with Green Gorillas Against Greenwash.
"We hope to get the city to take climate change more seriously," Jay
said, "and to push for legislation to have the city's power plants
powered by renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power."
One of several East Bay rallies was held in Lower Sproul Plaza at UC
Berkeley, where an estimated 150 people of all ages gathered to hear
speeches and musical performances.
"Climate change and sustainability are huge issues for students,"
said Mallory Sadan, student coordinator of the Berkeley campus event,
which was sponsored by the California Student Public Interest Research
Group (CALPIRG) as part of its Campus Climate Change Campaign.
"We want to get the message out before the presidential candidates
start campaigning in earnest," Sadan said. "We want change. We want
stronger leadership."
The founder of Step It Up 2007, journalist and activist Bill
McKibben, is a visiting professor at Middlebury College in Vermont and
the author of "Fight Global Warming Now." The movement began in
January, when he launched the Web site: www.stepitup2007.org.
"Northern California is one of the places we can count on," McKibben
told The Chronicle by phone Friday. "It's not preaching to the choir.
It's getting the choir to sing loudly enough for our leaders to hear
them."
