By Rebecca Solnit, Author
We march because this is an emergency.
We march because the time to do everything possible is now, and not next year, next decade, next administration.
We are marching because it turns out that our most ancient mode of transit—walking—is also a celebration of our first amendment rights and a reaffirmation of our power as civil society.
We march because together we are strong enough to move us out of this age of destruction, and because together we see each other and feel our power, and feel under it the love for vulnerable members of our own species and for the young and for the future and for the beauty that lies in this planet’s biodiversity and its symphonic ecologies now falling into cacophony.
We march so that we can go home remembering this shared passion and let it feed our work on campaigns, elections, policies, organizations that will bring our feverish earth the relief she needs.
We march because we know that another world is not just possible but coming into being, a fossil-free energy future that is happening with Iowa’s wind turbines and Texas’s solar panels, with California’s brand-new commitment to go 100% renewable electricity-generation by 2045.
We march because we know, as the big banner at the 2014 New York City climate march declared: WE ALREADY HAVE THE SOLUTIONS. We just need to overcome the political obstacles to leaving behind the age of fossil fuel and all the corruption and contamination it has brought because we need to speed up this transition already underway.
We march because we know that a world that responds to the emergency will be a more beautiful and prosperous one, one without immense energy corporations corrupting politics, one without toxic sludge from tar sands and toxic air from refineries making locals sick, one where the sun and the wind give us boundless energy, one where the future is not sacrificed to the present.
We march because we believe that the difference between the best and worst-case scenarios matters desperately.
We march because we know that we can celebrate and worry and strategize and commit all at once.
We march to be part of hope and not of dread or indifference.
We march so that we can look children in the eye and say that we’re doing our best for their future, now in 2018 where the youngest children are quite likely to be alive in 2100.