The Wild Reed: Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson Joins NYC’s March to End Fossil Fuels

Monday, September 18, 2023

Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson Joins NYC’s March to End Fossil Fuels

Earlier today Democracy Now! reported the following.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters around the globe took to the streets over the weekend calling for an end to the burning of fossil fuels. Climate actions took place in the Philippines, India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sweden, Germany, the United States and across dozens of other countries and cities worldwide.

Here in New York, an estimated 75,000 protesters joined a massive march Sunday following days of peaceful actions targeting banks and other institutions involved with the fossil fuel industry.

The tens of thousands of people who filled the streets of midtown Manhattan sent a clear message to the world and leaders coming to the city for the U.N. General Assembly this week: End fossil fuels.

As part of more than 200 actions around the world leading up to the first-ever United Nations Climate Ambition Summit this Wednesday, more than 700 grassroots groups together called on President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency, stop all federal approvals for new fossil fuel projects, phase out production of fossil fuels on federal public lands, and build a new clean energy future.

Speakers at the massive march’s rally included New York Democratic Congressmember Jamaal Bowman, environmental justice activist Susan Lavigne, former Irish President Mary Robinson, actor Susan Sarandon and climate scientist Peter Kalmus.

“Every little bit of fossil fuel we burn makes the planet a little hotter,” warned Kalmus, while Bowman and Robinson condemned fossil fuel investment as “subsidizing” the planet’s “own self-destruction.”

Added Kalmus, “This is a task of cosmic importance. . . . We are on the brink of losing absolutely everything.”

As far as I know, progressive Democrat Marianne Williamson was the only 2024 presidential candidate to participate in yesterday’s March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City.

That’s both telling and significant, don’t you think? But then again, when you read Marianne’s Climate Action Policy and listen to her speak about this crucially important issue, the only conclusion that can be reached is that she is the presidential candidate most serious about taking action on climate change.

And yet as always, it’s crickets from the mainstream media in terms of coverage of this and of Marianne’s campaign in general.

Well, as I learned during my time 20 years ago with the Minneapolis-based Counter Propaganda Coalition*, often times you have to be the media you want to see in the world. Hence my frequent writing on and coverage of Marianne and her presidential campaign here at The Wild Reed.

With this in mind and heat, I share today not only some wonderful some images of Marianne and supporters at the March to End Fossils Fuels, but also the message Marianne sent to her supporters, myself included, just prior to her participation in Sunday’s march.

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Dear Michael,

Today I’m marching with lots of our East Coast volunteers to participate in the March to End Fossil Fuels Parade in New York City.

I’m old enough to have experienced what it means when an idea becomes a movement, which over time then becomes a power that simply will not be stopped. And ending fossil fuels is at such a point today. A critical mass of people at last seem to understand that when it comes to fossil fuels the era of extraction must end, so a new era of green energy can begin.

To make this transition, it will not be enough to simply invest in green energy. It’s not enough to go clean if you’re still investing in dirty. We must begin right now to ramp down fossil fuel extraction, not ramp it up the way both Presidents Trump and Biden have done.

It’s time for a World War II level mass mobilization for a just transition from a dirty economy to a clean economy, and as President I will preside over that.

“But wait a minute, Marianne,” one gentleman said to me one day. “I make over 6 figures at my job working for Big Oil. Are you telling me to go install solar panels for $15 an hour?”

“No Sir, I’m not,” I told him. That’s where the word “just” comes in to the concept of a just transition. Many thousands of people who work at least indirectly for fossil fuel companies have the technological, research and manufacturing careers sorely needed in a green economy. I will work tirelessly with the fossil fuel companies – as long as they will work with me – to partner in the single greatest industrial transition in modern American history. In doing so, we will create jobs, we will create profits, and we will create a safer and more livable planet.

In the meantime, I will immediately upon taking office declare a Climate Emergency. Why? First of all, because there is one. But more importantly, because as your President I will not be pussy footing around. During my administration, the U.S. government will refuse to bow down to any oil producer, foreign or domestic. We’re not staying stuck, and we’re not going backwards. We’re going a create a Green Century for ourselves and our children.

Every time I give a talk on the campaign trail, I ask people to raise their hand if they are a young person or have heard a young person say the following: that under normal circumstances they would be thinking about having a child but that given the state of the environment today they don’t think it would be a responsible thing to do.

Never does less than 1/3 of the room raise their hands – and at one talk recently a majority did!

That’s it. We’re going to listen to our young people. They want a better life, and they deserve it.

I hope you will work as hard as we are – as a donor, a volunteer, a friend of the campaign – to amplify this message so we can get it done.