Please join us at the top of Putney Mountain this Saturday, November 4 at 10:00 am for a demonstration to demand urgent action on global warming (see press release below).
The weather should be good, so please bring along your digital camera, if you have one, and your good spirits. If you would like to carpool from Brattleboro, a group will be meeting at 9:00 am in the parking lot at the rear of the Abbott Block apartment building, 10 Canal Street (across from the Brattleboro Food Co-op). For directions to Putney Mountain, please contact Paul at 254-0367.
We look forward to seeing you on Saturday!
For immediate release:
GLOBAL WARMING ACTIVISTS PLAN LARGEST DEMONSTRATION IN VERMONT
HISTORY (SORT OF)
This Saturday, 72 hours before Vermonters cast their ballots in
mid-term elections, Vermonters demanding urgent action on global
warming will stage a rally unlike any the state has seen before.
Some demonstrators will gather in Burlington’s Intervale farm, for
an day of festivities that will include, among other things, a giant human
artwork—they will join hands to form the image of an enormous maple leaf,
which will be photographed from the air by a Greenpeace helicopter.
Meanwhile, small groups of Vermonters will be fanning out to
well-known locations around the state—from the tops of Mt. Mansfield and
Ascutney to the shores of Lake Champlain. The demonstrators at the more
than 20 sites will hold the same banner—“Vote to Stop Global
Warming,” and by one in the afternoon photos from each of the sites
will be visible on a giant screen at the Intervale.
“We’ll be gathering the length and breadth of Vermont to remind
people we need to vote for a change in U.S. and state climate
policy,” said author Bill McKibben, who will speak to the Intervale
crowd via cellphone from the snowy top of Camel’s Hump at 2 in the
afternoon. “Vermont needs to lead the nation in building a liveable
world.”
“We’re forming a maple leaf to symbolize all that Vermont stands
to lose if we don’t take strong action soon on climate change,” said
Rebecca Sobel, Greenpeace’s Project Hot Seat organizer in Vermont. “We
don’t have any more elections to waste—this is the most critical issue
facing the planet today.”
Recent Middlebury College graduate Will Bates, who also helped
organize the 50-mile Labor Day walk across Vermont for climate action
that turned into the country’s largest global warming demonstration
to date, said response to the plan for the unprecedented spread-out
rally had been very strong. “We’ve had people from every part of the state
wanting to organize their own small demonstrations,” he said. “From East
Burke to St. Albans, from Strafford to Hartland to the shore of Lake
Champlain in Burlington’s Oakledge Park, people are spontaneously
organizing; we’ve only been planning this about ten days and the result
has been explosive.”
The participants will include students at Johnson State, UVM, and
Vermont Academy; grass farmers on the state’s northwest slopes; and
skiers at Middlebury’s Snow Bowl. The protest will also serve as a
dry run for a similar national effort in the spring, said McKibben,
author of The End of Nature, the first book for a general audience
about climate change.
Sobel, who has spent the last four months working to make climate
change a central part of the fall elections, said that all the
candidates for major office in the state except Gov. Jim Douglas had
appeared at a Burlington rally to sign a pledge backing legislation
introduced by Sen. Jim Jeffords to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by
2050. “We’re glad they’re on the record; we just want to remind them how
committed we are,” she said.
A list of all the demonstrations across the state can be found at
saveyourvemont.org, and Bates said there is still plenty of time for local
organizers to add to the list.