1 - Introduction

Summary

In the summer of 2014, representatives of several environmental groups in Pittsburgh began meeting to plan for local participation in the People’s Climate March to be held in New York City on September 21, 2014. The Sierra Club, 350.org, and other national and international groups were organizing the march around a United Nations (UN) meeting on climate change held in New York in advance of the Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015. Across the country, grassroots groups, including affiliates of Rising Tide North America and the Climate Justice Alliance, were organizing to attend the People’s Climate March and to participate in a week of activities that would include a nonviolent direct action in New York’s financial district to “flood Wall Street” on the day following the main march. Radical and mainstream environmentalists alike were eager to be part of these events, and participants in the Pittsburgh meetings included a staff member of the Sierra Club and members of the Global Warming Action Team of the Allegheny Group of the Sierra Club, local anti-fracking and environmental justice groups, student environmental groups, and a community organization called Action United. In addition to organizing Pittsburgh residents to attend the People’s Climate March, their goal was to build a diverse local climate movement consisting not only of environmentalists but also unions, faith leaders, students, and residents of disadvantaged communities. On September 8, 2014, this ad hoc group held a “pre-event” with speakers, music, and refreshments that attracted a diverse crowd of people. A national organizer working with 350.org and Rising Tide came from New York to speak about the march, followed by local speakers from a student coalition, the local Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and the Sierra Club among others. Framing of the issue reflected the diversity of the event coalition; the SEIU speaker talked about how low-income workers are “extremely affected by climate change,” and the AFSC representative talked about “climate justice” in connection with racial justice and human rights (fieldnotes, September 8, 2014). A few weeks later, several hundred Pittsburgh residents traveled to New York in at least five buses organized by local groups.