It all started when my mom and I flew to New York City for the People’s Climate March. This is me on the airplane.
Anyway, as we flew into NYC I saw a beautiful skyline.
This was what I saw when we landed.
The next morning (since we had been in LaGuardia, which is in Queens) we traveled by subway to Brooklyn for a climate meeting with two other kids my age and some teenagers and grownups from all over the country. This is what the meeting looked like.
It got to be a little boring for the kids about half way through the meeting, so we all started to draw. These are things that were in front of me, so I drew them.
After the meeting my mom and I had lunch with the group, and then we got back on the subway to Manhattan. After we put our stuff away in our hotel we went around the city to many “I Love New York” shops. Then we went to a restaurant we have always liked in NYC right down the street from our hotel for dinner. This is where I got an amazing hot cocoa.
The next day was the day we would leave, but also the day of the People’s Climate March. At about 10:00 am we joined thousands of other people there, in the 60s on Central Park West. My mom said that John Lennon had lived near there. The people we had met the day before marched with us. One of the groups that we met with is called Climate Mama. Another group is called iMatter, but they are changing their name to weMatter. There were other parent groups there with children. One parent group was called Climate Parents. Another group was called Moms’ Air Force. They were from Washington, DC. Our group of youth and families covered ten city blocks. But we did not see any other by kids/for kids groups at all, except for the groups of college kids. It was very busy, but very happy and peaceful. By the time they had done a head count there were over 400,000 people.
I met Peter Yarrow. This is a pic of him. He is from the singing group from the 60s called Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Then I got interviewed by HBO for their climate TV series. Joanna and I have already been working with Amy Schatz and her team at HBO.
We started marching on time, but we kept starting and stopping because of the traffic. My mom said that the volunteers and the police worked together to start and stop the March every 20,000 people or so, because the cars in NYC had to be able to drive. The March went around a lot of different streets, so it was complicated for the police. On 5th Avenue, near the Park Plaza, we saw a policewoman just yelling and yelling at a car that had stopped in the middle of the road to let passengers out. It was only noon time and she was already really tired, it seemed.
We met Bill McKibben (he is the one who started 350.org), so we gave him a bumper sticker and asked him to visit Santa Fe. Then we saw him again, at a food truck near Central Park, and he said that his people were telling him that there were 200,000 or more people. He seemed really happy about that. I bet he was really happy when he found out how many people there actually were!
We kept on marching and giving out bumper stickers. At Columbus Circle, as we looked up there was a huge screen showing marches from all over the world. It looked like the marchers were walking towards us.
I was getting REALY tired and hungry so we went to eat lunch. After lunch we rejoined the March again and walked through Times Square and gave out the rest of our bumper stickers. It got really crowded by that time. The part of the March that we joined was called Solutions, and there were mostly thousands of college students there. They really liked our bumper stickers! My favorite chant of all of the chants that people were saying was SHOW ME WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE! THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!
We had to leave the March early, at 3:00 pm. The March was going to end at 11th street and turn into a block party. But my mom thought that we might have a hard time getting to the airport so we left early. It was a good thing that we did, because it took us four hours altogether to get to JFK aIrport. When we arrived we were about an hour early, and we were really, really tired. Luckily, I got a seat next to an empty seat so I could stretch out and sleep on the way home.
For me climate change is the most important issue in the world today. I will do anything to help slow down climate change so that my family and I will have good lives.
The Global Warming Express is a…
organizaton, so all kids can have a voice.
Marina