This is What Democracy Looks Like

Clean Water Action partnered with many other organizations on the February 17 Forward on Climate Rally.  We spread the word with our members and staff from offices in the DC Metro area, the Mid-Atlantic and New England all participated.  Here’s a report from our own Casille Systermans on her experience at the rally and the importance of our nation’s youth speaking out. On Sunday, I met with about 40,000 other climate activists and marched from the national mall to the White House to let President Obama know we not only want, but will demand, action on Climate Change. Before this, I had never taken part in large marches or rallies, but standing alongside such a huge group of my peers ignited something in me I haven’t really felt for a few years - belief. For four years I studied climate change and environmental science at Boston College. My good friend Anthony, who shared my major and most of my classes, and I used to joke that studying the environment and what humans were doing to this planet was an exercise in learning about our inevitable doom. Especially considering at the time we saw the political right passing bills to outlaw climate science and legally deny the dangerous futures we were learning about every day. Needless to say, this atmosphere didn’t engender any real hope in me that we could make the changes needed to guarantee my generation will be able to live on a planet that will look like the one we grew up on. This past weekend, standing beside 40,000 other activists, most of whom were young people like me, finally changed my mind. My generation is a generation that is going to have to fight an uphill political battle for the future that our parents and grandparents should have worked for years ago. But the Forward on Climate rally has shown me, President Obama and the world that we are willing to fight - even in the frigid cold - for clean air, clean water and a secure future that every generation before us has always known they would have. So to President Obama and the US Congress, we gave you the push you needed. Move us Forward on Climate because we will NOT let you sell our future to fossil fuel companies who are profiting by betting against the planet’s future.