The (physical, breathing, fungible) People’s March
Story and Photos by Timothy Shivers
We were told by King, Wherever you are, get involved in a march. Because that’s the way we are going to change the culture of this country.
America had a problem then. So hundreds of thousands joined a march.
Fast forward 50 years, and the masses gathered together still retains its influence. Change the backdrop from the Lincoln Memorial to New York City skyscrapers, replace color with climate, add a few degrees to the thermometer, and you have The People’s Climate March.
On Sunday, September 21, 2014, the young and old both somehow mustered enough energy to snake through the streets of a barricaded Manhattan; the black and white decided that green would look better on them; the native and the foreigner knew the melting ice caps don’t really care about nationality. That week’s congregation filed into the pews of Central Park West. Instead of listening to another sermon, they had their own message to send.
Divest in fossil fuels. End fracking. Respect indigenous people groups. Stop the tar sands.
A group of indigenous people are part of the first group to leave from Columbus Circle in New York.
And the wonder of it all, they sent their message not with their Twitter or Facebook, but with their bodies. At the start of the march — near Columbus Circle — the media was buzzing, hoping to capture the fullness of what the world was witnessing: the largest march to date on climate change. Not the most viral video, or the most liked post, but the largest march.
A million “likes” was never going to do the trick (who knows if seven billion would have done much, either). While more and more evidence is being released about climate change, the audience stays confined to those who want to hear it. Hundreds of thousands marching through an already congested Manhattan, however, is a little harder to avoid. Throw in a few famous faces, including the United Nation’s Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, and you’ve got yourself a stage.
The power is in part a result of its historical context: as the advent of social media has democratized activism to something as simple as a click of a button, the fact that hundreds of thousands of physical bodies showed up and marched through the streets of New York City carries a much greater significance. Time lapsed. Miles traveled. Roads clogged. The effort of the People’s Climate March was magnified by the archaism of it all.
As I photographed the event in New York City, I wondered what the streets in D.C. looked like 50 years prior. Was Dr. King there in the front, with black and white hand in hand? Was there one chant echoing as a chorus, or were there a million small voices competing in chaos? Were people watching in awe from the window of McDonald’s? Did that many people have cameras?
A man takes a photo from a McDonald’s on Sixth Avenue during the People’s Climate March.
While I’ll never know the answers to those questions, the bigger idea that I witnessed was the magnitude of seeing a group of committed citizens physically manifest for highly polarized cause that can be layered with complicated lingo and nuanced details (later mother calls and I tell her, yea, climate change. Like taking care of the earth better. I wasn’t about to attempt describing FRACKING to my mom.).
As physical, breathing, fungible beings gathered, the world witnessed again how special it is when people show up. So perhaps we should go back to the drawing board — and maybe we should use our hands to do it, not our track pads. While I am by no means dismissing the power of social media, or the mere reality that this event wouldn’t have ever happened without it, I am saying that in the midst of such a fad-friendly and “likable” world, a march like this has major implications, not just on climate change, but on the way we advocate for social justice in the future.
As the hoards of people swung through the Manhattan jungle from start to finish, we saw a glimpse of what real crowdsourcing looks like. Little did we know, she works best not as 1s and 0s, but as a collection of atoms.
