What Should My Sign Say at a Rally To Act on Climate Change and Protect the Earth? What Would Yours Say?

The Children Are Standing Up For a Habitable Planet! 

We Need to Join Them!

On Tuesday, June 4th my husband and I will attend the Rally For the Right to a Livable Future. We will be standing with the youth who are bringing a momentous law suit demanding a livable planet for themselves. This all began in 2015 when 21 children and teenagers filed the landmark climate lawsuit Juliana v. United States against the federal government seeking a court-ordered national climate recovery plan that will decarbonize our energy system.

"The constitutional youth climate lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, has a hearing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Portland on June 4th, 2019. It is hoped that this will make history by having it be the most watched Ninth Circuit oral argument ever. This rally will take place just a few blocks from the courthouse to demonstrate to the government that the American people support these young plaintiffs and the constitutional rights they seek to protect. At the rally, there will also be a livestream of the oral argument, music, art, and speakers, including the youth plaintiffs and their attorneys after the hearing has concluded." Please go here for more information: https://www.diocese-oregon.org/event/rally-for-the-right-to-a-livable-future/ and https://www.oregonpsr.org/rally_with_youthvgov_for_the_right_to_a_livable_future. 

I am excited to go and to do everything I possibly can to stand with the youth and to be on the right side of history. And, of course, this is not the only event happening. Millions of children have been rallying worldwide, something that began with the actions of one amazing teenage — 16 year old Greta Thunberg. It is beyond tragic that these kids have had to bring this lawsuit and are speaking up and rallying nationally and globally because the adults — through their power and greed, ignorance and fear, doubt and denial, minimization and misinformation — have so completely failed to protect their futures and ensure a livable planet. This is a horrendous indictment. I fiercely pray that the kids will prevail in court on Tuesday, and that their needs for a livable planet will shake millions of us as adult awake and into action on their behalf. We have already squandered decades on inaction and the poisonous propaganda and toxic brainwashing fueld by the fossil fuel industry and complicit corporate media and neoliberal political systems.

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I've been searching for ideas for new rally signs to make, which I will be doing tomorrow. These are some ideas I have so far:

There should be a word for when you commit treason on a whole planet. — Bill McKibben

What do we most need to do to save our world? What we most need to do is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying. — Thích Nhất Hạnh 

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary. — George Orwell

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. — Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Here we are the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it that we can destroy the only planet we have? — Jane Goodall 

The greatest danger to our future is apathy. Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achiever our full potential. — Jane Goodall

Our stark choice: allow climate disruption to change everything about our world, or change pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate. — Naomi Klein

It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message—spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions—telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. — Naomi Klein

You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes. — Greta Thunberg

Until you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope. We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. If solutions within the system are so impossible to find, then we should change the system itself. — Greta Thunberg

This ongoing irresponsible behavior will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind. — Greta Thunberg

We stand now where two roads diverge. The one less traveled offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the Earth. — Rachel Carson

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What does or would your sign say? 

— Molly