San Francisco’s Rise for Climate march, part of an international day of climate events and estimated to be 30,000 strong, was led by large indigenous groups including many Native Americans, some who danced in ceremonial regalia, along with many other groups and individuals making up a diverse, musical, and creative crowd of all ages on the sunny Saturday before the upcoming San Francisco Climate Summit. The colorful event included a plethora of expressive signs, banners and even messaged tee shirts, many with various calls for Jerry Brown to stand up to big oil. A group called “Brown’s Last Chance” chanted “Jerry Brown – keep it in the ground, if you don’t do it we’ll shut it down”.

Excerpt:

“We are part of the Brown’s Last Chance campaign. We’re marching, we’ve got a message that Jerry Brown – if he wants to be a real climate leader – it’s not enough just to say we just got build up renewables or create energy efficiency. We have to keep fossil fuels in the ground. We have to start a just transition from all fossil fuel production, beginning with protecting the front line communities in California that are being poisoned by toxic neighborhood oil drilling right now. We need a 2500 foot setback, a health and safety buffer zone to protect those communities, and if Jerry won’t do that, after California scientists three years ago gave us the information that we needed that it needed to be done, then his legacy is of a failure to protect our communities, a failure of the climate – not leadership. That’s our message, this is Jerry Brown’s last chance.” ~ Kai Newkirk, part of the Brown’s Last Chance campaign.

Rise For Climate March, San Francisco, September 8, 2018

The song from the end of the event “When We Rise” is featured at that end of the video above, but here is a shorter video with just the song:

Report by James George