I heard the news today. I was at the People’s Climate March, in New York City.
I wasn’t alone when I heard it; I was with something like 300,000 other people, stretched out along Central Park West. It wasn’t a throng, or a mob- it wasn’t even a crowd.
It was a movement. A successful movement, as diverse as any I have ever seen. Food servers, students, retirees, environmental scientists and medical doctors- journalists, twenty, thirty and forty-something’s, babies; there are babies in this movement. Friends I’d never met, and friends I’d known a long time were also in this movement. I even saw someone carrying a sign that said “Another Republican Who Believes Climate Change is Real.”
I saw Native Americans, people from Tibet, from the University of Vermont, Yale, from Pakistan in this March. I saw New Yorkers and New Jerseyites walking together in common purpose, people from Massachusetts walking arm in arm with people from North Carolina.
We all heard the news, at about the same time.
Sometimes, there is a moment when the world changes, when there is a shift. Nothing is quite the same, or will be ever again- probably, a lot of those moments. What they usually lack, because we human beings tend to have a narcissistic pre-occupation with what the moment is doing for me, is an open heart, eyes that see, and ears that hear. After time passes, and hindsight illuminates that which we were too disengaged to see happening in front of us, we realize what has happened.
There was a moment like that today. That’s the news.
About 90 minutes after the March has started, word was passed back, literally sailing through the crowd, like it was borne on the wind. A moment of silence, we were going to have a moment of silence. I heard it from the person in front of me, and passed it back. I was at about 62nd Street, Central Park West. Word threaded through the crowd, working it’s way back farther than any of us knew at the moment- back to 90th Street, and beyond that.
There was a countdown. “4, 3, 2, 1”...
And then silence. Golden, deeply moving silence. Thousands of people taking a moment to think. Meditate. To pray. To hold sacred something they value, some reason that brought all of us together. A child. A friend. A river. The air they breathe. Something of this world, something that we wanted to preserve, from the things of man, from the things we do that place profits above people; from the selfish, poorly thought out, irresponsible actions we take as a species.
It was a profound moment; there were tears in the eyes of many of us.
Then we heard the news. In the haunting quiet of a stretch of some 60 blocks, in one of the biggest cities on earth, running alongside one of the most famous and utile patches of green that ever flourished in the heart of a big city, we heard it.
A rumble. Something alive, moving like a wave, picking up speed and volume, rolling over thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, maybe 300,000, people- maybe even 600,000. I’ll never know for sure, but it sounded like it came from behind us, from the recipients of the message we had channeled back towards 90th Street, of the moment of silence.
It was a roar, it was the combined voices of all of those, from the back of the March, building power as it moved forward, igniting everyone in it’s wake. The volume increased, and we looked around, still unsure of what was heading our way- and it rolled over us, like a powerful, joyous wave of noise, uplifting us- every voice was raised, and fit neatly into the voices around it, and launched the wave of sound forward with enthusiasm- until, I swear by all I hold dear, we reached a crescendo, when every single voice stretched over 60 city blocks, and in harmony, all saying the same thing, united. It rolled down Central Park West, past the Dakota, where I’m sure the spirit of John Lennon smiled, perhaps adding his voice, yet again, to a movement for peace and justice, The wave moved on downtown towards 42nd Street.
And in the murmur of thousands of voices, entwined and bubbling upward, onward, this is what I heard.
We are ready to do this.
We won’t be denied, and we will no longer be denied by the deniers. The paradigm is shifting. That singular roar was heard around the world; once released, it will reverberate.
That’s the news. I heard it, and 300,000 people heard it.
And the rest of the world? I know they heard it, too.
But those who treat the earth as a resource to be exploited, as unrealized profits? Well, they will have to rely on hindsight to pinpoint that moment, today, when things shifted.
In favor of a sustainable planet, and against them.
WarrenS, boatsie and I are collaborating on "A Trilogy," telling our individual stories on our journey to the Moment of Silence, and our experience of this transcendent experience. If any other marchers wish to contribute, please contact boatsie.