The Great March for Climate Action
By David Zahrt

I joined the Great March for Climate Action initiated by former Iowa state legislator Ed Fallon last year. The 3,000 - mile (4,800-kilometre) journey, the longest march in US history, began in Los Angeles on March 1 and ended in Washington, DC, on November 1. We wanted to address the nation’s reluctance to deal with the mining and use of fossil fuels that add to the global warming behind climate change, and our Consume-and-Throw-Away lifestyle that the rest of the world is copying.

It cost $5,000 per marcher. There were various fundraisers. Some got their head shaved. I chose an adoption program at $500 per donor.

We began with a rally in Wilmington, and marched through Los Angeles. My wife Linda and our daughter Heidi joined us for half a day. It rained for two or three days but people were delighted as California had been experiencing a drought!

What was the march like? We covered 15 to 25 miles daily. One person was assigned every day to select the route. We camped out at night. We had various vehicles carrying our gear and even a kitchen truck! Every morning, at breakfast, we had to pack our lunch. Dinner was the biggest meal.

We had a core of 20 to 30 marchers. Others walked with us for a day, a week or a month. Some of us were in our 70s. At 77, I was the oldest. Although it was a march, I usually rode my bicycle. We called ourselves the Elders Bike Brigade.

We held rallies. Sometimes we halted for a “rest day”. People greeted us and offered overnight home-stays or organised a potluck dinner. Local action groups made presentations at our evening meals. It was amazing that there was so much support at the grassroots level.

Connecting up with colleagues

The march also helped me renew old acquaintances along the way! Many of them were colleagues from the Order Ecumenical/Institute of Cultural Affairs. I had spent 20 years in the organisation working in various places: rural America, the inner city of Chicago, aboriginal communities in Australia and villages in Kenya.

In California, Milan and Linda Hamilton helped arrange camping sites and home-stays along the route. Jim and Judy Wiegel, from Phoenix, visited us at the ASU (Arizona State University) West Campus. After crossing into New Mexico, I had lunch with Tim and Martha Karpoff in Albuquerque and met George and Elise Packard in Santa Fe. In Denver, Diane Greenwald and Jim and Oliveann Slotta joined us for a rally at the Colorado State Capitol Building. In Nebraska, I enjoyed a home-stay with Joan Wallace.

In Iowa, I stayed with Denise O’Brien and her husband Larry Harris in Atlantic. They helped me find a welder to fix the back seat on my bike. In Winterset, I stayed with Nancy Trask, who works as director of Winterset Public Library. She had the library host a potluck and collegial gathering. In Davenport, I stayed with Doug and Pat Druckenmiller. Doug came for the rally at the City Park.

I celebrated my 77th birthday on Sept 4 as we approached Chicago. Sally Stovall, Dick Alton, Paul Noah and Linda joined us in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. We marched through 5th City, a black ghetto on the West Side, where OE/ICA did its first project in urban renewal. Linda and I had lived there from 1966 to 1968.

Terry Bergdall, who has just ended his term as CEO of the US chapter of the ICA, joined us on his bike. We rode to the rally downtown. After that, we cycled up Lakeshore to ICA’s headquarters at 4750 North Sheridan, where the marchers halted for a rest-day.

Memorable moments
Various events made the march memorable. One was marching across the Colorado River separating California and Arizona. Police escorted us across the bridge.

After three weeks, my wife Linda and our family friend Kristen Lein picked me up at Morristown for a home-stay at Kristen’s home. I did some laundry, got a haircut and took a bath. I re-joined the March the next day.

We marched through Iowa City, where I was born, went to university, met Linda and got married in 1959. In Angola, Indiana, I stayed with Bill and Donalou Imler, Drew University acquaintances. The local paper featured me in an article about the march.

We suspended our march in Montpelier, Ohio, and took a bus to New York City to join about 400,000 people in a two-mile walk on Sept 21. It was tagged the Largest Climate March, compared to ours, the longest. Thousands of people in 160 other countries held climate events on that day as well. We took a bus back three days later to continue our march.

In Pennsylvania, we stayed at Maggie’s Family Farm, devastated by the fracking operations of Shell that triggered anti-drilling protests. We also stayed overnight in Pittsburg, where we learnt it was the first city in the US to ban fracking.

Keeping the march “running” was figured out along the way. Tasks were identified, created, and assigned. Assignments usually rotated twice each week. There was no administration until we elected a mayor, three administrators and a judicial council. The 20 to 30 of us would have occasional meetings before or after dinner. There were no chalkboards or printouts so there was nothing objective to refer back to. Sometimes there was no agreement on an issue.

We worked on a statement of purpose during several meetings. Our final text reads: The mission of the Great March for Climate Action is to change the hearts and minds of the American people, our elected leaders, and people around the globe, to inspire action on the climate crisis.

During the march, we heard people say individual action would not make a difference to the foot dragging on dealing with climate change, that what we need is a movement. It also seems to me that things won’t change until we can sit at the table and have a personal conversation with those who we hope to impact – the people behind the fossil fuel industry.

David Zahrt (4deezee@gmail.com) lives
with his wife Linda in Carson City, Nevada.