Reflections on the March to End Fossil Fuels
By Evan Tao B ‘27
Photo courtesy of Sunrise Brown
Water is life. I will hear that phrase many times this weekend, but I know it’s true even before the march begins. On the railroad from Providence to New York, we pass by the shipyards and harbors that have fed this region for generations. I feel an unutterable awareness of my family’s connection with the water—I can’t help but remember that the oceans I am traveling along are the same that my mother’s ancestors, some of the first Europeans in New England, hauled cod from in the 1630s. I imagine they’d still recognize the sea, but definitely not the harbors. They are now populated by steel tugboats, cranes, and loose parts of wind turbines under construction, the shafts and cores of which are laid in rows along the shipyard like schooner cannons. My companions and I point them out to each other excitedly. They remind me that, like my ancestors, I also have a job here on the New England coastline—to tell our leaders that, for the sake of its future, these wind turbines must be the first of many.
Tomorrow, September 17th, is the March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City. According to their website, it is organized by “a broad-based collaboration among New York grassroots organizations; Black, People of Color, Indigenous and frontline communities living next to oil and gas facilities and infrastructure; youth, elders, workers, people of faith, and people of all backgrounds impacted by fossil fuels and climate disasters across the U.S.; and national and international climate and justice advocacy, local and Indigenous organizations and coalitions who are united in our commitment to a rapid and just phase out of fossil fuels.” Ahead of the UN climate summit, we are calling on President Biden to take more consistent action against fossil fuel use.
I am traveling with a campus activist group called Sunrise Brown. We are an independent chapter affiliated with a broader national organization called the Sunrise Movement—a young, scrappy and hungry student climate activist movement. We don’t know it yet, but the ten of us aboard this train will be among 75,000 marchers from around the world tomorrow. The excitement in the train car is palpable: all voices forgoing homework to buzz, strategize, debate, imagine.
…
Isaac Slevin is a tall, lanky, stubble-faced man with sky blue eyes and a sheepish grin. Isaac is a Hub Coordinator (“cause we don’t do presidents”) of Sunrise Brown. I sit down with him on the train to talk about the upcoming march. The conductor leaves after collecting our tickets and quipping a few jokes. “I love that Rhode Island accent,” Isaac remarks, then tells me about a similar trip Sunrise took last year to Washington DC.
“There was the immediate fun of marching down the Washington Mall. We were chanting, holding these beautiful wooden coffins that we had constructed. We did this art that we had brought with us, and [met] organizers from other schools that we got to share that experience with. Then, there was the time after the march, having that energy, that really important and empowering experience together… and then just getting to hang out with one another. We cooked dinner and did a whole lot of nothing sitting around and chit-chatting. Sunrise Brown was maybe a month old at that point.”
Washington DC, 2022. Photo courtesy of Sunrise Brown.
Isaac continues, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast. You need a strong culture to keep your movement together. That's how Sunrise Brown, in my opinion, is so successful. Like, we're a fun place to be. We bring friends to meetings, we have art builds, we do stuff like this, we do really big provocative art installations, we have kickbacks, we've had a couple parties… Because being an activist of any kind means you're always confronting what is bleak, and what is horrible in the world… that's taxing, and that's hard. A lot of the time, I think especially in the youth climate movement, it's about our entire future.”
Our entire future? No pressure.
…
Around two hours into the train ride, we pass through a small Connecticut seaside village which seems right out of an H.P. Lovecraft story. I breathe on the window and draw a tentacled monster with my finger. There is something about these ancient, foggy New England towns that makes them a perfect backdrop for tales of scholars driven mad by the call of the ocean monster Cthulhu, something in the air reeking of that existential dread that Cthulhu represents. In Lovecraft’s fiction, reality is so horrific, so inhumane, and so undeniably vast that to gaze into the depths of it will snap your fragile mind.
I wonder if H.P. Lovecraft had ever heard of climate change.
After talking with Isaac, I sit down with Marlena Brown, one of the lead organizers of our trip. I ask her a question that is somewhat cliche for activists, but sorely necessary: what motivates you? Her response:
“The more that I get into climate organizing, the more motivated I feel because I meet more people who are doing it in so many different ways and with so many different levels of excitement. All high levels of excitement, but you know what I'm saying? People who are passionate about their own individual aspects of it and who feel like they are really getting stuff done and usually are. That's cool. It’s like the reverse of what you would think. The more that I learn about it, the more optimistic I feel.”
Pretty soon, I’m feeling the same way. The night before the march, we meet with activists from many other college groups. AJ Mejia, leader of Sunrise American University, opens with a stirring land acknowledgement and an icebreaker: a Simon Says game that is a metaphor for capitalism. Then, leaders from each group share their experience and insights for campus organizing in a panel discussion: how to find faculty allies, how to avoid burnout, how to improve diversity. I take careful notes. With them by my side, I’m beginning to feel a bit less seasick.
The next morning, as we assemble on 53rd and Broadway with hundreds of other activist groups, I think of us as a kind of armada. Letting our signs luff like sails in the wind, holding aloft puppets like figureheads, hollering our chants like work songs, ships from all nations gathering in dialogue and cooperation… Now that the wind is in our sails, where will we go? The sea is deep and full of unbearable realities, but rather than retreat to land, we sailors fight the current. We stare Cthulhu straight in his myriad eyes and taunt him atop a wooden coffin.
Before the march. Photo by author.
…
Have I mentioned how much New York City overwhelms me? It is a whirlpool of a city: people drawn in from all corners of the earth by a kind of gravity. If Cthulhu is alive today, he probably lives somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen, I think to myself as I haul my luggage through endless, faceless subway tunnels, full of steam vents and traffic jams and flashing advertisements that threaten to pull you under and force you to become a mergers and acquisitions lawyer.
But we sail on. As the armada passes by Citibank, Zara, Bloomingdale’s, we chant our dissent up to the great black skyscrapers, as if the storm can hear us. There is no captain on this ship. We take turns leading our chants, call and response, making words up on the fly, dropping out when your voice gets hoarse, taking over for your neighbor when hers does. My feet feel raw by the end, but we press on as one.
“Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!”
Photo courtesy of Sunrise Brown.
On the train home, just before midnight, fellow Sunrise member Annabel Williams looks up from her computer screen and taps my shoulder. She says she’s been processing and asks if I am still taking quotes for the article. Sure, I say, hurriedly getting out my phone to record.
“Well, as someone who's been a part of the climate and environmental movement for many years now, I’ve noticed that over the past few years there’s been a more somber attitude surrounding the future effects of climate change and climate injustice. There has been something really community-building in that, but that negativity and somberness is what creates burnout in activist movements, particularly among younger people. And today at the march, there was a palpable sense of joy and optimism that I found new and exciting, something that I personally haven't experienced to the extent that I did today. And among all the young people who were there, there seemed to be a new energy of hope that I felt was lacking before COVID. I think now that there is a more widespread acceptance that climate change is happening—it's already happening, it's already affecting people around the world— there's less of an urge to like… convince the rest of the world that climate change is happening and more of an energy towards, okay, what do we do about it now? And I think there is optimism, and that makes me really excited. Okay. Hopefully that was helpful.”
It was. Outside my window, the windmill cores are as white as bones under the midnight moon. We march on home to Providence, unsinkable.