The 2014 People's Climate March and Flood Wall Street Civil Disobedience: Making the Transition to a Post-fossil Capitalist, Commoning Civilization

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Notes

¹ According to Goldenberg (2013b):

Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change the Guardian has learned. The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing ‘wedge issue’ for hardcore conservatives.

² Peter Linebaugh (2014, 13–15) lists twelve principles of the commons. In summary, these are: (i) human solidarity is at the foundation of commoning; (ii) commoning is best understood as an action rather than a thing (a verb, not a “common pool resource”); (iii) commoning is primary to human life and begins in the family; (iv) commoning has a long heritage (the English “village commons” and the “French Commune”); (v) commoning has always had spiritual significance (especially as expressed in sharing food and drink); (vi) the commons is without class struggle; (vii) communal values are perpetually taught and renewed; (viii) commons has always been local and independent from state authority (therefore commoning is not the same as the communism of the USSR); (ix) wind, water, earth, and fire are the essential and “invisible” requirements for subsistence; (x)“We understand the public in contrast to the private, and we understand common solidarity in contrast to individual egotism”; (xi) commons requires participation and collective work; and (xii) “human thought cannot flourish without the intercourse of the commons.”

³ The so-called “climate smart” Alliance involves “more than 20 governments and 30 civil society organizations and private firms, including Fortune 500 companies McDonald's and Kelloggs” (Deen 2014). Corporations that claim to be “climate smart” include Yara (the world's largest fertilizer manufacturer), Syngenta (corporate seed monopolist), McDonald's, and Wal-Mart (Deen 2014).

⁴ According to GRAIN (2014, 14), “women are the main food producers on the planet, although their contribution remains ignored, marginalized, and discriminated against.” The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (2009, 1) confirmed that “women are responsible for some 60 to 80 percent of food production in developing countries.” Agroecology is foundational to a transition from capitalist value chains to commoners' food webs that prioritize “soil not oil” (Shiva 2008) and food security for all. Seventy percent of the food we consume comes from small-scale farmers (UNEP 2011).

⁵ According to social media statistics, the #PeoplesClimate hashtag for the march, generated 334,820 original tweets. Despite the fact that the Flood had about 130 times fewer people than the march, and that it was held during working hours on a Monday, the Flood action generated 154,138 original tweets, almost half as much as the massive march (statistics provided by Mark Provost of US Uncut, cited in Rugh, 2014). According to Rugh (2014), the relatively high volume of Tweeting activity at the flood “highlights the pervasiveness of the sentiment [the flood participants] conveyed.”

⁶ For more information, see www.ourpowercampaign.org/cja/.

⁷ For more information, see http://floodwallstreet.net.

⁸ Bill McKibben (2012) demonstrates that if we allow all the currently proven oil, gas, and coal reserves

to be burned up, that would equal five times the carbon budget of 565 Gigatons of CO₂.

⁹ A video clip of the Tools for Change carbon bubble action can be viewed at http://youtu.be/CDlrCkqs3JM.

¹⁰ The Rockefellers joined some 800 organizations including religious groups, health care institutions, cities, and universities to pledge a withdraw of funding from fossil fuel companies totaling $50 billion over the next five years (Goldenberg 2014).

¹¹ Days of action are widespread and involve multiple links on the corporate fossil fuel value chain. Other actions include: the Global Frackdown's international day of action to ban hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) (http://www.globalfrackdown.org/) and La Vía Campesina's April 17th Day of Peasant Struggles (http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/17-april--day-of-peasants-struggle-mainmenu-33).