By:Maiken Winter
It was a gorgeous sunny fall day for the rally, and in spite of the little time to prepare and advertize (just 1 week of putting it all together), we had 40-50 people attending. We were lucky that a number of people agreed to speak at such a short notice. They included Cornell professors Tim Fahey (Natural Resources), Louis Derry (Atmospheric Sciences), and David Winkler (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology); a local business man and active climate presenter Sylvester Johnson; and local politicians Herb Engman, Dan Lamb, and Nathan Shinagawa.
We even had a band of 4 musicians who had made their own songs on climate change and related issues specifically for our event. The very best song – I think – was one composed to the tune of Joshua Fought…and had the refrain
†We’ve gotta get workin’ on climate change, climate change, climate change….Step it up! And cool it down!
That song should become our Step It Up! Hymn – it was really fun and motivating.
In addition, we were lucky that a local organic coffee shop, Buzz coffee, donated a lot of coffee to the event, and several people had brought delicious cookies, which helped to keep us warm in the surprisingly cool wind.
To me, this event was a perfect example of what can be done when people decide to do something. Whereas I was ready to cancel the event last week when I realized not much had happened, we decided that we just needed to step up and do it. A huge Thanks!! to Liz Rowland, the perfect organizer, and Anne Ward, the wonderful musician, both at the Biocacoustics Research Group of the Lab of Ornithology!! An important lesson for me was that if you want something to get done, do something, and if you feel powerless, do something! Never in my life have I organized anything even closely similar to a rally. To me, the commitment of all the people who helped to pull off this event was a wonderful sign that there is a great dedication and commitment to the cause, a deep concern about climate change that brings us all together, and thus a much larger power to make a difference than we might even realize.
Thank you to all people who came and made this such a fun inspiring afternoon!
