Grassroots Environmentalism

"In the summer of 2014, representatives of several environmental groups in Pittsburgh began meeting to plan for local participation in the People's Climate March to be held in New York City on September 21, 2014. The Sierra Club, 350.org, and other national and international groups were organizing the march around a UN meeting on climate change held in New York in advance of the Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015. Across the country, grassroots groups, including affiliates of Rising Tide North America and the Climate Justice Alliance, were organizing to attend the People's Climate March and to participate in a week of activities that would include a nonviolent direct action in New York's financial district to "flood Wall Street" on the day following the main march. Radical and mainstream environmentalists alike were eager to be part of these events, and participants in the Pittsburgh meetings included a staff member of the Sierra Club and members of the Global Warming Action Team of the Allegheny Group of the Sierra Club, local anti-fracking and environmental justice groups, student environmental groups, and a community organization called Action United. In addition to organizing Pittsburgh residents to attend the People's Climate March, their goal was to build a diverse local climate movement consisting not only of environmentalists, but also unions, faith leaders, students, and residents of disadvantaged communities"--