Pearl River One of the things that both challenging and enduringly interesting about the global work of ACORN is the mix of excitement and burden of a 24-hour clock. For a long time, this was something of a personal novelty for me as an organizer, but as the organization and the team that supports ACORN grows, it’s, thankfully, more of a shared burden.
Our second Global Day of Action in hardly a month once again brought this reality into full focus. First, the Adani action to support our members in Mumbai and raise attention to the Adani Group and its controversial, perhaps illegal, activities around the world, kicked off the 55th anniversary of ACORN. Now, the Beat the Heat Campaign saw actions and events across the map. A spirited action in Calgary by ACORN Canada started a day early to get the action going.
Our communications director had been coordinating with others in the same post. He was in Berlin, but admitted getting up a 3am in order to make sure everything was moving to social media and the website, knowing that everything was in full force in India by that time. By the afternoon, he had reports from Fayetteville and Little Rock, Arkansas, Portsmouth, Virginia, and a bigger action with more than twenty in New Orleans. Canada came roaring in as the afternoon moved on and the evening came. Actions in New Brunswick and British Columbia were energetic and well-attended. A huge 140-member Zoom call with representatives from across Canada convened to make plans to continue the campaign. We’re still anticipating the report from a large action in the evening in Lyon, France, as well. Good times! Each action is better than the last, and we learn more in the collective experience.
The Anthropocene Alliance joined us on the action. A late note from the new executive director celebrated the ACORN action where some of their members participated, while noting that it was appropriate that a landmark decision had come out from the International Court of Justice, the UN’s highest court, even stronger than expected. The court ruled that nation states had the legal responsibility to protect their populations from the “urgent and existential threat” of climate change. Not all countries participate in the court’s proceedings, or are held to its advisory opinions, but some have embedded in their own constitutions adherence to their decisions. The court obligated nations to limit warming to 1.5 Celsius. The United States has never agreed to come into the court’s jurisdiction and under President Trump has once again withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, but this decision is still a significant rebuttal to the administration’s efforts to deny climate science and empower climate deniers throughout the administration.
We all do what we can, and there’s much to be done.