Protest marches happened around the world today as part of a Global Day of Action to demand a fair climate change deal.
Earlier today NOW Magazine reported, “As the most far-seeing players in the United Nations Climate Change Conference struggle to extend emission reduction agreements under Kyoto, The Toronto Climate Campaign, Council of Canadians (Toronto chapter), Toronto People’s Assembly on Climate Justice and others host a day of action. At 10 am hear live up-dates via video from Durban at Oakham House and at 2 pm, head to Yonge-Dundas Sq or a march, along with Occupy Toronto.”
This evening, CITY TV reports, “Occupy Toronto demonstrators and local grassroots groups held a protest march under the theme of ‘climate justice’ Saturday that coincided with the annual two-week UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa. …Demonstrators carried signs and chanted slogans supporting their climate justice agenda, including the Bhopal disaster on its 27th anniversary, the northern Alberta oilsands and the Keystone XL pipeline project. Protesters held the Canadian flag with a blackened leaf, seemingly dripping with tar. ‘We are unstoppable. Another world is possible,’ demonstrators chanted at Yonge-Dundas Square where there were a few guest speakers. ‘I thank everyone for standing for Mother Earth, for standing for our children’s future and for standing to make things better,’ Danny Beaton, a Mohawk environmentalist told the crowd.”
“Demonstrators stayed at Yonge-Dundas for about an hour until 3 p.m. before marching south on Yonge Street towards Old City Hall. A group of protesters rallied in front of the Royal Bank of Canada on King Street, one of the world’s largest financiers of Canada’s oilsands. The march ended at St. James Park, where the Occupy encampment was cleared Nov. 23.”
Meanwhile, in Durban, Agence Frace Presse reports, “Chanting ‘Amandla’, the rallying cry of the South African anti-apartheid movement, thousands of people marched through the streets of Durban Saturday calling for ‘climate justice’. Their appeal was aimed at diplomats huddled in negotiations under the 194-nation UN Framework Convention for Climate Change… The crowd, estimated by police at 6,500, snaked through the coastal city’s downtown area shouting and singing against a backdrop of drums and vuvuzelas (high-decibel plastic trumpets)… Many in the crowd lashed out at the UN talks, which end next Friday, saying that they were moving too slowly in the face of potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change, and that many of the solutions proposed lean too heavily on the market.”
