The Mysteries of Seed Starting

There’s something magical about starting seeds. You begin with a tiny wisp of a thing, enclosed in its little shell, push it into damp soil, and wait. Perhaps it grows, perhaps it doesn’t. Even if you understand the science far more than you did in third grade, there’s only limited amount of influence you have. You just have to trust it works.

But there are a few steps you can take to help the process along. While I’ve been a little lax in the past about taking those steps due to a combination of overconfidence and thriftiness, I’m trying to do it the (mostly) proper way this year.

Unfortunately, I’m starting hopelessly late – I should have started this process at least a month ago to maximize the season – but late is better than never. Plus, I realized last year that I should transition my seedlings outside later than most experts recommend, as the piles of leaves I plant into with lasagna gardening don’t hold the heat nearly as well as traditional soil. As a result, the nighttime temperatures in my garden are much lower than they would be with a conventional set-up and my plants are more at risk.

To make the best use of my time, I’m focusing on the plants that truly need to be started from seed, rather than those for which it’s just “nice” to. Most seeds you can plant straight into the ground, although you can extend your season and grow a lot more produce if you start inside. In contrast, there are a few plants that experts strongly recommend only starting inside or purchasing as seedlings. The chances of successfully planting seeds outside for these plants is so low that it’s not worth bothering. The main culprits are all types of tomatoes. While they grow like weeds once they’re established, they’re very fussy to start. To germinate, they require temperatures between 75 and 85 F during the day, and can’t fall below 50-60 degrees at night. Similarly, peppers are nearly impossible to grow outside in the narrow band of time we in D.C. have between “almost frost” and “so hot you melt into a puddle.” Another on the “unlikely to grow if you start it outside” list is broccoli, which requires having the soil at least 75 degrees to germinate, but reducing the air temperature to 60 F once the seeds have sprouted. How did people ever figure out how to cultivate this thing?

Considering the limits on my time and patience, I’ve decided to start seeds for three different types of peppers, four types of tomatoes (two cherry, one heirloom and one regular full-sized), broccoli, and just for the heck of it, eggplant. For each of the varieties, I planted a lot of seeds. Even if 2/3 of the seeds don’t germinate and 3/4 of the seedlings fail, I should still end up with a good number of plants. This is particularly important for the broccoli, as the seeds are several years old. I picked them up at the first seed exchange I attended, not realizing the specific conditions they needed. Although the rest of the seeds are much newer, I figured I’d err on the side of caution. If a lot more of them germinate than anticipated, I can always weed out the weakest ones.

For the planting, I’m using my recycled yogurt containers. While most people use flats, I don’t like that you have to transplant the seeds at least once into a larger container before transplanting them into the ground. I’m klutzy enough with larger plants – I prefer to handle the smallest ones as little as possible. To kill any bacteria or other crud that might have built up in the basement, I rinsed the containers, sprayed them off with a bleach mixture, and then rinsed them again after they tried.

For the starting mixture, I decided to use up the leftover mix from last year. While you can plant into compost that’s been baked in the oven (to kill bacteria), I didn’t save any last year. Compost from your yard is far more sustainable than the store-bought mixtures, which often use slow-developing peat moss from bogs. As I already bought the mixture sitting in the basement, I figure it’s best to use it up first. Before putting it in the pots, I moistened the starter mixture thoroughly. Just to be safe, I boiled the tap water for five minutes to remove any chlorine. While I don’t remember the chlorine affecting the seeds in the past, I figured it couldn’t hurt. Also, I am not ashamed to say that I really enjoyed mixing the soil starter and water with my hands. There’s something joyfully primal about working directly with the dirt you’re planting seeds into.

The seed starting mixture after wetting.

Now, the seeds are sitting on our brand new heat mat in the warmest room in the house. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s actually any warmer than when I had them on top of the heating vent, but it’s probably more consistent. Nothing has sprouted yet, so I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed…

Have you started seeds? How did they come out?

Helping Your Garden Grow with DIY Lights

This year, I promised myself I wouldn’t try to start seeds without the right equipment. It only led to heartbreak in the past.

The last two years, I tried to convince myself that with a little ingenuity and hard work I could somehow create enough sunlight to raise seeds in our guest room. Except that the room’s southern exposure is blocked by a giant pine tree. My seeds would sprout, but they’d grow lanky and weak. While they looked okay, albeit not thriving, when I transplanted them, only one or two actually survived outside. I discovered that unlike many endeavors in life, cleverness and dedication alone isn’t enough. There’s no fighting Mother Nature, at least if you don’t have the right tools.

However, I’m also really cheap. There was no way I could justify spending $150 or more to buy a seed starting system. On a strict cost-benefit analysis, buying seedlings at the farmers market that have done well in the past would no question be less expensive.

But then inspiration arrived in the form of a demonstration by Master Gardener Kent Phillips at the Washington Gardener Seed Swap. I always assumed the systems were expensive because of their components. But as he informed us, we could easily build one ourselves for less than $75, depending on the size. In fact, you didn’t need any specialty components – most hardware stores have the necessary equipment for sale.

Confident that Chris and I could build this without much difficulty, we made our way to the hardware store. As per the speaker’s instructions, we picked out two t8 four foot fluorescent bulbs. (These bulbs aren’t exactly the same, but very similar.) The bulbs produce cool white light and more than 2600 lumens. You can either have two cool bulbs or a combination of one warm and one cool. For those not familiar with the term, watts measure energy use, while lumens measure light output. Buying based on lumens makes more sense because you want to use less energy for the same amount of light.

We also bought a fixture to install the bulb. (Again, this one is similar but not identical.) We had a bunch of extra wood from my father-in-law’s construction experiments, so we figured it would be easy to build a stand from those leftovers. Altogether, the equipment totaled less than $50.

On his day off, Chris got to work building our new gardening tool/toy. But instead of building a stand, he came up with an even more ingenious idea. We have a wire rack in our basement that holds our lesser-used kitchen supplies. Part of it is a wooden butcher block that you can use as a countertop, with another rack above it. Rather than jerry-rigging a stand, he realized that we could place the plants on the butcher block and hang the lights from the overhead rack.

Unfortunately, he almost had everything together when he ran into a slight problem. He installed the bulbs in the fixture, attached the lights to the rack, and realized that he had no way to plug in the lights. As it turns out, we bought an industrial fluorescent fixture, the type that wires straight into an electrical system. As we had no desire to mess around with electrical wires, it was back to the store.

On his return trip, Chris discovered shop light fixtures the very next aisle over, which plug right into a socket. Despite being more convenient, the shop light fixtures were only half the price of our original fixture!

The completed product.

To complete the set, I just ordered a heat mat to keep the seedlings at a consistent temperature. Not all the seed starting kits come with them, but I figured I could afford it with all of the money we had saved building it ourselves. Between the lights and heat mat, we spent about $50 in total.

So now that I’ve at least made a small investment of money, we’ll see how my investment of time pans out. Hopefully, I’ll have more to show for my seed starting efforts this year than a lot of frustration and a few dying plants.

Six Months and Still Cycling

Some days I feel very pregnant; others, as if hardly anything has happened to my body in the last six months. Wonderfully enough, I felt like the latter when I went for a bicycle ride this past weekend. While it wasn’t exactly a “normal” ride, I was pleasantly surprised at how ordinary it felt despite being at the very end of my second trimester.

The ride this past weekend was a prelude to the Tour de Cookie, a 14 mile charity ride in April that involves stops for baked goods. With my twin loves of biking and food, it seems like an obvious one for me to participate in, but could be impossible depending on my physical condition. Before this weekend, I hadn’t ridden outside in two months, when my body was quite a different shape than it is now. I’ve spent some time on the stationary bike, but was nervous about my sense of balance. The weather was perfect – high 50s and sunny – so it was the perfect time to see how my new body shape interacted with my bicycle.

Because I couldn’t take any photos by myself that were far-away enough to see my whole body, here’s a pretty photo of a pond just off of the trail.

I headed off towards the Millennium Trail, which the Tour de Cookie will also follow. At first, I was very cautious, pedaling slowly. Then, as I felt more confident, I picked up the pace a little, and decided to take the bumpy part of the trail rather than a neighborhood detour. In particular, I was pleased by how good my balance was – I wasn’t distracted at all by the extra, off-center weight. Just to prove to myself I could do it, I even leaned down, grabbed my water bottle, took a drink, and returned it to the holder, without stopping the bike. Towards the end of the ride, I stopped at the grocery store and hardly even noticed the extra weight of my shopping bag.

The part of the trail near my house is a mix of downhill and flat straightaways, with the first challenge coming around the third mile. It’s a gradual upward slope that can be a bit of a slog. Although I doubted my ability to conquer it, I was going to try. However, I had some issues to consider. My doctor specifically said that I shouldn’t raise my heart rate above 140 beats per minute, or the point at which you can still talk fairly easily. In addition, I learned that when I lean forward on hills, my abdomen starts seizing up. While leaning forward is usually a good thing, as the core muscles take some of the stress off of your legs, abdominal discomfort is something you clearly want to avoid when pregnant.

As my typical approach towards hills is “go as hard as I can until I reach the top,” I had to take a slightly different tack. Instead, I kicked it into low gear, pedaled slowly, and sat up as straight possible. I’m sure I looked ridiculous – a pregnant lady in her sixth month, with no lack of black spandex (and on a later hill, a bright yellow jacket hiked up over my bump), sitting stick straight, and sludging up. But I didn’t care. With these techniques and a good amount of patience, I actually made it up all of the hills!

Besides the physical issues, I had a different mental perspective for this ride. While I usually push myself hard, the doctor’s instructions forced me to take my time. Instead of thinking of it as exercise, I imagined it more as practice for when I can bring my son out on future bike rides. Even though his hearing is far from developed and his understanding even less so, I narrated what I was doing and seeing to him. I’m sure it didn’t make me look less weird, but it was a neat way to bond with my future child.

A potential future stop with my bicyclist-to-be.

By the end of the ride, I felt confident in my ability to complete the Tour de Cookie. But besides helping me know whether or not I can do the ride next month, getting out on my bike also helped me feel better about my body. I had been feeling pretty big lately and had some fear about the changes in the next three months. It was reassuring to know that I felt just as comfortable on my bike as ever. This ride reminded me once again that no matter my size or shape is, the physical and emotional strength and comfort biking can offer.

“I Get My Advice from the Advertising World…”

Title courtesy of Koka Kola, by The Clash

It’s gardening catalog season again. They arrive in the mail, shiny and bright, filled with colorful photographs of gleaming fruits and vegetables. They promise award-winning harvests, plants that grow themselves, and lip-smacking heirloom produce. They use words like “beautiful,” “bountiful,” and “easy,” as if plants will blossom just being in the vicinity of their products. While it’s simple to give in to their vision, often it’s much better not to.

Even if you start it for environmental reasons, gardening for food can be just as consumerist as any other hobby. Needless to say, companies haven’t ignored the homesteading trend. Garden supply stores have been around for decades, but the market has expanded drastically in recent years. When Williams and Sonoma has an entire “Agrarian” section that even includes chicken coops and beekeepers’ suits – two of the more hardcore contingents of home agriculture – you know that it’s not just for cheap hippies anymore. Their chicken coop alone, with its fashionably faded red paint, starts at a mere $600.

While these visions of idyllic homesteading are tempting – I know I look at them longingly and try to convince Chris that raising chickens would be awesome – it’s just another version of advertising’s same old story. “If you just buy our stuff, you and your house will be beautiful and your life will be awesome,” it whispers.

However, unlike clothes, beauty products or electronics, many of the items offered in gardening catalogs are easy to make, often from recycled materials. (And to do so without a special, overpriced DIY kit.) One of the better catalogs, Gardeners’ Supply Company, has a whole collection of tools that promise to make life easier, from ready-made raised beds to high tunnel hoops. However, most of these things can be easily constructed with a little knowledge and a few items from the hardware or a local recycled goods store. Instead of plastic garden markers that always get lost, we’ve refashioned old metal clothes hangers into them with tape. We’ve already built a worm box for $30 and an about a hour and a half of work that’s just as functional as their $110 Worm Factory. Similarly, we just bought $40 worth of lighting supplies this weekend and will be using some leftover lumber to construct a seed starting array. In contrast, their cheapest “SunLite” garden for sprouting seeds is $199 (also available as a “simple monthly payment” of $24.88). In addition to saving a ton of money, we get the satisfaction of using something we’ve constructed with our own hands. I recognize this approach isn’t practical for everyone, but it’s worth trying a few times.

The other temptation gardening catalogs offer is buying a bunch of stuff that you won’t even use. I have this particular problem with seed catalogs. Looking at all of the different varieties, I imagine a garden with a huge diversity of plants, far larger and neater than our relatively small plot. As a result, between seed exchanges, free seeds from Rooting DC, purchasing on a whim from the gardening store, and ordering from catalogs, I always end up with far more seeds than I could ever put in the ground in a single year. While none are particularly expensive and many are free, it’s still a waste.

To me, the best way to fight this urge is to allow my garden’s needs to drive my purchases, not the other way around. I try not to buy something until a specific need comes up, and I know exactly what I will use it for. While I didn’t “need” a worm box, I didn’t purchase it until I knew how to take care of worms and how to use their compost. Similarly, I’m building the seed starting setup because raising my seeds indoors without them has failed miserably the last two years. While I’m never this organized, I know I could cut down on my seed hoarding issue by actually planning out what I’m growing and then choose seeds based around that map, rather than on my over-active imagination.

If urban and home agriculture really is about turning our industrial food system on its head, we have to be willing to do things differently and not have them just delivered to us. Before purchasing, I need to ask myself these three questions: 1) Do I really need this and if so, what will I use it for? 2) Can I borrow it from someone else? 3) Can I make it myself in a more sustainable fashion? If I can truthfully answer those three questions, then I can go ahead and buy it. If not, then I need to consider why I really want it – for my actual, real-life garden or some fantasy perpetuated by shiny images. Growing food is a messy, real business; there’s no room in my garden for glossy advertisements.

Yes We Can – Have Safe Bicycling for All!

Biking is thought of by certain populations as an activity for rich or at least middle class people. They only see two groups. The first group is competitive cyclists, where people spandex up and purchase expensive racing gear. The second group is the style-conscious crowd riding pricey city bikes and carrying specialty handbags. Besides the fact that this categorization leaves out the majority of folks who are somewhere in-between those extremes, it completely ignores an often-invisible group of people who need to bike for transportation – low income folks who have few other choices.

Transportation is a choice between expense or inconvenience no matter where you live – and in some unfortunate places, you’re stuck with both. In places with little public transit, you must own a car, which has the cost of gas, insurance, and maintenance past the initial upfront price. For people who cannot afford a car, a bicycle is often the only option to get back and forth from work, even if roads are not safe or well-lit.

Even places with good public transit can be limiting. The D.C. metro area has some of the best public transit in the country, and yet it has major issues. The train is extremely expensive – more than $10 round trip during rush hour to the suburbs and back – and has patchy service at night and on weekends. Housing in areas that are in walkable neighborhoods or near Metro stops is substantially more expensive than equivalent housing elsewhere. Nationwide, properties located within five to ten minutes of a transit station are 20-25 percent more expensive than comparable properties further away. In my area, bus service is good in places, but terrible in others. The line that runs past our house leaves the Metro station like clockwork but only comes every half-hour and stops shortly after midnight. Plus, bus service doesn’t run everywhere. Many trips involve transferring between multiple buses, waiting a long time to catch the next one, or needing to walk a long distance to your destination. Considering these factors, a bicycle can still be the cheapest, most convenient option.

Both data and personal experience support the evidence that there are plenty of people who bike because they have to, not because they want to. As this article reports (based on this study out of Rutgers and Virginia Tech), 31% of all bike trips are done by people in the poorest quartile, while 21% are done by the second poorest. As that includes all bicycle trips, including those for recreation, I would expect those two quartiles to make up a significant proportion of commuter cyclists. Personally, I’ve seen a similar proportion of people around my town. In my suburban but traditionally lower-income neighborhood, I constantly see folks on bicycles that don’t fit them and/or riding at night without lights. I believe they just can’t afford proper equipment, which can be deadly. This article includes a particularly tragic story about an immigrant in L.A. who was killed as he rode at night in an area with particularly infrequent bus service. While most people who ride at night aren’t killed, he’s far from the only one forced to make this choice.

How do we serve this population who doesn’t have the time or resources to participate in bicycle advisory groups or advocacy? It’s essential for those of us who do have the opportunity to keep a diversity of needs in mind, not just those relevant to our circumstances. Transportation is a basic need that we should be able to provide for everyone. People have the right to get to work and back safely, no matter what their income. The article with the story mentioned above has a particularly moving reflection on this subject, where the author compares Martin Luther King’s social justice work to the very real social justice work needed for to guarantee safe, convenient, affordable transportation for everyone.

On a more practical note, it’s essential to get good bicycle infrastructure everywhere people bike, not just the places where bicyclists are the loudest or richest. Gentrification happens in part because some neighborhoods gain amenities while others stay the same or decline. If we can work to institute essential safety measures across-the-board, like consistent enforcement of driving laws, separated bicycle lanes or correctly installed traditional lanes, and well-lit streets, everyone will be safer. Outreach programs should also target the lowest income folks that cycle, focusing on providing them expensive safety equipment like lights and helmets for free or a discount.

Fortunately, it looks like more and more bicycle programs are beginning to acknowledge and serve this population. The Washington Area Bicycle Association has done its “Got Lights” giveaway for years, but recently started targeting cyclists “riding dark” in low-income areas. Similarly, when bikeshare finally comes to my town this spring, it will offer free memberships and helmets to low-income folks and focus on installing stations at centers of employment. Another local blogger and grad student at Virginia Tech is actually doing his senior thesis on making bikesharing systems more equitable.

So the next time someone accuses all bicyclists of being “hipsters” or “yuppies,” let them know that you want transportation for all. Some people are going to be out cycling to work no matter what and they deserve to get there safely.

Growing Urban Agriculture at Rooting DC

There are some events that follow the same pattern year after year, which although worth attending, are remain essentially the same. Then there are those that surprise and delight you with their growth, such as Rooting DC, the Washington area’s annual free conference for urban gardeners.

While Rooting DC has been around for quite a while, it’s experienced tremendous growth in interest and originality in the last few years. When America the Beautiful ran it, it largely focused on helping home gardeners cultivate ornamental flowers and trees. A few years ago, the group received a grant that required it to focus on growing food. While the first year of this direction was a bit shaky, it’s gained a lot of positive momentum in the last two.

They’ve opened with a great keynote speaker each year, each with a very different perspective. The first year it was the fiery Gordon Clark from Montgomery County Victory Gardens, then last year, Washington D.C.’s sustainability manager. This year, we went national with Audrey Rowe, the USDA’s administrator for Food and Nutrition Services. While food advocates have rightly criticized Obama’s USDA for short-sightedness on systemic change, it seemed like she understood holistic nature of the problems we face. Describing obesity and hunger as “two sides of the same coin,” she talked at length about how the USDA supports community level food programs, from using SNAP benefits at farmers markets to installing People’s Gardens. The most inspiring example was from Pembrook, Illinois, a traditionally agricultural and African-American community. She said the school lunch there was so terrible that she couldn’t force herself to eat it. After helping farmers obtain ownership information and qualify for grants, 30 new farms have opened in the area. Since then, the cafeteria food has gotten exponentially better and even the school established a garden. I’m a huge fan of federal efforts that support community-level programs, so it was great to see her talking about the strength of that model.

This year’s workshops were also particularly well-organized, offering five different tracks: beginning gardening skills, advanced gardening skills, teaching about gardening and sustainable food, cooking and food preservation techniques, and community/social aspects of gardening. While I couldn’t make all of the ones I wanted to, I did attend five good ones that mixed and matched almost all of the categories.

The first two fell into the “community/social” aspects of gardening category: recruiting and maintaining volunteers and expanding urban agriculture. The volunteer workshop was an obvious one for me to attend – it’s a problem no matter what type of community organization you’re in. Taught by school garden group City Blossoms, it presented a creative way to cultivate a small but extremely dedicated core group of volunteers. Essentially, they recruited people the way you would for a paid job (even including interviews) but provided non-financial incentives instead of actually paying them. Specifically, they put on educational workshops and attempted to match the garden’s needs to that group of volunteers’ specific interests. Even if I never create a volunteer effort with quite so much commitment, it’s always helpful to get advice on increasing motivation.

The second workshop was understanding the foundational ways we can “make the pie bigger” for urban agriculture. Originally labeled a “manifesto,” the founder of Compost Cab discussed the fact that if everyone is scraping by and competing for the same grants, urban agriculture will always be stifled and insignificant. He brought up some excellent points about what we can do on the institutional level – share best practices for running urban farms, organize local networks for a louder voice, change regulations to help rather than limit us, gather data on urban agriculture, and even lobby Capital Hill. It reminded me a lot of the work I’ve been doing at my job on “soft costs” – bringing down the price of everything except the hardware, so that it’s easier to get permits, establish new projects, and train people. While seeing the on-the-ground results of a community garden can appear more fulfilling than working on policy, agreements that allow that garden to stay in place instead of getting evicted are essential in the long run

Jeremy Brosowsky of Agricity/Compost Cab, speaking on “Making the Pie Bigger” for Urban Agriculture

While I’ve left my professional teaching days behind, my next workshop was definitely in that realm. I chose to attend “Kid-Centered Theme Gardens” because once the munchkin is old enough, I’d like to start a kids garden at the nearby community center. Most of the people in our neighborhood have yards large enough for their own gardens and so don’t need community plots, but a kids garden would create a lot of educational opportunities. You could run workshops, provide kids a place to explore food, and allow them space to mess around in the dirt with plants. The presenter, who was from the Washington Youth Garden, presented a number of neat ideas, including a “Poptart garden” where you grow some of the ingredients in Pop-tarts (corn, soy, strawberries) and inspire a conversation about the differences between processed and relatively unprocessed food. She also got us to loosen up a bit, having us sing a song about bees that involved flapping our arms and waggling our butts.

My last two workshops were more traditional, focusing on advanced gardening skills: drip irrigation and permaculture design. The drip irrigation workshop had a particularly useful hands-on session where we clicked together pieces of tubing like Tinker Toys.

Tubing for the drip irrigation systems we constructed.

The permaculture workshop didn’t cover a lot I didn’t previously know, but did give me some ideas for replacing our giant bush in the front yard with a fruit tree.

Rooting DC’s info fair, with organizations and businesses throughout the region

Every year, Rooting D.C. has grown to match the scope and diversity of the urban agriculture crowd. Both the schedule and audience reflected a level of racial and cultural diversity I hadn’t seen before, including quite a few older folks. Even though I probably won’t be able to attend next year, I’m definitely glad I was able to make this conference. It leaves me with plenty of food for thought for the coming year and beyond.

Forward on Climate!

In the last few months, I’ve made sure my kid-to-be is there for important moments in U.S. history even if he doesn’t remember them. First, it was President Obama’s second inauguration. Then, last weekend, it was Forward on Climate, the largest climate change rally in U.S. history. Admittedly, I attended both these events more for my edification than his. But I also attended because I truly believe that addressing climate change is essential to ensuring a sustainable future for my child.

The day was brisk with some serious wind gusts, reminding us once again that climate change doesn’t always equal warm weather. Despite his protestations, Chris and I walked to the Metro because I insisted, “You can’t drive to a climate rally. It would just be wrong.” As we walked to the National Mall, we saw fellow activists carrying hand-painted signs and even got a professionally printed one from some volunteers.

After meeting up with Steve, one of my friends from Ecolocity, we picked a spot near the Washington Monument that allowed us to see over most of the crowd. The multitude went on and on, with the event attracting more than 35,000 people and up to 50,000. Despite that, it still managed to look small, dwarfed by the massive National Mall.

Like the best protests, the crowd was equipped with a variety of creative costumes and signs. From more Earth flags than I’ve ever seen in one place to a protestor dressed as the Grim Reaper, people had some innovative ways of expressing their message.

The event had a great array of speakers, representing the cultural and racial diversity of the best of the climate movement. The Rev. Lennox Yearwood from the Hip Hop Caucus launched the rally with a rousing cheer that the majority-white crowd admittedly had some trouble following. He also gave a powerful speech that drew parallels between the 1963 March on Washington that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led on the Mall and the one we were attending. “They marched for equality, but we marched for existence,” Yearwood said. I also liked his statement that “Organized money can never stand up to organized people.”

Later in the rally, Van Jones, founder of Green for All and Rebuild the Dream, drew another effective and somewhat shocking parallel. Referring to the Keystone XL oil pipeline that could run from Canada’s tar sands through the U.S., he said, “It would be like jabbing a dirty needle in the planet.” Chris leaned over to me and said, “Did Van Jones just compare Canada to a heroin addict?” I replied, “No – the U.S. is the drug user and Canada’s the dealer.” Which considering the social and economic damage of both isn’t all that far off.

The other particularly compelling speaker was Chief Jacqueline Thomas of the Saik’uz First Nation in British Columbia. She described about how greedy businesses had exploited her people and land for decades and how the Tar Sands are another incarnation of this abuse. Dressed in her ceremonial clothing, I found her accounts of her tribe’s work in modern environmental issues especially compelling.

I particularly appreciated these speakers because they provided the rally with a broader context. Environmentalism, especially climate change, is sometimes framed as a middle-class white issue of concern only to people who care about polar bears and don’t have to worry about their next meal. However, these speakers showed that climate change is fundamentally about injustices we carry out on people here and now, in our country and globally. They demonstrated that climate change is rooted in a broader picture of social and economic inequity that goes back generations.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I also liked that the Sierra Club was a major organizer of the rally. Generally, most people think of the Sierra Club as fairly moderate. They’re the group you go with if you want to take your kids on a hike. So having them sponsor a very explicit political action and more importantly, participate in civil disobedience for the first time earlier that week, sends a very big political message. When I participated in the climate movement in the U.K., I saw their direct action worked because of their variety of protestors. For example, they involved the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and had a number of elderly folks willing to lie down on the Heathrow Airport runaway in protest. Just like no one likes to see Grandma get arrested, I think the variety of speakers at this rally could be the turning point for the conversation on diversity and climate change.

Unfortunately, one of the speakers who contributed the most to organizing the rally was actually the least interesting. While Bill McKibbon, founder of 350.org, was pretty good as usual, I found his message the least unique. It didn’t really help that I’ve seen him speak a number of times, including at the end of the Climate Ride.

While the rest of the speakers were good, my attention started drifting after about 45 minutes. I was slightly distracted by the fact that I was really, really cold. We were supposed to start walking at 12:45, but people were still on stage at 1:15 PM. So as soon as we saw people start walking, Chris and I, along with Steve and his friends, headed for the street.

Fortunately, the march had a much different feel than the rally. From the banners to the chants, the march was completely about the crowd. The New York City / New Jersey contingent was particularly compelling, in shirts that said “Occupy Sandy.” An off-shoot of Occupy Wall Street that’s working to help the area recover from the hurricane, they sang about how “children of the Rockaways” are still going to bed without light and heat. While the speakers on stage had powerful stories, that plaintive song stuck with me more than anything else that day.

We circled the White House, then Chris and I ditched the rest of the group. A pregnant lady can only stand out in the cold for so long and I had reached my limit at two and a half hours. I was also really hungry – I had brought food, but was too cold to reach around in my bag to get it.

The rally and march reminded me of why I’m involved in the climate change movement. Most of all, it showed the diversity and power of the stories related to climate change from British Columbia to the Queens. The fact that my husband – who is not a protest-oriented or even left-learning individual – was willing to show up on the Mall with me in January speaks to the fact that climate change will truly affect our future child in tangible ways. Now, we just need to know how to continue this momentum.