The Mainstream

I was in Washington on Thursday and Friday for some interviews for a book I’ve been working on. (Think meat, fish and feed and the many and complex ins and outs of those.) My daughter came down on Friday evening so she, my sister-in-law, and I went to the big march on Saturday. Great day! A good time was had by all.This march comes on the heels of the March for Science on April 22 and two and a half years after the huge PCM in New York. What struck me on Saturday was that these 200,000 people in Washington (and tens of thousands more at hundreds of other sister marches around the world, organized by all manner of constituencies) are the mainstream. We are the teachers, the activists, the engineers and scientists, the public employees, the retirees, the students, artists and musicians – and all of us are consumers – we are the ones who have been and are working to build a cleaner, safer, smarter, more humane world. We are the now not-so-silent majority and we’re fighting the radical and reactionary elements who live in fear of modernity, of the simple virtues of a lighter footprint on the planet and a gentler relationship with nature. We are at peace with science because it’s practiced by serious, hard-working, smart and concerned people. It’s manifestly not a shell game like some would have us believe. We are in tune with our brothers and sisters from all ethnicities and sexual identities from our immediate neighborhoods and around the world. We’re living in the global village, as some of us used to call it.

And guess what? We’re winning. But – and this is very important – the forces of reaction are very dark and very crazy. We need to muster all the passion for peace and sanity we have to match their propensity for greed and fear. That’s the fire I saw in the streets of Washington on Saturday and I see more and more. (Great op-ed in the NY Times today echoing this theme.)

Anyway, there’s a ton of good coverage, much of which you’ve already seen no doubt. But here are my photos: