The Columbus Circle stop on the NYC subway system WILL be open Sunday during the Climate March. It is the closest by far to the 58th Street block from 8th Avene to 9th Avenue where the various Communities of Faith and Spirit will gather.

 Secondly, Above is the “map” of where each faith community will gather, on 58th Street. Click on it twice to expand it.

 The Columbus Circle subway stop is at the 8th Avenue end of the street, but it won’t be possible to enter 58th Street from 8th Avenue. So walk south to 57th, walk across 57th to 9th Avenue, and then walk back up to 58th Street. Then follow the map to find your folks.

BRING YOUR SHOFAR!

 (Each community will also be flying a placard with its name.)

Third,  in the Forward today, the leading American Jewish newspaper,  there appears this article:

Jewish Groups Warm to Climate Change Battle:
100,000 Expected at Demonstration in New York
 By Hody Nemes

It’s too long to include in full. Below are a few excerpts. You can read it all at --
<http://forward.com/articles/205617/jewish-groups-warm-to-climate-change-battle/#ixzz3DTt9Utdx>.

…
The march will also mark the first entry of many major Jewish institutions into the social movement that in recent years has coalesced around climate change. After the march was first announced last winter, it received early grassroots support from local Jewish synagogues, Jewish community centers and advocacy groups. The governing bodies of the Conservative, Renewal and Reconstructionist movements also signed on as march co-sponsors fairly early.
 
But it is only in the past few weeks that some larger groups have added their names to the list of sponsors, including the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, Hillel International, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater New York and the Union for Reform Judaism.
 
The Jewish groundswell contrasts with the last major U.N. climate conference, in 2009. That summit, held in Copenhagen, attracted a massive assortment of diplomats, nongovernmental organizations and even religious bodies — but no American Jewish delegations attended, according to Mirele Goldsmith, one of the main coordinators of Jews at the current march. To get credentials to actually enter the conference then, she recalled, she had to register as part of the Franciscan delegation (“I didn’t want to go there and just hang around,” Goldsmith said).
 
Even this time around, the grassroots activists feel there is room for improvement. “They came on very late,” Diamond said, referring to the larger national organizations. “It feels like they were waiting for it to be more socially accepted to sign on. I think some of the little guys had to put themselves on the line first and represent the community really well.”
 
As director of Hazon’s Jewish Greening Fellowship, which helps Jewish organizations work on energy efficiency and promote climate education, Goldsmith decided on her own early on to try to coordinate a Jewish presence at the march. …

“In the Jewish community, most of the [climate change] focus is on what we do with our buildings, but we need to take it to the next step,” Goldsmith said. “To solve the problem we need legislation, we need international treaties.” ...
 
Longtime environmental advocate Rabbi Arthur Waskow, who was one of the march’s earliest advocates in the Jewish community, drew his lesson from the civil rights movement, which saw its largest legislative successes after its most public demonstrations. “It took action on the street to make it happen,” said Waskow, who is executive director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia.

“I think the march in New York may be as crucial a turning point in the debate around the climate crisis as the March [on Washington] of 1963 was on civil rights.”
 
Murray Lantner, a 45-year-old father of two, is concerned about his children’s future. He convinced the leaders of his Conservative synagogue, East Midwood Jewish Center, to sign on to the march. “I don’t recall people from the synagogue going to a march together in the recent past,” Lantner said. “It’s something new for us.”

Indeed! --  And that newness is not only for Jews. The newness must not end on Sunday, but begin there. There are two crucial steps the communities of faith and Spirit must take, analogous to what we did in the 1960s about racial segregation and denial of the vote:

Organizing a much broader political base for insisting on profound change from the carbon economy to a sustainable society of sharing among humans and all other life-forms , AND

Making the burning of our planet by the Carbon Pharaohs into what our whole society knows is a moral abomination.

 We are committed to doing this work as we did the work of organizing for this March. We need your help   -- your minds, bodies, hearts -- and your gifts of money. Please help us by clicking on the Donate button in the left margin! 

Thanks, Arthur