Climate change protesters in Kalispell, Montana.

Climate change protesters in Kalispell, Montana.

Some GenXers and their offspring in D.C.

In addition to the tens of thousands of protesters who showed up in Washington, D.C., Sunday to urge President Barack Obama to reject a permit for TransCanada to build the northern leg of its Keystone XL pipeline and generally call for action on climate change, there were smaller protests across the country. The largest was in San Francisco, where about 4,000 exuberant people gathered in the Embarcadero district for a march around the State Department Building and then rallied to hear a few speeches at nearby Justin Herman Plaza. Kossackalso wrote about the San Francisco protests in Forward on Climate: What the Kids Have to Say About the XL Pipeline

While the 1,700-mile tar-sands pipeline was the immediate target of the protests, action against climate change and for clean energy was the underlying push, something reflected in an array of signs and banners from coast to coast and in between.

Of the Washington protest, Kossack angelajean wrote a photo-filled diary, "Dad, how many people are there? It looks like a jillion!":



San Francisco protester

There was the young teenage boy who held a cardboard sign that read, Don't Frack Your Mother and an older woman whose poster board read One Green Grandma for this Fragile Earth. The connections between generations were clear—I saw Baby Boomers and Gen-x-ers, Greatest Generation and Millennials, all braving the cold together. There was some diversity in the crowd though not as much as I've seen at an Obama Rally. Even with the support of the Hip-Hop Caucus, youth of color were disappointingly few. A point was made, however, that the most unusual meeting of the minds was happening—the appearance of a recent alliance, the CIA. Yes, the CIA, the Cowboy and Indian Alliance. The farms and ranches of the midwest and Texas are under threat from this pipeline just as native lands in both Canada and the US are. This movement isn't only crossing traditional boundaries of age but of culture.

In fact, Indians—First Nations peoples—have been instrumental in bringing attention to the tar sands and the Keystone XL pipeline from the get-go in both Canada and the United States.

Organizers of the D.C. protest claimed about 35,000 protesters showed up, but Kossack lao hong han made a personal headcount and concluded there were no more than 20,000.

Either figure was considerably less than organizers had hoped for, but it was nonetheless the largest climate change-related rally to date, if you don't count the 100,000 dolphins who gathered in San Diego on Saturday. Hundreds of human San Diegans also joined the nationwide climate-change rallies in their city on Sunday.

Please continue reading below the fold about protests in other cities and to see links to other Keystone XL-related Daily Kos essays.

