Hello Earth Day Boston supporters,

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I am thankful for your participation in our movement and how more people and organizations join us each day. Recent groups to join are Communities Responding to Extreme Weather (C.R.E.W.), Quincy Asian Resources, Inc. (Q.A.R.I.), and Citizens Climate Lobby, Boston. We continue to work to build a diverse group of people and organizations focusing on climate justice and the experiences of frontline communities in this climate crisis.

As thankful as I am about the people in this movement, I remain alarmed at the lack of action by political leaders. According to a new U.N report, emissions have been increasing by about 1.5 percent a year over the past decade. We must now reduce our emissions by almost 8% a year between 2020 and 2030. If you didn’t see the story from the Newshour, it is worth 10 minutes of your time. It will wake you from your post-Thanksgiving food coma.

Once your shock is over, please mark your calendar for our next meeting on December 18th at 5:30 pm at the Church of the Covenant. We will begin making decisions about our plan for the event and hear about the more public phase of our campaign starting in January, 2020. We will also spread a little holiday cheer! This year Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa all neatly stack up next to each other, so there are plenty of reasons to celebrate the season.

One of the things that came out of our national conference call is that Earth Day 2020 will not just be a day. There will be a week of climate action events in Boston and around the world. We will be promoting all of these events in the lead up to our kick-off event on the 18th of April. Strikes, voter registration and other education events will be held. Please let us know if you have heard of an event that we should be publicizing. We need all of our voices!

In the meantime, next week there is another Climate Strike organized by students on December 6th at Copley Square 10:30 am and on December 7th, a musical event called Playing for the Planet that will raise money for 350MA.org.

I hope to see you at our meeting on December 18th at 5:30 pm.

In solidarity,

Michael Kozuch, Earth Day 2020 Boston