UPDATE, NOV. 25, 1:18 P.M.: Garden Grove Mayor Bao Nguyen is among the speakers announced for Sunday's rally for the climate at the Irvine Spectrum.
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Also addressing the Orange County crowd in advance of Monday's U.N. climate conference in Paris are: Bill Honigman from the Progressive Democrats of America; Candice Nunez from the Climate Reality Project; and Greg Walgenbach, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange's director of Life, Justice and Peace. Irvine City Councilwoman Beth Krom has also blessed the event through a letter to the public. The rally location is the corner of Gateway and Spectrum Center Drive, across from the movie theater. The public is of course invited.
ORIGINAL POST, NOV. 25, 7:05 A.M.: In support of the United Nations Climate Summit (COP21) in Paris, members of the grass-roots group Orange County for Climate Action rally at the Irvine Spectrum shopping center on Sunday afternoon.
Why there?
“Irvine is one of a few key cities in OC,” Barbara English, a member of Orange County Climate Action (OCCA), tells the Weekly. “Avaaz called for global action on November 29, the eve of the Paris talks.”
Avaaz–meaning “voice” in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages–launched in 2007 “with a simple democratic mission: organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want,” according to its website.
“November 29 also happens to be the Sunday after Thanksgiving when many people are out shopping,” English continues. “The location was chosen primarily because many people will be there. Like our motto, borrowed and slightly modified from the Naomi Klein book and film (i.e. This Changes Everything), “to change everything, we need everyone. We chose to locate the rally where many people go on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.”
The public is invited to attend from 1-2:30 p.m., when they will hear speakers advocate for meaningful commitments from national leaders to address climate and social justice. Simultaneous grass-roots events are planned in Paris, Amsterdam, London, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Melbourne and Tokyo, among others.
For more information and to RSVP, visit OCCA's website.
A similar rally is planned from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Dec. 3–with a march–at Pershing Square, 532 Olive St., downtown Los Angeles. Nurses and physicians plan to join environmental activists at the rally. Participating organizations include: 350.org, Sierra Club, Food N Water Watch, Courage Campaign, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, MLK Coalition of Greater Los Angeles, Amalgamated Transit Union, Los Angeles for Bernie Sanders, A3PCON/Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council-Environmental Justice Committee, SoCal 350 Climate Action, Tar Sands Action Southern California, South Bay/L.A. 350, Progressive Christians Uniting, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy and Friends of the Earth.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.