Climate Change March Makes Strange Bedfellows

By AARON MESH

Made your weekend activism plans? Pretty much everybody else in town has.

Opposing climate change isn't exactly a radical stance in greenie Portland. But as New York City prepares for the People's Climate March on Sunday—described as the largest global-warming demonstration on record—the PDX offshoot has drawn a notably large contingent.

Event RSVPs include not just the usual environmental coalition and the KBOO crowd, but a large swath of organized labor, including Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain. That interesting because trade unions and enviros are regular opponents in Oregon (most recently warring over the Columbia River Crossing).

The march also has support from the Jubitz Family Foundation—heirs to the truck-stop empire—and organizations on both sides of the fluoride wars.

At a time when many American cities are preparing for the effects of climate change while refusing to utter the words, Portland's loud coalition makes it something of an outlier.

""We all want to protect the Oregon we love," says Jessica Moskovitz, spokeswoman for the Oregon Environmental Council, "so we all are coming together to take action: church congregations and communities of color, entrepreneurs and unions."

The People's Climate March is 3 pm Sunday, Sept. 21 at Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

WWeek 2015

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