International Day on Climate Change

December 7, 2008 | International Day on Climate Change

calling all artists, performers, music makers,
dancers, writers, jugglers, puppeteers, poets, talkers, rappers,
imaginers…

Venue: Mezzanine | Covent
Garden Market

Events: Events will include
music, photo booths, face painting for children, online petition signing,
reclaiming your Christmas toolkits, alternative santa wish lists, political and
community activist speakers & students

Time: Drop in from 11am
– 4pm | Rally TBA

Wehave tables for artisans & organizations. We are also asking artisans,
activists & citizens from our neighborhoods & arts community to assist
with the following:

polar
bear / eco costumes & volunteers to wear them

Santa's
helpers / beautiful fairies to hand out Christmas 'letters for Santa' to
children & 'how to reclaim your Christmas' toolkits

Speaker
suggestions / contacts

Media
Liaison

Banner
Drops | Banners are needed for a banner drop downtown and for the demonstration

Face
painter (face painting for children)

Call
out for our musicians … a choir, Christmas carolers, bands, those who
just love to sing. All ages.

We
need a poster designed ASAP to be distributed throughout the city.

We
are also looking for children & youth to recite lyrics from the following
songs found here: http://www.buynothingchristmas.org/images/resources/pdf/BND_Song_Cards.pdf

Book your table today! Space will be limited. We are asking for
twenty dollars towards costs associated with this event – however –
you will not be turned away if you cannot afford to pay!

Because
we love this earth.

From
December 1st to 12th, 2008, international representatives and heads of states
will meet in Poznan, Poland to address the challenge of setting new parameters
of human activity in preparation for the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol in
2012. The mandate is to limit and prevent further unbridled greenhouse gas
emissions into the planet's atmosphere to prevent the unimaginable from
becoming the inevitable.

The
international environmental movement, in more than 39 countries, will mobilize
at the time of the conference, on December 6th & 7th , to support, build for and demand a new
era of human caring and commitment from world leaders. The planetary community
is calling for courageous and unprecedented decisions from governments, from
institutions, from all of us. We must develop binding and effective limits on
carbon emissions and a global strategy for conversion to renewable energy
sources, such as the sun, the wind and the sea, along with appropriate rewards
and deterrents.

In
Canada the United States & the world we have the opportunity -- and the
responsibility as one of the major contributors to the crisis -- to make December
6th & 7th an overwhelming manifestation of hope and
determination. It will be a day of decentralized activities throughout the
world, in concert with international mobilizations. Climate Crisis Coalition
– visionary of 'because we love this Earth' was founded in 2004 by
Pulitzer Prize winning editor, journalist and author of the book on global
warming Boiling Point, Ross Gelbspan, and a group of leading environmental,
human rights, peace and justice activists.

Professors
Roberto Unger and Cornel West have written: "It is not enough to rebel
against the lack of justice but we must also rebel against the lack of
imagination." And as Eleanor Roosevelt said: "The future belongs to
those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

This is where you come in.
The beauty of our dream is to re-imagine the possible, to make art, music,
poetry, theatre, dance -- all our creations and imaginings -- integral to this
historic event. To replace the footprint of despair with our imprint of hope.
Our vision for December 6th & 7th, is the blossoming of
activities throughout the country creating an overwhelming manifestation of
individual and collective determination to become informed and effective. Our
mission is to develop and support policies that will reduce the carbon
footprint, while creating millions of jobs throughout the world, and offering
economic independence for developing countries. We will address how to change
habits in our homes, neighbourhoods, schools, jobs, communities, cities,
provinces and on a federal level conscious that the crisis has already had
severe implications for those living in the poorest, most vulnerable
communities and countries, and that the ice is melting as we write. We need our
work as artists to be integrated on all levels into the work of the many
community and national organizations taking part in this campaign.

We've
done it before. In 1982 Dancers for Disarmament and Poets Against the End of
the World moved, shook and inspired us as we pushed the world leaders for a
sane arms policy, backed up by a massive mobilization during the UN Second
Special Session on Disarmament. Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central
America, Art Against Apartheid, and more recently Billionaires for Bush, the
National Political Hip Hop Convention and so many others, have all moved us to
imagine the possible, expanding the dimensions of our movements for peace and
justice.

Let
us make December 7th a day which our children and grandchildren and their
children will look back on as a time when we stopped and started again, to join
in unity to take care of our precious resources and this natural world. What
choice do we have?

Please
sign on as an endorser and let us know how you will be involved. Join with
artists in your area, call on your favourite arts or community organization. We
call on all to put aside business as usual on December 7th to replace the
footprint of greed and despair with an imprint of imagination and hope.

Because We Love This Earth.

Please
respond to let us know your interest and we can work together to connect to
other artists.

Art is politics.

It
is political as opposed to politics as management (ie. of state), a profession,
a power play, manipulation or propaganda. As a matter of existence, art aims at
the political as the ultimate means of emancipation, absolute freedom from
commodification, if such is still possible. Art is a critical necessity as long
as it fights being a part of the spectacle, as it aims to turn the spectacle
upside down, as it exposes the 'culture industry.' Read more: http://www.xurban.net/notion/art_politics.htm

Please
distribute widely. If you wish to volunteer in organizing this event
– please contact us at <councilofcanadians.london@sympatico.ca>

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