See online google album at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nspMaryland/20080927GREENJOBSNOWBalt#

There was alot of rain but the gathering at Clifton Park in Baltimore was full of spirit and enthusiasm. A coalition of organizations came together to demand Green Jobs Now!

The Towson Energy Activists along with other schools in the Maryland Student Climate Coalition were spreading the word about "PoverVote". Across the country students on hundreds of campuses are running the Energy Action Campaign and are asking citizens to pledge voting for climate champions. The PowerVote platform consists of supporting green jobs, building a just, clean energy economy, cutting global warming polution, and getting dirty money out of politics. We were there sporting out green t-shirts and hard hats!

The Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Baltimore Climate Action Network, Civic Works, Peer2Peer Enterprises, and other organizations helped organize the event and even though it poured everyone left energized and ready to demand accountability from our elected officials.

Baltimore, MD- Under the gloomy rain and cold day a group of community leaders and members of local organizations united in a warm atmosphere for cry for green jobs. National organizations like the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Environment America, Energy Action Coalition, and the Sierra Club got united and exchanged lessons and information with local organizations like United Workers/ Trabajadores Unidos, Baltimore Green, Baltimore Civic Works, Baltimore Peer-to- Peer, and the Network of Spiritual Progressives. Over 100 people of different ages and backgrounds got more educated and involved with the local efforts of their local community for a greener future. Listened to music and got motivated with local speakers like John Mello, Brownfield’s Workforce Development project supervisor of the B’more Green. What I learned form this event is that it takes more than a little shower to stop us because we are ready for green jobs now; and the more it rained, the more people talked with one another to share their umbrellas while mingling closer, and closer until the end of the event.

Who knew that green jobs events - even in the pouring rain - would be this exciting? The best part of the group of about a hundred Baltimore citizens was how excited everyone was, ranging from Zaire in her green hard hat running around collecting PowerVote pledges to Bill Barry (a professor at Dundalk Community College) speaking about the links between the labor movement and green jobs. Environmentalists chatted with low-income advocates, students chatted with retired folks… and more and more common ground was discovered.

Some of the participating local organizations include Civicworks, which provides training for green jobs through their B’more Green program, Peer-to-Peer, Baltimore Citizens for Positive Change, and Unite Here. (and so many others across the board, but listing them all would make up my whole blog… it made up about 5 minutes of my closing speech on the day of)

Check out pictures here: http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/blog/?p=479

Another photo...