Something’s Coming: 350 ppm in South Bay L.A.

This followup to “a genuinely ballooning effort to achieve 350 ppm” is by guest blogger and long-time commenter Joe Galliani aka Creative Greenius.  Galliani is chair of the South Bay 350 Climate Action Group, which has an event “on the beach in Manhattan Beach on October 24, 2009 in support of 350.org’s International Day of Climate Action.”

I started feeling it on October 10 and I song-Tweeted the feeling via my blip.fm Twitter plug-in.  That song from West Side Story, “Something’s Coming,” kept playing in my head, and I couldn’t get it out.  So I shared it with my small group of Twitter followers, because even though I reference show tunes from over 50 years ago, I do it via social media to friends all around the worldwide web.

It was on October 10 that we could all sense it. What had started just three months earlier as a meeting at the Community Church with 25 local people to brainstorm ideas for a South Bay 350 climate action event, had now become a Los Angeles County-wide event at the beach.  And you could just smell that it was destined to keep getting bigger.

And that’s exactly what has happened because there is a hunger to get involved that is palpable with everyone we reach out to.  Every individual, every group, every elected official, every city, every school, every church, every professional we asked to donate their special skills and talents.  They all just kept saying “Yes.”  And then they say, “What else can I do?  How can I help make this a success? Do you need any money?”

It started with our friends at Greenpeace who brought not only tremendous energy, but also incredible organization, outreach, canvassing and phone banking skills.  Jenny Binstock, the Southern California Field Organizer we reached out to, immediately involved all of Greenpeace USA who in turn have given us incredible support.  Greenpeace sent an army of highly-trained young volunteers down from the Bay Area last week and they have been working on the ground here in our South Bay-Los Angeles community from the moment they got here.  They’ve trained other volunteers and we’ll have over 70 people working well defined roles on the day of our event. Here’s some photos from last Sunday’s training session.

The City of Manhattan Beach stepped up early and volunteered to become our host city, passed a unanimous resolution in their city council, and has worked as our partners every step of the way.  They’ve strung banners across major streets, created fliers and posters, and have literally involved every city department to help make this 350 Climate Action a huge success.  Red tape?  Bureaucracy? Delays and multiple layers of management to get decisions made?  We don’t know anything about those things in working with Manhattan Beach and the incredible Sona Kalapura the City’s Environmental Programs Manager.

And when we needed money to help pay for those banners our alliance partners the Surfrider Foundation South Bay Chapter stepped up and made it happen.  So did the South Bay Environmental Services Center.

Northop Grumman gave us their parking lot and the County of Los Angeles donated buses for free park and ride shuttles to our event site.  The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition volunteered to do a bicycle valet.

We got our permit fees for using the beach waived thanks to the board of Supervisor for the 4th District, Don Knabe.  When we told the the Executive Director of the South Bay Cities Council of Governments that we needed a plane, it took less than 24 hours before we were hearing from the Public Affairs Director of the So Cal Gas Company with details of his plane and proposed flight plan over the beach.  And when we needed a great pro videographer and top still photographer to volunteer to take that flight to capture our Amazing Waving Human Tide Line, once again we had volunteer help almost instantly.

None of us have ever seen anything like this here.  There’s a stronger sense of urgency and momentum then we felt during the Presidential election and that was the most exciting one I had ever been through.

And the more momentum we gain, the more we get.  Supporters introduced us to new friends and people, like the renown Miguel Luna and his Urban Semillas, who represent the Spanish speaking communities throughout broader Los Angeles on water issues, joined us and  in-turn reached out to their friends.  We all share the beach, and we’ll all share what’s coming to the beach if we don’t work together now.

Every day some new group, business, school or elected official reaches out to us and says, “I want to be part of that climate action on the beach this Saturday.”  From senior citizen groups, to girl scout troops, to college sororities, to volleyball teams to kayaking groups, what we’re hearing is “It’s about time somebody was doing this.  Hell yes we want to be there!  If we don’t take care of this now we’re in real trouble.”

All this does is give me and all our volunteers renewed energy and passion and we’re all working harder than we’ve worked on any other project before.

And that song in my head?  It just keeps getting louder every day.  Something’s coming all right, and we’ve got two full days of great work ahead of us to make sure it arrives.  I’m betting it gets here on Saturday.

The air is humming,
And something great is coming!
Who knows?
It’s only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach,
Maybe tonight . . .

For more information, click here.

– Joe Galliani