At noon on Monday, July 25, Philadelphia will welcome the Democratic National Convention. On Sunday, July 24, the day before the convention begins, we look for thousands to gather at City Hall to call on the DNC to move forward quickly to protect our region and the planet from the poisons of burning fossil fuels –- including the UN-natural gases that come from fracking. 

The March for a Clean Energy Revolution demands:

• Make a quick and just transition to 100% renewable energy.
• Keep fossil fuels in the ground.
• Stop dirty energy.
• Stop fracking now.

The march was initiated by Food and Water Watch (www.foodandwaterwatch.org), with strong commitments to the Pennsylvanians who have already been assaulted by the impact of fracking on their drinking water and air. Food and Water Watch then invited a number of “contingents” to form. One of them, the Faith Contingent, owes a great deal to the work of the Philadelphia chapter of Interfaith Power and Light and of the Shalom Center. The Faith Contingent has created an activist ritual that will begin the march with a clear commitment to the universal moral necessity of moving into an economy and culture of just, shared, sustainable abundance.

Beneath and beyond all our diversity as members of different communities of faith and ethics, we stand as one in our concern for individual health and dignity; for justice in society; for the sacred vibrancy and vitality of the endangered web of life on Earth, our common home. 

All these concerns are violated by current policies that prioritize money and power over the well-being of the planet and all its inhabitants — especially, and urgently, through the burning of fossil fuels. 

The shepherds, farmers and fisherfolk among our ancestors learned the practical wisdom of worthy relationships among human communities and other life-forms of the Earth — a proto-science infused with loving care. Today, science increasingly affirms the same sense of interwoven Unity that suffuses what the ancients taught and teach us. Our science today warns us that continuing to extract and burn fossil fuels endangers both those who live where extreme extraction takes place, and life on the planet as a whole. 

Our ancient texts also warn us against the growth of decision-making pyramids of power that are top-down, unaccountable, tyrannical and addicted to preserving their own power — pharaohs and Caesars, as our forebears knew them.

We see these dangers today in the Corporate Carbon Pharaohs that for the sake of their enormous profits have corrupted our politics and deliberately lied about the science their own experts reported to them.

Not only our ancient sacred teachings but our own deepest personal yearnings call on us to feed the hungry and empower the powerless. We are not surprised to discover that the effects of burning fossil fuels damage the poor first and worst. It will take national decisions by public officials, business executives and religious and cultural leaders to renew health, neighborliness and vitality at the grass roots and pavement tops of our society. 

We call on our leaders to end all subsidies to fossil fuel and to focus our funds and our attention on helping neighborhoods turn to community-based renewable energy, creating the jobs that can make this happen and joyfully celebrating our myriad cultures. 

Join with us to elevate these issues in our national discussion and build a national movement for a world based on love, justice and sustainability. 

Join with us in supporting a strong presence in the March for a Clean Energy Revolution, this July 24 in Philadelphia. 

For more information, to sign up for the march or to provide support such as housing for those who come from far away, visit www.cleanenergymarch.org.