March 8, 2017
By Wanda Guthrie and Claudia Detwiler

Attention: Leaders of Faith Communities Greenfaith is a national fellowship of people of diverse religious backgrounds who advocate for care of creation. Its work is based on the shared beliefs of world religions that protecting the earth is a religious value and environmental stewardship a moral responsibility.

Greenfaith is mobilizing faith communities for the April 29th People’s Climate Movement Marches. The purpose of the marches is to demonstrate, once again, the passionate commitment of Americans for care of the earth and social justice.

We believe that faith communities have a special place in this movement.

Our special witness recognizes that all struggles for justice are a part of a single movement for creation care. Our faith traditions tell us that when we fail to care for creation we contribute to injustice in all communities.

Many people from faith communities will join the April 29th march in D.C. This is wonderful. Also wonderful would be a large presence of people from the Pittsburgh faith community marching right here in Pittsburgh. We can be a powerful witness that people of faith are committed to a just world through care of creation. Will you work with us to engage your faith community in a Pittsburgh March for Climate Justice? Will you help us plan a multi-faith service prior to the march? Please let us know if you would like to help engage faith communities in a Pittsburgh march for climate justice. Perhaps someone from your faith community would like to work with us. Please see the nine points to the platform of the People’s Climate Movement below. These nine points also reflect our own faith-based vision of Creation Justice. Please contact us at the addresses below if you, or someone you know, could help engage Pittsburgh faith communities in the march or the service just before the march.

We can be reached at: wanda.guthrie@gmail.com;   cdetwil@earthlink.net

We look forward to working with you to show our city and our state the passionate commitment of Pittsburgh’s faith communities to climate justice.

Here are  the nine platform positions for the Peoples Climate Movement :

• Directly and rapidly reduce greenhouse gas and toxic pollution to successfully combat climate change and improve public health.
• Mandate a transition to an equitable and sustainable New Energy and Economic Future that limits the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
• Provide a Just Transition for communities and workers negatively impacted by the shift to a New Energy and Economic Future that includes targeted economic opportunity and provides stable income, health care, and education.
• Demand that every job pays a wage of at least $15 an hour, protects workers, and provides a good standard of living, pathways out of poverty, and a right to organize.
• Ensure that investments are targeted to create pathways for low-income people and people of color to access good jobs and improve the lives of communities of color, indigenous peoples, low-income people, small farmers, women, and workers.
• Make bold investments in the resilience of states, cities, tribes, and communities that are threatened by climate change; including massive investments in infrastructure systems from water, transportation, and solid waste to the electrical grid and safe, green building and increasing energy efficiency that will also create millions of jobs in the public and private sector.
• Reinvest in a domestic industrial base that drives towards an equitable and sustainable New Energy and Economic Future, and fight back against the corporate trade-induced global race to the bottom.
• Market- and policy-based mechanisms must protect human rights and critical, native ecosystems and reduce pollution at source.

Wanda Guthrie is a GreenFaith Fellow. Claudia Detwiler is a member of Greening Our Faith, EcoJustice Working Group.