We had 399 marchers from 37 states and 7 countries*. Here is a small selection of their biographies!
*Marchers signed up to march one day or more. Hundreds more marched for a day or portion of a day and never registered so are not included in this number. There were approximately 35 full-time marchers. Only 1 of the marchers from the 7 countries was granted a visa to march.
John Abbe
John has lived in Eugene, Oregon for eight years at a housing co-op, and has also lived in the Sri Lanka, the Bay Area, and around Boston, Massachusetts. For over 20 years, his activism has been focused on process – *how* we make decisions and work together – rather than any one particular issue, but the urgency of the climate crisis and the lack of a sufficient response drew him to join the march. In recent years he has also served on the board of the Co-Intelligence Institute, done communications work for MindFreedom International, and been part of the team that developed the Group Works deck.
Jimmy Betts
Jimmy represents an eclectic tapestry of international Korean adoption, rural Nebraskan roots, urban Iowan adulthood, ongoing global cultural immersion, and purposeful seeking. For over a decade he has been a guide of introspective self-realization practices, emergent traditional life arts, martial arts, healing modalities, and personal, behavioral activism. He is a graduate of Iowa State University and the Universal College of Healing Arts. Being an active local & planetary steward and a representative of the global majority fits his traveling pants well and serves brave justice-seeking climate activists in ways that are ever-evolving and interconnecting. One of his primary visions of the Climate March is the facilitation of a greater era of coming-togetherness of community organizations, business, and individuals to address local climate issues and to provide them with greater capacities to more powerfully demand change at higher levels of government-industry.
Robert Cook
Robert retired as an active Presbyterian pastor after 40 years of ordination to join the Great March for Climate Action. About it he says, “Walking the March is the most difficult thing I have ever done. It hurts my 71 year old body, especially my knees. The urgency of the crisis we face in global warming makes it essential to my faith to face the challenge the March presents me.”
Doug Cooley
Doug is a native of Colorado and was part of the early Transition Town movement there. Later he participated in the Occupy Boulder and Occupy Denver movements, working on numerous issues, with a focus on wrongful foreclosures and wrongful evictions. Many of these foreclosures stemmed from disastrous, calculated abuses, in the financial/corporate sector. As an outgrowth of the Occupy work, he started to educate himself with others about hydraulic fracking, which is a busy, environmentally dangerous, industry in Colorado. They engaged the local citizenry, and several city councils around this serious topic. About 2/3 of the film Gasland was filmed in Colorado.
He also started to educate himself and others around environmental, social, financial and political issues by showing documentaries at his home in Lafayette, CO, once a month, for the past 4 years. In addition to his time in Colorado, he has spent over 15 years in coastal Florida, much of that on and below the ocean as a sailor and scuba diver. He has always been concerned for the health of the ocean and the species struggling to living in and around this salty environment.
Shortly after the end of the Great March for Climate Action, he will once again have the opportunity to travel long distances by sailboat, this time through the islands of the South Pacific! He will incorporate a new and broadened zeal for environmental/climate change issues/activism, into my travels, as he meets and gets to know peoples from this vast region, with their varied cultural back grounds, much existing only a few feet above sea level !!!
Jeffrey Czerwiec
Jeffrey, 33 years old and from Des Moines, Iowa, joined the Climate March in Los Angeles and plans on walking every step of the way to Washington DC. Having been a climate organizer right after graduating from the University of Iowa he sees the Climate March as a unique opportunity to increase the level of participation of people from all over the United States on the issue of climate change and create a loud, unified voice for change. Follow him on his personal blog at http://aintnowalkinthepark.wordpress.com.
Marie Davis
Marie is a working artist from Burlington, Vermont. Of the Reclaiming Tradition, she believes the earth is sacred and worth defending, so has joined the Climate March to walk her talk. She also delights in cooking, and in sharing the stories of food and knowing where it comes from. She brings this to the Climate March by volunteering as kitchen coordinator.
Mary DeCamp
Mary joined the Great March for Climate Action after running an unsuccessful campaign for Mayor of Tucson, AZ. A native Nebraskan and a long-time activist, Mary thinks globally and acts locally to be the change in the world we want to see. Walking across the country is a small price to pay after spending time in jail for civil disobedience with the Occupy movement; and the food is so much better on the Climate March!
Kelsey Erickson
Kelsey, a native of Carlisle, MA, received a Bachelor’s Degree in Natural Resources from Cornell University. It was at Cornell that she first became involved in environmental activism, which is how she met her best friend, Chris Dennis, who was an avid video activist. Five days before graduation, Chris tragically drowned in Cayuga Lake. A month after this devastating event, Kelsey learned of the march and immediately signed up with the intention of filming it and dedicating the documentary in Chris’s memory.
Ed Fallon
Ed Fallon of Des Moines, Iowa served in the Iowa House for 14 years before running unsuccessfully for Governor in 2006. After a strong finish in the Democratic Party primary, he was encouraged to run against a conservative Democratic Congressman in 2008. He lost that primary challenge, but then launched a daily talk show called the Fallon Forum, which is heard online and on two Iowa radio stations. In early 2013, with a growing sense of urgency about the climate crisis, Fallon raised $150,000 from his Iowa political base and founded the Great March for Climate Action. He continues to serve as the March’s unpaid Founder and Director, and has so far walked every step of the way from Los Angeles toward Washington, DC. In his home town,Fallon is noted for logging more miles on his bike than on his car, his passion for gardening and raising chickens, and as an accomplished musician on several instruments.
Kimberly Foley
Kimberly was born in Bellevue, NE on Offett Air Force base. She traveled to numerous countries and throughout the US when growing up as an Air Force brat. She is the favorite of five children (the middle kid). Kim has lived in Des Moines, Iowa for the past 24 years. She received her Phyical Therapy license in May of 1992. Work has focused on home health. In 1999, She graduated from massage school and started her own business (Entouch Therapy Services).
She has been on the “Green Team” at Plymouth church for the past 7-8 years and interested in the environmental movement for many years before. Thus, she jumped at the chance to be part of The Great March for Climate Action.
Sean Glenn
Sean most recently from Simsbury, CT is getting her last credit from Emerson College for marching across the country. In school she studied Theater Education. Her studies in theater have helped her to better understand what it means to be a human being. With the opportunity to explore other’s minds in character development she has a deep passion for people and therefore has chosen to march in an effort to help save the humans she so loves despite all their faults and flaws. “We have an opportunity to grow and to change here. The world is changing, time we do the same. Let’s evolve!” She spent the first three months of the march in silence in order to stand in solidarity with the unheard victims of Climate Change, and to express her feelings, “Enough talk, time for action!” While marching Sean does her best to convince all she meets that real change begins at home. “It’s our very lifestyles that need changing, not just big government, political change though we need those too. Learn where your food comes from, research where your water is sourced. Time to be honest about our basic life necessities!”
Kat Haber
Kat is a doer. She’s a pioneer: for women’s rights, being one of the first women at the United States Air Force Academy; for boots on the ground for gamechanging, founding a virtual global Rotary called We Rotary (on Facebook); and for bringing innovative ideas to Alaska and Vail, founding TEDxHomer and TEDxVail.
Debaura James
Debaura, from Silver City, New Mexico is a retired high school educator. She designed curriculum for sustainability/climate change education and helped co-create an environmentally-based charter school now in its ninth year.
John Jorgensen
John, age 57, father of two; son Dylan, age 25, daughter Bridget, age 21. John is a science and math teacher from Tucson, Arizona, who has worked with at-risk teens over a 17-year career. He went on the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament 28 years ago and is now on the Great March for Climate Action for pretty much the same reasons.
Miriam Kashia
Miriam is a mother of 2, grandmother of 2, 71 years young, world citizen living in Iowa, retired psychotherapist, returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Namibia, Africa, 2005-2008), outdoor adventurer, lover of the Earth, and Spiritual Seeker. I came on this March as the most extreme action I could think of to bring awareness to the greatest crisis ever created by and faced by humankind. I believe action is the best antidote to despair. This amazing community of extraordinary-ordinary people gives me joy and hope. I plan to walk every step – 7 million of them!
Liz Lafferty
Liz was born in New Mexico, and has lived in Florida, South Dakota, and Washington State. She currently has a home in Southern California where her daughter and four grandchildren live. Liz holds a degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco. Her deepest interest lies in humanity’s capacity to evolve, grow and awaken. For her work as a community activist she has been awarded both the California Woman of the Year Award, and President Bush’s Point of Light Award. Walking across America, is a journey of awakening—a commitment to help make visible the impact of individual choices on the whole. “We are all—always—impacting each other and the future.”
Faith Meckley
Faith is a 19-year-old environmental activist from the Finger Lakes Region of New York. She is attending college at Ithaca College for a degree in journalism and hopes to become an environmental journalist. Locally, she is involved with preventing a liquefied petroleum gas storage expansion project from being implemented on her home lake and with keeping fracking out of New York. Check out gasfreeseneca.com to learn about her local fight and how you can help.
Izzie Dean Mogelgaard
Izzie was raised in Detroit, Michigan and attended Western Michigan University. He taught psychology @ SUNY Morrisville, NY for 11 years. Raised 2 children with his wife Jo Ellen in Hamilton, NY. He worked as a psychologist for the NY State Office of Mental Retardation for 15 years and Hamilton Central Schools as an elementary school counselor for 7 years before retiring to an alternative lifestyle of living in intentional communities and the Omega Institute. He lives in Clearwater, Fl. during his time off Winter months, and is an environmental activist and Dharma Bumz band leader in his spare time.
Rosella Lala Palazzolo
Lala is a vibrant mother of three and is no stranger to cross-country journeys for urgent social change as she was on the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament in 1986. She is a passionate advocate for ever-evolving interpersonal communication, corporate responsibility, and socio-environmental justice. She demands resolute action by our leaders and ourselves to address the monumental challenges we face regarding the climate crisis. She marches for our children and our harmoniously shared future.
Kathe Thompson
I’ve never felt as exhilarated, as satisfied, nor as strong as I feel
today. The March has given a 72 year old woman the opportunity to recycle old hiking knowledge, reuse leadership skills and refocus my dedication to action on Climate Change. This, in turn has repurposed my life.
David Zahrt
David is 76 years old. He spent 8 years in higher education; 20 years in an ecumenical, interfaith family religious order engaged in local church renewal and community neighborhood development; 20 years back on the family homestead for mother and dad and restoring the prairie of the Loess Hills (of Iowa); placing a conservation easement on the farm and moving to Carson City, NV to be closer to family.