SONA (Sustain Our Natural Areas) invites and encourages your organization’s members to stand with us on Saturday, September 8, 2018, for the RISE for Climate, Jobs, and Justice march, a launchpad for deeper worldwide commitments and accelerated action on intertwined challenges.

We are faced with important choices about the direction in which our country is moving, in terms of climate and in terms of a wide range of issues: civil rights, immigration, and the right to a family-sustaining wage. We could continue down the path we’re on where large corporations pollute our communities, the gap between the richest and the rest of us gets even bigger, and where we see even more frequent climate disasters. Or, we can rise up and invest in real solutions to the climate crisis that prioritize the most impacted and vulnerable in our communities. We can push for a massive transition to a 100% renewable energy and a just economy that ensures safe and healthy communities, the right to organize for all workers, and millions of family sustaining jobs.

Decatur’s environmental and social justice movement is growing. SONA is just one part of that work. We invite local organizations and citizens to add your vision to this march. What are the issues connected to environmental and social justice that you are working to change? We invite you to bring your ideas and your voices to this event.

All RISE marchers will gather beginning at 1:00 p.m. at a site at the Old King's Orchard Community Center. Together we will march to the Decatur City Center Plaza in downtown Decatur to call on our community to:

• Preserve and build a clean, green and just natural environment

• Encourage the growth of clean energy jobs in our community

• Work for environmental justice in our community, where blight, pollution and social inequality limit opportunities to interact with nature and with each other.

Real climate leadership rises from the grassroots up. It means power in the hands of people and communities, not decisions dictated by a few. It means economic opportunity for workers as well as justice and dignity for frontline communities that are hardest hit by fossil fuels as they heat our world past its ability to cope.

Join us for the march on September 8!