* About 120,000 diverse marchers hit city streets in heavy rain
* Protest focuses on racial, social justice side to climate crisis
* Calls for more attention to leadership outside the COP26 summit
By Megan Rowling
GLASGOW, Nov 6 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Braving heavy rain, tens of thousands of protesters including indigenous people, workers, environmentalists and social activists took to Glasgow’s streets on Saturday, decrying glacial progress on climate change threats inside the formal COP26 U.N. summit.
At the city’s Kelvingrove Park, the day of protests started with a rally organised by the Fire Brigades Union demanding green jobs that meet workers’ needs and racial justice.
Vulnerable people in countries that have contributed least to climate change bear the brunt of extreme weather and rising seas on a warming planet, speakers said.
Throngs of protesters, including Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg, then wound their way through the city centre to a second rally at Glasgow Green, where indigenous community members called for rainforest protection and food producers urged ecologically friendly forms of farming.
Asad Rehman, co-director of the COP26 Coalition, which brings together British groups campaigning on climate change, said the Glasgow march was just one of more than 300 climate demonstrations around the world Saturday as the U.N. climate talks hit their midpoint.
The coalition estimated about 120,000 people took to the streets of Glasgow, amid rain that at times blew in sideways.
Rehman, also director of charity War on Want, pointed to the diversity of protesters, with indigenous peoples, African climate activists and others from developing nations leading the Glasgow march after braving pandemic restrictions to travel to COP26.
“We have built a movement that is not just of environmentalists but that involves and connects with labour movements, faith organisations (and) grassroots activists,” he said.
That shows how “the (climate) crisis we face is a multiple crisis … a symptom of a rigged economy and a broken system,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
