This past November, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the government agency that oversees taxpayer-owned public lands, auctioned off tens of thousands of acres of land, including portions of the Pawnee National Grasslands in my home of Colorado, to the highest bidding oil and gas companies,

T It is important to participate in the talks and to push for an ambitious, justice-oriented global agreement. We also remember that at the end of the day, no one is coming to save us. Lives are on the line, we know that millions of people are already being affected by climate change.

Successful social movements do not always look to the police or state authorities for permission take action for justice. In the 1965 Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery, protesters were forbid to march on the first day across that bridge, yet they marched anyways.

"If you don't have a strategy, you are part of someone else's strategy” -Alvin Toffler in Beautiful Trouble

Our first 24 hours here have been a blur of jet lag, cultural adjustments, crepes and chaos. As tens of thousands of people arrive to Paris just days before COP 21, I see many contradictions.