Who is riding the elephant?

I have been in Cancun for the Climate Justice Conference. An image keeps popping into my mind: by accident an ant falls on top of an elephant who is crossing a hanging bridge. The ant, in its excitement, feeling the unstoppable force pushing under its body, gets to the other side. Looking back, seeing the dust billowing up exclaims: Wow, we really shook it! My conjecture, amidst a growing sense of frustration in the context that many of the groups on the ground are feeling cut off from any real action and the delusional sense that we, at times, fall into by thinking that just by doing we are having a significant impact, thinking to ourselves and exclaiming: Wow! We are really shaking it! As I was sharing the image a friend said: is the elephant the world? And the UN and those who think that have the power to control it, to shake it up, to ride the elephant on the right direction, are those who are, behind closed doors, deciding on the future of Madre Tierra?

From delusion to illusion, there are many worlds. Here, I find myself on another island, the one I left behind not too different from the one that I am riding on. The hand of developers is everywhere and even those places where the ruins of civilizations once lived are being sold to the best buyer without any consideration to history, memory nor those inhabitants who have been here for generations. Bloomberg would feel right at home here where the mighty dollar monopolizes and buys anything and anybody.

Then I look down from my molehill and see many companer@s converging. A dissenting chorus of voices rising and more. I see them cheering, celebrating as they paint new worlds with their hopes and visions where Madre Tierra and every living being has the air to breath free. Other voices come from afar. Voices, well known, of youth in the South Bronx, in Brooklyn, who see beyond garbage, infested lots the gardens and gathering places for their communities. Where cleaning a river and holding politicians accountable is a work of love, solidarity and transformation of the whole world.