9:15 am – We are in a car on our way to the Via Campesina march for climate justice this morning. There is more police activity visible on the streets of Cancun this morning.

9:50 am – We marched for a short distance and now people are packing on to buses that plan to take us to a place near the Moon Palace, the location where the official climate negotiations are taking place. It’s hard to estimate the number of people here, but it feels large. There was a large Bolivian contingent at the front of the march. The bus has just started to move.

11 am – We are on the main highway to Tulum where it intersects with Alfredo V. Bonfil, which is about a 10 kilometre march from the Moon Palace. We are waiting as more buses bring people to join us. There are about 500 of us here now.

12 noon – Thousands marching in 27 degrees Celsius heat on the Tulum highway. The Council of Canadians ‘climate justice banner’ – with Council activist signatures on it – is being photographed and filmed and welcomed with thumbs up by many people. The Polaris Institute, the National Farmers Union, the Indigenous Environmental Network, and other Canadian activists are in this march. Word is that people will be leaving the official talks at the Moon Palace shortly to join the march, including Bolivian ambassador Pablo Solon. Mexican military humvees with mounted machine guns have driven past on the other side of the highway, and a military helicopter has flown overhead several times.

1:15 pm – Word is that a kilometre or two up the highway is a major police blockade. That appears to be where we will have our peoples assembly for climate justice. Estimates now have 2,000 people marching. Some governments and NGOs inside the talks on their way to join the assembly now.

2:15 pm – We have arrived at trucks situated across the highway where the peoples assembly will take place. It appears that people will be speaking from the back of a pick-up truck. About 500 metres past the trucks is a first line of police in riot gear with shields, and then 250 metres past that is several-metre high steel barricade across the highway. This is what blocks us from getting to the Moon Palace where the climate talks are taking place and where environment minister John Baird will be at some point today.

Visit http://www.canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=5640 for further updates and photos.

Brent Patterson, Director of Campaigns and Communications, Council of Canadians
www.canadians.org

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Brent Patterson

Brent Patterson is a political activist, writer and the executive director of Peace Brigades International-Canada. He lives in Ottawa on the traditional, unceded and unsurrendered territories of the Algonquin...