Walking the walk: Fallon shares Climate March story at Kling Memorial Library

Former Democratic gubernatorial candidate and state representative Ed Fallon, like millions of other Americans, read the headlines and saw the warnings about the havoc that global climate change could wreak, and he wanted to do something about it. As others took steps like recycling, buying hybrid vehicles and reducing their meat and dairy consumption, Fallon decided to walk across the country.
           
“We’re kind of the Paul Revere of the climate movement right now. We want people to wake up and realize (that) climate change is not an issue… It’s a crisis,” he said. “It’s a big challenge to walk across the country, but it’s a statement that needs to be made.”
           
Between March and November of 2014, Fallon and a group of about 50 others marched from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.—passing through his home community of Des Moines along the way—and he shared his story, chronicled in the book Marcher, Walker, Pilgrim: A Memoir from the Great March for Climate Action at the Kling Memorial Library in Grundy Center during an event hosted by the Ivester Church of the Brethren last Thursday night.
           
The journey led him through the barren Mojave Desert, the expanse of the southern Great Plains, protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the Midwest, and eventually, the congested metropolitan areas of Cleveland, Pittsburgh and the nation’s capital. Though the group struggled and contemplated giving up more than once, Fallon, who contracted plantar fasciitis while marching, was continually impressed with the people he met along the way. 
 
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