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It’s not every day that
Rolling Stone publishes a call for its readers to engage in a massive act of civil disobedience, but that’s exactly what happened Wednesday. “This is an invitation,” the call read. “An invitation to come to New York City. An invitation to anyone who’d like to prove to themselves, and to their children, that they give a damn about the biggest crisis our civilization has ever faced.”

The call’s author, Bill McKibben (who is –  full disclosure – on the board of this publication) and 350.org, the organization he co-founded, are planning a protest in New York this Sept. 21 and 22, which is, not coincidentally, at the exact same time and place as the next U.N. Climate Summit. “You’ll tell your grandchildren, assuming we win,” writes McKibben – though some might argue that this discounts the very real possibility that, even in the event of a loss, enough marchers might survive through the floods, plagues, famines, and civil unrest of unchecked climate change to pass on the story, in post-apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy style.

Rolling Stone might seem like an atypical venue for this kind of thing. The call (or, as McKibben put it “invitation to demand action”) appears next to articles about hologram Michael Jackson, breaking news regarding the official title of the new Batman vs. Superman movie (
Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice – which is, in this reporter’s opinion, a terrible title), and how the magazine has finally “penetrated the secret world” of Jack White.