NEW YORK CITY, NY — Of the 400,000 or so people participating in the People’s Climate March on September 21, quite a few were from the Upper Delaware Valley. There were representatives from the Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, Catskill Mountainkeeper, Damascus Citizens for Sustainability and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. There was also a contingent of about 20 residents from The Weather Project, which was created by the NACL Theater in Highland Lake.

Nora Brown, of Beach Lake, PA, was with the Weather Project group, and she said a member of the cast brought a snare drum, and played it when there were pauses in the chanting that various groups undertook.

Brown said everyone was having a good time, and there was a “feverish” element among the people, who carried thousands of signs and had many children and pets in tow. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said.

The marching route stretched across Manhattan from 93rd Street and Central Park West to 34th Street and 11th Avenue. At 5 p.m., march organizers sent out a text asking marchers to disperse from the route because the crowds had swelled beyond the route’s capacity.

The New York march was led by indigenous and front-line communities who came from across the globe to highlight the disproportionate impact of climate change—from communities hit hardest by Hurricane Sandy to people living in the shadow of coal-fired power plants and oil refineries to those living in Island Nations already faced with evacuating their homes.

“The front lines of the climate crisis are low-income people, communities of color and indigenous communities here in the U.S. and around the globe. We are the hardest hit by both climate disruption—the storms, floods and droughts—as well as by the extractive, polluting and wasteful industries causing global warming,” said Cindy Wiesner, co-director of The Climate Justice Alliance. “We are also at the forefront of innovative community-led solutions that ensure a just transition off fossil fuels, and that support an economy good for both people and the planet.”

Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International said, “When people lead, leaders listen. In fact, it’s the only way to be sure they will. The hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of New York today are only a fraction of the millions around the world who are blocking pipelines, stopping coal plants and building a new clean energy future one solar panel at a time. An obvious next step would be for governments to stop wasting billions of taxpayer dollars to make the problem worse. ‘Stop Funding Fossils’ should be at the top of every climate leaders’ to-do list.”

Among the notable participants in the event were New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Vice President Al Gore, actor Mark Ruffalo, U.S. Senator Bernard Sanders, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

The global day of climate action came two days before a U.N. Climate Summit, which was scheduled to be attended by more than 125 world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama. The summit was intended to kick-start a process that will end with significant agreement at next December’s global negotiations in Paris.

The organizing for The People’s Climate March required the coming together of 1,574 groups in an effort akin to electoral campaigns.

The march was one of some 2,000 climate action events in 150 countries scheduled to take place ahead of the U.N. climate summit.