The youth among the Earth defenders, from tweeners to college debtors, are fierce like the folks in Earth First and Redwood Summer. They arrive with a reckoning, a moral sureness. In this "Earth Church of the Air" we meet an eco-Marxist named Kala, a holistic healer named Wally, and Ariella -- freshly returned from jail for singing in a tree surrounded by men with chainsaws. 

Ariella is one of four tree-sitters in the Stop Shopping Choir, arrested in the endangered East River Park. Our Earth Church is a block away in an unrented bank branch. We gather each Sunday at 5 pm (address: 36 Ave C at East 3rd Street in the East Village). To oppose real estate power in New York City is full of pressure. One of our activists took his life yesterday. So our friend has gone with the 500 trees that went under the blade so far.

May each us find that fierce defender within us, recover it from passive Consumerism, and go to the trees.