Street artist David Stocker includes everyone in his Global Climate Strike performance on Friday, Sept. 20, 2019.

As young people around the world organized their communities Friday for climate change awareness strikes, a couple dozen Rockfordians staged David Stocker’s public theater protest on State Street.

The world-wide protests demanding action against climate change preceded a weekend of United Nations’ Climate Action Summit in New York where world leaders, from government, business and civil society address the global climate emergency.

This is a special episode of “Meet the Artist” where we get to hear the confluence of art and activism through Stocker’s street theater.

From Market Street to State Street, protesters carried an 80-foot-long black tube that was topped with a two-headed snake figure. Stocker calls his creation the “black snake of death” - a symbol of corporate greed and environmental abuse.

Other protesters carried signs and chanted “Climate justice now” over a rhythm section of drums and a tambourine.

The street performance was the most recent of Stocker’s lifetime of creating free art that anybody can consume and participate in.

“I’m a public artist. I believe in the science, but I’m not a scientist. So, what can I do? I thought that bringing artwork into resistance and movements and social activism...I thought that’d be a good thing,” said Stocker.

“Some people say the arts shouldn’t have politics in it, but I really don’t think it’s about politics. I think it’s about the human experience.”

Stocker, a 30-year Rockford resident, has used music, theater and activism to influence social change for 25 years.

He was born in Philadelphia, grew up in England, earned a masters degree in theater at Yale, then came to the midwest, and Rockford specifically, for the residency at the Illinois Arts Council in the late 1980s.

His environmental activism started when he participated as a kid in the first Earth Day.

He’s a member of “One Drum” a multicultural ensemble that toured the midwest hosting educational music workshops.

Stocker knows that the performing arts won’t win wars, but the interpersonal engagement it fosters can be a powerful experience.

“In an age of moving so fast we need to have real conversations with people,” he said in a recent phone interview.

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More information

Rockford Register Star: www.rrstar.com

Host: Scott P. Yates; 815-987-1348; syates@rrstar.com; @scottpyates

Article: Protests in Rockford and across the world urge climate action

Sound: Scott P. Yates, various field recordings from the Global Climate Strike march in Rockford, Illinois, on Friday, Sept. 20, 2019.