CCL’s Orange County South chapter promoting renewable energy and raising awareness of climate change in their local Swallows Day Parade.

Chapter spotlight: CCL Orange County South

By Flannery Winchester

Despite Congress dealing a blow to clean energy tax credits in the recent One Big Beautiful Bill Act, clean energy itself is widely popular, and CCL chapters around the country are finding creative opportunities to celebrate it.

One great example is CCL’s Orange County South chapter in California, who participated in San Juan Capistrano’s annual Swallows Day Parade this spring. 

The parade, which celebrates the return of the swallows from their winter home in South America, is one of the largest non-motorized parades in the U.S., featuring horses and horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians. This year’s 65th annual event was attended by around 55,000 people — meaning a big audience for the chapter’s message.

“For the last three years, we have marched in the parade to promote renewable energy and raise awareness of climate change,” says OC South chapter member Patti Maw. “This year we kicked it up a notch, wearing cardboard ‘solar panels’ and an inflatable sun costume.”

Judith “JJ” Anderson shined in her role as the sun! JJ serves as the chapter’s co-media manager alongside Patti Maw.

CCL OC South is co-led by Karl Reitz and Larry Kramer, a former mayor of San Juan Capistrano. In this year’s parade, they were joined by the San Clemente Mayor Pro Tem and his family, showing that the chapter has developed strong grasstops support in their community.

Announcers along the parade route introduced the volunteers as the “local chapters of Citizens’ Climate Education, here to remind you that sunlight is free and solar panels are your friends!” 

From the parade to the pages of local media

The announcers also told parade attendees that CCE is “dedicated to educating the public about climate change and how to take action against it,” adding that “you might have read their educational articles in the Capistrano Dispatch, the San Clemente Times, or the Dana Point Times.”

Those educational articles come from a “writer’s subgroup” of the chapter, which submits a monthly article on a climate topic to three local community newspapers: the Capistrano Dispatch, San Clemente Times, and Dana Point Times. 

Patti, who serves as one of the chapter’s media managers, says, “Our topics run the gamut from scientific (‘an overview of attribution science’) to economic (‘how climate change affects the price of your morning coffee’) to whimsical (‘giving the month of April the love it deserves’) to macabre (‘why you should consider green burial’). Most months we manage to get printed in all three publications.”

Creativity extends to tabling, too

The chapter’s creativity doesn’t stop at the end of the parade route! The chapter stays busy with “less flashy community outreach” too, Patti says. 

They have an annual booth at the San Clemente Garden Fest: 

The chapter also has an annual table at the San Juan Capistrano Butterfly Festival. They help connect the dots for festival-goers about how climate change is impacting butterflies, and last year, they gave away small pots of soil and milkweed seeds to encourage folks to plant native milkweed and support the migration of monarchs through California.

“One random day we even set up the Climate Anxiety Booth outside one of our local pubs!” Patti shares.

In springtime, the chapter brought CCL’s “Healthy Forests” policy area to life with some local tree planting efforts in coalition with other local groups. “For Earth Day, we partnered with the local Rotary Club chapter to plant trees in our city dog park, and in honor of Arbor Day, our chapter paid for and planted some trees at the San Clemente Municipal golf course,” Patti says.

Staying connected in OC South

“In addition to our monthly meetings (in-person at a local church hall and also on Zoom), our excellent chapter leads Larry Kramer and Karl Reitz also host a couple of potlucks each year so we can get together just to socialize,” Patti says. 

“It’s just a really fun, great group of people!”

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