Students across the world are walking out of class today in protest of a catastrophic climate crisis that threatens the health of communities and individuals, and will eventually leave earth uninhabitable.
From London to NYC, North Carolina to Germany, Australia to Chicago, young people have decided enough is enough.
“I want this country’s leaders to realize that the youth will not back down, we will strike and strike and strike until they take action,” Isabella Johnson, the high school senior who organized a Chicago rally, told USA TODAY. “And if they refuse to take action that would ensure my generation a healthy future, then we will vote them out of office first chance we get.”
Climate change has already lead to melting icecaps that force migration, wild fires on indigenous land in the Amazon rainforest, and an increase in the strength of hurricanes, as recently seen with Hurricane Dorian. The powerful storm killed at least 50 Bahamians and displaced thousands more who fled to the United States, only to be met with the dehumanizing and cruel bigoted bureaucracy of the Trump Administration.
World leaders are scheduled to meet at the United Nations on Monday for a climate summit, the Washington Post reports. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres has made it clear that it’s time for action, informing countries to come to the table with tangible solutions, such as “reaching net zero emissions by 2050, scaling back fossil fuel subsidies, and halting construction of coal-fired power.”
Isra Hirsi, 16, co-executive director of U.S. Youth Climate Strike and the daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who has dedicated herself to fight for Black lives, understands that the climate crisis undergirded by environmental racism is urgent, particularly for marginalized and oppressed Black communities who withstand the brunt of this nation’s capitalist greed.
From heatwaves that affect predominantly older and unhoused Black and Brown people to air pollutants and toxic water, this is a matter of life and death.
