Youth lead the way in a multi-generational climate strike

By Jill Ryan                           9/20/19

Hundreds marched to the Arizona Capitol Museum on a 97 degree day to demand new climate policies for a greener future. 

The Arizona Youth Climate Strike organized the event with one particular goal in mind: all people are to be protected from climate change. Claire Nelson and Aditi Narayanan, both 17, are co-leaders of the organization. Nelson said that while they’re striking in solidarity for climate action, they have specific demands to their state and city political leaders.

“We want cities across Arizona and the state to declare a climate emergency and come up with a climate action plan that focuses on making sure that nobody gets left behind in the transition to a green economy and environmentally friendly city and state,” Nelson said.

She and other activists at the rally said they are concerned that as the Earth gets warmer, those who can’t afford to be protected from extreme heat, will die. Their solution is to have all communities, in Arizona involved in the conversations about climate action policy. 

Guest speakers joined the Arizona Youth Climate Strike to continue the theme of conversation diversity. On an elevated stage outside the Capitol Museum, Laura Medina, a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa [Ojibwe] tribe, spoke about the indigeneous perspective on what “settlers” have done with their land and what they should be responsible for. After her speech, she said indigineous people have a right to be involved in the environmental conversation. 

“We are all on occupied territory, so anything that goes on, anyone who poisons a river, who poisons the sky, who poisons the dirt, who poisons the soil, they’re poisoning indigenous territory that was never relinquished. We never gave it away,” Medina said.

Another guest speaker, Sarra Tekola, is a part of many organizations, including the Environmental Justice Coalition of Phoenix, Sunrise Movement Phoenix and Black Lives Matter. She spoke about how minorities need to be included in the Democrat’s proposed Green New Deal. 

“It needs to be people-powered not party affiliated,” Tekola said. 

She said America has polluted more and has contributed more to climate change than most smaller, poorer countries.  

“With privilege comes great responsibility. If we are disproportionately responsible for the climate crisis, we must disproportionately lead the charge for change,” Tekola said. 

Young people were not the only ones worrying about the future at the event. 

“I’m 78 years old I expect to live until 150 so I’m very concerned…[if] there will be something left for me to enjoy–in the form of nature,” John “Bluebird” Crossman said. 

Crossman came wearing a hat with a picture of Greta Thunberg fastened to the top. 

“This is Greta Thunberg, she’s a very young girl who will probably receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to awaken the world to the need to protecting the Earth,” Crossman said. 

She is also the girl who inspired the international climate strikes–the Phoenix march was happening in solidarity with other protests going on around the world. 

Arabella Berkebile, 7, with her two friends Attison Easley and Hally Anderson, both 8. The three chanted “Stop denying the Earth is dying.”  Her mother, Melissa, says Arabella is a protest veteran; both of them protested at the 2017 Women’s March in Arizona. 

Arabella is holding up a sign that reads: “I’ll go to school when you start to listen to the educated.” Melissa said she allowed her to miss school that day so she could come to the protest.

“I think what we’re doing to the Earth is bad, and we should help it because all we’re doing is destroying it,” Arabella said. 

Another protester, 24-year-old Morgan Flander, wore a shirt that had a picture of the Earth on it and it read: HELP WANTED. She is the community engagement intern for “Keep Nature Wild,” a retail company that gives its profits to host cleanups in national parks, rivers, etc. She is concerned about the lack of action being done by policy-makers to address climate change. 

“There is no planet B, there is no plan B…we need to come together as a whole planet to work on it,” Flander said. 

The protest was on Friday, Sept. 20, 2019 from 2 p.m. and lasted until 5:45 p.m. The following Monday, the United Nations held a special Climate Action summit, which featured a speech by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg. 

She said to the world’s leaders:

“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you.”