NYC Streets Overflow With Youth Protesting Elders’ Inaction on Climate Change — ‘They Leave it Up to Us,’ Says 16-year-old Swedish Activist
By MICHAEL ELSEN-ROONEY and CATHERINA GIOINO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
SEP 20, 2019 | 1:48 PM
Students march in DUMBO, Brooklyn during the Friday's New York City Climate Justice Youth Summit. (Jesse Ward/for New York Daily News)
The kids have thrown down the gauntlet on climate change — and they traveled in numbers Friday.
The city’s streets filled with thousands of fired-up young people who accused adults of letting them down on the most important issue for their generation and those yet to come.
“Nowhere have I found anyone in power who dares to tell it like it is," said indomitable 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg in a Battery Park speech Friday afternoon that captured the spirit of the march. "They leave it up to us as teenagers, as children.”
The children were more than ready to take up the mantle — and send a message to world leaders who will gather Monday in New York to present long-term plans on curbing greenhouse gas emissions at the United Nations climate summit.
Young people carting handmade signs packed into subways and buses early Friday, and snaked their way across city bridges towards Foley Square, where protesters gathered at noon before winding their way down to Battery Park.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, just exited from the 2020 presidential campaign, estimated 60,000 people descended on lower Manhattan.
The throngs may have been even bigger at Battery Park, where speakers including Thunberg and Jaden and Willow Smith addressed the excited crowds. Organizers claimed 250,000 people packed the park, which was fenced off and staffed with guards to keep an eye out for heat exhaustion.
Kids from kindergarten to college found a place at the rally — which was one of dozens that took over cities across the globe.
[More New York] Lawyer admits bring pot and blade to client in custody at Manhattan courthouse »
Penny Trapchak, 5, who attended with her parents, came to “show everybody who’s not here to be nice and good to the environment. I think they think that the earth is strong enough. But the earth needs to be stronger enough to handle all of that.”
Carolina Tucker-Hennessy, a 16-year-old from Queens, expressed a similar sentiment with a slightly more political edge. “Every day you see so much apathy from politicians and from big corporations alike,” she said. “I’m absolutely blown away by the turnout.”
City students were excused from class Friday, but teachers weren’t, leaving some younger kids stranded without their teachers to chaperone them to the march. At least one school, P.S. 10 in Brooklyn, staged a march closer to home.
“DOE told our school they couldn’t go [to] the #ClimateStrike today, so the kids brought the strike to their school,” Elizabeth Meister wrote on Twitter.
Young activists, with Thunberg at the helm, have taken an increasingly visible role in climate politics in recent years. Average temperatures have risen almost 2 degrees since before the Industrial Revolution, and scientists attribute most of the change to the burning of fossil fuels.
Scorching hot temperatures and powerful storms have become more likely as the thermometer ticks up, scientists say. And President Trump has pledged to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Accords — the world’s largest climate change reduction plan.
Youth climate participants called for a complete divestment from fossil fuels among other changes, with one young activist sporting a sign that read: “Don’t be a fossil fool.”
New York’s rally was one in a wave that swept the globe Friday. German police estimated 100,000 people gathered outside the Brandenburg gate in Berlin, and Australian officials said 300,000 people across the country protested.
While the march went mostly smoothly in New York, temperatures in the high 70s did cause some issues as the crowd packed into Battery Park. Several people fainted of heat exhaustion, and one speaker, Dr. Ayana Johnson of the Ocean Collective, spoke out of order because she had to give medical attention to someone who passed out.
Brazilian activist Artemisa Xakriabá pointed out that climate change has particularly harmed indigenous communities.
“We have the technology, the science. Now it’s the fate of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, we can be sure to avoid climate change, while creating a better future for our own," she said in her speech at Battery Park.
For some of the march’s attendees, the day started early — preparing signs, chants and snacks.
About 40 high school and middle school students met at the nonprofit Global Kids at 9:30 to get ready for the protest. They’ve been meeting after school once a week and planning for Friday for months.
Dominique Welsh, a senior at John Adams High School in Queens, "wanted to do something to say ‘hey, our world is slowly dying and people need to get off their butts.’”
Welsh said she would’ve attended even without the city Education Department’s recent announcement that it would excuse absences for the protest, but the policy did put her mind at ease. “I didn’t want to miss a school day of work,” she said.
Welsh and her peers turned their creative energy toward sign-making. “Winter isn’t coming — if we don’t change,” read one sign making tongue-in-cheek reference to the ominous refrain from HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Daniel Torres-Lopez, a senior at William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens with a booming voice, helped lead the group of teens in chants including “the oceans are rising, and so are we!”
After attending an event put on by the Council on Foreign Relations several years ago that laid out the grim environmental prospects as temperatures continue to rise, Torres-Lopez said he was moved to tears.
“Back then it was adults” talking about climate change, he said. “Now we have our generation caring about this issue.”
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
SEP 20, 2019 | 1:48 PM
Students march in DUMBO, Brooklyn during the Friday's New York City Climate Justice Youth Summit. (Jesse Ward/for New York Daily News)
The kids have thrown down the gauntlet on climate change — and they traveled in numbers Friday.
The city’s streets filled with thousands of fired-up young people who accused adults of letting them down on the most important issue for their generation and those yet to come.
“Nowhere have I found anyone in power who dares to tell it like it is," said indomitable 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg in a Battery Park speech Friday afternoon that captured the spirit of the march. "They leave it up to us as teenagers, as children.”
The children were more than ready to take up the mantle — and send a message to world leaders who will gather Monday in New York to present long-term plans on curbing greenhouse gas emissions at the United Nations climate summit.
Young people carting handmade signs packed into subways and buses early Friday, and snaked their way across city bridges towards Foley Square, where protesters gathered at noon before winding their way down to Battery Park.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, just exited from the 2020 presidential campaign, estimated 60,000 people descended on lower Manhattan.
The throngs may have been even bigger at Battery Park, where speakers including Thunberg and Jaden and Willow Smith addressed the excited crowds. Organizers claimed 250,000 people packed the park, which was fenced off and staffed with guards to keep an eye out for heat exhaustion.
Kids from kindergarten to college found a place at the rally — which was one of dozens that took over cities across the globe.
[More New York] Lawyer admits bring pot and blade to client in custody at Manhattan courthouse »
Penny Trapchak, 5, who attended with her parents, came to “show everybody who’s not here to be nice and good to the environment. I think they think that the earth is strong enough. But the earth needs to be stronger enough to handle all of that.”
Carolina Tucker-Hennessy, a 16-year-old from Queens, expressed a similar sentiment with a slightly more political edge. “Every day you see so much apathy from politicians and from big corporations alike,” she said. “I’m absolutely blown away by the turnout.”
City students were excused from class Friday, but teachers weren’t, leaving some younger kids stranded without their teachers to chaperone them to the march. At least one school, P.S. 10 in Brooklyn, staged a march closer to home.
“DOE told our school they couldn’t go [to] the #ClimateStrike today, so the kids brought the strike to their school,” Elizabeth Meister wrote on Twitter.
Young activists, with Thunberg at the helm, have taken an increasingly visible role in climate politics in recent years. Average temperatures have risen almost 2 degrees since before the Industrial Revolution, and scientists attribute most of the change to the burning of fossil fuels.
Scorching hot temperatures and powerful storms have become more likely as the thermometer ticks up, scientists say. And President Trump has pledged to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Accords — the world’s largest climate change reduction plan.
Youth climate participants called for a complete divestment from fossil fuels among other changes, with one young activist sporting a sign that read: “Don’t be a fossil fool.”
New York’s rally was one in a wave that swept the globe Friday. German police estimated 100,000 people gathered outside the Brandenburg gate in Berlin, and Australian officials said 300,000 people across the country protested.
While the march went mostly smoothly in New York, temperatures in the high 70s did cause some issues as the crowd packed into Battery Park. Several people fainted of heat exhaustion, and one speaker, Dr. Ayana Johnson of the Ocean Collective, spoke out of order because she had to give medical attention to someone who passed out.
Brazilian activist Artemisa Xakriabá pointed out that climate change has particularly harmed indigenous communities.
“We have the technology, the science. Now it’s the fate of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, we can be sure to avoid climate change, while creating a better future for our own," she said in her speech at Battery Park.
For some of the march’s attendees, the day started early — preparing signs, chants and snacks.
About 40 high school and middle school students met at the nonprofit Global Kids at 9:30 to get ready for the protest. They’ve been meeting after school once a week and planning for Friday for months.
Dominique Welsh, a senior at John Adams High School in Queens, "wanted to do something to say ‘hey, our world is slowly dying and people need to get off their butts.’”
Welsh said she would’ve attended even without the city Education Department’s recent announcement that it would excuse absences for the protest, but the policy did put her mind at ease. “I didn’t want to miss a school day of work,” she said.
Welsh and her peers turned their creative energy toward sign-making. “Winter isn’t coming — if we don’t change,” read one sign making tongue-in-cheek reference to the ominous refrain from HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Daniel Torres-Lopez, a senior at William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens with a booming voice, helped lead the group of teens in chants including “the oceans are rising, and so are we!”
After attending an event put on by the Council on Foreign Relations several years ago that laid out the grim environmental prospects as temperatures continue to rise, Torres-Lopez said he was moved to tears.
“Back then it was adults” talking about climate change, he said. “Now we have our generation caring about this issue.”
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