Community Corner
Thousands Protest For Action On Climate Change
"There is no room for denial or fear." The protest was part of a global day of action.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Thousands of Bay Area students joined a global youth strike on Friday to demand leaders take action on climate change.
San Francisco's Market Street was filled with middle and high school students from around the region who were marching instead of attending classes.
"We are in a climate crisis," said Isha Clarke of Youth Vs Apocalypse, one of the student activist groups that organized the march, at a rally in San Francisco's Union Square. "There is no room for denial or fear."
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The students rallied in front of the San Francisco offices of U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, calling on both to support the Green New Deal introduced by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-NY.
The marchers attached post-it notes on the front of each office's building with comments including, "Don't ruin our planet!" and, "Our climate is changing, why aren't you?"
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Feinstein drew attention in a viral video last month where she was seen rejecting a group of youth activists who demanded support of the bill.
Her office did not respond to a request for comment on the strike. "We have 12 years to save this planet - the only planet that we have," Clarke told the crowd, referring to an October report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which said that "rapid and far-reaching transitions' must be made by 2030 to avoid worst effects of global warming.
Globally, the Youth Climate Strike included hundreds of similar strikes planned in an estimated 75 countries. In the U.S., organizers are calling for Congress to adopt the Green New Deal and declare a national emergency of climate change.
"We need action before it's too late, and it's almost too late," said Jazea Smith, an 11th-grade student at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco. "The politics and economics and everything else that's going on right now - there's no point if our Earth is warming at such accelerated rates that we've never seen before."
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