September, 06 2019, 12:00am EDT
Over 450 Climate Strikes Planned in U.S. on September 20th; Global Climate Strikes to Take Place in 117 Countries
Activists of All Ages, Labor Groups, Faith Leaders, Businesses and More Join Youth-Led Climate Strikes in Intergenerational Demand for Climate Action
WASHINGTON
- With two weeks to go until the September 20th climate strikes, there are over 2,500 strikes registered globally and over 450 strikes taking place across the U.S.
- This comes as Greta Thunberg joins New York youth climate strikers for her second strike outside the United Nations today.
- The Youth Climate Strike Coalition in the U.S. issued a set of policy demands calling for a just transition to 100% renewables by 2030, a halt to all leasing and permitting for fossil fuel extraction, protections for frontline communities, indigenous people, and biodiversity through transformative and decisive climate action
- Coordinated by Future Coalition, the U.S. youth-led strikes includes Earth Uprising, Fridays for Future USA, Extinction Rebellion-Youth, Sunrise, Zero Hour, Indigenous Youth Council and Earth Guardians. The Youth Climate Strike Coalition is steering the national campaign, with active support, participation and collaboration from an Adult Climate Strike Coalition, which includes leading national organizations such as 350.org, Greenpeace, SEIU and March On. Youth and adults, institutional and grassroots organizations, climate-focused and social justice groups, are coming together as a unified front to demand transformative action on climate.
- A week of escalated actions are planned the week preceding the global strikes from September 23rd - 27th, with local actions planned in Washington, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Wisconsin, Vermont, and the Bay Area. Demonstrating that the fight for climate action is beyond one moment, these actions put a spotlight on key climate justice fights taking place throughout the United States. Actions, vary from fossil fuel project shutdowns to demanding climate own halls to mass actions against fracking and fossil fuel finance.
Xiye Bastida, Fridays For Future NYC said, "September 20th isn't a goal, it's a catalyst for future action. It's a catalyst for the engagement of humanity in the protection of Earth. It's a catalyst for realizing the intersectionality that the climate crisis has with every other issue. It's a catalyst for the culmination of hundreds of climate activists who won't stop fighting until the climate emergency is over."
Vic Barrett, 20-year-old Juliana v. United States plaintiff from White Plains, NY said: "Because of the actions of the United States government and the fossil fuel industry, my generation has never known a world free from the impacts of climate change. Time is running out. This decade is our last chance to stop the destruction of our people and our planet. This is our time to join in solidarity with communities around the world to fight for a just future. This is why we strike."
Along with the global climate strikes, events during the week include the The Peoples' Summit on Climate and the Rights and Human Survival - the first ever global summit on human rights and climate change, that will be hosted by leading civil society groups and the UN Human Rights Office in New York, on 18-19 September.
During Climate Week, escalated actions will happen throughout New York City and across the US during the week of September 23-29. Communities are joining youth-led climate strikes, as well as coming together to protect families, air, and water from toxic fossil fuel projects, including in Minnesota, Seattle, Portland, New Hampshire, and more with hundreds across the country taking on the fossil fuel corporations and financiers.
Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, 350.org North America Director, said "The September 20th Climate Strikes and the following week of action across the United States is an intergenerational and multiracial moment to make our stand for our right to transformative climate action that preserves a sustainable, healthy, and livable future for all. With the leadership of young people backed by grandparents and parents alike, health workers, teachers, cab drivers and more, now is the time for all of us to come together to demand that real climate leaders at the national, state and local levels hold fossil fuel companies accountable for decades of negligence and damage."
The first ever widespread global blackout will also be taking place with many organizations and businesses planning to stop business as usual by shutting down their websites and redirecting them to the global climate strikes website.
In New York City, the strike on September 20th will be led by youth strikers including Greta Thunberg, who arrived in the city to take part in the UNSG summit, kicking-off with a rally in Foley Square before marching to Battery Park for key speakers and performers. The weeklong movement will surround the UN Climate Summit being held on the 23rd of September, which will gather world leaders in an attempt to accelerate real actions to implement the Paris Agreement and meet the climate challenge.
Other notable strike locations are Washington D.C., Boston, Seattle, Minneapolis, Miami, Los Angeles, Denver.
The climate strikes movement inspired by teenager Greta Thunberg has spread rapidly across the world in the last 12 months. Strikers are demanding that governments step up to take urgent action to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown by phasing out fossil fuels, accelerating the urgent transition to a 100% renewable energy powered world with climate justice and equity at its core, and holding fossil fuel billionaires most responsible accountable for their destruction.
For more on U.S. Climate Strikes and Week of Action visit strikewithus.org and explore this media pack
For more on the 9/20 NYC Strike, visit strikewithus.org/nyc and explore this media pack
For more information about global climate strikes, go to globalclimatestrike.net
QUOTE SHEET
Jamie Margolin, founder of Zero Hour said, If adults want youth to be studious and pay attention in school in order to prepare for our futures, then they need to do their jobs to make sure a future actually exists for us. That is why I am striking for the survival of my generation and civilization as we know it. I am striking because it is pointless to study for a future that does not exist.I am striking for complete system change."
Jesus Villalba Gastelum, Age 16, Earth Uprising LA City Coordinator/ Youth Climate Strike Los Angeles Organizer, said: "I live in Los Angeles, a diverse city of many roots, including Indigenous, Mexican, Spanish, American, and Tongva. We are organizing the LA Youth Climate Strike from a place of love, hope, and resolve. We are taking to the streets this September 20th in order to claim the future that is rightfully ours. While this mobilization is youth led, we welcome people of all generations to join us in kicking off LA's week of action. Our march is calling out inaction on the climate crisis, and stands in support of refugee rights, human rights, and dignity for all."
Katie Eder, executive director of Future Coalition said, "On September 20th the voices of thousands of young people from more than 400 locations across America will be heard as we strike for our future. Our message will be clear -- we must act now to avoid the worst effects of climate change because all of our lives depend upon it. We are the new face of the climate revolution and we demand just and equitable climate action."
Daphne Frias, founder of Box the Ballot, a member of Future Coalition said, "I'm striking this September to secure my future. When I take to the streets on the 20th and 27th, I take with me the resilience of my Latino and Disabled communities. People who are so disproportionately affected by climate change. Most importantly, I strike to show that you don't have to stand to take a stand; our voices are our most powerful tool and I will use mind to protect this planet we call home."
"A livable climate tomorrow requires halting public-lands fossil fuel expansion today. We're proud to stand with Colorado's youth calling for climate solutions that match the scale of the crisis," said Taylor McKinnon, senior public lands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, participating in escalated actions in Colorado.
"We're making a stand that we're still here. The Gitche Gami is really important to the people of Minnesota, and we want to honor that through a peaceful prayer action on September 28th. Our goal is to teach people that treaties are a two-party agreement -- Native people are not the only ones responsible for maintaining the treaties, but that we're all responsible and we need to move in solidarity. We all need the water, and we all need to do this together," said Nancy, MN 350, Minnesota Chippewa / Leech Lake, participating in a rally and gathering to stop Line 3 in Minnesota.
"While PSNH would like people to think that they are undertaking this renovation in good faith, the reality is that they are propping up this old plant to protect their own assets at the great expense of ratepayers, public health and the environment. PSNH has embarked on a massive and costly effort to keep Merrimack Station online for decades to come and New Hampshire ratepayers will be forced to throw more and more of their good money after bad if this project moves forward," said Melissa Hoffer, vice president and director of the CLF's Healthy Communities and Environmental Justice program in New Hampshire, where there will be a major action to shut down the coal plant in Bow, NH.
"The climate crisis is a human issue - affecting all of us. We are inspired by the youth activists who have led a global movement, and Patagonia is calling for urgent and decisive action for people and our home planet. On Friday, September 20th, we will be walking out of our stores, striking with the youth activists and calling for our government to take action. There is no room in governments for climate deniers and their inaction is killing us. We invite the business community and all those concerned about the fate of our planet and humankind to answer with actions and join us," Rose Marcario, President & CEO, Patagonia.
"As people of faith, we say that we believe in love, in compassion, in justice - then it follows that we must join this strike as surely as dawn follows the deepest darkness. Our children are calling to us. We must respond," Fletcher Harper, Executive Director, GreenFaith.
"Climate breakdown is one of the greatest human rights issues we face. Fighting climate breakdown is about much more than emissions and scientific metrics it's about fighting for a just and sustainable world that works for all of us. We need to start by phasing out fossil fuels, building real and long lasting solutions and prioritizing the communities at the frontline of the climate crisis,"May Boeve, Executive Director, 350.org.
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
LATEST NEWS
As Hobbs Signs Repeal, Arizonans Push Abortion Rights Ballot Measure
"We cannot afford to celebrate or lose momentum. The threat to our reproductive freedom is as immediate today as it ever was," said the campaign behind the ballot initiative.
May 02, 2024
While Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs on Thursday signed legislation repealing an 1864 abortion ban, reproductive rights advocates in the state reiterated that fuller freedom over family planning requires passing a November ballot measure.
In response to an
Arizona Republic opinion piece noting that there is no emergency clause in House Bill 2677, the law repealing the ban, "which means it won't go off the books until 90 days after the Legislature adjourns," Arizona for Abortion Access stressed that "Arizonans will still be living under a law that denies us the right to make decisions about our own health."
"We cannot afford to celebrate or lose momentum. The threat to our reproductive freedom is as immediate today as it ever was," the campaign behind the ballot initiative said, adding that only passing the Arizona Abortion Access Act "changes that for good."
The Arizona Abortion Access Act is a proposed state constitutional amendment that would prohibit many limits on abortions before fetal viability and safeguard access to care after viability to protect the life or physical or mental health of the patient. Arizonans were fighting for it even before the state Supreme Court reinstated the 160-year-old ban.
Even Hobbs recognized that the battle for reproductive freedom is far from over, saying Thursday that "today, we should not rest, but we should recommit to protecting women's bodily autonomy, their ability to make their own healthcare decisions, and the ability to control their lives."
"Let me be clear: I will do everything in my power to protect our reproductive freedoms, because I trust women to make the decisions that are best for them, and know politicians do not belong in the doctor's office," the Democrat pledged.
Her signature came just a day after the Arizona Senate approved H.B. 2677, following its state House passage last month. In both cases, a couple of Republican lawmakers voted with Democrats to advance the legislation—defying not only party members in the state but a national GOP that is hellbent on ending access to abortion care.
Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Wednesday that the Senate vote "to repeal the draconian 1864 abortion ban is a win for freedom in our state" and she was looking forward to Hobbs signing the bill.
"However, without an emergency clause that would allow the repeal to take effect immediately, the people of Arizona may still be subjected to the near-total abortion ban for a period of time this year," Mayes acknowledged. "Rest assured, my office is exploring every option available to prevent this outrageous 160-year-old law from ever taking effect."
Law Dork's Chris Geidner pointed out that "on Tuesday—though technically unrelated—Mayes' office asked the Arizona Supreme Court to stay the issuance of the mandate in the case holding the near-total ban enforceable."
According to Geidner:
If granted, that would push the issuance of the mandate to July 25—90 days beyond the date when the Arizona Supreme Court denied Mayes' request for reconsideration—which would then block enforcement to at least 45 days beyond that, to September 8.
At that point, the repeal law passed on Wednesday likely will have gone into effect—meaning that the 15-week ban would remain the applicable law throughout this entire time—and the expected vote on the proposed constitutional amendment will be less than two months away.
Planned Parenthood Arizona took similar action after the Senate vote on Wednesday. The group's CEO, Angela Florez, explained that "we have said all along that we will use every possible avenue to safeguard essential care for our patients and all Arizonans, and that's exactly what we're doing with today's motion."
"While anti-abortion extremists in the state Legislature will continue to do everything in their power to undermine Arizonans' freedom and criminalize essential healthcare, Planned Parenthood Arizona is taking action to prevent a harmful total ban on abortion from taking effect in our state," Florez continued. "The court's April 9 ruling was both tragic and wrong, but it rested on trying to discern legislative intent. The Legislature has now spoken and clearly does not want the 1864 ban to be enforced."
"We hope the court stays true to its word and respects this long-overdue legislative action, by quickly granting our motion to end the uncertainty over the future of abortion in Arizona," added Florez, whose group supports the ballot measure.
Keep ReadingShow Less
DOE Investigating Columbia University for Anti-Palestinian Harassment
"Students have the right to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians, without fear of unequal treatment, racist attacks, or being denied access to an education by their university," one lawyer said.
May 02, 2024
Palestine Legal announced Thursday that the U.S. Department of Education has launched a federal investigation into "extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment" at Columbia University a week after the advocacy group filed a complaint on behalf of four students and a campus organization.
"While the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) looks into all complaints it receives, it only opens a formal investigation when it determines the facts warrant a deeper look," Palestine Legal pointed out on social media. "The complaint explains how Columbia has allowed and contributed to a pervasive anti-Palestinian environment on campus—including students receiving death threats, being harassed for wearing keffiyehs or hijab, doxxed, harassed by [administration], suspended, locked out of campus, and more."
"Instead of protecting Palestinian and associated students when their voices are most needed to oppose an ongoing genocide, Columbia has taken actions to reinforce this hostile climate in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964," added the group.
"The law is clear, if universities do not cease their racist crackdowns against Palestinians and their supporters—they will be at risk of losing federal funding."
Palestine Legal senior staff attorney Radhika Sainath stressed that "the law is clear, if universities do not cease their racist crackdowns against Palestinians and their supporters—they will be at risk of losing federal funding."
"Students have the right to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians, without fear of unequal treatment, racist attacks, or being denied access to an education by their university," the lawyer added.
Since the filing, which highlighted that Columbia University President Minouche Shafik invited "the New York Police Department (NYPD) onto campus for the first time in decades to arrest over 100 students who had been peacefully protesting Israel's genocide of Palestinians," the Ivy League leader has called officers back to the school for more arrests.
On Tuesday night, the NYPD "violently arrested and brutalized dozens of student protestors, some with guns drawn, using sledgehammers, batons, and flash-bang explosives," noted Palestine Legal, which represents Maryam Alwan, Deen Haleem, Daria Mateescu, and Layla Saliba as well as Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
Columbia is one of many American campuses where administrators have called the police, who have behaved aggressively toward students and faculty nonviolently demonstrating to demand that their schools and the U.S. government stop supporting the Israeli assault of Gaza, which has killed at least 34,596 Palestinians in under seven months.
The Interceptrevealed last week that OCR opened an investigation into the University of Massachusetts Amherst after Palestine Legal filed a complaint "on behalf of 18 UMass students who have been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab harassment and discrimination by fellow UMass students, including receiving racial slurs, death threats and in one instance, actually being assaulted."
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—who has supported peaceful student protests and whose daughter Isra Hirsi was suspended from Columbia's Barnard College for protesting last month—highlighted the reporting on social media and some of the verbal attacks that students have endured.
OCR has opened a probe into Emory University following a complaint filed by Palestine Legal and the Council on American Islamic Relations, Georgia (CAIR-GA), according toThe Guardian. The newspaper noted Thursday that complaints have also been filed about Rutgers University in New Jersey and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Emory spokesperson Laura Diamond said in a statement that the university "does not tolerate behavior or actions that threaten, harm or target individuals because of their identities or backgrounds."
CAIR-GA executive director Azka Mahmood said that she hopes the investigation into Emory helps "make sure that the systems put in place against bias are used for everyone across the board—so we can produce a comfortable, equitable place for Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab students in the future."
The probes and complaints are notably being conducted and reviewed by an administration that has condemned campus protests while arming Israeli forces engaged in what the International Court of Justice has called a plausibly genocidal campaign in Gaza.
After U.S. President Joe Biden delivered brief remarks on the demonstrations Thursday morning, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a civil rights attorney and national deputy director at CAIR, said his "claim that 'dissent must never lead to disorder' defies American history, from the Boston Tea Party to the tactics that civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters, and anti-apartheid activists used to confront injustice."
"And if President Biden is truly concerned about the conflict on college campuses," Mitchell added, "he should specifically condemn law enforcement and pro-Israel mobs for attacking students, and stop enabling the genocide in Gaza that has triggered the protests."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Corporate Profiteering Schemes That Drive Inflation Detailed at Senate Hearing
"At every turn, companies are cutting corners on the path to record profits, and American consumers are paying the price," one expert testified.
May 02, 2024
Progressive policy experts took aim at corporate greed and profiteering during a Thursday U.S. Senate hearing on "shrinkflation," the process of reducing the size or quantity of a product while selling it at the same price.
At the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing—entitled "Higher Prices: How Shrinkflation and Technology Can Impact Consumers' Finances"—Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) began by acknowledging that "prices today are far too high, and families are having a harder time finding a fair price, seeing more of their paycheck vanish into thin air."
"All of this is happening while corporate profits hit record highs," the senator continued. "Let's be clear: The fact that prices and corporate profits are going up at the same time is no coincidence. A study by the Kansas City Fed found that corporate profits drove half of the price increases in 2021."
Bilal Baydoun, director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, testified that "in America today, a fair price, let alone a sweet deal, is harder and harder to come by. In the age of corporate concentration and high-powered algorithms, pricing is in the midst of a troubling transformation, and the price tag as we know it may become a relic of the past."
"At every turn, companies are cutting corners on the path to record profits, and American consumers are paying the price," he continued. "In a practice known as 'shrinkflation,' companies discreetly reduce the size or volume of common household items—everything from jars of peanut butter to bars of soap—to charge consumers more for less."
"For some essential goods like household paper towels, shrinkflation accounted for roughly 10% of the price increase consumers experienced over the last four years," Baydoun added. "Indeed, big profits increasingly come in smaller packages."
Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone and other executive members of the group submitted a statement for the record asserting that "the American people are fed up with corporate greed and price gouging."
The statement continues:
Even as inflation has gone down, prices remain too high. Americans understand that corporate greed is a major driver of costs that make it difficult for their families to make ends meet.
Corporate profits have exploded since 2020, and a recent study by our partners at the Groundwork Collaborative found that for much of 2023, corporate profits drove 53% of inflation. Comparatively, over the 40 years before the pandemic, profits drove just 11% of price growth. In the final three months of 2023, corporate profits reached an all-time high of $2.8 trillion, according to Commerce Department data.
"From Big Food to corporate landlords to Big Pharma, CEOs across industries keep raising prices despite bragging of bigger and bigger profits and stock rewards for wealthy investors," said Liz Zelnick, director of Accountable.US' Economic Security & Corporate Power program. "These executives clearly didn't need to raise prices so high, but they did it anyway because they could."
"Yet one by one," she added, "conservative Senate Banking Committee members today gave a free pass to their corporate megadonors and instead disingenuously blamed the Biden administration's actions against junk fees and price gouging that are actually working to lower costs for everyday families. They should get their priorities in check."
Earlier this year, Brown and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) introduced a bill "to crack down on companies shrinking their products and raising their prices."
The Shrinkflation Prevention Act would:
- Direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to promulgate regulations to establish shrinkflation as an unfair or deceptive act or practice, prohibiting manufacturers from engaging in shrinkflation;
- Authorize the FTC to pursue civil actions against corporations who engage in shrinkflation; and
- Authorize state attorneys general to bring civil actions against corporations engaging in shrinkflation.
"We need members of Congress to grow spines and stand up to more of these corporate lobbyists," Brown said during Thursday's hearing. "We need our colleagues to join us in efforts like this, to lower prices and stop these tactics that distort the market, stifle competition, and make it harder for Americans to afford the cost of living."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular