“We are the Future Voters”: Thousands of Kids Flooded New York City to Protest Climate Change

“I just took a CO2 test, turns out I’m 100% dying.”

Pablo Monsalve/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

An estimated 60,000 New Yorkers flooded the streets of lower Manhattan to protest climate change Friday, where the late September sun warmed the city to nearly 80 degrees. In New York, as in countless places around the world, people ditched school and work to take part in the Global Climate Strike to push for meaningful governmental action against climate change.

New York’s public school students were excused from classes Friday to join the march from Foley Square to Battery Park. Students of all ages chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, climate change has got to go,” and, “Fossil fuel or fossil-free, what will be our legacy?”

Some carried humorous signs, like one that nodded to Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts,” in which an illustration of Earth floats beside bold text that says, “I just took a CO2 test, turns out I’m 100% dying.” Others were punchier: “Planet Before Profit” and “Corporate Greed is Killing the Planet.”

The students we spoke to were passionate, thoughtful, and well-informed about the major contributors to climate change. Samantha Nowak, an 18-year-old student at Manhattan Marymount College, said that she uses reusable shopping bags and eats less meat because of climate change. “You can’t ignore something like this,” she said, referring to the size of the protest. “Hopefully it’ll get people active, calling their representatives and making more changes in their personal lifestyle.”

“Hopefully we can spark a larger change on a higher, government level,” her roommate Kandace Campbell, 17, said. “But also, it’s like, where is the hope for that, because how much do they care?”

Kandace Campbell, 17 (left) and Samantha Nowak, 18 (right)

Sam Van Pykeren

Jake Eraca, a 17-year-old high school senior from New York’s Dutchess County, said he realized the severity of the climate crisis when Iceland commemorated the loss of its Okjokull glacier with a plaque warning that the country would lose all its glaciers in the next 200 years. “This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done,” the plaque reads. “Only you know if we did it.”

“I sat in my bed and was on the brink of tears because I was like, ‘I’m not going to live past 50,'” Eraca said over the roar of passing strikers beating on drums. “I’m not going to have the life my parents had. Why am I worrying about college, why am I worrying about my grades? Why am I even trying if there’s no future for me to have?”

Eraca’s younger sister, Jillian, 16, had similar fears.”I don’t know if I will have a future,” she said. “I think about if I’m gonna have kids, what their life would be like.” Phoebe Anderson, 17,  agreed. “I’ve always wanted kids, but now I’m just like, why think about it?”

Eraca said that the protests gave him hope, but that ultimately there’s more work to be done at the congressional level. “This is a good first step,” he said, “but if we don’t get recognition, we’re not gonna go anywhere.”

 

From left to right: Jillian Eraca, 16; Jake Eraca, 17; and Phoebe Anderson, 17

Sam Van Pykeren

Two 20-year-old students at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Isabella Mayes and Chloe Dechambeau, wanted to call attention to the pollution in the fashion industry. Both students are minoring in ethics and sustainability, and they were critical of fast fashion like Zara and Forever 21.

Despite the bleak environmental outlook, Dechambeau and Mayes were heartened by the children who came to protest.”I’m overwhelmed right now by how many young people there are,” Mayes said. “I was almost brought to tears.”

Chloe Dechambeau, 20 (left) and Isabella Mayes, 20 (right)

Sam Van Pykeren

One group of students said that corporate greed was at the heart of the climate change problem.”I think we need generally much more tight regulations on large corporations that are the biggest polluters, much more accountability,” said Uma Channer, a 19-year-old sophomore at Sarah Lawrence College.

Her friend Tara Blossom added that she supports Bernie Sanders’ promise to move away from fossil fuels and his emphasis on using renewable energy instead.

Sumayya Bisseret Martinez, a 19-year-old New York University sophomore, wanted to draw attention to racial exclusivity and classism in the environmental movement. “Let’s be honest,” she said. “Climate change most impacts…black and brown communities and people who have lower incomes.”

From left to right: Uma Channer, 19; Sumayya Bisseret Martinez, 19; Evan Feist, 17; and Tara Blossom, 19

Sam Van Pykeren

Among the younger protestors were three best friends in the eighth grade who sported clever signs bearing slogans they found online. Mary Rousakis, 12, said that she has become conscious of how her actions, like using plastic or eating meat, are affecting the environment. “I personally really want a good future ahead of me where we don’t have so many endangered species and extinction of species,” she said. “It kind of just puts a dimmer on my dreams and hopes for the future.”

“The government needs to focus more on our earth and how to clean it and help the environment instead of just focusing on profit,” her friend Grace Chen, 13, said. “It’s important for young people like us to talk about this because we are the future voters.”

“I think it is so great to see a big turnout to see how many people are supporting it,” said 13-year-old Nona Stislow. “It seems like there’s more hope for the earth, and I really hope it does make a difference.”

 

From left to right: Mary Rousakis, 12; Grace Chen, 13; and Nona Stislow, 13

Sam Van Pykeren

Protestors climb on street signs while chanting.

Sam Van Pykeren

Abigail Weinberg
Sam Van Pykeren

To see more images from the protest, visit Mother Jones’ Instagram @motherjonesmag.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate