On Friday, September 20, about 30 Lowell students left their houses that morning not to go to school, but to go downtown to join the international climate strikes happening around the world. 40,000 youth and adults showed up from all over the bay area in San Francisco to demand for serious action to address climate change. “I have a lot of angst about climate change. I’m really worried about our future. I know I’m supposed to be a good student, getting good grades, focusing on my classes, but it’s hard for me to be focused when I’m so worried about our environment, the health of our families, and our whole world,” senior Tanya Santos said. “[It] is much more important than this one day of school.”

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Christy Vong

The climate strike in San Francisco was organized by Youth vs. Apocalypse, a group of young climate activists from the bay area with a clear list of demands: a safe, healthy, and just planet, justice and asylum for people displaced by climate change, policy based on science for immediate plans to get off fossil fuels and reverse carbon pollution in the next 5 to 10 years, for people, not corporations, to influence politics, equal rights and representation from people of all ethnic groups, environmental stewardship, and for humane living conditions for workers of corporations held accountable for climate change.