Recently, children and adults from all around New York City congregated for the Climate Strike. The Climate Strike was a large protest against the lack of US involvement in negating climate change. The rally started at Foley Square in downtown Manhattan and from there marched into Battery Park. There were an estimated 250,000 participants.
Throughout September, the rally gained a lot of popularity, and because of this Mayor Bill de Blasio excused NYC public school students from attending school so long as they attended the event.
A representative from the clothing company Patagonia, Brenna Cohen, attended the rally and stated, “All of our New York stores are closed for the day so that our workers can come out here. Climate change is a huge problem, so we wanted to support this as best we can.”
In one interview with protestor Benjamin Morse, he stated, “I’m out here because climate change is the biggest crisis of our time. I’ve been saying so since I was in high school in the 80’s. I remember my dad voting for Bush back then and saying ‘you can’t have an economy without an environment.’”
Morse also stated, “I mean, according to the UN we’ll see a three degree rise not in 20 to 30 years but in potentially five to ten years. So, I mean, it’s all or nothing now.”
Another protester, Tom Smolka said “After today, I hope we get the immediate end of fossil fuel use and extraction, we need to start pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere, and we need more research and scientific innovation.”
People at this event weren’t only there to protest climate change, moreover. Many protests held signs against capitalism and current US president Donald J. Trump.
Overall the strike had a huge turnout, with roads and parks nearby being so densely packed it was hard to walk around.
