On Friday, the twentieth of September,, students across the world left school earlier to protest the various factors of nations across the world causing climate change. This was no different for Boston and especially Boston Latin Academy. People from all portions of the city, country, and world left their school or workplace to convene at a common location where the topic of climate change was heavily discussed as well as demonstrated with hundreds of homemade signs. The crowd of a reported eighteen thousand people cheered on speakers, including Mayor Marty Walsh.The large group of protesters had also sang and danced in between them. A stage had been set up next to the Boston City Hall with plenty of seats for those who could not stand. Food trucks parked nearby to sell their food to the people attending. Finally the crowd marched to the Massachusetts state house where the protesters had chanted and eventually walked in crowding the state house.
I spoke with organizer and fellow student of BLA, Sam Draisen about the student climate strike in Massachusetts. He says of the climate strike in retrospect that “We kicked off this global movement with a successful strike. We had great, influential speakers and it was amazing to see all of the young people in the crowd”. He also says that we will continue to work hard to continue to have a lasting impact on our world.” Sam Draisen ended our interview by passionately stating that he is choosing “to fight, and fight hard, for this issue.”
The morning of the protest droves of students walked out and attended the global protest. This is not including those who had left earlier that morning or even hadn’t come to school that day, but had still attended. In large clusters students flooded buses to the Ruggles station to enter trains to the state station nearest to the Boston City Hall. A mass of environmentally conscientious youth had stood passing the time while waiting for the speeches scheduled to start at eleven-thirty. Speakers then gave emotional speeches about climate change. Between each had been a space of about five to fifteen minutes which had been occupied by chanting and singing.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lHU52MObEjpeVQVmwhghsdo50e6VSkAv
The first speaker was an Iranian girl who had immigrated to the United States, and told of her experience with loss to then relate it to the feeling of loss when dealing with a decaying environment. Following this were two speakers who had given the perspective of the indigenous people. Speeches had then pursued until one with the aforementioned breaks between them. The crowd had then marched the State House from the area outside of the Boston City Hall.
Outside the State House the crowd had gathered. Many of the protesters sat and stood in the courtyard in the back of the building. When they had arrived they started to chant. Among these chants were, “do your job!”, “hey hey ho ho climate change has got to go”, “what do we want? Climate Justice! When do we want it? Now!,” and “This is what democracy looks like!” Minor tensions in the audience had been aroused by laughter of some guards outside of the State House and frustrated protesters, but this was minor. Another minor chant had been, “eat the rich!”At last the protesters were allowed entrance into the State House. Inside they chanted and quickly filled the halls. Due to the size of the protest many had quickly entered and exited as to allow those who had not gained entrance to do so.
Finally the protesters had exited, and some had reconvened to aid in a worker’s strike in the North End afterwards. By this time however many students had made their political statements.
As this is an ongoing political movement there was another climate strike on November sixth, and another was planned for December sixth. As it is currently going it seems these strikes will happen throughout the year.