The Global Climate Strike Returns to the Streets of New York

It was Fridays for Future’s first New York City march since the pandemic started, and though the signs were familiar—”We Speak for the Trees,” “Our Mother Is Burning”—the visual tapestry of the day reflected the year 2021. Some marchers were barefoot, others covered in buttons from past political actions, but most all wore masks. The theme of this year’s global climate strike was #UproottheSystem, and its goals were expressly intersectional: “With both the COVID, climate, and every crisis in history, overexploited countries and marginalized sectors of society are systematically left behind to fend for themselves,” read the Global Climate Strike statement. “...Together we will fight for a just future where no one is left behind.”

Almost 2,000 students attended the action, accompanied by parents and the occasional elderly ally. After making their way from City Hall to Battery Park (the same route they took in 2019), the crowd gathered to hear from their peers. TREEage activist Kathryn Gioiosa remembered the New Yorkers who were killed by Hurricane Ida, also the cause of 55 oil spills. Tsela Zoksang spoke of melting glaciers, mining, and rapid industrialization in her father’s homeland of Tibet. Jerome Foster II urged the end of subsidies for fossil fuel industries, the adoption of the Green New Deal, and the passage of the Climate Change Education Act.

“Our solutions make the politicians and their ultra-wealthy donors uncomfortable,” Gioiosa said, “because instead of taking small steps towards a more equitable future, we’re threatening the racist, classist systems that created climate change in the first place.” This generation knows that a focus on one’s personal carbon footprint is a distraction propagated by the fossil fuel industry, and that meaningful climate progress will only happen when those companies—and the banks that fund them, the Congresspeople who defend them—are held accountable. On October 1, Fridays for Future will go uptown for a strike in front of the UN. The action is ongoing until real change is made.

Below, see scenes from the 2021 global climate strike in New York City, as captured by Shana Jade Trajanoska.