Teens hold line on climate change
The teenage activists came prepared with viral videos and Power-Point presentations. But it was the floor-to-ceiling windows that served as the best visual aid during Saturday afternoon’s teen-run town hall on climate change. The mid-afternoon sky was as gray as the city’s sidewalks. The leaves on the downtown trees intermittently swayed, then shuddered, as the wind wound up a storm rolled in.
“This city is my home,” 17year-old Madeline Canfield, who attends the Emery/Weiner School, told the few dozen people gathered to hear her generation’s take on global warming. “And Houston is in a really, really scary place.”
Across the city, from one post-Harvey community to another, Canfield said the friends she’s made “have a shared narrative of fear.”
She paused and pointed to the sky outside.
“We look outside and we see
what’s happening — right now — and it scares us,” she said.
A moment later, the universe chimed in for emphasis with the afternoon’s first crack of thunder.
Saturday marked the first public event hosted by the nascent Houston chapter of the national Sunrise Movement. Founded in 2017, the organization is a coalition of young people who regularly participate in activism that aims to educate Americans about climate change, and fight back against man-made planetary harm. And Canfield is confident that Saturday’s consciousness raising will be the first of many actions Sunrise takes in her native city.
And not a moment too soon. “In the climate change-activism world, we like to use the phrasing, ‘On the front lines of climate change,’ and I think that is an excellent choice. When you think of front lines, you think of this as a war, in the sense that we’re being attacked by something and there’s this ominous threat over us,” she said. “And living in Houston, we are on the front line of that kind of an attack that, if I’m being earnest, we brought on.”
One of the main goals of the Sunrise Movement, a volunteerand donation-powered grassroots organization, is to promote the Green New Deal — an economic stimulus package that takes aim at both climate change and economic equality and has been brought forth as a resolution in Congress by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It pitches everything from affordable and safe housing to access to clean water and air, and includes a push to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
“I think in Houston, the Green New Deal can be a hard thing to talk about,” said Ioana Nichiti, a 16-year-old student at Bellaire High School. “Because so may people have connections to the fossil fuel corporations.”
But Houston is also a city working on a Climate Action Plan, announced late last year by Mayor Sylvester Turner. And this is where the student activists feel they can have the greatest impact. When sending out invitations to Saturday’s introductory meeting, Canfield said she and her fellow activists made sure to invite students their own age, as well as adults from the specifically — specifically representatives for the mayor’s plan.
“I’d hope to have a lot of adults because the message is a message that teenagers already know. It’s why we’re striking from school, shutting down government office and taking to the streets, which is Sunrise’s strategy to really mobilize an effort of long-term non-cooperation, where we use the tactics of nonviolent protest to make change,” she said.
“And we wanted more adults who have the power to make change.”
Still, while it’s great to have adults at the table, 17-year-old Clear Creek High School student Anna Alves said it’s her generation that really has the most to gain — or lose — from their effort.
“This is an issue that really affects us in particular,” said Alves. “I would like to live a full life just like my parents, and previous generations. And I want to make sure I’m going to be able to do the same, and my kids, my grandkids, are going to be able to do that.”
“This city is my home. And Houston is in a really, really scary place.”
Madeline Canfield, 17-year-old student at the Emery/Weiner School