In a Feb. 22 interview, Jamie Minden, co-founder of the Silicon Valley Youth Climate Strike, said the organization was still planning their next strike on April 22, Earth Day.
“We’re hoping to have five to 10,000 people to attend,” Minden said.
The coronavirus pandemic spread across Santa Clara County at the same time the youths began preparations for the strike.
Only two cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed in the county at the time of the interview, but by the climate strike’s most recent in-person meeting on March 8, the number of confirmed cases had jumped to 37.
Just eight months earlier, hundreds of thousands of climate activists took to the streets in massive demonstrations to raise awareness about the incipient climate crisis. Catalyzed by youth leaders like Greta Thunberg, young people comprised most of
the dissidents.
On Sept. 20, 2019, Silicon Valley Youth Climate Strike activists marched shoulder to shoulder toward San Jose City Hall for their first large-scale protest.
Approximately 1,000 people shared close quarters and passed around homemade signs, stickers and campaign flyers. Only messages were spread that day and interest surrounding the local coalition grew in the following months.
Youth climate activists said climate change should be treated with the same severity as the pandemic that prompted unprecedented mitigation responses from international governments.
Helen Deng, a climate strike co-lead, said the recent fast-paced changes in daily life are a window into the looming consequences of what she describes as the climate crisis.
“I just hope people take this lesson into account when they realize, with climate change, you can’t stay business as usual, you have to change your lifestyle otherwise people are going to die,” she said.
Fellow Co-Lead Lexie Crilley said that as a climate activist, she is used to dealing with the “impending doom” of facing a worldwide crisis.
“Given that we deal with the fear and existential dread of climate change on a daily basis, I feel, for me at least, it’s easier to have a positive attitude,” she said.
Large gatherings have since been restricted under California’s shelter-in-place order, forcing the coalition to cancel their plan to march from Plaza de César Chávez for their Earth Day demonstration.
According to an April 23 New York Times article, numerous protests worldwide such as the ongoing Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, have moved off the streets because of COVID-19.
Minden said they still plan for an Earth Day strike, just not on the streets.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but Greta Thunberg is posting about striking from home,” Minden said in a March 24 interview
over Zoom.
Thunberg, pioneer of the youth climate strike movement, recently used the hashtags #DigitalStrike and #ClimateStrikeOnline to encourage activists to post pictures of themselves with their strike signs on social media.
In a March 28 Instagram post, Thunberg announced that she had recovered from an illness she believed to be COVID-19 because of symptoms she and her father experienced after traveling abroad.
“We who don’t belong to a risk group have an enormous responsibility, our actions can be the difference between life and death for many others,” she stated in her post.
Minden said she and other team leads organized an online-only demonstration for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day to prioritize the health of their youth activists.
“People are spending a lot more time on social media. We want to maximize that as much as possible,” Crilley said. “We want to just continue to build our base, like Jamie said earlier, by posting art and positive messages.”
The youths co-hosted a virtual Earth Day strike with the Palo Alto conservation group Green Foothills. They were joined by local politicians, including the co-founder of the first Earth Day celebration in California, former Bay Area Rep. Pete McCloskey.
The activists called in from their homes to share speeches with an audience of about 700 people over the hour-long Zoom meeting.
The digital strike opened with San Jose Assemblymember Ash Kalra introducing musician Chris Reed, who played Earth Day-themed music on his guitar.
“Fifty years ago, 20 million people turned out on April 22 to protest that Congress wasn’t doing anything about the environment,” McCloskey said. “Now 50 years later, it’s even worse.”
Crilley, Minden and Deng also spoke during the digital strike, talking about climate change mitigation efforts and pending legislation such as the Green New Deal.
Deng said that the absence of in-person action changes the nature of the climate strike movement, but everyone should prioritize health during such a pandemic.
Nonetheless, the coalition and other climate strikes’ continued online presence is essential in rallying people to pressure local businesses and public servants to act on climate change, she said.
“I don’t think change is going to come at the national level anymore, I’ve grown really disillusioned with that because of the leadership we’ve seen demonstrated by their response to this [COVID-19] pandemic,” Deng said.
