'We need to cause an uproar': Minnesota students 'strike' over climate change

Friday's rally in St. Paul was part of a wave of student demonstrations worldwide.

March 16, 2019 at 3:57AM

High school stu­dents across the Twin Cities staged a walk­out to de­mand ac­tion on cli­mate change Fri­day, meet­ing en masse at the State Capitol to press lawmakers on the is­sue.

"We need to cause an up­roar," said Maya Sprenger-Otto, an organizer and student at Washburn High School in Minneapolis, addressing a crowd of several hundred teens on the Capitol steps. "We won't be stopped until substantial change is made."

Fri­day's stu­dent "strike" in the Twin Cities was part of a wave of youth-led cli­mate dem­on­stra­tions across the globe. Sim­i­lar walk­outs, in­spired by a pro­test staged by a Swed­ish teen, were held in more than 100 cit­ies world­wide, with some rallies at­tract­ing tens of thou­sands of march­ers.

In Minnesota, students also gathered in Duluth and Rochester.

Students at the St. Paul ral­ly said their goal is to send a mes­sage to lawmakers that they want im­me­di­ate change to pro­tect their fu­ture. Many cited a 2018 Unit­ed Na­tions re­port on cli­mate change call­ing for "rapid and far-reach­ing" chan­ges to slow glo­bal warm­ing in the com­ing years. Fail­ure to act, authors cau­tioned, will re­sult in dire and ir­re­vers­ible con­se­quences for both the en­vi­ron­ment and the world's pop­u­la­tion.

Ruthie Hot­ting­er, a seventh-grader from Shore­view, wor­ries that "things are get­ting out of con­trol and it's scary." Three friends told her in the last week that they don't want to have chil­dren be­cause they fear the ef­fects of cli­mate change will have on the world, she said.

"In my fu­ture I see a world that's safe to live in and smil­ing faces all around," Hot­ting­er, 13, told the crowd. But that's not going to hap­pen if you and I don't stand up for what we want and what we need."

Max Sher­man, a seni­or at De La Sal­le High School, echoed those calls for im­me­di­ate ac­tion.

"We need to get in­volved and show the gov­ern­ment that we can't just stand back while we bas­i­cal­ly have 11 years left to save the plan­et and save our­selves," said Sher­man, who took Metro Transit to the ral­ly along with 80 of his peers from the pri­vate Catholic high school. Like many oth­er groups, Sher­man and his class­mates or­gan­ized their walk­out plans using so­cial me­di­a and word of mouth.

The hun­dreds of sign-carry­ing stu­dents gath­ered at the Capitol brought a long list of pol­icy de­mands. Teen or­gan­iz­ers said a na­tion­al em­er­gen­cy on cli­mate is long o­ver­due. They called for ac­tion on clean wa­ter, cli­mate ed­u­ca­tion in schools and pas­sage of the Green New Deal, a sweep­ing fed­er­al res­o­lu­tion fo­cused on re­new­a­ble en­er­gy, health care and jobs. On the state level, the stu­dents urged pas­sage of a bill man­dat­ing 100 percent re­new­a­ble en­er­gy use by 2050 and an end to the En­bridge Line 3 oil pipe­line re­place­ment pro­ject.

"If ac­tion isn't tak­en now, it will be our mess to clean up," said Far­rah Bergstrom, a sopho­more at Wayzata High School who has worked on pro­gres­sive cam­paigns since age 13. "It's im­per­a­tive that lead­ers and legis­la­tors in this Capitol rec­og­nize our deep con­cern for cli­mate change. This isn't a dis­tant is­sue, it's some­thing that's going to have very se­vere in­flu­ence on us in the near fu­ture."

Beyond those im­me­di­ate goals, stu­dent ac­tiv­ists said they hope to spark a broad­er cul­tur­al shift. Some of the loud­est cheers came as speak­ers made the case that the impacts of cli­mate change go be­yond the en­vi­ron­ment and the ec­on­omy. At it's heart, they said, it's an is­sue of ra­cial jus­tice and equi­ty.

"This move­ment needs to be dif­fer­ent in terms of we should be work­ing with mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties. No one knows our strug­gle like we do," said youth radio host Brit­ney Chi­no, a stu­dent ac­tiv­ist with Young Peoples Ac­tion Coalition St. Paul. "I saw a post­er earli­er to­day say­ing cli­mate change does not af­fect all e­qual­ly, and that is the truth."

Public o­pin­ion sur­veys suggest cli­mate change is a mo­bi­liz­ing force for young voters, who went to the polls in re­cord num­bers in 2018. March­ers said they ex­pect the is­sue to be a top pri­or­i­ty for their voting-age peers in the up­com­ing e­lec­tion. Signs read­ing "Vote the cow­ards out!" and "De­ni­al is not pol­icy" float­ed above the crowd.

"We've shown our pow­er and we do not plan to stop," said Sprenger-Otto, who plans to cast her first bal­lot next year. "That will be car­ried out into 2020 and be­yond."

Torey Van Oot • 651-925-5049

Minnesota students left school and went to the Capitol in St. Paul to be part of an international climate change protest, joining hundreds of thousands of students in more than 100 countries around the globe on Friday, March 15, 2019.
Minnesota students left school and went to the Capitol in St. Paul to be part of an international climate change protest, joining hundreds of thousands of students in more than 100 countries around the globe on Friday, March 15, 2019. (Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

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Torey Van Oot

Politics and Government

Torey Van Oot reports on Minnesota politics and government for the Star Tribune.

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