By James Cirrone

The Global Climate Strike kicked off on Friday, and University of Maryland students made their presence known. The UMD Sustainability Cooperative organized the event and did massive outreach to get as many students to strike as possible. Starting at McKeldin Mall, over 100 student strikers gathered to get ready to march on Capitol Hill, intending to send a strong message to elected officials.

One striker, Shania Garcia-Herrera, a junior government and politics and criminology and criminal justice double major, intended to send a message. She was there to remind lawmakers of the devastating effects climate change has on particular groups of people.

“People who will suffer the most because of the consequences [of climate change] will be people of color as well as minorities … and that’s me,” Garcia-Herrera said.

There was a common sense of existential dread among the strikers. Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out with a report giving the world a mere 12 years to act in order to avert climate catastrophe.

One of the organizers, Emily Fox, a sophomore philosophy, politics and economics major, spoke candidly about the fear that she experienced when that report came out.

“I definitely felt really worried about my future, and I did feel this sense of like ‘What is it worth going to class if I’m not going to have a future in 2050 no matter what I study?’” Fox said.

Juliana Guerra, a freshman environmental science and technology major, became increasingly concerned about climate change when she realized it will negatively affect her generation and generations of humans to come.

“Our kids might not have somewhere to grow up in. I might die young because of climate change,” Guerra said.

This common fear of the worst-case scenario united the strikers and energized them. They marched from McKeldin Mall, chanting slogans and showing off their pithy signs all the way to the College Park Metro station.

 

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There was so much crowding at the metro station that staff let the strikers hop the turnstiles and board the train free of charge.

The UMD strikers then met up with the rest of the D.C. strikers in John Marshall Park. People of all ages and backgrounds showed up to fight for climate justice: Mothers with their babies in strollers, millennials still in business attire taking a few hours off work, students from other nearby universities and enthusiastic grade-school-age kids.

Michael Quituisaca, a graduate student at American University who studies art history, commented on just how important this issue was to him as he marched through D.C. He said he had always been on the fringe of climate activism, but thought that now it was time to put his money where his mouth was and make his voice heard.

The march on Capitol Hill Friday had just over 2,000 participants according to the D.C. Climate Strike Facebook event, and cities all over the world had strikes just like it.

Vox reported that there were “2,500 events scheduled in over 163 countries on all seven continents” and that “more than 4 million people worldwide took part.”

There is a huge groundswell of energy in favor of swift action to curtail the worst effects of climate change and UMD students made sure their voices were heard.