Greta Goes to Washington

Hundreds of young people and their supporters rallied near the White House in a Friday Student Climate Strike protest. What has been a small weekly gathering grew exponentially in size last week as Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg joined them.

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One week ahead of the international #GlobalClimateStrike, hundreds of young people with Fridays for Future D.C., Youth Climate Strike DC, and their allies gathered outside the White House with special guest Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old Swedish climate activist. Thunberg was welcomed by an enthusiastic crowd, ready for action. Youth climate strikers have invited everyone to walk out in solidarity with them for two global mass actions on Friday September 20 and 27. Thunberg is on a six-day visit to Washington, D.C., ahead of a United Nations climate action summit beginning September 23, to continue to push for efforts to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change. 

Millions of students around the world have been walking out of classrooms on Fridays to protest inaction on climate change. They’ve been following the lead of Thunberg, who last August, began leaving her school in Sweden every Friday to sit on the steps of her country’s Parliament building demanding action.  She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year, and now the number of students taking part in her strikes—dubbed “#FridaysForFuture”—has broken 3.6 million across 169 countries. 

Now, up to 70,000 children skip school to protest every Friday in almost 400 cities around the world. In New York City, public school administrators say they won’t mark students as absent if they have a parent or guardian’s permission to join the Global Climate Strike on Friday, September 20. 

“See you next week,” Thunberg told the crowd at the end of the event.