On Friday, March 1, 13-year-old Alexandria Villaseñor will start her morning as she has every Friday for the past three months. She’ll wake up at 8:00 A.M. and get ready for her day. But instead of going to school, like she does Monday through Thursday, she’ll leave her Manhattan home and get on a subway headed downtown, where she’ll arrive at Grand Central Station and then walk to the United Nations headquarters. Once there, she'll again take her post as a solitary climate striker, for the 12th Friday in a row.

“I sit on the bench for about four hours, or at least until I'm numb because it's been cold,” she tells Teen Vogue of her Friday routine. “It's been rainy. It usually decides to rain on Fridays, out of the week.”

Alexandria has been picketing at the U.N. to help build U.S. support for a school strike movement that has been surging among European students for months. Partly inspired by 15-year-old Greta Thunberg, who told world leaders at a U.N. climate change summit in December that “change is coming whether they like it or not,” Alexandria says she’s undertaken her strike to fight for her own future.

“Like Greta says, if people skip school, it gets the attention of everyone,” Alexandria explains. “If just one person can do that, it gets the attention.”

Alexandria on strike. Photo: Kristin Hogue

The attention is something Alexandria says is much needed at this point, as her generation grapples with the burden of coming of age in a world ravaged by climate change.

“Since climate change will be affecting my generation the most with the trajectory we're on, it's important to try and get action, especially from our world leaders and government officials,” she tells Teen Vogue. “The point with school striking is [that] it's civil disobedience, and it's another way to put pressure on the world leaders.”

For Alexandria, there’s a personal impulse driving her efforts, too, because she’s experienced firsthand the impact climate change can have. She shares a story about visiting her family in California at the time of the Camp Fire, the deadliest blaze in state history. Even where she was staying with her family in Davis, nearly a hundred miles away from Paradise, a town engulfed by the flames, the smoke was too much for her asthma to handle.

“When it broke out, it was scary because it was the worst air quality in the world and we had to roll up wet towels [and] put them under the doors because the smoke was seeping into my house,” she says. “My family had to book me a flight out of California early and fly me to New York, because I couldn't live in that situation, especially not being able to go outside.”