Back in 2017, I was listening to news of another category four hurricane hitting the U.S. I remember sitting and thinking: Are we not going to do anything! I kept waiting for the President to realize that what’s happening isn’t normal, but that moment never came. All that happened was President Trump dismissing climate change’s involvement and saying “we’ve had bigger storms than this.”

A year later I was sitting in the cafeteria and I remember my friend talking about missing school for a funeral for a student who died in a flash flood. What stuck with me the most was how climate change affects flash floods. He was swept into a drain and carried a few blocks before he was rescued, and later died in the hospital. It still shocks me that someone in my community could be affected by climate change in that way. I knew about the rising temperatures and I knew that asthma rates would increase, but I didn’t know that rain could kill someone. In church later that week, I discovered that a taxi cab driver was killed by a flash flood that same night.

I remember sitting there thinking surely we have to do something now, but we didn’t. The only thing that happened was some news coverage and a prayer service for them. I hated feeling so helpless and feeling like nothing could be done. But in that moment of sadness in doubt, I realized that I put the responsibility on adults to fight for my future.

It wasn’t until December 2018 when I heard about the Sunrise Movement. I finally saw people taking real steps toward fighting for our future. The Sunrise Movement is a youth lead movement that demands our politicians take climate change seriously by addressing the crisis at the scale it deserves and creating hundreds of clean jobs in the process. What made Sunrise so appealing to me was the storytelling aspect of the organization. My local Sunrise group attended the strike in D.C. They went to Senator McConnell’s office and heard how climate change has affected people in many different ways. Most importantly, I learned that these strikes have inspired thousands of people to join the fight for a livable future. Through storytelling and showing up at both McConnell’s Louisville and D.C. office we got him to delay the vote for the Green New Deal.

Sunrise has organized several actions since they started in 2017. From sitting in at Nancy Pelosi’s office to marching in Detroit with communities outside the DNC debate. Their most important action, in my opinion, is just about to start. On September 20th, the Sunrise Movement will join dozens other environmental groups for the national climate strike. This strike will demand our politicians on local and national levels declare a climate emergency. Declaring a climate emergency will allow our politicians to acknowledge the threat of climate change and finally do something about it.

This is one of the most important strikes because in order for there to be the change, there needs to be millions of climate protestors in the streets. We have to go on strike because we can no longer sit around for politicians to make change. We have to take actions and disrupt daily life for the average person.

In the 1970 earth walk, there were about 20 million people across the nation going on strike to march for a healthier and more sustainable world. After the first Earth walk, the US government passed the clean air and water act, which was one step of many they took that year to create more sustainable and healthier Earth. We can do that too. I’m going on strike because I know that in order for there to be the change we need to show the world how important our fight and voices are.

This strike will be the start of many strikes for me. Yes, it will take more than just one strike for change to be made. But there’s still a part of me that hopes someone will read this and think, “I should strike too.” And that will lead to thousands of young people to going on strike on September 20th. However, only when thousands of students rise up and strike in cities like Louisville and around the country, will our politicians start to take this crisis seriously.

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