The ground beneath us shook last Friday when more than 4 million young people and community members around the world took to the streets as part of the beginning of the Global Climate Strike. This Friday, Toronto joins them in what will be the biggest climate mobilization our city has ever seen.

Behind Toronto’s climate strike is a youth-led coalition of climate and social justice groups from across the city. Together, we are calling on our leaders to treat our collective future as a public good that serves the many, not a private luxury for the wealthy few.

Made up of youth groups like Fridays for Futures Toronto, Climate Justice Toronto, and Our Time; labour unions like Canadian Union of Postal Workers, United Steel Workers, and the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario and social justice groups like Indigenous Climate Action, Fight for $15 and Fairness, and the Migrant Rights Network, we are a coalition demanding solutions to the climate crisis that match its severity.

We watch in dismay and anger as Canada heats up at twice the rate of the rest of the world and emits the highest per capita emissions among the G20, while our political leaders do nothing — the new “climate denial.” We watch, seething, as they declare climate emergencies in one breath and green light multibillion dollar pipelines on unceded Indigenous lands in the next.

As young people at the generational front lines of the climate crisis, we have had to face the reality of global warming since we could read “CO2” in grade school. This crisis is all we have known our entire lives. And youth in the Global South and in Indigenous communities all over the world are being hit the hardest, while contributing the least to emissions.

That’s why this coalition came together: we cannot continue with business as usual. Just as Indigenous communities resist ongoing colonialism for the seven generations ahead, we strike on Friday for seven reasons:

We strike to centre Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and self-determination in all climate actions. The climate crisis is the result of centuries of extractive colonialism that violate the intrinsic sovereignty of Indigenous people across Turtle Island. This continues. We demand the full implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the 94 calls to action of the Truth & Reconciliation Commissions, and the calls for justice in the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women.

We strike to defend land, water, and life. We honour the ongoing stewardship of Indigenous peoples who have cared for and protected the land and water for thousands of years. We call for collective efforts to maintain and protect forests, restore cutblocks, reduce habitat deterioration, and strengthen the protection of at-risk species.

We strike to transition to a zero-carbon, 100 per cent renewable energy economy. We call on all levels of government to reduce national GHG emissions by 65 per cent by 2030, reaching net zero emissions by 2040. We reject all new and ongoing fossil fuel projects, and demand the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies. We call for a just transition to publicly owned renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure that guarantees decent work for all workers, including those in the fossil fuel industry.

We strike so no worker will be left behind. We have more than enough to lift everybody into decent work, rest, leisure, and safety. Our demands for economic justice include a $15 minimum wage and workplace protections for all; the right to unionize; an end to the hoarding of wealth on offshore tax havens, which currently stands at $353 billion; and higher taxation of the ultra-rich and the corporations they control, whose greed has caused the climate crisis.

We strike for universal public services and infrastructure. We demand quality public services for all, including universal health and dental care, pharmacare, public education, free university/college, child care, settlement services, legal aid, and pensions; housing as a human right, including high-density, retrofitted, green public housing, and rent control; free, electrified, fully accessible public transit; and local community ownership.

We strike for justice for migrants and refugees. The imperialist practices of Canada, its allies, and multinational corporations — including war, occupation, and resource extraction — have been displacing people for centuries. We call for asylum for those displaced, and, in the words of No One Is Illegal, affirm the freedom of everyone to move, to return, and to stay. Our demands for refugee & migrant justice include status for all; an end to deportations and detentions; decent, low-carbon work for migrants; and full access to the universal public services listed above.

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We strike to make space for futures for all. As we rally together on Friday, we must ask ourselves: whose future are we fighting for? Many, including disabled people, Black, Indigenous and people of colour, poor and working class people, and migrants have long been excluded from the process of building a new world. We call for a return to the leadership and wisdom of the most affected — and most historically disenfranchised — communities, without whom there is no justice, no future.

From the land and water, to our housing and wages, we want a government that invests in our communities — not corporations eager to put a price-tag on our lives. For those already trapped in cycles of poverty and state violence, a just transition was needed centuries ago. Now is our time to organize, strike, and vote.

Mia Sanders, Simran Dhunna, Bella Lyne are members of a broad coalition of climate, labour, and social justice groups that call for a just transition to a zero-carbon economy that leaves no worker or community behind.

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