SM

I got a random email from the US Youth Climate Strike. It was essentially a call for me to join and talk about this new initiative for March 15, which was the first global strike day. I joined the call, and I was really intrigued by the idea, because I’ve heard of climate change all my life. I was really interested to take action, especially with the IPCC report coming out and too many other things that were building up to this movement, so I started organizing.

My family’s from Bangladesh. My dad’s seven siblings and their children are in Bangladesh. The last time I went to Bangladesh was around 2012, and I got caught in a flood. My own nephew passed away from a flood. Around then, my uncle kept on posting stuff on Facebook about the pollution in Bangladesh, how there’s so much air pollution that they can barely live. It really broke my heart. That’s when I started passionately getting involved.

While I’m in this country, my family’s still struggling in Bangladesh, and it’s not getting better. My dad’s only sister — her house is on this really narrow road, and due to the water rising, that road is kind of breaking off. No cars can even go onto the road to [her] house. So in the next few years, if the climate crisis doesn’t get better, her house could get dislocated from the main road, and she wouldn’t have any way of getting out.

That’s the reason why it’s so scary and why I’m so eager to fight on these issues. In the moment I spoke to Biden, it was really frustrating — how I have so much experience, my family is literally suffering, but he would invalidate that by [talking about him] doing something about climate change in the ’80s.