We are students from Hellgate, Big Sky, Sentinel, Willard, Loyola, University of Montana, Missoula College and young adults from across Missoula who are planning a week-long strike from school, authentic and focused learning, and an action plan for survival. Join us!
#mslaclimatestrike
Strike Week Schedule
Teach-in schedule for 9/23-27
Pledge to Strike
Help Feed the Students
During Strike Week and future strikes
...left to stop climate catastrophe[1]
Classes will take place on the University of Montana campus from 9/23 to 9/27. Leave school and get an education.
Fri, 20th
Rally & First Strike
10AM - Rally @ Caras Park
Sat, 21st
Prepare for strike week.
Sun, 22nd
6-8PM - Poets4Change Poetry Slam @ Imagine Nation Brewery
Mon, 23rd
Education: Climate Science
@ University Center Theater
9-11AM - David Klein @ UM Campus
11AM-12:30PM - Break/Lunch
12:30-2:30PM - Movie: Sorry To Bother You
Tue, 24th
Education: Political Economy, Imperialism, & Climate Science
9-11AM - Herb Simmens and Mark Vander Meer @ UM Campus
1:00-2:30PM -Willy Barreno @ UC Theater
Wed, 25th
Education: History
9-11AM - Richard Smith @ UM Campus
12:30-2:30PM - George Price: Climate Change and Imperialism Panel @ UC Theater
Thu, 26th
Education: Resiliency
9-11AM - Paul Wheaton @ UM Campus
12:30-2:30PM - Movie: Woman at War
Workshop Demands
@ University Center Room 225
9AM - Prepare demands and for future, monthly strikes
7PM - Strike Launch Party @ Free Cycles
Recorded Teach-ins
David Klein, Ph.D.
David Klein is a mathematical physicist with a Ph.D. from Cornell University. He is a professor of mathematics at California State University Northridge, where he is also director of the Climate Science Program, a NASA funded educational program designed to prepare students for careers or graduate work in climate science and related fields. He is a member of System Change not Climate Change and is the author of the ebook, Capitalism and Climate Change: The Science and Politics of Global Warming.
Willy Barreno
Indigenous leader and revolutionary Willy Barreno is the co-founder of DESGUA, Economic Development for a Sustainable Guatemala, migrated to the United States in the 90's as a political refugee. DesGua seeks to create economic development by building an international network of Guatemalan community-run cooperatives in both Guatemala and the U.S. within the Guatemalan immigrant-communities and rural Guatemalan groups.
DESGUA's Barreno, who grew up in Western Guatemala in the middle of the country's bloody 36-year civil war and was involved in the student movement in the 1980's, believes his country is in the middle of another fight-a fight to preserve it's culture and reclaim it's economic independence.
Mark Vander Meer
Mark Vander Meer is a USDA certified soil scientist and an ISA Certified Arborist. He works to mend severe disturbances such as degraded riparian areas or abandoned mine sites. Mark has developed many innovative revegetation and soil stabilization techniques. He is the lead author for three regional revegetation manuals. He owns and operates a native plant nursery for the company's many revegetation projects. His work encourages woodland health and appropriate ecologic trends. Recognizing the importance of the soil resource, Mark works to assess how past disturbances influence natural bio-physical resiliency and ecological trends of the above-and below-ground ecosystems; he then provides recommendations for soil rehabilitation and native plant revegetation. Mark is continually learning and teaching restoration and forest management techniques throughout Western Montana.
Herb Simmons
Introducing Mark Vander Meer
Herb Simmens is a member of Jem Bendell's Deep Adaptation team and the author of the new book A Climate Vocabulary for the Future. He has been a path-breaker much of his life. He was the youngest country administrator in the country in Atlantic County NJ when casinos were legalized in Atlantic City, the award winning creator of New Jersey's long range smart growth master plan in 2000 as head of New Jersey's State Planning Commission, and the leader of one of the first consortiums of higher education institutions to fight climate change in the early 2000's.
Richard Smith wrote his UCLA History PhD thesis on China's class structure and the contradictions of market reform in China. He held postdoctoral appointments at the East-West Center in Honolulu and at Rutgers University New Brunswick. He has published articles on the Chinese revolution, China's transition to capitalism, and capitalist development and China's environment for Against the Current, New Left Review, Monthly Review and The Ecologist. He has written about capitalism, capitalist economic theory and the environment for the Journal of Ecological Economics, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Real-World Economics Review, Truthout.org, Adbusters and other media. He published Green Capitalism: the God that Failed (World Economic Association Press 2015) and is now completing a book on China's Engine of Ecological Apocalypse (Verso, 2017). He is a founding member of System Change Not Climate Change.
George Price
George Price (Assonet band of the Wampanoag tribal nation of Massachusetts) has been living on his five acre organic, polyculture farm on the Flathead Indian Reservation since the Summer of 1985. He retired from a 33-year teaching career in May of 2018: 10 years at Two Eagle River School, 3 years at Salish Kootenai College, and 20 years at the University of Montana, teaching Native American Studies, American History, and African American Studies. Dr. Price is also a board member and Environmental Issues Coordinator for Indian People's Action of Montana and active in the food sovereignty movement. Now that he is retired, he is devoting the remainder of his life to Earth/Water protecting, organic farming, writing, and replacing industrial capitalism with eco-harmonious, life-supporting, alternative societal structures.
Claire Charlo
Claire Charlo of the Bitterroot Salish Tribe was born and raised on the Flathead Reservation. Claire was home schooled until the 9th grade. As a child, a strong connection was built with the land, the mountains, the rivers and lakes. Claire started gathering and harvesting traditional plants and berries since childhood. Claire spent childhood and adolescent summers at Agnes Vanderburg's Cultural Camp, where Claire learned the Salish language, tribal plant identification, how to tan deer and elk hides, how to bead and make regalia. Claire learned the significance of taking care of the land and the importance of maintaining our relationship with our land, our mother. Claire graduated from Cornell College with a Bachelor's in Ethnic and Women Studies and went on to graduate with a Juris Doctorate from University of Arizona School of Law. Claire works as a Civil Advocate for the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes. Claire is a grassroots activist, and involved with Indigenous movements like Idle No More, bringing awareness to Murdered Missing Indigenous People, and drawing the connection between how the destruction of our Earth relates to the murder and violence committed against Indigenous people, specifically Indigenous women.
Laura Folkwein
Rev. Laura Folkwein, MSW is the acting Chairperson of Montanans for Immigrant Justice (MIJ). Her commitments to justice for immigrants and other people on the margins grew out of her faith and her personal experiences growing up as a bit of an outsider in the rural Montana towns where she grew up (places like Harlowton, Troy, and Valier). She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. After studying in Mexico and living in Washington, D.C., she earned a dual Master of Social Work and Master of Divinity from the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology. She has worked in non-profit and faith community leadership for over twenty years, including serving homeless families in Colorado, homeless Veterans at the Pov, and low-income immigrants in the D.C.-area. Laura has served churches in southern Arizona, Denver, Kalispell and Missoula. She is passionate about social justice, intersectional identities, equity, and inclusion. She moved back to Montana in 2014 and currently serves as the Associate Pastor at University Congregational United Church of Christ (UCC-Missoula). In her free time, she enjoys hiking, cooking, speaking Spanish, reading, and watching (and Tweeting about), Griz Football and The Bachelor.
Sesar Bonilla
Sesar Bonilla is from Billings, Montana and majored in Spanish Education with a minor in Latin American Studies. He also studied Native American Studies and Anthropology and studied abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico for his last semester of college. After returning from Mexico, he volunteered with the Flathead Cherry Harvest as an interpreter, where he's now worked for the past four years. He's done Pesticide Trainings with the Flathead Cherry Harvest and has worked for Ag Worker Health and Services as a medical interpreter, translator, outreach worker and social worker. He now works with Rural Employment Opportunities as an Employment and Training Specialist. His stepfather Jesse Bonilla has worked with migrant workers and the Latino population for over 30 years and assisted with immigration, interpretation, and social work. His biological father was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who came to the United States for agricultural work as well as seeking a better life. He credits both with sparking for his strong passion for agricultural workers, immigrants, and the Spanish speaking population.
Paul Wheaton
Paul Wheaton is is the tyrannical ruler of two on-line communities. One is about permaculture and one is about software engineering. There is even one for Missoula. Paul has written several permacutlure articles starting with one on lawn carethat he presented at the MUD Project 17 years ago, including articles on raising chickens, cast iron and diatomaceous earth. Paul also regularly uploads permaculture videos and permaculture podcasts. In his spare time, Paul has plans for world domination and has currently living on a hollowed out volcano in the Missoula area, with good submarine access.
What is the Missoula Climate Strike?
Inspired by the message of young Swedish student activist Greta Thunberg, we are planning a week-long strike from school, authentic and focused learning, and an action plan for survival.
We students will be walking out of school and away from an education system that is, as Greta boldly put it, preparing us for a future that does not exist.
What are we planning?
We plan to strike the entire week of September 20th-27th. We will learn about the climate crisis from speakers from around the world and using this education we will formulate our demands that, if met, will end our strike. We plan to continue our strike one Friday a month (and possibly more) until our demands are met.
Our house is on fire — let's act like it. We demand climate justice for everyone.
What will we learn?
How capitalism has caused this crisis and why the same bad ideas that caused this crisis cannot save us from ecological destruction (i.e. "Green Capitalism").
How other communities are building resiliency, how some people and communities are relinquishing, and how others are restoring our ecology.
The knowledge and language to articulate concrete demands of our leaders and our education, political, and economic systems.
Are you a concerned adult?
Want to be an ally?
Checkout adult planned events here.
Not in Missoula?
Join the Global Climate Strike
Letters for students to teachers, parents, and administrators.
Letter to Missoula County Public Schools Administrators
Letter to teacher/professor
The human race messed up. I don't want to go down as the species that killed a planet when it was completely preventable.
—Sentinel High School Student
I show up because I see us being the light at the end of the tunnel. The climate justice movement is well alive in 2019 and I know that we are able and needed to make a big impact.
—Missoula Sunrise Movement Student
I want to use my voice and any platform I can create and find to speak out against systems that allow for the devastation of our environment as well as the devastation of our humanity. I want to be a tool for change. I think the passion and creativity of youth and young adults can be so powerful and I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you better.
—UM Student
I believe we are in a crucial time for change within humanity. I am scared and feel guilt everyday and I think everyone should feel this shame collectively. Once we collapse we have room to change and I want to inspire others to change as well be surrounded by people who feel the same way. Change is coming and I can feel it, I want to be a part of it in every way.
—Big Sky Student
I want survive. Everyday I'm inspired more more by the passion of my own generation, it gives me hope and I'm here because of you all.
Tune into the Kain Train on 89.9FM KBGA for climate facts, climate clock updates, Greta Thunburg speeches, and more Climate Strike week news and events. The Kain Train is on-air every Wednesday from 9-11am.
Follow, Share and Contribute #mslaclimatestrike
Email us at panic@missoulaclimatestrike.org
Psst. Don't Go To School.