Earth warming, forests burning, glaciers melting, oceans rising, animals extinct, storms more frequent, intense & deadly, climate refugees fleeing homes.
Students across the globe have been striking on Fridays to demand solutions to the climate emergency. Now, they are calling on everyone to disrupt the status quo and join them on Friday, 20 September for the Global Climate Strike. Three days before the UN Climate Summit in NYC, 20 September will start off a week of climate action, with a walkout to show politicians that our demand for justice is strong, and that we will not stop until the climate crisis is properly addressed and necessary action and system change are put into motion to restore dignity, integrity, and respect for Mother Earth.
Together we call for justice against the aggressive greed and global exploitation of nature and people that deepen inequalities in wealth and power. We call to restore dignity, integrity and respect towards Mother Earth and to all people of the world, particularly women and girls, who have been violated by policies and programs that cause environmental degradation and plunder.
V-Day and One Billion Rising activists are RISING and STRIKING in support of the student led movement. Their actions will platform the connections of climate justice and our movement to end violence against all women and girls, inviting everyone to participate.
One Billion Rising has been connecting the dots between multiple systems of oppression that escalate, exacerbate and profit from violence against women, including the extractive industries of oil and gas, militarized neo-colonial and corporate “development”, and the poisoning of our global food and water and eco systems. With the intentional burning of the Amazon by agro businesses in Brazil, action to address the climate crisis is needed more than ever. This earth is not meant for consumption. The global climate crisis continues to affect communities around the world, but women and girls suffer the most in terms of long term loss of livelihood, forced migration, trafficking and other climate related conflicts. Indigenous populations everywhere have also suffered gravely – displaced and forced to flee and relocate – making them the world’s first climate refugees.
In 2017, there were over 18 million climate refugees – people who have had to leave their homes due to long-term changes to their local environment which threatens their livelihoods. If nothing is done, an estimate of 143 million people will be forced to leave their homes due to desert expansion, devastating floods, fires, and heat waves by 2050. People all over the world joined the Risings in many countries to demand and end to violence against women and girls, by looking at policies that pillage, devastate and destroy the environment in the name of “development.”
All over the world, people will rise up to stop business as usual in the face of this climate emergency.
The climate crisis won’t wait and neither will we.
Business as usual is no longer an option.
The house is on fire.
RISE and STRIKE everywhere #UntilTheViolenceStops
To find a local event near you and/or create one, visit: https://globalclimatestrike.net/start/