My Climate Strike

The Climate Strike in Saint Paul was good: well-run and well-attended. It seemed like more than the reported 6,000 to me; I would have thought at least 10,000, maybe significantly more than that, basing my estimate on a comparison to the official 100,000 crowd estimate from the Women's March in January 2017.

The speakers were almost all young people, mostly teenagers. My City Councilmember, Mitra Jalali Nelson, who is 33, was probably the oldest person to speak.

I wish I had a recording of the opening spoken word piece by high school sophomore Juwaria Jama. These words from her will stick with me:

There’s something the whole world should know:
We aren’t generation Z. We aren’t the last to live.
And we won’t let this crisis be, we won’t let this crisis be
The be-it-all for our generation because
We are the era of the Green New Deal.
We are Gen GND, and we are just getting started

Here are my photos from the day. First, there's my sign (it looks a bit shiny because I waterproofed it with tape in anticipation of rain that didn't happen):


These two-sided signs were in the hands of Daughter Number Three-Point-One and her friend:


It was a hot day and I was trying to keep a beat on a metal can in time with the chants, so I didn't get as many photos as I might have. But here were some of the signs I saw and managed to get pictures of:














Some signs were more in your face than those, whether generationally...


...or with expletives undeleted:


One guy brought his reformed school bus, painted to say "Stop Line 3" on the side. The back of the bus, painted in black, was a participatory art project where each person could sign their name in red, white, or blue to say "No Line 3."


Finally, I had to appreciate this bit of sign engineering:


If you've been to a protest, you know your arms get tired holding up a sign for hours, even if it's light. Personally, I hang mine around my neck with yarn so my hands are free for the aforementioned metal can-clanging. But this guy cut a slot into a piece of foamcore board so he could hold his sign up with just one hand, switching arms over time. Pretty clever.