Climate Strike 2021: Deja Vu

Alexa David-Lang, ‘22

Friday, September 24th, 2021. I’m standing on the edge of City Hall Park by the Brooklyn Bridge as the afternoon sun beats down on my face. I am holding a sign and chanting, surrounded by people holding signs and chanting. The energy is electric, inciting, and...familiar?

When I went to the global climate strike this past September, I wasn’t really sure what to expect -- it was the first official strike since the pandemic had started. It was pretty much all your standard strike stuff, plus masks and social distancing. But while I was thrilled to be there to continue to protest the lack of government action against climate change, I couldn’t help but feel like climate legislation still hadn’t progressed.

Flashback 2 years to Friday, September 20th, 2019: the first big climate strike. People were getting fed up with the denial of climate change and had an encroaching sense of their own doom. Spurred on by activist Greta Thunberg, millions of people left school early to protest on that Friday. It was incredibly inspiring to be there, it made news all over the world, and then it stopped. Much like many other protest movements - cough, cough, Black Lives Matter - the sad reality is that most people stop caring once it stops being trendy. I’ve seen dozens of people talking about this phenomenon, but I witnessed it very clearly firsthand at the 2021 strike. We met at the same location, marched the same route, and had speakers at the same place as the 2019 strike. It was at that moment that I realized nothing had changed.

Of course, the reason why people strike is that they want something to change, that was why I and everyone else were there. But it was just so shocking to have this gut-wrenching feeling where I thought to myself, okay, I’m here again. It’s 2 years later. We’re protesting the same thing. Everything is the same except there are considerably fewer people. This is something that all activists and strong-minded people face when trying to fight for something they believe in. How do we keep going? How can we not give up hope when it feels like we are just running in circles as the sand falls out of the hourglass? And really, I don’t know.

But after I had this moment of panic and hopelessness, I looked around. I saw all of the people around me and looked back on the day. Everyone had so much energy and felt so passionate about what they were doing. People were cheering each other on and giving out flyers with information or sharing signs. Yes, many components of this march were the same, but that also meant that everyone’s energy level was still the same. Nobody was feeling deterred by the lack of action. People were frustrated by it, of course, that’s why they were there, but rather than feeling trapped, they used that energy and turned it into actions. They shouted and chanted in the streets so that others could hear that they were upset, but they weren’t about to give up anytime soon. It is so easy to fall into a pit of despair about something you really care about, but these people were still here, 2 years later, ready to do this again and again and again.