Berkeley students, community participate in global climate walkout

On Friday morning, over one thousand students and members of the greater Berkeley community took to UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza to advocate for climate action.

This walkout is only one of thousands of Youth Climate Strikes taking place across the world in anticipation of the UN Climate Summit meeting in New York on Monday. The global Youth Climate Strikes have been organized by eight national youth-led environmental groups that have five main demands: pass the Green New Deal, restore and protect biodiversity, respect indigenous peoples and lands, implement sustainable agriculture, and pursue environmental justice by advocating for communities on the front-lines of poverty and pollution. 

Dante Gonzales, a 21 year old student majoring in Society & Environment and Conservation & Resource  Studies, was the head organizer of the Berkeley walkout. The idea for this event came to him three months ago from students in the Engineering department and quickly garnered support from several campus partners and 1,700 students who marked “going” on the Facebook event. 

“We were just looking at pictures of the apartheid divestment rally that happened on Sproul,” said Gonzales. “This might be, since that point, one of the biggest rallies that has been on Sproul. It's huge.”

The event included an art build beginning at 9 a.m., where attendees could make their own signs, and teach ins from local union leaders, youth organizers, UC Berkeley faculty, and ASUC senators. 

Sylvia Targ, the 21 year old eco-senator in UC Berkeley’s ASUC, was one of the final speakers at the event, giving an emotional speech that earned some of the loudest cheers from the crowd that day.

“Whether or not you are engaged in this work to defend our natural resources and maintain them is for you. This is serving you. This is for you,” Targ said. “It is not for the five people who are vegan and talk about this all the time, we are out here because we are motivated to create a better and healthier world for everyone who's alive right now and the people who aren't even live yet.”

Although the event was held and organized on the Berkeley campus, plenty of members from the greater Berkeley community went to the rally as well.

Isabel Rodriguez Gerstein, age 12 and founder of the Green Team at Willard Middle School, attended the walkout with 9 classmates and her mother to show support for the movement despite barriers to her being there.

“My school isn’t letting us strike so coming here is an unexcused absence,” said Gerstein. “We’re really angry with adults who are older than us and think that these issues won’t affect them. If they don’t act like adults, we will.”

Annie Hallatt, 76 year old local artist and UC Berkeley class of ‘61, attended the rally as well. Reflecting on her involvement in the Free Speech Movement, Hallatt said, “I think we were more together, frankly. We surrounded police cars and kept them here for three or four hours.” She added, “But I’m interested in reconnecting. It's clear that we're destroying the planet.” She carried a large hard-to-miss sign depicting a fire breathing dragon with the message “The choice is war, fire, drought, death, heat or sustainable web of life.” Hallat said, “Art is really good at changing how we think. There’s not many things that are.”

At noon, when attendance was at its peak, the group make its way to the Downtown Berkeley Bart station to join the larger climate strike in San Francisco. To many, however, organizing a separate climate walkout at UC Berkeley was important.

“Berkeley does have this global platform and this global notoriety,” Gonzales said. “We really do want to take advantage of that, because we are in a very pivotal time in this climate catastrophe. We're just using our platform to garner more global attention and show that we're all here on a solid front to fight for climate action.”