Page 22
EPIB Trail
Volume 12, Issue 1
The Aim of Our Protest: AWARENESS, INCLUSIVITY, MOBILITY By John Milligan The global climate strike on Friday, September 20 was the largest single global climate event in our history. Millions of people around the globe, at over 2,500 events in 163 countries, stopped what they were doing to rally for climate justice. Protests called for the just transition to a green new deal economy; for the uprooting of an economic system crafted through colonialism and a cycle of globalǦ south dependence; and for equity in the face of environmental racism, which has placed poor, typically black and brown communities on the front line of harm.
In our local protest, more than 500 Rutgers students, faculty, and community members rallied to demand a fossilǦfree future from the Rutgers Board of Governors. We then marched to join an additional 150 Highland Park high school students and community members at the doorstep of U.S. Representative Frank
Pallone’s New Brunswick office. As our protest filled the street, we demanded that Pallone use his influence as the Chairman of the Energy & Commerce Committee to hold fair hearings on the Green New Deal, to call for zero carbon emissions by 2030, and to return and stop accepting campaign donations from the fossilǦfuel industry. The broad call for climate justice meant expanding the platform to those who face the most problems yet receive the least face time in the mainstream news cycle. At Rutgers, the Okeanos Foundation for the Sea spoke about globalǦsouth island nations facing existential threat. The Rutgers Latinx American Women’s Org, Black Lives Matter chapter, and Students for Justice in Palestine spoke of environmental racism, disproportionate hazards and burdens placed on black and brown communities, and an ethical
