Worcester Joins Nation in Climate Strike

Today, Worcester residents joined activists from across the world in rallying at their local city halls as part of the Global Week for Future. During this week, millions of people in over 150 countries banded together for what some are describing as the largest mass action against climate change in world history and Worcester was no exception.

The contribution from Worcester to this mass action included dozens of volunteers and was done in no small part by a number of local environmental groups such as, 350 Central Mass, Sunrise Movement Worcester and Extinction Rebellion. Together these organizations helped bring well over a hundred people to City Hall where they spent much of the late morning and early afternoon waving homemade signs and chanting slogans about the need to curb climate change and protect the environment.

This isn't the first action by these rally goers and the groups affiliated with them. Earlier in the month many of these same people were the ones to push the local city council to unanimously pass a resolution to declare a climate emergency in Worcester, along with pushing city council towards passing laws that banned single use plastic bags in the city of Worcester.

The local residents responsible for pushing those resolutions say its only the beginning. Demands from the activists that were read publicly included a pledge for 0 emissions by 2030 and for lawmakers to do more to combat the rising temperatures caused by climate change.

A number of local activists, many of which were affiliated with local climate groups who helped organize the rally, spoke at the event as well as some who had been traveling across the state and even some who had traveled from across the country to give addresses in major cities on the importance of combating climate change. "Even Governor Charlie Baker is here." One speaker said sarcastically in reference to a cardboard puppet of the Republican governor, whom activists allege isn't concerned with the environment due to donations he'd received from natural gas and oil companies.

Besides speakers at the event, the rally participants ranged widely in their backgrounds. Some were students still in highschool, others were retirees. Some had lived in Worcester their entire lives, others were recent immigrants to the country. Yet despite their varying backgrounds, all of them seemed to have an identical message when it comes to the issue they were there to protest. That messaging being that there needs to be something done immediately to protect the planet and its future.

The people who attended the rally and the speakers who lead them made it clear that despite the national climate strike being over this week, their fight had only begun. Stating that they would continue to hold events and protests possibly indefinitely until lawmakers began taking environmental issues seriously and started taking drastic action to begin to combat them.