Good morning, everybody.
Thank you to the members of the media.
This coming Friday, September 20th, hundreds or even thousands of Seattle public school students will walk out of classes to take part in a global climate strike.
This strike action is part of the global movement that has been growing to demand immediate action from political officials in response to the impending climate catastrophe.
It is now expected to be one of the largest protests ever, with 3,500 strikes in 117 countries and more than 700 in the United States alone.
After decades of inaction by corporate politicians and a recent report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change giving humanity just 12 years before surpassing a critical threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, young people are correct to be outraged and they have no choice but to take action.
Students, educators, parents, and socialists are here today outside Washington Middle School in the Central District to urge Seattle's workers and people of all ages to join this historic global action and the fight to save our planet from capitalism.
Congratulations to the nearly 1,000 employees at Amazon who have already announced that they will be joining the strike.
And we have applause for the Amazon workers.
They are demanding that Amazon as a corporation stop funding climate denier politicians and lobbyists, stop working with oil and gas corporations, and the company should reach zero carbon emissions by 2030. In Amazon's 25-year history, this will be the first time that workers at the company's Seattle headquarters will be participating in a strike.
This is powerful.
More than 400 Google workers are also joining the action.
In Seattle, my council office, alongside community organizations and Council Member O'Brien, is fighting for a Green New Deal for our city's working people.
We need a major expansion of clean energy.
We need a major expansion of public transit, making it fully electric and free at the point of use.
We need to retrofit buildings across the city, and all of this will create thousands of union jobs.
So it is important that the labor movement is on the forefront of the fight for climate justice.
And it is so crucial that the Seattle Education Association, the union that represents public school teachers, has just voted on a resolution to support this strike action.
We cannot rely on corporations and billionaires to make the change.
Corporations are vastly disproportionately responsible for the disaster we are in.
In fact, just 100 companies are responsible for causing 71% of global carbon emissions since 1988. We will need independent fighting movements led by the working class and youth, and we will need nonviolent civil disobedience.
School boards across the country and the world have a role to play in the struggle to protect our planet.
The New York City public school system is supporting the movement and has announced plans to excuse students from school for the climate strike.
In a tweet sent out September 12th, they said, New York City schools will excuse absences of students participating in the climate strike on Friday 9-20.
Students will need parental consent.
The head of Amnesty International has also asked school officials worldwide to, quote, let pupils join the historic climate strikes on the 20th, unquote.
The Seattle City Council reiterated that appeal just this past Monday, unanimously voting on a resolution from my council office, which, quote, urges Seattle public schools to support its students' right to assemble and participate in the global climate strike on September 20th, 2019. Furthermore, given the likely participation of hundreds, even thousands of students on Friday, this will also allow parents, teachers, and administrators to better plan for the day to ensure student safety above all else.
Following the unanimously passed city council resolution, I sent a letter to the Seattle School Board and the public school superintendent, Dennis Juneau, urging them to announce that they will excuse absences.
Unfortunately, Superintendent Juneau has responded to the city council resolution by saying, quote, when civic engagement includes missing class, there are standardized consequences.
The absence will not meet the criteria as defined by state law or board policy, unquote.
As a matter of fact, though, the school district's own rules allow for excused absences if the district itself was to decide that it was a community activity worthy of being excused.
And we have copies of the school board rules for the media if you're interested.
However, at the end of the day, it is not really about what is written in the rule book.
We are facing the question of our planet's survival.
And the courage that the Seattle school students are showing is incredible, wanting to take action for climate justice.
Seattle School Board members have an obligation to show moral and political leadership at this pivotal moment when their own students are showing historic courage.
And on that note, I wanted to invite Zoe Sherman, who is a student at Washington Middle School.
My name is Zoe.
I'm 13 years old.
I use she her pronouns and I go to Washington Middle School the place where this very press conference is being held.
I'm here today addressing the Seattle School Board to ask if they will allow us as youth to stand up for our futures.
Please give us excused absences while we defend it.
As a youth who knows the reality of the climate crisis, I know what it's like to feel overwhelmed by it.
The planet is in crisis and I wish that other people were handling it, but they aren't.
Us youth are trying so hard to save our future, to have the courage to do what the adults have not, and we're put under so much pressure to be perfect.
We must get good grades, we must do all of our homework, even when overwhelmed by our organizing.
There are the stresses of being an activist, the stresses of being a teen, and the stresses of school all piled onto one another.
Now will you free us from the consequences of this and the stresses of an unexcused absence?
Or will we get one just because we demand a future where our world isn't on fire?
Because it is on fire.
It is.
We need a world shaped by love and compassion, not ruled by fascism and greed.
We need to be able to breathe.
We have the right to clean water.
We have the right to clean air.
We have the right to clean soil to grow our food in.
You have the responsibility of being on the school board, and you took that on because you care about us, right?
You care about us being successful.
You care about us being, like, having good lives.
Well, we can't succeed if our resources have been destroyed by the time we graduate.
If you want to succeed, if you truly care about us, let us strike for our futures.
Why should we be punished for doing the things that adults can't or won't?
In my experience, people are listening to the youth.
We need to use this power while we still have it.
You have the power to help hundreds, maybe thousands of Seattle school children.
Will you use that power for the better or for the worse?
Thank you.
I hope the Seattle School Board and the superintendent are listening to students like Zoe Sherman.
And now we are joined by Kimaya Mahajan, who is a student at Interlake High School.
Hi, my name is Kimaya Mahajan.
My pronouns are she her and I'm 15 years old.
I'm here today on behalf of hundreds of Seattle Public School students who want to participate in the international climate strike on Friday, September 20th.
The students partaking on Friday are the students who feel the greatest pressure on their shoulders of saving the world.
Being a teenager is stressful enough with high school, friendships, sports, drama, puberty, family, and all the other things that are constantly on our minds.
And the fact that adults at our city, state, national, and international levels are expecting teens to find solutions to the climate crisis, it's not cute or empowering.
It's a gross injustice to ask 13, 14, and 15-year-olds to spend their time figuring out how to save all of humanity because adults are too selfish to act.
I am stressed and anxious all the time.
Because every time I don't act, I feel responsible for the lives lost as a result of my inaction.
When will the adults begin to feel that same responsibility?
As school board members, I assume that you're on the school board because you care about the success of the students in Seattle Public Schools.
So then please, show us that you really do care, not just through words, not just through your title, but through real action.
And as adults who let the climate crisis get to a point of no return, Don't force us to deal with the consequences of an unexcused absence simply because we demand the right to a future, and we demand the right to clean air, to drinkable water, and to one day be able to show our kids what snow looks like.
Let's face it, this is the easiest demand that we are asking you to do.
All we're asking for is one day.
We're asking for one day to make up for the decades of inaction.
One day where you support us, the future generation, and recognize us as the change makers that we are.
Thank you.
Following Kimaya's remarks, we now have Dr. Sarah Myrie, who is a University of Washington climate and ocean scientist.
Thank you, Councilwoman Sawant.
My name is Dr. Sarah Myrie.
I'm a fifth-generation Washingtonian.
I am a climate and ocean scientist.
I was recently a research associate at the University of Washington, and I'm a mom to a five-year-old boy who is a kindergartner here in the Seattle School District.
It is a profound injustice that we are here with children arguing for our right to live on a finite planet.
And the fact that the school district does not recognize the moral imperative to allow these kids and to support and promote the organizing around the strike is heartbreaking as a parent and as a scientist.
We are fighting a fight that is one of the most profoundly difficult fights that anyone has ever fought because we are fighting the most powerful and entrenched economic interests that have ever existed on this planet.
The fossil fuel companies, they want us to be fighting amongst ourselves.
They want us to be mired on the sidelines and not participating in the most powerful and clear way that we can.
The reason why we are striking is because we need to send a global message to these companies and to the brokers in power that it is no longer status quo, that we will no longer sit on the sidelines while the world burns.
It is not our job as scientists to sit on the sidelines and document the world burning.
So I am here to support the organizing of the students, and thank you so much.
I'm here to support the public leaders who understand the scale of the stakes involved.
This is not a joke.
There is no one coming to save us.
There is no one that's going to arrive in 10 years and go, oops, actually, the science was, you know, not quite right.
And by the way, all that organizing, it was for nothing.
That is not the world we are living in.
We are living in a science fiction fantasy where we are foreclosing the future of the children that come after us.
We are acting as terrible ancestors.
So I call upon all the people in the city of Seattle, all the workers, all the parents, all the children, all the teachers, and everyone that can move the needle on this to show up on Friday, show up for yourselves, show up for your family, so that we can have a safe, livable, equitable, and just future for communities in Seattle, communities in Washington, and our global family.
Thank you.
What do we want?
Climate justice.
When do we want it?
Now.
What do we want?
Climate justice.
When do we want it?
Now.
What do we want?
Climate justice.
When do we want it?
Now.
And now we have Lucas Vargas de Petello from 350 Seattle.
He's your name Joe?
Joe Mama.
Hey, thanks for letting me be here today.
I'm Lucas.
I'm an activist with 350 Seattle.
I'm a working member of UAW Local 4121, and I'm a climate scientist at the University of Washington.
When I tell people that I study the physics of our climate, they typically have the same question, which is, You know, how much trouble are we really in here?
Are we really in deep?
And the answer that I always give is that we're only in as much trouble as we are because people don't act on the science that they know is true.
But today I'm here because I have hope that the youth who are organizing around the Seattle climate strike and the Fridays for the Future campaign are showing us that action is the only way we're going to get out of this crisis.
We can't continue to educate our children about the impacts of climate change and expect them to assimilate that into their daily lives without taking action.
Once you know the truth and you know that the system is rigged against you having a livable planet, you can't just go back to the way things were.
It's that same knowledge that the system is rigged against you that is currently driving members of the United Auto Workers Union to go on strikes for better wages and better living conditions when CEOs make fortunes exploiting their labor.
The last thing I want to say is that My parents grew up very working class.
They didn't have a lot of money.
They worked their way through the education system to get advanced degrees.
And so when I was growing up, I basically had to be on my deathbed if I was supposed to miss school.
A lot of children from poor socioeconomic conditions feel that same stress, where they feel like if they miss any school and have any sort of something on their record, they won't be able to achieve the things that their more privileged peers might be able to.
So I strongly encourage the Seattle Public School District to excuse the absences of every youth who wants to participate in this crisis because if they punish those who are lower on the socioeconomic ladder, they punish all of us.
Thank you very much.
Seattle School Board and Superintendent Juneau, you've heard from public officials, from climate scientists, parents, socialists, and students above all.
So the question is, will you make a decision at your meeting tonight and allow excused absences for all the students who will be walking out on Friday?
Most importantly, if you are watching this and you're a person in Seattle who cares about climate change, and I know that our vast majority does, then we need you out there with us on Friday.
So join us to fight for climate justice, to fight for a sustainable planet on Friday, September 20th at 9 a.m.
at Cal Anderson Park.
Thank you, and we're open for questions.
Do you all know how many students are planning on taking part?
How many students will be affected by this?
We currently have about 1,000 students interested in going from our social media campaigns.
And what would it mean for you for the school district or the school board to support that and give you guys a feedback?
If the school district shows us through their tangible action that they support us, it would mean the stress relieved off of the shoulders of thousands of teens that want to participate, knowing that the adults, for once, have our backs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I brought a resolution to the city council this past Monday afternoon, and that was voted on unanimously.
And among other things, the resolution urges the school district to allow excused absences for the students who are walking out.
The resolution also importantly says that city of Seattle public employees have the right to take a day of conscience to join the strike action.
So I hope all public sector employees, not just city, but state employees will also join us.
I don't know exactly how big it will be I do know that it will be historic in the significance of this strike action because of you know it's for example it's historic that for the first time in Seattle's headquarters of Amazon the workers will be going on strike and it is historic that tech workers throughout the world are are helping lead the charge for climate change and demanding that their own companies, you know, become zero carbon emission companies.
And it is historic because young people, teenagers are helping lead the way.
And it is historic because the vast majority of humanity understands that we are on the precipice of climate catastrophe.
What has failed is the lack of political will among elected officials who are tied at the hip with the fossil fuel industry and with big business in general.
And that fight has to start.
The fight against that corporate domination has to start somewhere, everywhere.
And that is why we will be walking out on Friday.