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New Haven Climate Movement’s Girls Speak Out for Climate Justice event.
On Monday, March 9, from 4 to 5 p.m, at the courthouse steps at the corner of Elm and Church streets, New Haven Climate Movement held a Girls Speak Out for Climate Justice event to have young women and girls share their thoughts and call for action on the growing climate disaster. Leaders of different youth climate organizations spoke alongside other high school age students. The Speak Out was followed by a social in the Library Performance Space with trivia, food, and educational videos. This event was organized in solidarity with International Women’s Day.
The event recognized that the young and girls and women will be disproportionately impacted by climate change. According to Oxfam, “when natural disasters strike, they hit poor communities first and worst. And since women make up an estimated 70 percent of those living below the poverty line, they are most likely to bear the heaviest burdens. At the same time, women are often left out of the conversation about adapting to climate change, even though they are sometimes in the best position to provide solutions.”
NHCM also launched their Climate Emergency Art/Poster, TikTok Video, and Essay contests inviting students to enter from March 9 to April 11. Submissions are to communicate how they would like to see action taken on climate change.
The Speak Out event is part of an ongoing campaign to urge immediate action by the City and State to enact strong climate policies following the New Haven Climate Emergency Resolution. NHCM is also working to mobilize residents for to the April 22 Earth Day Strike and the Hartford Strike on the 24th as part of an international week of climate action. (The groups will now have to plan on other creative approaches to a conventional strike due to COVID-19.)
NHCM Youth Action student leaders from Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School, Metropolitan Business Academy, Hopkins School, Sound School, Sacred Heart Academy, Wilbur Cross, Yale, and New Haven Academy have been active in developing strategy, organizing events and protests, creating art, doing outreach, meeting with alders, and managing websites and social media.
The proposal for a Climate Emergency Resolution is based off of the documents from the Climate Mobilization, an organization that develops policy frameworks, messaging, and organizing approaches to accelerate the global transition into an “emergency mode” to address the climate emergency. Their mission is to initiate a WWII-scale mobilization to reverse global warming and the mass extinction of species in order to protect humanity and the natural world from climate catastrophe.
The Emergency Resolution states, “New Haven declares that we face an existential climate emergency that threatens our city, region, state, nation, civilization, the natural world, and humanity.” The Resolution also states that, “New Haven officially commits to leading an emergency mobilization effort that, with appropriate financial and regulatory assistance from state and federal authorities, ends community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by or before December 31, 2030, and immediately initiates an effort to safely draw down carbon from the atmosphere.”
The New Haven Climate Movement (NHCM) is a coalition of individuals and local organizations that are devoted to climate action. NHCM is addressing the climate emergency by focusing on change in New Haven. This movement’s goal is for New Haven to switch from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable energy. NHCM helped write the New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework, an initiative that focuses on cutting back greenhouse gas emissions. NHCM seeks to involve community members by encouraging them to talk to their alders, attending events, and supporting the movement.