Niles North participated in the Global Climate Strike on September 20 during homeroom.

The Global Climate Strike is the week long disruption of schools and businesses in order to stress the issue of environmental harm. The purpose is to convince countries’ leaders to devote to helping the environment with harsher climate goals. 

16 year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg is the leader of Global Climate Strike. 

Thunberg traveled from Sweden to attend the Climate Action Summit hosted in New York. 

“This is all wrong,” she said at the summit, “I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!” eco-activist Thunberg angrily said.                                                                              

 Niles North students walked out and listened to speeches made by the strike’s leaders: Student Government’s president junior Ovi Banerjee, and Climate Change Club members junior Elliot Parrish and his sister junior Abigael Parrish. 

“When I announced to the student body and faculty of our school that we were organizing a walkout, the one question everyone asked was: ‘Why are we taking the time out of our busy days to leave the building and walk around it in a circle?’” Elliot Parrish said. “I have an answer to that question. Because the very life of our planet is at stake, and some of us would like to do something about it!”

The speeches emphasized the issue of climate change and their mission to work towards a better environment. Students then walk around the school chanting about saving the planet and then returned to the rest of their day.

“Definitely opened my eyes to an urgent problem,” junior strike participant Angelie Prem said. “And it made me… how do I say this? It made me see the world a different way and this world needs help. It allowed me to believe that I can make a change just with my community.”

Click here for more info on the strike.