By Steve Otto
It was announced as “Visions for Our Future: Youth Climate Action Rally,” and it started at Naftzger Park. About a hundred or more area high school and college students marched around a few blocks, then came back for a rally.It was nice to see so many young people concerned about climate change. Just today the morning national news TV show covered extreme record heat along the entire western US coastal states, with temperatures well over 100 in many of those states. In many of these places the temperatures were record highs. Also of concern were wildfires and drought.
At the same time there is massive rains and flooding all along the eastern coastal states. Again there are record rains. And through all of this, we still have conservative politicians, such as former President Donald Trump, trying to claim that climate change does not even exist.
The young people who came out for Saturday’s march were not about to let the naysayers have their way. Many of these young people demonstrated that they are determined to hold modern day politician accountable for their actions or lack of.
Among the speakers was Marissa Rapp, one of the organizers of the event, who complained that city officials did not pay much attention to those who approached them over issues of the environment and climate change.
Anjali Singh stressed that we have a climate crisis.
“The city does not see this as important,” she said. “But the teenagers do see it as important.”
“Kansas doesn’t have a plan,” said Jason lin. He said the city needs to work on a plan for renewable energy.
He said that Wichita and Sedgewick need to step up and take action.
He also said that every minute that goes by where we don’t act time is wasted. He sited some statistics that show Wichita has a terrible record for taking action on renewable energy.
Another speaker Alice Fitzgerald said that Wichita ignores climate change. She gave the example of a program in Toronto where they reduced plastic bags by about 250 million.[1]
Jarod Hudson spoke about the affects of poverty as such people are affected by climate change and other economic issues.
“Working class has struggled,” he said. “My mom worked a lot of jobs. None of them paid a livable wage.”
He said politicians constantly focus on bringing in jobs, but not jobs that pay a livable wage. He discussed all the empty platitudes that politicians make when running for office, but they then ignore chronic poverty after they get in office.
“They want us to pull us up by our boot straps, our boot straps have fallen off from us trying to pull us up by them,” he said.
I’m really happy so see so many progressive young people. I especially like to see young Marxist people. And that is especially important here in Wichita, a bastion of ultra-conservatism. Maybe finally after all these years
[1] See Is Toronto Finally Ready to Break Up with Plastic Bags?