By Sebastian Lopez

In September, students across the Bay Area organized multiple protests against our local politicians to acknowledge that climate change is real. Students skipped school to go to their nearest cities or towns to protest with signs of hope and voices of need to get our government to listen to us. This protest was the most impactful, as it showed that the protesters were mostly young teens. However, out of all the teens and adults that joined the protest, only ten students and two teachers who chaperone them were from AHS.

         

Our fellow students from AHS in the Green Club went to a march in San Francisco to join other students to let our local government know that we care for our future and surroundings. The ten students and two teacher advisors should not just be the only people from our school to join this protest. There must be more participation so our voice will be heard with other students who want our policies to change, so everyone’s future will be better.

         

These proud environmental organizations were created by the efforts of young students  who care about what their future looks like. The Green Club, took the opportunity to join a protest with organizations like this and it was worth their time, getting excused from school to join this cause because these students care about what their future looks like. These students have great courage to go to these protests as this was also an important choice they all made because it makes an impact on us, nationally.

         

Other students should participate with these students to acknowledge the fact that “our planet is literally dying” and we tell people, to get others to help us. Paying attention to our surroundings is part of the participation and we shouldn’t be blind with these issues instead, we should control our future. Advocating for climate change is one example of an issue that students felt very passionate about. Multiple issues we should stand up to, including minimum wage, gender violence, LGBTQ rights, etc. These issues will always be debated against by adults who oppose our rights, look down on us and who believe we are still too young to understand politics. We must maintain  a strong commitment of proving to these lawmakers that we have control of our future.

         

Last year, AHS created two protests, one for gun control and another for climate change. These protests were successful because of the participation of students that joined the fight to get their point through. These were both worth their time and it is a good thing that students joined together to make a point that they all want the policy to change. The logical point to if we all participate in making a point to we want change to happen now, we all must participate.

         

With all this participation, we should first join a march. An upcoming march is the Women’s March, next year in January 2020. We all must participate and join this march to not only support women who are oppressed everyday around the world, but to expand a positive cause to the injustice and to have our policies change. We all should participate in changing our policies, we can have control with our future to help others.