Gavin MacRae photos
Comox Valley Students ‘Stand up, Fight Back’ for Climate Action
A jovial yet determined crowd of student strikers and adult supporters over 250 strong marched through downtown Courtenay Friday, to demand action on climate change.
The protest started with a rally at Courtenay City Hall.
The crowd cheered as speakers said it was time to “stand up and fight back” against fossil fuel interests and insufficient government action.
“We are here today under a unified cause to protest climate change,” said Nalan Goosen, a co-organizer of the event.
Speaking through a megaphone, Goosen said investments in the tar sands and other fossil fuel infrastructure make Canadian banks culpable for climate change.
To showcase this, the demonstration traced a serpentine route through the downtown to pause and protest at CIBC, Bank of Montreal, and Scotia Bank.
Outside CIBC the crowd chanted, “No more coal, no more oil, keep the carbon in the soil!”
At Bank of Montreal the rallying cry was, “What do we want? Climate Action! When do we want it? Now!”
Finally, the Scotia Bank received, “Corporate greed we must fight, polluting earth is not a right!”
The crowd also made a stop at the office of MLA Ronna-Rae Leonard, where she and MP Gord Johns spoke with the demonstrators.
Both politicians gave short impromptu speeches on the importance of protecting the environment.
Students put questions to Leonard and Johns about increasing climate education in the school system, protecting old-growth forest and marine areas and fighting the Trans Mountain pipeline.
The answers met with some applause, and Goosen said he was hopeful Leonard would bring the demonstrators’ concerns about old-growth logging to Doug Donaldson, BC’s Minister of Forests. Goosen was also hopeful Johns would echo the students’ concern over the climate crisis in Ottawa.
The protest ended with a return to City Hall.
Students said all but two schools in Comox and Courtenay were represented among the protesters.
“The turnout was amazing,” said Mackai Sharp, a co-organizer of the protest. “The last two events had under 35 people.”
Sharp and Goosen are leaders of the Comox Valley-based Youth Environmental Action, which planned the protest. The group has a separate arm for adults named Adult Allies for Youth Environmental Action.
”This will not be our last protest, said Goosen. “We don’t have very long to solve the climate crisis, so this movement of youth empowerment is essential to our health and survival.”
Gavin MacRae is the assistant editor of Watershed Sentinel, which is a publishing partner of Decafnation
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A friend living in the USA had a chat with some locals about Trump. Here was a growing consensus there. I would submit that the same is true in the Comox Valley. What our SD needs is a healthy dose of student democracy.
Here is what was sent to me:
We had a discussion on the importance of a free press yesterday in the discussion group. Oddly enough, one factor which members raised as a contributory factor in the Trumpian attacks on media is the lack of civics education in US schools – the population does not know the relationship between the media and good government. – and the lack of training in critical thinking skills. Seems to me I heard similar complaints in Canada over the years.