Youth Climate Activism Is Challenging Societal Norms
Young people are organizing in new ways to inspire change.
By Ray DePaul
12/29/2024
Excerpt of pamphlet handed to attendees. (Ray DePaul & Sustaining All Life)
Climate Week in New York City is an opportunity to rally climate activists and have them participate in different topical protests and events related to various facets of the climate movement.
Sustaining All Life (SAL), a division of their parent organization United to End Racism, facilitates listening circles for participants to vent their frustrations and speak about their lived experiences, typically related to climate change. “The Central Role of Young People in the Climate Movement,” was only one of many panels hosted by two young climate activists from SAL during NYC’s Climate Week.
Panelist Ida Schenck, 17, spoke to a reporter about how youth advocacy in the climate movement is pivotal.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What motivated you to participate in the panel today and what does it mean to you?
I am a part of the larger organization evaluation counseling, which is a kind of peer counseling [where we] just support people in their lives more broadly, and Sustaining All Life is our climate change leg of the organization. [We use] those tools in a broader context to support activists in any way they need support because we know burnout is a big issue. Any place in my life where there’s an opportunity to get involved, I will go and get involved. It’s cool to be recognized for the work that you do.
Q: What do you think is the special perspective the youth bring to climate activism?
We’re more fresh in the world. We’re talking about the ways that as you get older you kind of lose the excitement, the ability to connect as easily as people, to play and have that “freeness.”
We bring more of a joyful perspective. We see so much that adults don’t see and we can see how important this is because it’s our lives. It’s all of our futures. It’s the dreams we haven’t even had a chance at that are on the line. Adults don’t know how to work social media and get stuff into the mainstream, and we know the trends. We know how to make things attractive to people and make climate change more accessible.
Q: What role do you think being so politically engaged from such a young age has played in your life?
Protests are such a powerful place to like hear people’s stories and starting advocacy at age nine taught me this is all connected. You can be at a climate protest and they talk about how racism or sexism impacts climate change or laws that are passing. It helped me be more engaged in the world as a bigger context, instead of just my life. To see perspective on the things that were happening in my life, and to see the personal is political and how it’s all connected.
Q: How do you think that activists can account for colonization and oppression, like within climate activism?
Oppression is everywhere. Even if your group is not working across lines of oppression, it’s still the ways that we’ve been socialized to act. You just act in ways that aren’t actually how people would act. Women silence themselves a lot, because even if you’re working with all women, you’re taught to act demure, but quiet and subservient.
Q: Do you think that there are challenges to being so young in the fight for activism, for climate change?
I remembered my story of having this protest at the mayor’s office, and [the office workers] gave us coloring books titled “It’s Always Raining In New Orleans.” When it rains, we need pumps to pump the water out into the lake, or else it’ll creep in and flood because we’re under sea level. If the pumps break, it’ll flood if it’s not raining. The book was just about that, which is an infrastructure issue and an issue with the way New Orleans is built.
We went there to tell them they needed to do more about the infrastructure, and they gave us an educational book about pumps. It felt condescending and if you gave us that, you did not hear anything we said. In response, we partnered with the neighboring art school students and designed our book: “We’re Always Protesting in New Orleans,” about oil executives and climate change in New Orleans.
Q: How do you feel like the Youth Climate Movement is doing? Is there progression in the time that you’ve been participating?
COVID-19 hit the Youth Climate movement because the only organizing we could do was without that human connection and that talking face to face, without that togetherness. If we don’t have the human connection young people are so good at, young people don’t want to be a part of it. New Orleans is a pretty poor liberal southern city. It’s hard to organize, it’s hard to find the time or the mental bandwidth. I’ve struggled with that, and that’s why the tools of SAL have been so good for me.
Q: When was the first time you noticed a bandwidth issue and how did you overcome it?
I remember having no time during junior year and feeling like I was going crazy because I had no time for myself. Every single second of the day I had to do some kind of homework and I was like, “How, on top of this, am I supposed to organize and make people care about climate change when all I want to do is sleep?” I got to express those feelings and cry after feeling like I was going crazy, how tired I was and how horrible everything felt. I was like, “Okay, maybe I have it in me to care about climate change. I have it in me to see climate change is more important than this assignment.” Venting has been helpful and it gave me a new perspective on the situation. It was like a deep breath, a step back.
Q: How do you think that rules to stay in line impact Youth Climate advocacy?
We’re socialized to follow needless rules and a lot of rules keep young people silent. For example, if a young person has a great idea and wants to bring it to the school legislature, but they don’t do it in the right way, it gets dismissed. The rules matter more to adults sometimes than what you’re saying. They can have no flexibility, and when you’re just following these rules that don’t make sense, it kills activism.