About 100 young people gathered in front of city hall Friday and marched on Baker Street for climate action.
The local Fridays for the Future group has been gathering in front of city hall every Friday, but there is a need to keep the group’s momentum up following the 1,000-person march in September, says 16-year-old organizer Jade Osecki.
“We are reaching a bit of a plateau with the movement, and the strikes get a few less people at each time,” she said.
So they decided to couple the strike and protest with a related event, something also related to climate. On this day it was a clothing swap, as a statement about waste of resources and the need to recycle.
“It is an experiment,” Osecki said, “so we didn’t know how it was going to go, but I think it has gone well because a lot of people brought clothing and whatever doesn’t get used is going to the Selkirk College Student Union clothing swap coming up soon.”
She said the strike and protest, along with those across the country, will send a message about credibility.
“Our city council is in the process of making long-term plans about what the city will look like for climate action, and it is really important that they get to see there are numbers out here,” she said.
”We have people out here every single week. And on the bigger level the numbers from Canada, if we say this number of people walked out of school this day, it has some weight behind it for political conversations around climate action.”