A10 The Region The Boston Globe FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2019
Boston and their peers around
the world agree: The only rea-
sonable response to impending
catastrophe is to stop what you
are doing and take to the
streets.
“Thinking, ‘Oh it won’t hap-
pen to us, oh don’t worry, some-
one will save us’ is the wrong
way to think,” said Simon Cher-
now, a 16-year-old junior at
Boston Latin Academy who is
helping to organize the Boston
strike. “The only people who
are going to save us are our-
selves.”
The strike will begin at 10
a.m. in City Hall Plaza; students
from elementary, middle, and
high school, as well as some col-
leges, will converge to listen to
speakers including Gina McCa-
rthy, head of the Environmen-
tal Protection Agency under Ba-
rack Obama, and City Council-
or Michelle Wu before
marching to the State House.
The superintendent of Boston
Public Schools told parents this
week that students could get ex-
cused absences to attend the
strike.
And though the Boston rally
will probably draw the biggest
crowds, organizers have
planned dozens of events across
the state, from a kids’ speak-out
in Truro to an afternoon strike
in Williamstown. Some compa-
nies, including Patagonia and
Ben & Jerry’s, will close their
stores.
For the Boston kids organiz-
ing the strike, the daunting task
of saving the planet can some-
times seem to be made up al-
most wholly of logistics. They
have spent hours applying for
permits, drawing up a detailed
budget (then cutting it in half),
negotiating prices with Throne
Depot (a portable toilet compa-
ny), training dozens of mar-
shals, designing a logo (bold let-
ters inside a black and white
sunflower), enlisting speakers,
writing press releases, and
painting enormous banners.
But beyond those efforts, the
students are also waging a phil-
uCLIMATE STRIKE
Continued from Page A
osophical battle, attempting to
convince both their peers and
their elders that there is actual
hope of reversing the climate
crisis before it’s too late. They
often refer to a 2018 report
from the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change,
which said that in order to hold
off further global warming,
greenhouse pollution levels
must fall by 45 percent by 2030
— 11 years away. That length of
time has become a mantra to
the young activists.
“We still have 11 years,” said
Saya Ameli Hajebi, a 17-year-
old senior at Brookline High
who will be speaking at the
strike. “We better make those
11 years count.”
Born in Tehran, Hajebi
moved to Boston when she was
9, and now lives with her moth-
er, younger brother, and a large
rabbit named Fandogh in a
two-bedroom apartment in
Brookline. When she started
high school, she was busy: She
liked diving and doing parkourand taking apart her computer
to rebuild it better. Hajebi
didn’t intend to join her
school’s environmental club.
“We’re going to just sit
around a table and complain.
What’s the point?” she said. But
the club’s adviser kept prodding
her, so finally she showed up to
a meeting. She was surprised by
what she found there: students
were drafting a resolution for a
3-cent gas tax in Brookline.
Hajebi began working on
the proposal, and the next sum-
mer she joined Sunrise, a hub
of youth climate activism. Her
mother initially worried about
her becoming an activist, fear-
ing it might be dangerous to be
a visible troublemaker, as it was
back in Tehran. But last Decem-
ber, with her mother’s blessing,
Hajebi participated in a sit-in at
Nancy Pelosi’s office in Wash-
ington, D.C.
When she considers the
grand notion of climate change,
she often thinks about a single
mountain, the Damavand, inIran.
“It’s got a snowcap, and it’s
got this huge field of bright red,
fiery flowers right in front. I’ve
never been there,” Hajebi said.
“I was just like, man, I really
don’t want those flowers to die.
I really want to hike that moun-
tain someday.”
Other students learned how
to organize by throwing them-
selves into other issues first.
Amalia Hochman was a rela-
tively new student at Somer-
ville High on the day of the
Parkland school shooting in- That night, scrolling
through her phone before going
to bed, she saw a post on Snap-
chat from another student at
her school: “We have to orga-
nize. Let’s go on strike. Every-
body meet in the library after
school.”
Soon Hochman, who is now
17, was walking out of class ev-
ery Wednesday, agitating with
other students for a statewide
“red flag” bill that would tem-
porarily remove guns from peo-
ple considered dangerous to
themselves or others. Hochman
said she often forgot to eat and
couldn’tkeepupwithher
schoolwork — but she was also
ecstatic. The bill was signed in-
to law in the summer of 2018.
“I never felt like I had
worked for something that real-
ly mattered before,” Hochman
said. She had seen how a small
group of students who initially
had no idea what they were do-
ing could actually help change
the law.
In her junior year, she took
an environmental science class
and came to believe that the
fossil fuel companies were not
so different from the gun com-
panies she and her peers had
battled. In both cases, Hoch-
man saw major corporations
profiting from something dan-
gerous and using those profits
to support national policies
that protected them.
“It seemed like a similar
fight,” she said. “There are these
people who care more aboutmoney than they do about peo-
ple.”
She helped to organize three
smaller climate strikes in the
spring, and now is one of two
general coordinators of Friday’s
strike.
“Ideally you get to grow up
and be a kid and have a life,”
Hochman said. But, she added,
“It just doesn’t seem like an op-
tion to me to not do some-
thing.”
On a recent evening during
rush hour, Hochman and three
other student activists boarded
an Orange Line train to Forest
Hills. They were wearing
Birkenstocks and jean shorts
and carrying backpacks, and
they were giddy, experimenting
with a new type of outreach
where they sang a song about
the upcoming strike and passed
out fliers on the train. It re-
quired a thrilling disruption of
business as usual — an in-your-
face version of the strike from
school.
“The first time we did it, I
was terrified,” Hochman said.
Now, the train they boarded
was so crowded with commut-
ers that the students could
barely move.
“This is un-ideal,” Hochman
whispered.
Audrey Lin, an 18-year-old
from Watertown who is also a
general coordinator of the
strike, had printed out hun-
dreds of fliers to hand out as
they walked the length of the
train. But they were walled in
by a mass of commuters who
were surely not eager to hear a
song.
“Should we do it?” Lin
asked, as riders jostled them.
“Right now?”
There wasn’t much time:
Soon the train would pull in
and they would lose their
chance. So Lin began to sing,
and the others quickly joined
in, their voices rising bright and
defiant above the crowd.Zoe Greenberg can be reached at
[email protected].
Follow her on Twitter
@zoegberg.Forclimatestrike,studentshavedonetheirhomework
BARRY CHIN/GLOBE STAFF
Audrey Lin (foreground) of Watertown and Amalia Hochman of Somerville didn’t let Orange Line crowds stop them.