
Photo: In August 2018, outside the Swedish parliament building, Greta Thunberg started a school strike for the climate. (Anders Hellberg)
On August 20, 2018 a fourteen-year-old Swedish schoolgirl sat down alone in front of the Swedish Parliament with a sign saying “Student Strike for Climate.” Soon thousands of students around the world began joining her weekly actions. By March 15, 2019 one-and-a-half million students from 2,233 cities and towns in 128 countries on all seven continents joined the strike. Now Greta Thunberg and her fellow student strikers around the world are asking grownups to join the strikes – starting on September 20.
This is our invitation. Starting on Friday 20 September we will kickstart a week of climate action with a worldwide strike for the climate. We’re asking adults to step up alongside us. There are many different plans under way in different parts of the world for adults to join together and step up and out of your comfort zone for our climate. Let’s all join together, with your neighbors, co-workers, friends, family and go out on to the streets to make your voices heard and make this a turning point in our history.
For an account of their appeal, see “Young people have led the climate strikes. Now we need adults to join us too.”