Youth group plans 3-day DC rally to highlight climate change
Thousands of millennials are expected to descend on Washington, D.C., for a three-day rally to demand action on climate change.
The march, which is being organized by the environmental advocacy group Zero Hour, is set to run for three days, from July 19 to 21, featuring a different theme each day. There will be a lobby day, an art festival day, and on the third day organizers are planning a large youth climate march.
“Youth are lobbying on Capitol Hill for common sense climate change policy," a Zero Hour statement on the group's Facebook page reads. "We will be speaking to our elected representatives in Congress about what we need from them in order to have a livable future."
“The demands that we will be delivering during this lobby day are the same demands that we will be marching for on July 21st,” the statement says.
Iris Fen Gillingham, a member of the Zero Hour board of directors, said that climate change forced her family to stop vegetable farming for a living.
"And this is nothing compared to what many front line communities are experiencing today," she said in an email to ABC News.
“Right now many of our leaders are not thinking about our lives and as a youth that is painful to see, but it also is motivating us to stand up and speak.”
The group will use art and music to engage the D.C. community for climate action and bring cultural diversity to the issue, according to the Zero Hour statement. The young people will use workshops, exhibitions and performances to highlight how climate has impacted their lives and livelihood.
“This issue is very real to us because it's our communities that are feeling the negative effects of climate change and things that are contributing to it -- like fossil fuel extraction, our food system and consumerism," Fen Gillingham said.
"We want to uplift youth voices around climate change and call upon our leaders to take action around the defining issue of our time."
At the same time more than a dozen sister marches are expected to take place around the U.S. and across the world -- including Miami, New York City, Los Angeles, London, Sao Paolo, Nuremberg and Kenya. The group is expecting thousands of young people across the globe to join the cause.
