Postcards from the Rogue Valley

“I’ve often wondered why I didn’t protest more as a teen-ager,” writes Alexandra Schwartz, a child of the nineties, in this week’s New Yorker. “Surely there was a lot to be mad about.”

My second day of high school, in New York, fell on September 11, 2001. A year and a half later, hundreds of thousands of people, here and around the world, protested against the mad impending war in Iraq. Then the war began, and the war dragged on. There were marches, and sometimes my friends and I went to them, but their attendance did not impress. We had other causes, too; I remember classmates peeling themselves off the floor where they had fallen asleep, after a party, to catch the dawn bus to D.C. for a pro-choice rally. These things mattered. We weren’t apathetic. But I don’t know if it felt like we could truly change a disastrous war by marching. It seemed a bit retro, a little vain, even. Who was listening? . . .

The teens who, galvanized by the astonishing sixteen-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, took to the streets on Friday for a ‘school strike’ in cities spanning our shared, imperiled globe, are in a different position. They have been drafted, in the war against climate change; either they, and their children, will win, or, as seems increasingly, terrifyingly possible, they will die trying, and they have risen to confront that challenge in magnificent form. The burden of the climate crisis is not evenly distributed: it falls more heavily on the poor, the indigenous, on those forced to leave places where rising temperatures have already begun to smother life. But teens are nonetheless stuck in a shared predicament, and they have put the rest of the world on notice that they have no intention of going down easy.

Here in Ashland this Friday the 20^th, approximately 200 local high school students joined their peers worldwide in marching and speeches. They gathered in the town’s Lithia Plaza, where 100 years ago settlers would hitch their horses, trade wheat for flour or purchase lumber.

When I arrived, the plaza was filled with aging boomers like me (of which there are many in Ashland), some of whom may have cut their protest teeth in antiwar demonstrations 50 years ago. To be sure, there were some families and Millennials cheering on the youth, but it was a work day, and the retired and semi-retired made the most noise and carried the best signs.

The student speakers (which included those who braved the open mic that followed the scheduled speeches) took the stage. 

“Dear Mitch McConnell, it feels odd appealing to the morality of a man who is unabashedly immoral,” began Maiah.

“When I look to the future,” said Leanne, striking a brighter note, “I see renewable energy, I see fields of solar panels and wind turbines, I see healthy forests and jungles that are being replanted instead of cut down.”

Eight-year-old Brianna, the one elementary student on stage, explained: “I have a job, a job that represents being plastic free in the deep dark ocean and a healthy earth.” Every Friday, she spends her lunch holding a vigil for the planet in the plaza where we stood.

Several students shared songs and poems. “We’re going to strike ‘cause our waters are rising/We’re going to strike ‘cause our people are dying/We’re going to strike for life and everything we love/We’re going to strike for you, will you strike for us? . . .”

“How do we kindle the same worldwide concern for our burning planet that accompanied the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral?” Damian wondered. 

“Go vegan!” urged Gwen, reminding us that the methane emissions of livestock make some quip that cows are the cause of global warming.

Lilly assailed the massive fracked gas export pipeline that would flow across Southern Oregon, if approved.

Erin talked about the power of voting. “Get ready for the largest youth voter turnout in history,” she warned. “The youth vote will transform American politics. When I cast my first ballot in 2020, two days after my 18^thbirthday, I’ll be a proud part of that change.”

As the students entered Lithia Plaza to shouts of “nice job,” I surprised myself by suddenly breaking into tears. Having spent half a century championing youth voice and vision, it is moments like these that make my world go around. But what a world it has become. My darker half couldn’t stop thinking of Jackson Browne’s 1974 song, “Before The Deluge.”

Three thousand miles to the east, the now legendary Greta Thunberg told thousands of school strikers in Manhattan: “We are not just some young people skipping school. We are a wave of change. Together, we are unstoppable.”  

I so hope she is right.

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