California teen: I’m marching 266 miles, from Paradise to San Francisco, for climate justice

Growing up in Richmond, I knew about the climate crisis. On hikes with my family, I’d wonder whether the plants and animals we saw were going extinct. I remember asking my dad to take me to see a glacier before they all melted away. I remember how the Richmond oil refinery caused a thick black coating on the bark of our trees.

The weight of that was too much for my small shoulders to carry, and my parents could tell. When I was 7 years old, they sat my brother and my sister and I down and told us that the adults would take care of it. They said we didn’t have to worry.

When I moved to Sebastopol at age 10, I realized that everything would not be okay. The adults weren’t taking care of it.

Every fall, fires demolish communities around me, leaving people houseless and jobless. They fill the air with toxic smoke so thick that the sun looks like a coin in the sky. I’ve prepared to evacuate 10 times, stuffing beloved items in my backpack and saying goodbye to my house. I’ve had to look into my sister’s wide eyes over and over and tell her the truth — that I didn’t know if our house would be standing when we returned.

The climate crisis isn’t a future threat. It’s as real and tangible as the ash drifting across the sky. I’m no longer comforted by the thought that adults will clean up their mess. I feel outraged and hopeless.

That’s why I’m marching 266 miles, from Paradise to San Francisco, with fellow youth activists from the Sunrise Movement. We’re marching for climate justice and fighting for every community.

We dare to dream of a California where the air is safe to breathe, the water safe to drink and fire seasons are much less destructive. We dream of a world where everyone can sleep easily, knowing that when — because it’s no longer if but when — the fires come, they’ll still have a place to live and the guarantee of a job rebuilding their community to make it stronger.

When my little sister joined Sunrise, I felt just how deeply our leaders have betrayed younger generations. My sister is in middle school, yet I’ve watched her take on leadership roles for direct actions, fret over strategy and stay up late to coordinate logistics. Should 14-year-olds be shouldering the responsibility of creating a better future?

I’m marching from Paradise — the site of the infamous Camp Fire — to San Francisco because I want my 14-year-old sister to get to just be a kid. She should worry about high school, not whether or not she’ll still have a home next fall, and not whether or not she can make our leaders take responsibility for the crisis they created.

I should get to be a teenager, too. But I know that if I don’t step up to fight for my little sister, nobody will.

To Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Speaker Nancy Pelosi: It’s your responsibility to lead us in this fight and you are failing us. Your constituents are counting on you to support a robust Civilian Climate Corps — the first big investment in a Green New Deal that will guarantee green jobs so that we as a nation can build back better. And so that my sister can be a kid again.