Gallery • 4 Photos

Photo Submitted by Katie Dahiya

People line up to protest holding signs of a better future.

The MN Youth Climate Strike is constantly hosting and planning climate strikes but not many people know about the efforts taken to plan one. The most recent strike was on February 27 in partnership with SEIU (Service Employees International Union). The main purposes of this strike were to give families in need pay raises so they can live better, and for corporate employers to take responsibility for their carbon footprint. The protest drew roughly 4,000 people to downtown Minneapolis as they marched around the skyways and large corporations. 

Each protest that the MN Youth Climate Strike Team holds, it takes them months to plan and work out details to figure out how to safely protest for their beliefs.

For the last strike, MN Youth Climate Strike member Galen Juliusson said, “We met with SEIU for a meeting and figured out the logistics and to make sure what the demands of the strike were.”

Some of the major logistics for planning a strike are who is speaking, leading chants and guiding the protestors; and routes for the strike.

The amount of detail that goes into ensuring that the strike route will be safe for thousands of people protesting is extremely important. 

Katie Dahiya, another member of the MN Youth Climate Strike said, “A couple of the group walked around and scouted various locations for the strike across downtown to find the safest and most convenient route.”

The MN Youth Climate Strike has many meetings to iron out details and make the strike the most effective as possible. After everything is planned, their next task is to publicize and announce the strike details. To do this in the most efficient way, the MN Youth Climate Strike utilizes social media to reach a wide variety of communities, especially the younger demographic of people.

On the day of the last planned strike, the organizers met up before at a cafe and walked to the strike together. Once they were there, the leaders lead the protesters around Minneapolis with SEIU representatives protesting for their demands of corporations. To reach people who could not attend, the MN climate strike live-streamed the event on Instagram so that all could feel present. 

This last strike on February 27 had a successful turnout but the strike is still waiting on a response from some corporations about their demands.