This is not a drill!
Fire Drill Fridays are headed to Downtown Los Angeles and our CEO Surina Khan and Chief Program Strategist Bia Vieira will be there to represent the Women’s Foundation of California.
As Greta Thurnbergh made clear, “This is a crisis. We have to act like our house is on fire, because it is.” And we need to act accordingly. Youth climate strikers took to the streets on September 20, 2019 and Fire Drill Fridays have been an extension of that bold call to action on the climate crisis.
With Fire Drill Fridays, Jane Fonda and Greenpeace USA anchored fourteen continuous weeks of protests in Washington D.C. alongside a dynamic crew of movement makers, indigenous leaders, scientists, celebrities, and community members young and old. Now, after five arrests, Jane Fonda is bringing the action to California where rallies will take place on the first Friday of every month.
We, at the Women’s Foundation of California, couldn’t help but answer the call. We’re bringing our feminist leadership to the cause.
As Jane Fonda herself said, “(W)e have little more than a decade to take bold, ambitious action to transition our economy off of fossil fuels and onto clean, renewable energy. We need a Green New Deal to mobilize our government and every sector of the economy to tackle the overlapping crises of climate change, inequality, and structural racism at the scale and speed our communities require. We need and deserve a world beyond fossil fuels…prioritizing justice and equity for working people and communities of color on the frontlines of climate disaster and fossil fuel exploitation, so the clean energy transformation leaves nobody behind.”
For an issue as critical and complicated as climate change, we need to come together and put ourselves on a path towards solutions. Greta has taken that action. Jane has taken that action. And we are taking that action. We need women and gender non-conforming folks to be a part of those actions, conversations, and solutions.
Whether we are joining Jane Fonda on the streets of Downtown Los Angeles or investing in the work of our partners advancing environmental justice campaigns in Fresno, we are ready to do our part to tackle the climate crisis. Especially as an feminist organization dedicated to advancing racial, gender, and economic justice, we face the reality that the impacts of climate change disproportionalely impact women.
Professor of gender and development at University of East Anglia, Nitya Rao, summarizes her research on the topic in the following terms, “What we found is that climate change and environmental stress are common factors that intensify pre-existing disadvantages or gender…inequalities.”
In the face of these devastating trends, we also see young feminist leadership among women like Nadia Nazar, Isra Hirsi, and Mari Copeny. Each of these young women of color take courageous action on environmental issues and encourage others to do the same. And that is where we need to continue to focus our energy and our attention.
When we come together, when we take to the streets, when we sound the alarm, we can do big ambitious things. Together we can tackle our climate crisis before it’s too late.