The Tufts Daily - Monday, September 23, 2019

Page 1

The Blank Quintet takes its performance to Cambridge, Medford next see ARTS&LIVING / PAGE 8

PHOTO SPREAD

Climate strike takes over Boston, Campus Center

Football loses against Williams, faces Amherst this weekend see SPORTS / BACK PAGE

SEE PHOTO SPREAD / PAGE 6

THE

VOLUME LXXVIII, ISSUE 12

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T HE T UFTS DAILY Monday, September 23, 2019

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

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Tufts students participate in global climate strike in Boston

CONNOR DALE / THE TUFTS DAILY

Protestors cross the street to City Hall Plaza to join the Boston climate strike on Sept. 20. by Connor Dale News Editor

In a crowd outside the Mayer Campus Center that overflowed onto Talbot Ave., university students attended a strike last Friday to demand action on the climate crisis before joining a crowd of more than 7,000 protestors at City Hall Plaza in Boston. The Tufts contingent, organized by Sunrise Movement Tufts, Tufts Climate Action and a coalition of other activism groups on campus, coincided with a day of global climate protests in which masses of young people on every continent poured into the streets to denounce government inaction on climate change. “My priority right now is not my math class,” Caitlin Colino, an organizer for Sunrise Movement Tufts who put together

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much of the action leading up to Friday’s strike, said. “My priority right now is saying to our governments that radical policy change has to be made immediately in order to save our planet.” Students congregated outside the Campus Center around 10:15 a.m. on Friday, where Ella McDonald, another organizer for Sunrise Movement Tufts, energized the crowd with a collection of songs and chants. Colino, a sophomore, and fellow organizer Olivia Freiwald then addressed the group. “I’m so honored to be here and to know that you are fighting here too,” Colino said. Colino and Freiwald, a junior, told stories of their own personal connections to the climate crisis. They emphasized climate change’s disproportionate impact on low-income communities and communi-

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ties of color, highlighting the need for environmental justice, a transition that invests in prosperity for those on the front lines of poverty and pollution, to be part of any government action regarding the climate. Above all, the two activists stressed the urgency of the situation. “Business as usual is a death sentence for our generation,” Freiwald said, inciting a roar of applause from the crowd of students. Friday’s strike was supported by a coalition of Tufts activism groups including Students for Environmental Awareness, Tufts Labor Coalition, United for Immigrant Justice and more than ten others. Colino also said that while initially thinking about how to participate in Friday’s global action, Sunrise Movement Tufts was planning on simply offering an easy way for students to get to the strike in Boston.

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However, she said that the groups decided to hold their own strike at Tufts in order to call attention to the university’s role in perpetuating the climate crisis through its investments in the fossil fuel industry. “We want to send a message that students here — including alumni, faculty and grad students — all care about the university’s involvement in perpetuating and causing climate change,” Hanna Carr, an organizer for Tufts Climate Action, said. “And we hope that through our activism, the university will ultimately divest from fossil fuels.” Tufts Climate Action has been pressuring the university to divest from its investments in fossil fuels, which account for 2% of the university’s total assets, since

NEWS............................................1 FEATURES.................................4 PHOTO SPREAD.....................6 ARTS&LIVING.........................8

see CLIMATE STRIKE, page 2

FUN&GAMES.........................10 OPINION....................................11 SPORTS............................ BACK


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