LOS ANGELES _ Young people are taking to the street again to protest inaction on climate change, joining Swedish teen Greta Thunberg and other activists in a school strike Friday in Los Angeles.
Thunberg will join nearly a dozen California teen and college-age activists, who will combine protests for global climate action with a push for state and local leaders to phase out fossil fuel production. Among their demands of Gov. Gavin Newsom and other politicians: A halt to new oil drilling and a 2,500-foot buffer between drill sites and homes.
"We're not going to stop striking until they start listening to us," said Chandini Brennan Agarwal, 16, a 10th-grader at New West Charter School on L.A.'s Westside and one of the strike organizers. "Even though our focus this time is oil wells in California, we're still trying to send a message about the climate crisis to politicians worldwide."
Thunberg is the most prominent face of the youth climate movement that has swept the globe since she began launching school strikes in her home country last year. She traveled to the U.S. in a zero-emissions sailboat in August, delivering a powerful speech at the United Nations climate summit in September excoriating world leaders for their inaction and "empty words."
She is expected to be the final keynote speaker at Friday's march and rally, scheduled to begin about noon near City Hall.
The demonstration is the latest groundswell of action by the youth climate movement, which has organized students across the globe in coordinated school strikes on Fridays to urge bold action to confront global warming.
Several local activists scheduled to speak Friday will highlight their experiences living in the shadow of fossil fuel industries in some of L.A.'s most polluted communities, where residents have long fought for clean air and environmental justice.
"We have oil drilling right next to our homes, we have oil refineries," said Nizgui Gomez, a 17-year-old from Wilmington and a first-year student at Santa Monica College. "Yeah, we are making little changes, but that's not enough."
The demonstration comes after the much-anticipated U.N. climate summit in September failed to deliver the bold action demanded by young people. None of the world's biggest nations made new commitments to cut emissions, an outcome that served only to galvanize the youth movement's mission.
Since the summit, Thunberg has made her way across the United States and Canada, participating in strikes in different cities along the way. L.A.-based organizers said Thunberg's team approached them a few weeks ago about convening a climate strike on Nov. 1 and that it shaped up quickly after that. This week, she made headlines by declining an international environmental award, saying "the climate movement does not need any more prizes."
Brennan Agarwal said the demonstration will seek to elevate the stories of young people and "how the climate crisis is affecting us, how we are worried about our futures, or about even having a future."
"We don't want politicians to speak, we want the frontline youth," Brennan Agarwal said. "We want the politicians to listen."
Organizers said they expect a few thousand young people to attend. For some, it's not their only climate-related absence this week. Some students, including Agarwal and Gomez, had classes canceled after wind-driven wildfires broke out and fouled the air with lung-damaging smoke.
In a statement, Los Angeles Unified School District said it would excuse absences of students whose parents check them out of school to participate in Friday's climate strike "due to the educational component," but would not provide supervision for any student who leaves campus to participate in the City Hall rally.
Instead, the district said it would bring students together in a "virtual gathering" by livestreaming Thunberg's remarks on its website to play in classrooms.
"Schools will also be holding climate forums and organizing other activities to help students discuss climate issues and become advocates for change," spokeswoman Shannon Haber said in the statement.
