New York City says there won’t be any punitive consequences for their 1.1 million public school students who may choose to skip school Friday to participate in a “climate strike.”
Led by a 16-year-old Swedish activist named Greta Thunberg, the strike is set to take place in various major cities all over the world including NYC, where Thunberg is reportedly set to show up in person to lead the movement.
The strike will happen just days before the United Nations for the Climate Action Summit is set to meet on Monday.
And apparently, the adults in charge of New York City think it’s a fantastic idea to turn over a million K-12 kids out into their streets to join the march (and only God knows what else) for a whole day.
“Climate change is real and I’m glad that our young people feel passionately about saving our planet,” tweeted NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson. “And I’m also glad the city is making it easier for them to express themselves by attending the climate change rally. I couldn’t be more proud!”
Kids will need approval from their parents to skip for the demonstrations on Friday. But the school district was under pressure to come up with a solution for the rally on Friday after Thunberg inspired large numbers of students to join her in protests at the U.N in August.
Wait – let me get this straight. The school district, which is supposedly run by grown adults, was “under pressure” from a 16-year-old Swedish girl with a social media microphone?
...Really?
But apparently, the folks in NYC aren’t the only ones who’ve lost what little remains of their common sense. Officials in L.A., Miami, Minneapolis, Seattle, Boston and D.C. are planning their own strikes, in which youth are being encouraged to attend. The movement’s also spread to Sydney, London, Tokyo, Moscow, and São Paulo.
Mobs of millions of children trouncing around the streets of the world’s biggest, busiest and most crime-ridden cities in the name of emotionally-charged “social justice.” What could possibly go wrong?