On April 22, around 200 people rallied at Amherst Common to call for climate action in the town and surrounding areas in an Earth Day celebration.

The event was organized by the Sunrise Movement of the Pioneer Valley, including representatives from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Smith College and Mount Holyoke College. Other schools and organizations present included Amherst High School, Northampton High School, Mount Holyoke High School, Youth Climate Action Now and Indivisible Northampton.

Earth Day was founded 55 years ago by former Senator Gaylord Nelson, who was inspired by the student anti-war protests of the time.

On April 22, 1970, 20 million people showed up for the fight against pollution and for conservation of the Earth and to stand up against negative climate impacts made by years of industrial development.

Recently, President Donald Trump has taken many legislative actions against climate change initiatives, including signing an executive order that instructed the Department of Justice to stop enforcing state climate laws and withdrawing from the Paris Climate agreement.

At 2:30 p.m., around 20 UMass Sunrise members gathered on the South Lawn for art building, music and conversation before marching into downtown Amherst to meet their collaborators to rally for climate justice. Specifically, for the town of Amherst to back an act that supports the Climate superfund that was recently passed in Northampton, and call for action against current administrative actions.

“Every major victory in this movement has come from people like us. Young people, students, workers, organizers who refuse to be silent,” said Sarah Jones, a sophomore natural resource conservation major, an action team leader for the UMass Sunrise Movement and organizer of the event. “We took to the streets and made our voices impossible to ignore.”

Jones said the rally was to call attention to the billionaires and corporations who profit from the destruction of the planet. “They’re the ones causing these issues and they’re the ones who need to make the change.”

“We’re not just fighting for the Earth, we are fighting for climate justice,” Jones said. “For a future where everyone has clean air and clean water and a safe place to call home [and] where communities are prioritized over corporations.”

The group of 20 marched into Amherst Common yelling chants such as “We are unstoppable, a better world is possible” and “Hey hey, ho ho, fossil fuels have got to go.”

Member of the Smith Sunrise Movement, Ira Nathan, started off the speeches, saying that the current administrative actions, including revocation of student visas and the defunding of climate research, “demonstrate not only a complete disregard for our constitutional rights, but also a complete disregard for the survival of our planet.”

“We deserve a livable future … The generations after us deserve a livable future,” Nathan said. “Every decimal of a degree of warming that can be avoided is worth the fight, and we are not backing down.”

Joshua Rand, the UMass Sunrise hub’s delegate, said that the consequences of hurricane season, due to the reduction of funding by the Trump administration, “will inevitably cost black and brown communities especially so much in homes and lives.”

“The fossil fuel companies continue to run about, exploiting indigenous land for their dirty profits, screwing all of us over, as both political parties continue to support them,” Rand said. “Our leaders, and the entire capitalist elite, are complicit in ecocide.”

Rand continued saying that humanity has failed at reducing carbon emissions before they reach an uncontrollable degree. In the past year, the planet has reached 1.7 degrees Celsius of global warming.

Rachael Boyce, climate justice and resilience manager for Make Polluters Pay, said that the movement “demand[s] inclusive climate action plans that address the historical inequities and disproportionate impacts borne by frontline communities.”

Boyce emphasized the importance of student movements in the continued fight for climate justice.

“From the youth to the elders, it’s everyone in between. It will take all of us, but we need your vision, your radical imagination for a resilient future,” Boyce said.

Pat Church and her husband heard about the rally through the Climate Awareness Network and recalled her first Earth Day when she was in high school in 1971 in Glastonbury, CT.

“There’s an awareness to an extent,” Church said. “But I think the problem is that we don’t have the political power to make huge changes.”

Church continued, saying that today’s high schoolers are “aware and they’re alert, and I think that the students are [going to] be the ones that help make change.”

Students and protesters need to “be clear about what they want and they need to have for this.”

Emma Coopersmith, a freshman at Smith and descendant of Holocaust survivors, stressed the intertwined nature of social movements. “Climate justice requires fighting fascism. Climate Justice means justice for immigrants and undocumented people. It means an end to people being kidnapped off the street for their beliefs … and it means an end to ICE.”

The Pioneer Valley Sunrise Movements, primarily the Mount Holyoke hub, will be protesting at Congressman Richard Neal’s office this weekend.

Norah Stewart can be reached at nestewart@umass.edu. 

Kalina Kornacki can be reached at [email protected] or followed on Twitter @KalinaKornacki.