“This week will be historic. In over 150 countries, people are stepping up to support young climate strikers and demand an end to the age of fossil fuels. The climate crisis won’t wait, so neither will we.” 

—The Global Climate Strike Team

On Friday September 20th, the first Global Climate Strike kicked off across our earth! Millions of people, and countless communities and institutions—including 9 Story and Brown Bag Films—joined in the Global Strike to help kickstart and renew action all over the world, to raise awareness about our present climate crisis. 

The roots of the Global Climate Strike can be traced back to 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg’s lone protest, staged just over a year ago, in front of her national parliament in Sweden. Her action, activism and courage spread to millions of school children who began joining in with her #FridaysForFuture strikes, leaving their schools every Friday to #Strike4Climate. 

View this post on Instagram

NEVER doubt that you can make a difference. The first photo is Greta last August when she quit school to climate strike. The second photo is this September, a mere 13 months later. It is just ONE image of crowds in Hamburg, Germany, but there were actually 4 million worldwide who participated in Friday’s climate strike. Remember these pictures next time you doubt if you can make an impact as an individual. #climatestrike #fridaysforfuture #gretathunberg

A post shared by ZeroWasteElPaso (@zerowasteelpaso) on Sep 23, 2019 at 1:04pm PDT

And now it’s everyone’s turn to stand with our young people and sound the alarm to show our world leaders that we need climate justice.

View this post on Instagram

Vi barn gör ju oftast inte som ni säger åt oss att göra, vi gör som ni gör. Och eftersom ni vuxna skiter i min framtid, så gör jag det med. Jag skolstrejkar för klimatet fram till valdagen.

A post shared by Greta Thunberg (@gretathunberg) on Aug 20, 2018 at 12:28am PDT

Our studios have joined in the eight-day strike, which spans from September 20-27, in many different ways, such as attending local marches, staging our own internal rallies, and encouraging team members to cut down on their fossil-fuel consumption by ditching the car, and either taking public transit, and/or biking and walking to work. 

Also, the 9 Story and Brown Bag websites engaged in a digital strike on Friday, September 20, by implementing site wide, non-dismissible banners directing all visitors to the Global Climate Strike page.

And finally, we handed over the reigns of our Brown Bag social channels to our Green Bag teams, who work across multiple continents, so they could stage their own social media takeover!

Green Bag is our studios’ environment committee, who grew out of our Dublin location, and have since spread to our Manchester and Toronto studios—and soon to be launching in Bali!  They are our Brown Bag guardians and leaders who work together to create positive change toward saving the planet by starting first with our own community, right here at work.

Our Green Bag team spent the day posting tips on how to help the climate, did live stories from the Dublin and Manchester marches (which saw thousands of strikers turn out to support the cause), and shared shots from our own internal studio rallies. Check out our story highlights here. 

The Strike actions continue into this week, with the Toronto March happening on Friday, September 27th, starting at 11am from Queen’s Park. It’s anticipated to be the largest anti-climate change rally the city has ever seen.

And our studios’ efforts to help restore and protect the environment will continue on, well after the strike ends, thanks to the strong and passionate leadership from our Green Bag committees and from all our studio staff’s continued and combined efforts to do better and try harder to make a change in this world. 

Everything we do has an impact, and together we can make a meaningful change.

“The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.” 

—From the speech Greta Thunberg delivered to the UN Climate Action summit in New York on Monday

Want to join in the action? We’ve compiled a great list of resources and helpful suggestions on how to help in our previous post here. Check out the climate strike site here and the Friday’s for Future site here.