Huntsville became part of a global climate strike Friday when activists gathered in the Lowman Student Center mall area for a protest.
The strike was observed across the globe, inspired by teenage activist Greta Thunberg. The New York Times cited an estimate that said around four million people in thousands of cities turned out for this protest.
More than a dozen of those people were in Huntsville. A diverse array of protesters with handmade signs gathered for this occasion.
Protest attendee and Conroe business owner Mary Keating described the importance of the event.
“It’s the one topic on everybody’s lists and on our lips because if we don’t do something about climate change its’ not going to matter what our economics are,” Keating said. “It’s not going to matter who the next president is. It’s not going to matter if we have good relations with China, or Russia, or whoever, because we’re going to have much bigger problems than anything we have seen so far.”
The event was arranged in part by junior mass communication major Gabriel Marrero.
“You know these campuses are the future,” Marrero said. “We’re going to be leaders eventually, so it’s definitely a student issue. I think about the anti-war movement or civil rights, those started at college campuses, so climate action is going to require the same level, more actually, of activism and campaigning.”
A downpour interrupted the event only an hour after it began. Protesters persevered through a flash flood caused by Tropical Storm Imelda before rising water levels affected campus.
Tropical Storm Imelda led to the worst flooding across Texas since Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The storm left more than 40 inches of rainfall and at least five dead in its wake.