Hint: We need your help this Earth Day!

Today, Teen Vogue ran a profile on how YVA is building power by investing in leadership development and mobilizing turnout at nearly 30 frontline Bay Area schools. As YVA organizer Hannah Estrada states, “We as young people of color coming from low-income communities have not all seen ourselves in this movement, but we’re going to be the most impacted, so it’s important that we are involved. In the climate movement, there is a place for us.”

We thank our long-time ally Brooke Anderson for her work with Movement Generation to lift up the day-to-day organizing that lays the groundwork for a real shift in power.

So what is next?

Organizing for intersectional climate action in CA this Earth Day!

YVA is hosting a Bay Area Action in San Francisco as part of Earth Day activism on April 21st, 2023!

Youth across the Bay Area are demanding that Governor Newsom be held accountable for not protecting our communities.

Our demands: 

1. We demand that the state of California stop investing in fossil fuels through public pension funds and that Governor Newsom supports SB252.

Right now, the retirement funds of every public employee are invested into the racist, destructive, and lying fossil fuel industry. If Newsom wants to be a climate leader, he needs to speak  out against investing public pension funds in fossil fuels and support SB252, which will move our state from investing in destruction towards investing in our future.

2. We demand that Governor Newsom hold PG&E accountable to people and not profits.

Newsom must not allow PG&E to make a profit by charging customers more to cover the cost of their disastrous fires. We demand that Newsom protect people, not the profits of a private company – we need clean, public, local energy.

3. We demand that the state of CA support Migrant Justice as a part of Climate Justice and speak out against Biden’s plan to jail immigrant families.

Many individuals and families have been pushed into migration by the climate crisis or by the systems of exploitation that led to it. If Newsom is a true climate leader, he will use his platform to call out the cruelty and injustice of Biden’s threat to revive Trump’s policy of incarcerating immigrant families. 

4. We demand that Newsom protect frontline communities from fossil fuel extraction by ending all new fossil fuel permits in the state of CA, drop existing production sites, and make sure there are at least 3200 feet between toxic oil drills and people’s homes and schools.

Newsom is issuing a huge number of permits to extract and process even more oil. 90% of people in CA living near fossil fuel infrastructure are people of color. And if we continue to extract and burn fossil fuels, we are closing the window on a livable future. Newsom must stop new fossil fuel permits.

March Route:

We will gather at Embarcadero Plaza then go on a 1.9 mile march past the SF Immigration Court office and the California State Building. Map here.

Schedule: 

10:00am - Gather, practice chants, learn song/movement, speakers, Hip Hop performances

11:00 am - March 

1:00pm - End

Background: For more information about our targets, check out CAYVBO, CalSTRS, Reclaim Our Power, Fossil Free California, BlackRocksBigProblem. 
 

Sign up for youth who want to get involved in the action planning team:
https://bit.ly/YVAnoid

Performer/Youth Speaker Sign up: https://forms.gle/UocA7kVKv9dAJBmb8

School Support Request Form: https://bit.ly/yvaschooltripsupport