This Sunday, 90 Bowdoin students will travel to New York City to participate in the People’s Climate March, a massive event designed to put pressure on world leaders to address climate change.
The trip, spearheaded by Bowdoin Climate Action, was also made possible by the coordinated efforts of Sustainable Bowdoin, the Green Bowdoin Alliance and the Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good.
The rally will draw crowds from across the nation, and may end up being the largest protest against climate change in history. While the weekend’s highest-profile march will take place in New York, there will be over 1,500 demonstrations happening in over 130 countries around the world.
“I don’t know if we will see the likes of it any time soon,” said Kenny Shapiro ’17, who helped organize the group of Bowdoin students travelling to the march.
“The march is unprecedented. There has been nothing like this,” added Michael Butler ’17, another organizer of the Bowdoin group.
The march will be held two days before a United Nations summit on climate change hosted by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The cause has drawn widespread support from the Bowdoin community. Over 250 students expressed interest in attending the event. In addition, many members of the Brunswick community and students from other Maine colleges, including the University of Maine, Colby and Bates, will attend the march.
“We really are drawing from a diverse network of people,” said Shapiro.
Many Bowdoin students expressed a personal connection to the issue of climate change.
Allyson Gross ’16 grew up in Deer Park, Texas, a town she described as being heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
“Climate change is hugely personal,” she said. “There are about seven refineries within a two-mile distance from my house, and my community is within the first percentile of worst air toxicity in America.”
Gross also helped organized the group of Bowdoin students who are travelling to New York for the march.
“What excites me a lot,” said Shapiro, “is the prospect of 90 people going to New York and being really energized and inspired by the 100,000 people that are there and bringing that energy back to Bowdoin.”
Shapiro said he hopes that this energy will be a way of “catalyzing more change on campus.”
With the march quickly approaching, the logistical arrangements are being solidified. For months, Gross has been organizing transportation and housing for Bowdoin students. Due to the lack of available transportation, there are still many students on the waitlist.
“We have been speaking with some faculty about our dilemma of wanting to bring as many students as possible, but being constricted by one bus because every bus in Maine has been sold out for about a month now,” said Gross.
Transportation will be split between a 55-passenger bus and multiple student cars. Once in New York, the group will be staying at the homes of Bowdoin students.
Subsidies by the organizers of the march—as well as donations by faculty members, community members, alumni and five College Houses—have made the trip economically feasible. In addition, Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster and the Office of Student Affairs has given Bowdoin Climate Action $1,500 towards transportation. At the moment, the cost of a round-trip bus ticket is $35.
Gross said she is grateful for the financial assistance, which she said has made the trip affordable for countless students.
“It has been really exciting having a really giant intersectional mobilization of the climate movement,” she said.