Climate Refugee Walk: HIA Strives to Spread Climate Awareness
May 13, 2022
On May 10, Honors In Action led a climate protest. The protest was held as a walk around campus in order to spread awareness of climate change and climate refugees. Climate refugees are people who have been displaced from their homes due to climate change. The goal of the protest was to not only spread awareness for climate refugees, but to also get students involved in climate awareness.
Many students joined the protest. Maggie Garcia, a member of Phi Theta Kappa, received an email about the climate protest and decided to attend.
“I’m really big in climate change and I believe in it,” Garcia said. “I hope that people start taking this seriously, and that people in ECC actually care about climate change. It’s a big deal going on, and if we don’t make a change then something bad could happen.”
HIA also collected donations for an organization called Border Angels, which is a nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid along the US/Mexico border.
The protest started in front of the Building A entrance. HIA offered protest signs for participants to hold while they walked. These signs had messages such as “The Climate’s Changing… Why Aren’t We?” and “System Change, Not Climate Change” on them. Protesters walked around the campus, and many people joined the walk along the way. After the first circle around campus, protesters went inside to rest and drink water before the second round. Kelly Stoffle, the HIA officer for PTK, felt like the protest was going well.
“I feel like we got a decent group of people and we are spreading the message that we want to send,” Stoffle said.
