Galvanizing social change: A perfect example through Storm The Riding
Full disclosure at the beginning of the post: Many of the students who participated and/or organized in Storm The Riding are or have been students of mine, and I’m affiliated with several of the organizers in one way or another (specifically, because of my academic work in environmental politics). So, I’m kind of biased in that I feel absolutely inspired by my students and by the organizers of Storm The Riding. And of course, I am incredibly proud of the accomplishments of Sophie Harrison and Sam Harrison (two teenagers whom I have seen grown to become these agents of social change and founders of Kids For Climate Action).
So, now that the disclosures are out of the way, I have to say I’m very impressed, as someone who has studied environmental social movements for more than a decade, about the traction that Storm The Riding (organized by UBCC350 and Kids For Climate Action) obtained this past weekend. I had an opportunity to talk to several of the organizers (I arrived late, as I was sick most of the morning) and the kind of energy that they radiated was just unbelievable. It’s hard not to be galvanized for action when you see so much passion in youth, and all of them concerned and worried about their own future and that of coming generations. You can check a video of what went down below (credit: Jon Chiang/UBCC350).
52 WEEKS- WEEK 13: Storm the Riding from Jon Chiang on Vimeo.
Additional coverage I found:
– The Huffington Post Canada with a fantastic article on how actually to effect change by getting off your butt and doing something.
– Global BC with great written coverage and a fabulous accompanying video.
– My favorite student paper (ok, ok I’m biased – it’s UBC’s student paper, The Ubyssey) wrote about the Storm The Riding event.
– UBC student Jon Chiang writes about his story on how he got galvanized and engaged into joining UBCC350. Read it. It is extremely powerful.
– The Vancouver Sun provided continued coverage (before and after the event). These are a couple of stories after the Storm The Riding event (read second story here).
– On my colleague Simon Donner’s blog.
– On Richard Hughes‘ blog.
Wonderful work, everyone. Hopefully next time I will be able to join you! And hopefully this galvanizes our government to take action against climate change.
