by Christine McLaren
VANCOUVER, April 22 (Xinhua) -- An estimated 3000 people paraded down Commercial Drive Friday morning in one of Vancouver' s largest celebrations of Earth Day and a rally for climate justice.
Organized entirely by youth through the newly founded organization Youth for Climate Justice Now, the atmosphere of the event was joyous but the message serious. Part protest, part party, the event's goal was to reclaim Earth Day as a vehicle for environmental action.
"We really wanted to organize this because we feel like there' s never really a big Earth Day event that is youth lead. So this is really an opportunity to recapture those roots and to really be the start of a movement; a movement of change," Brendan Chan, one of four 17-year-old co-organizers from local Vancouver high schools, told Xinhua.
The parade spanned several blocks of the East Vancouver street and included musicians, stilt walkers, children dressed in animal costumes, and more hoolahoopers than one could count.
The parade culminated in a community festival with guest speakers including politicians and a First Nations environmental activist, as well as spoken word poets and local musicians, bringing a light hearted air to a serious event.
The main message the Youth for Climate Justice Now organizers hoped to get across at the event was what they call the two-degree message -- reminding people of the irreversible climate damage that will happen if we allow global warming to increase the world' s temperature by two degrees.
As part of this two-degree campaign, they encouraged youth and adults alike to reclaim the V-shaped two-fingered hand gesture usually representing a peace sign as a symbol for climate justice.
"We are bringing back the peace sign as the symbol for our event because we want people to think about being at peace with the Earth, but more specifically we want people to focus on the goal of keeping global temperature from going up another 2 degrees, which is the tipping point for run away climate change," said Chan.
The youth had several mentors assisting them with the project, including members of the Canadian wilderness protection group the Wilderness Committee, and the local community engagement organizing group Transformation Projects.
"These young people are just totally amazing. They are really making me feel hopeful about the fact that change really is possible," Ben West, Healthy Communities Campaigner for the Wilderness Committee, told Xinhua.
"A lot of people in the climate change movement are focused on market driven solutions, and it tends to be relatively affluent mostly white folks, and this is a real change. This is a group of students from a totally different part of town who are coming with a totally different set of values, and it's, I think just really inspiring to watch young people really lead the way," he said.
According to Brendan Chan and his fellow organizers, there is no other choice.
"We're youth and we're going to inherit the world eventually, and inherit all the problems, so this is really something that we need to tackle right now."
