Student protestors carried banners, waved signs and chanted slogans as they led hundreds of climate activists from Montpelier High School to city hall Friday morning.
The "Empty The Schools" March for the Global Climate Strike was one of numerous demonstrations held around Vermont and the world in anticipation of the United Nations' Climate Change Summit.
Montpelier Police estimated about 350 protesters took part in the march, which included a symbolic "die-in." Protesters lay down on Main Street and had their bodies traced in chalk, like crime victim corpses.
Thetford Academy eighth grader Asa Kelleher came to the march with a group of classmates.
"I hope that the people who are in charge of our country will see this and they’ll be like, 'Well maybe it's time that we should start thinking about this too,'" he said.
Carmen Richardson-Skinder is a sophmore at Montpelier High School and one of the student climate action leaders who organized march.
"We are just making sure everyone knows that we aren’t going to take this lying down," she said. "And we’ve tried to cooperate with the system in the past and tried to just go through the right paths, and that hasn’t resulted in anything. So we’re starting to take it to a more disruptive level."
Student protesters said they were prepared to be arrested as they marched down Memorial Drive and Main Street on Friday, but Montpelier Police Chief Anthony Facos said no arrests were made.
Richardson-Skinder said more disruptive actions are being planned by groups such as the Extinction Rebellion and the Youth Action Alliance, which helped coordinate Friday's demonstrations in Montpelier, Burlington and other Vermont communities.
The Extinction Rebellion has additional actions planned for next week to coincide with U.N. Climate Change Summit, including hanging banners off Vermont's interstate overpasses.
