Grady High School students staging walkout to raise climate change awareness

At 10 a.m. today, more than 150 Grady High School students are expected to walk out of class in solidarity with the global Youth Climate Strike, organizer and student Bria Brown tells Curbed Atlanta.

School officials are aware and supportive of the protest, which will take place at Piedmont Park.

The walkout is another example of students taking action to raise awareness of climate change that’s being perpetuated by the unencumbered burning of fossil fuels.

Many of them feel the adults in positions of power—politicians, namely—aren’t doing enough to curb the negative impact of climate change.

This type of activism has been making international headlines as 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg travels the world to spread the gospel of going green.

And this isn’t the first time lately that Grady students have rallied to spotlight what they see as an injustice.

In February, students staged a “Rally 4 Safe Streets” in Grady’s auditorium, lobbying for “complete streets projects”—initiatives to make roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists—near the school.

The event marked the three-year anniversary of the death of Grady freshman Alexia Hyneman, who was fatally struck by a vehicle while crossing the intersection of Midtown’s Monroe Drive and 10th Street.

Grady students are also protesting an Atlanta Public Schools project that would transform one of the institution’s longtime green spaces into a parking lot.

Atlanta is already designed to be car-centric, and Brown told Curbed in August that “the addition of parking spots to the specific Charles Allen location would make the street very trafficked, when it’s currently the quietest street Grady sits on.”