Hi All,

Here's an Op-Ed in today's Press-Democrat from Representative Mike Thompson (D-Santa Rosa). He is a member of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus. Politicians respond to the non-partisan voices of education leaders speaking up for climate action to protect students. Our (education sector) non-partisan words can help prevent significant harm to our students and future generations.

Here is the closing paragraph Rep. Thompson's Op-Ed:
"There are encouraging signs right here at home. Young people, for whom climate change poses the greatest threat, are no longer staying quiet. More than two dozen school boards in three states*, including nearly a dozen schools right here in our district, have passed formal resolutions demanding action on climate change. These young people are right. Congress should listen to them — and follow their lead."

(*actually the number is now 27 school boards and 1 student council in 4 states. There are 14,000 school boards in the country.)

Please help Schools for Climate Action (S4CA) engage any and all school boards, student councils, and educational support organizations to speak up together in non-partisan climate action resolutions calling on Congress to act on climate. Here is a template email you can use. If everyone reading this email, sent quick emails to their local, county, and state boards of education, it would likely set off hundreds or thousands more school board and student council climate action resolutions. Here is a press release we are asking Superintendents/school districts and school support organizations to release on 1.10.19 encouraging the new 116th Congress to act on climate. Youth-adult S4CA teams will be hand-delivering these press releases and climate action resolutions to every Congressional office in March, 2019.
S4CA Congress, Act on Climate! Day 2019

Ed sector leaders have been so tireless and so effective in their efforts to serve young people and advance equity, climate literacy, and school sustainability in so many ways. It shouldn't be ed leaders responsibility to also advocate for national climate action, but sadly it seems that without their voices, Congress may not act quickly enough to prevent potential catastrophic humanitarian crisis within our student's lives.

Just as important as it is for Congress to hear these words from the educational sector is that our students and young people hear the education sector speaking up assertively and accurately for them. Young people have, and will continue to experience, climate-related trauma. Key to helping them heal and build resilience is for their leaders (educators) and institutions to bear accurate witness to full story of their trauma. If our account or reflection of their experience does not include climate change and our national climate inaction as part of the story, we limit our ability to help them build an accurate and coherent narrative of their experience. Psychologists suggest that the ability to conceptualize traumatic experiences within a coherent narrative is important to psychological recovery and resiliency. Certainly, recent disasters---fire, flooding, hurricanes---are not 100% climate caused, but conspicuously leaving climate change out of the account undermines our institution's ability to help young people build resilience. Our young people also need to hear us speaking about their climate-related trauma in moral or in climate justice terms. Simply put, it is not fair that our generation has failed to act to protect them from this. Again, in order for young people to build resilience and to preserve strong, trusting relationships with their elders and our institutions, they need to hear us own up to this unfairness and speak up to shift it. Only a tiny fraction of ed leaders and organizations from across the country have broken silence on climate justice. This undermines our institution and our ability to help our young people. We can all speak up in moral terms about our national climate inaction. Who else is more appropriate to lead this effort but the education sector?

Thanks, Representative Thompson and staffers for this important Op-Ed! Thanks Santa Rosa CCLers for all your non-partisan work advancing climate solutions.

Cheers,
Park