Climate activists have started a hunger strike in front of the White House to demand U.S. President Joe Biden to act on the climate crisis.
Climate activists begin hunger strike in front of White House to demand action on crisis
The Sunrise Movement, a campaign group made up of young people who want to curb climate change, is seeking Biden’s approval of the Build Back Better Agenda with its full range of environmental policies.
Their demands come at a time when the White House and Democrats are hastily reviewing key aspects of President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion domestic policy plan, slashing social services and climate change programs and rethinking new taxes on businesses and the wealthy to pay for a reduced package.
“We’re here to highlight how terrible this moment is,” hunger striker Kidus Girma told the New Republic.
“A couple hundred people in a two-part building in DC are deciding the scope of what climate justice can be, and not just climate justice, but many critical programs that before this pandemic people didn’t think were possible.”
“We are so close to achieving things that seemed impossible and this hunger strike is about creating space for that possibility again.”
Earlier this week, Sunrise Movement activists staged an overnight protest outside Arizona Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s office in Phoenix to demand that she fight climate change.
Sinema refuses to endorse the $3.5 billion price tag of the plan originally proposed by the White House.
Yesterday, Biden spoke of the challenge of getting the most divergent factions of the Democratic Party to agree on the final contours of the bill.
