Earth Day brought a wave of activity across Ithaca and Tompkins County Monday as students and community groups led demonstrations calling on universities and elected officials to act with urgency to address climate change.
The demonstrations were part of a nationwide, student-led movement called “Reclaim Earth Day” that rejects claims from universities and companies that say they prioritize sustainability, while they continue to invest in and rely on fossil fuels.
“We are here today to declare a climate change emergency,” said Lochlan Nunn-Makepeace, a student at the Lehman Alternative Community School in Ithaca. “I am learning that the climate crisis intensifies inequalities. Way too many people and institutions do not want to name this.”
Dozens of people gathered on the Ithaca Commons, holding signs calling for an end to fossil fuel use and divestment from fossil fuel companies. They chanted calls for climate justice and passed around oranges and cookies for students who walked to the rally at the end of their school day.
“We have to be okay getting uncomfortable,” said Democratic Assemblymember Anna Kelles, who represents Tompkins County, addressing the crowd. “Because we cannot live a life of convenience anymore, because that’s what led us here in the first place.”
Kelles voiced dismay that significant climate policy was excluded from the state budget, which passed over the weekend. Several legislative priorities from environmentalists, including the New York HEAT Act, which would have removed subsidies for utilities to expand gas infrastructure, were not included in the final version.
Ahead of the rally, Cornell students marched through campus calling for the university to fully divest from fossil fuels and decarbonize the campus.
Several Indigenous students also spoke about how the university benefited from lands that the federal government expropriated from Indigenous groups. The university obtained almost 990,000 acres of this land through the 1862 Morrill Act, making it the largest beneficiary.
“The Morrill Act has harmed Indigenous communities through the disposition of their lands,” said Alex Bentley, a member of the Native American Indigenous Students at Cornell student group. “These lands were then used to establish the colleges funded by the Morrill Act, and this continues to marginalize Indigenous communities and disrupts our traditional ways of life.”
Students marked off one acre of land on Cornell’s Arts Quad to demonstrate their demand that the university relinquish the mineral rights it still holds from one acre of land in Wisconsin.
Separately ahead of the rally, a small group also gathered in Dewitt Park, facing the Tompkins County Legislature’s chambers in downtown Ithaca, for a die-in protest.
Around 10 people, including children and their parents, laid down in the center of the park, surrounded by flags and posters.
Nora Brown, a community organizer with Mothers Out Front, an activist group advocating for climate resilience from the perspective of moms, participated in the die-in.
Brown said the protest expressed the group’s fear for the safety of their children and emphasized the need for immediate action against climate change.
“In order to implement the solutions that we need swiftly enough, we really need everyone to stop business as usual and take action on the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Brown said.