Gen Z Highlight: Isra Hirsi

Imagine being a 17 year old girl, who is black and muslim, going to high school and taking college classes simultaneously. Imagine being exposed to struggles and disadvantages that children and families should never have to go through. 

Well, these two questions just described Isra Hirsi.

Isra Hirsi is a high school student from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar, an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district since 2019. Isra Hirsi is a climate and racial justice advocate. She is the Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the US Youth Climate Strike. She led the organization and hundreds of strikes across the country on March 15th and May 3rd. Hirsi started her climate activism in her freshman year of high school by joining her school's environmental club.

Isra Hirsi wrote an article published on https://grist.org/. Some excerpts from her articles explain how Isra first got involved in environmental activism when she joined a club at her school. In the article, she explains how she was usually the only black kid; sometimes even the only colored person in the room and the club consisted of white kids talking about their camping trips. She further explains her beginning in striking nearly every Friday to make her voice heard and continues to explain that she doesn’t need to strike every week, but that does not make her activism invalid. She concludes by writing that we should all remember our privilege for being here, the work of hundreds of indigenous activists before us, and that we strike because we can. She ends her article with a powerful statement: “This movement is not one person, or one group. This movement is all of us and we need to make sure we value those who are disproportionately affected by this crisis. And allow those who are affected, to lead.”

Driven by her identity as a Black Muslim woman in this work, Hirsi has been a longtime advocate for intersectionality and diversity within the climate justice movement as well as in her daily life. She uses her advocacy to not only help her understand the world around her but to navigate it. Hirsi, as a child of immigrants, cares deeply for a multitude of issues that impact her family but also her community. Hirsi has made it her goal to help change the world from a young age and has always wanted to help others to ensure that every space is safe and welcoming. Isra Hirsi uses her passion in her advocacy to help change the world.

As stated earlier, she co-founded the U.S. Youth Climate Strike, the American arm of a global youth climate change movement, in January 2019. She acts as the co-executive director of this organisation. Throughout her years of activism, she has achieved numerous accomplishments. In 2019, she won a Brower Youth Award. That same year, Hirsi received the Voice of the Future Award. On September 20th and 27th, 2019, Thunberg, Hirsi and other young organizers asked people to flood the streets, walking out of their workplaces and schools. The goal was to raise their collective voices in defense of human life, particularly the communities most vulnerable to climate destruction.

It is so incredibly empowering to see people of such a young age take such brave actions towards changing the world. Isra Hirsi has shown us that age does not matter when it comes to helping and saving the world. Teenagers are not ignorant, rather, we are powerful because we have the strength to bring change provided we choose to do so. Isra Hirsi has shown the importance of intersectional environmental activism, and how it is so important now, more than ever, for Generation Z to stand up and fight for what’s right!

Citations

https://www.internationalcongressofyouthvoices.com/isra-hirsi 

Image: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-students-skipping-school-to-fight-climate-change/