NYT: Penn Senior and Climate Activist Xiye Bastida Leads Youth Movement Against Global Warming

University of Pennsylvania senior Xiye Bastida, an activist and co-founder of the Re-Earth Initiative, is among the young leaders who are on the front lines of efforts to fight climate change, writes Jim Colgan for The New York Times.

Bastida, who is also an organizer of Fridays for Future New York City, was just 16 when she helped organize a march of around 250,000 people at the United Nations.

Today, she is happy to help 14 and 15-year-old organizers who contact her for advice.

“They’re cute,” she said.

But they often tell her they are having trouble getting people to turn out.

“I had to tell them we went for two weeks on subway cars singing climate chants and distributing fliers,” said Bastida.

The veteran activist comes from a family of environmentalists. Her father spent years campaigning to preserve the wetlands of his Indigenous community, while her mother is an ethno-ecologist. The family are members of the Mexican Otomi-Toltec people.

Bastida, who is one of the speakers at this year’s New York Times Climate Forward event, is a Penn senior and is majoring in environmental studies.

Read more about Xiye Bastida’s remarkable journey and her global influence on climate advocacy by exploring the full story in The New York Times.

Meet Xiye Bastida, Indigenous Climate Activist | NowThis NEXT