TCA will attend Flood the Seaport in Boston today

Tufts Climate Action (TCA) will attend Extinction Rebellion's event, Flood the Seaport, today as part of continued climate protests following last Friday's global climate strike.

The event is organized by the Massachusetts chapter of Extinction Rebellion, a U.K.-based organization that advocates the use of civil disobedience to halt mass extinction, according to its website.

The event's Facebook page said activists will meet in Dewey Square in Boston and march to the Boston Seaport.

According to Caro Fett, a member of TCA,Seaport is of particular interest to the activists because that area of Boston is vulnerable to sea level rise. A reportreleased by the City of Boston in 2018 confirmed this, saying that sea levels around Boston's Seaport District could rise nine inches by 2030 and 40 inches by 2070.

According to the report, without significant action to improve the flood-related resilience of certain areas along the coastline, significant portions of South Boston would flood at least once a year.

"As sea levels rise, these flood pathways begin to merge with more widespread flooding in South Boston and, later in the century with no action, flooding from South Boston could reach beyond the district into the South End and connect with flood pathways from the Charles River and Moakley Park," the report said.

Fett explained the purpose behind attending climate protests. 

"In these acts of civil disobedience, the goal is to disrupt business as usual," Fett, a senior, said. "It does disrupt people's everyday lives, but that's kind of the point when we're trying to make this crisis unavoidable."

Fett said the action tomorrow is closely associated to the global climate strike that occurred last week. She added that the Sunrise Movement at Tufts, which largely orchestrated the Tufts climate strike, and Extinction Rebellion support each other's missions.

TCA member Erica Nork praised Extinction Rebellion's work, saying they adequately portray the gravity of the situation behind climate change.

Fett also mentioned the event will seek to disrupt "business as usual," which she said is closely linked to a capitalist system.

"Business as usual is a capitalist system based on endless growth. And we can all understand now, even if we don't admit it to ourselves, that endless growth is not compatible with a planet that has finite resources," she said.

Nork, a senior, said Extinction Rebellion is aligned with TCA's goals, which include halving global carbon emissions by 2030.

According to Nork, students will also meet in front of Ballou Hall to discuss Tufts' possible divestment from fossil fuels and its connection to global climate issues.

"We decided at Tufts Climate Action that we would all gather and go because that's really powerful like the global climate strike," she said.

Although Nork said she and TCA planned to "make noise" at the event, she imagined that it would not be as large or organized as the climate strike last Friday.

Olivia Freiwald, who will not attend the event but helped organize Tufts' contingent of last Friday's Climate Strike, emphasized the importance of continued action, providing Greta Thunberg's Friday strikes outside the Swedish parliament building as an example.

"The point of these strikes is mass civil noncooperation and bringing the institutions of our society that are requiring us to not focus on huge political action and huge demonstrations" Freiwald, a junior, said. "Why would we be in school learning for a future that is not guaranteed to us?"