Varshini Prakash Delivers Rose-Walters Lecture
Photo by Dan Loh.
Video by Joe O'Neill
Executive director and co-founder of Sunrise Movement urges students to take action, in ways that are personal to them, in the fight against climate change.
Varshini Prakash, executive director and co-founder of Sunrise Movement, recently delivered the 2021 Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize at Dickinson College for Global Environmental Activism lecture. The lecture, Stopping the Climate Crisis: The Time to Act Is Now, was held on Tuesday, Nov. 9, in Dickinson's Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium.
The event concluded Prakash's weeklong residency as the 2021 recipient of Dickinson's Rose-Walters Prize. Throughout the week, Prakash visited classroms, delivered a workshop and spoke with students attending related campus events.
During the Tuesday lecture, Prakash traced her own inspiring journey into activism. She recalled that she first felt the need to "do something" as she watched a tsunami decimate a shoreline in India, her native country, and kill and injure people along the shore. But she also felt powerless to do anything at all.
“I had an overwhelming feeling of helplessness," Prakash said. "So I did what I think a lot of us do when we’re faced with pain and suffering in proportions we can’t process: I tucked it away. I ignored it. I pretended it was someone else’s problem.”
Her drive to "do something" resurfaced years later, when she learned about the climate crisis.
“Something broke,” she recalled. “It was a moment of realizing there is a lot of suffering that we might not be able to stop, but [also that] there is a lot that we can [do]. I think we all have a moral duty and existential responsibility to do every single thing in our power to build a more just and equitable society for as many people as we can.”
The lecture included discussions about how climate change will affect students' lives and the things they cherish. Prakash concluded with words meant to inspire the students to change the world.
“I have so many dreams and such a vision for what this country could be. … We just need more people to build the power to make it possible,” she said. “Whatever your superpower is, lean in and make sure that your values define and govern how you live your life.”
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Published November 10, 2021