My mother was born behind the Iron Curtain in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The communist government stole her family’s belongings and forced them to work demanding physical labor jobs. Wishing for a better life, her family illegally fled across the border and immigrated to America in 1968. The communist government eventually fell in 1989 due to the Velvet Revolution, an anti-communist protest fueled by an economic downturn. In June 1990, Czechoslovakia’s first democratic elections established a new government that transformed the economy by moving company ownership from the state to private entities.

I witnessed a sea of yellow-orange skies cast a haze over the nearby buildings. This was not Blade Runner 2049; this was yet another example of the cataclysmic impacts climate change can have on the planet we call home. The smoke from the wildfires in Canada had finally arrived in New York, sending my entire community into disarray. I felt my eyes burning as I walked out of the double doors of my school on what should have been a normal school day.