[WSMDiscuss] Hi, Jai, I was literally in the middle of writing about the School Strikes for Climate for the new edition of Strike! when this arrived. Thanks!

Wed Mar 27 17:31:44 CET 2019

On Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 12:08 PM Jai Sen <jai.sen at cacim.net> wrote:

> Wednesday, March 27, 2019
>
> *Youth in movement…, Climate in movement…*
>
> [Here, a compilation of articles reflecting on the recent – and hopefully
> continuing – strikes by students and youth for climate justice, in many
> parts of the world :
>
> *Student Strikes for Climate Justice*
>
> Socialist Project
>
> The Student Strike to Save the Climate Will Leave a Mark
>
> Piero Bevilacqua
>
> Young People Feel Betrayed by Adults Over the Climate Crisis
>
> Sharon Lerner
>
> Students Strike Now for the Jobs of Tomorrow
>
> “The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is standing behind the
> global student strike, that took place on March 15th – more than 700
> actions in 72 countries <https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/events/map>.
> Unions in Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, the UK and elsewhere took part
> and many others are active in mobilizing their members.”
>
>             With thanks to friends at The Bullet / the Socialist Project
> for compiling and posting these articles !
>
>             JS
>
>
>
>
> Student Strikes for Climate Justice
>
> Environment <https://socialistproject.ca/category/environment/>  •  March
> 27, 2019
>
>
> https://socialistproject.ca/2019/03/student-strikes-for-climate-justice/#more
>
> Since 2018, Swedish students have been striking in front of the Parliament
> in Stockholm every Friday, prompted initially by high school student Greta
> Thunberg. The demand has been simple – the Swedish government should meet
> the carbon emissions reduction targets set out in the Paris Agreement. The
> movement has continued to grow, and on March 15 students from around the
> world walked out of classes in a strike for climate justice. In Canada, the
> first climate walkout occurred in Sudbury in November last year when Sophia
> Mathur joined the #FridaysfortheFuture actions, with students in nine
> cities walking out. In all parts of Canada on March 15, high school
> students, often joined by university students, joined the climate strike.
> The student climate strikes continue to grow in Canada and around the
> world, with the next Canada wide walkout planned by Fridays for the Future
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_strike_for_climate> for May 3,
> 2019. These need to become mass strikes that we can only hope keep building
> and, indeed, begin to push beyond students to all sectors of society.
> The Student Strike to Save the Climate Will Leave a Mark Piero Bevilacqua
>
> The world’s first Global Climate Strike for the Future, that took place on
> March 15th, is destined to make a profound mark. Something that should make
> everyone stop and reflect is the fact that it is the teenagers and young
> people from 80 countries around the world, and students from thousands of
> cities, who are leading this initiative. Indeed, things look even more
> dramatic if we look at the data provided by the UN’s sixth Global
> Environment Outlook report
> <https://global.ilmanifesto.it/un-environmental-damage-causes-25-of-all-death-and-disease/>
> just presented at the climate summit underway in Nairobi.
>
> These facts should lead us to think twice because, for the first time in
> human history, we are close to catastrophic processes which will determine
> the living conditions of future generations on Earth, and even though we
> are certain and aware of them, we are failing to act.
>
> Instead, we let the governments and political forces organize pompous
> international meetings, destined to change little or nothing about the
> mechanisms that are causing the climate to heat up, and we continue living
> the consumerist lifestyle that is pushing the planet toward destruction.
> That is why the fact that young people – to whom we are leaving a legacy of
> impoverished and inhospitable habitats to be fought over by a growing
> population – are assuming the roles of protagonists with a worldwide
> protest movement is a heartening development that gives one hope.
>
> They are going on “strike,” signaling their disobedience and refusal to
> work – in this case, a refusal to attend school – something that gives a
> special character to this event, and at the same time shows the tragic
> problem with the current global situation. The kids are the ones going on
> strike, and in effect striking against their own interests, losing hours of
> their studies. Yet everyone else is not striking: the adults, factory
> workers, employees, executives, all the figures who would actually be able
> to do serious economic damage to the extractive capitalists responsible.
>
> It should have been us, the adults – who have been enjoying, and still
> enjoy, the comfort made possible by the destruction of the Earth – to rebel
> and organize a general strike to stop the infernal machine that throws 1.3
> billion tons of food per year straight into landfills, dumps the excrement
> from 24 billion farm animals into the waters, fills the air with CO2 and
> other greenhouse gases, floods urban areas with millions more cars than
> they can support, and is heaping up mountains of technological waste
> (e-waste) around the world – whole mountain ranges born out of planned
> obsolescence.
>
> While it’s all too easy to sit and draw conclusions on the occasion of
> this memorable event, it is important to also call out a warning and an
> alarm. Young people cannot hope to win the war with one battle, because
> they cannot afford the delusion that those who are governing the world
> economic order care even the slightest bit about their future and that of
> the Earth. They will destroy even the last strip of fertile soil and dry up
> the waters of the Earth to the last drop, as long as they are able to draw
> some private profit from it.
>
> And there is no argument that will stop them or lead them to take another
> route, except for hitting them where their vital interests lie. To this
> end, the protest must take a systematic and structured form, bringing the
> fight to several fronts. It must put pressure on the governments, involving
> all the many forces which are now engaged in these struggles, for the
> ecological re-conversion of the cities (full recycling of waste, the spread
> of solar power, limiting urban traffic, the reuse of waste water, a stop to
> the destructive spread of cement, etc.). Furthermore, it must also set up
> systematic campaigns of boycott against goods produced using systems that
> are destroying natural habitats.
>
> The young people need to be aware that there is no more time, and that the
> moralistic sermons and the lofty rhetoric of the political class are not
> going to make the mechanisms in place budge even an inch. It will take
> weeks and months of a “consumption strike” – boycotting meat from factory
> farms, the products of industrial agriculture, goods designed to break, the
> whole American lifestyle imposed by U.S. capitalism on the world – if one
> wants to succeed in pushing the powers ruling over production, which are
> currently dominating the planet’s economy, onto a track compatible with the
> survival of the environment.
>
> The young people have chosen the right path. Like the women of Non Una Di
> Meno <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni_una_menos>, they have understood
> that the struggle must have an international scope and must take the form
> of a strike: that is to say, of a full-on struggle, a conflict against an
> opponent that is defending the status quo, to which its interests are tied.
> For over two centuries now, the working class has managed to bring
> industrial society progressively forward, decreasing the length of the
> working day and increasing wages, promoting innovation by means of long and
> costly conflicts. Today, there is simply no other way to save the planet. •
>
> This article first published on the Il Manifesto
> <https://global.ilmanifesto.it/the-student-strike-will-leave-a-mark-but-it-wont-be-enough-to-save-the-climate/>
> website.
>
> Young People Feel Betrayed by Adults Over the Climate Crisis Sharon Lerner
>
> For her 16th birthday, Maddy Fernands asked her parents for an unusual
> gift: to switch the family to wind power. She didn’t want an iPhone, new
> clothes or – banish the thought – a car. Cars and trucks account for about a
> fifth
> <https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/car-emissions-and-global-warming>
> of greenhouse gas emissions, and a significant amount of Fernands’s climate
> anxiety. “Sometimes we’ll be stuck in traffic and I’ll look outside and
> watch the exhaust coming out of the car in front of me and I’ll freak out,”
> she told me. “I feel so powerless to stop it.”
>
> Fernands has been struggling with that sense of helplessness since she
> first became keyed into the accelerating timetable of climate change in
> seventh grade. “It seemed like the end of the world,” she said. “But the
> apocalyptic message wasn’t being broadcast. Nobody was taking correct
> action to put us on a path away from climate catastrophe.” Because her
> parents and teachers didn’t seem to share her urgency, Fernands decided
> that she herself would have to sound the alarm over climate.
>
> Over the past year, Fernands, now a sophomore in high school, has
> connected with other young people around the country and the world who
> grasp how dire the climate crisis is. And today they’ll be taking to the
> streets in at least 105 countries. In the U.S., youth will strike in more
> than 100 cities
> <https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/youth-climate-strike>, taking
> time off from school to demand
> <https://www.youthclimatestrikeus.org/platform> radical legislative
> action to combat climate change and a transition to a 100 per cent
> renewable economy.
> Strike: A Sanity-Saving Expression
>
> As much as it is an effort to make the planet livable in the future, the
> strike <https://www.facebook.com/events/1994180377345229/> is also, for
> many young activists, a sanity-saving expression of the grief and anxiety
> they shoulder about a quickly worsening crisis that older people have been
> unwilling or unable to fix.
>
> The global climate strike movement, which has spread around the world in
> the past few months, has its roots in deep sadness. Greta Thunberg
> <https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-fifteen-year-old-climate-activist-who-is-demanding-a-new-kind-of-politics>,
> the 16-year-old who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize
> <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-swedish-teen-climate-activist-greta-thunberg-nominated-for-nobel-peace/>
> for her climate activism on Wednesday, was so devastated by the knowledge
> that adults were failing to address the climate crisis that she had stopped
> eating, talking, and going to school. As she told Democracy Now’s Amy
> Goodman <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TYyBtb1PH4> in December, “I was
> so depressed I didn’t see any point of living because everything was just
> so wrong.”
>
> Thunberg’s emergence from this depression coincided with the beginning of
> her protests in front of the Swedish Parliament building and her calling
> bullshit on the adult response to climate change. “You only talk about
> moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even
> when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake,” she told
> the adults assembled for the Climate Conference
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkQSGyeCWg> in Poland in December. “You
> are not mature enough to tell it like it is.”
>
> She’s not the only one who has found activism to be the cure for climate
> anxiety. Marcela Mulholland, a senior at the University of Florida, grew up
> in South Florida and has experienced the ravages of flooding, storms, and
> rising temperatures firsthand. “I was drawn to this work because of a deep
> sense of pain,” said Mulholland.
>
> But over the past year, as she’s begun to volunteer with the Sunrise
> Movement <https://www.sunrisemovement.org/>, Mulholland has experienced a
> dramatic emotional shift. “I’ve found that there are other people who feel
> just as depressed and sad about it and are choosing to do something about
> these problems,” she said. “There has been no better antidote to despair
> and hopelessness than finding the other people who feel as I do and working
> with them to fix what is breaking our hearts.”
>
> Climate change is causing mental anguish in people of all ages, according
> to Lise Van Susteren, a psychiatrist and member of the Climate Psychiatry
> Alliance <https://www.climatepsychiatry.org/>. “When you’re hearing day
> in and day out that we’ve got 12 years, we’ve got 11 years, the oceans are
> collapsing, fires are burning, air quality is terrible, wear a mask, the
> anxiety is inescapable,” said Van Susteren. “It sticks itself into dark
> crevices in your brain.” For kids, she said, there’s often an added
> emotional layer of feeling betrayed by the older generation’s inaction.
>
> Justine Berfond, a 22-year-old who lives in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of
> Brooklyn, agrees. “The tough thing is when the adults in our lives are
> like, don’t worry about it,” said Berfond, a senior at New York University.
> “They have good intentions. It’s like when you think there’s a monster
> under the bed when you’re little, and they tell you you don’t have to worry
> about it. But in this case, the monster is real.”
>
> Berfond, who has been terrified about climate change since elementary
> school, has found relief in sharing some of the anxieties she used to keep
> to herself with other activists. “Every time the winter is rainy and
> there’s no snow, I get really upset,” said Berfond. “I talked about that in
> a Sunrise meeting recently – how I remembered winters being different. And
> every person around my age said, ‘Oh my god, I feel the same way.’” The
> discussion eased some of the burden. “Saying ‘I’m scared’ publicly is
> cathartic,” said Berfond.
>
> But there are limits to the uplift. “The reality is that the climate
> crisis is really depressing,” said Oli Tierney, a 17-year-old climate
> activist in Louisville, Kentucky. Tierney has found that urging lawmakers
> to do something about the crisis has eased her feelings of helplessness.
> But nothing can shake her worry about her mother and grandfather, who both
> have disabilities and live in a coastal area of the Philippines that has
> already been hit by storms.
>
> “I don’t know what will happen to them,” said Tierney. “That’s the thing
> that brings me to tears when I participate in actions. Every time I get
> ignored by politicians, I feel like I’m failing them.”
>
> Tierney was thinking about her mother and grandfather when she and other
> young Kentuckians stormed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s
> <https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/25/politics/sunrise-movement-mcconnell-protests/index.html>
> office last month to demand climate action. She was already facing possible
> suspension from school for skipping part of a class to attend a planning
> meeting for the protest. And then security guards told the protesters that
> if they didn’t leave, they would be arrested.
>
> Tierney left – in tears. But girded by her fellow activists and her
> conviction that someone needs to call attention to the environmental
> catastrophe the adults around her are ignoring, she spent much of the next
> few weeks planning Friday’s walkout.
>
> “They think threatening us with arrest and suspension will stop us, but it
> won’t,” said Tierney. “The climate crisis is way more frightening than
> that.” •
>
> This article first published on the The Intercept.com
> <https://theintercept.com/2019/03/15/youth-climate-strike/> website.
>
> Students Strike Now for the Jobs of Tomorrow
>
> The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is standing behind the
> global student strike, that took place on March 15th – more than 700
> actions in 72 countries <https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/events/map>.
> Unions in Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, the UK and elsewhere took part
> and many others are active in mobilizing their members.
>
> Young people are taking the demand for urgent action on climate to
> political leaders around the world, proving that the power of democratic
> voice is alive and well.
>
> “The students are taking responsibility where leaders have failed. We have
> to thank them for their bravery in confronting the climate crisis. Their
> courage deserves our support,” said Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary.
>
> Climate scientists have given the world until 2030 to stabilize the planet
> with a maximum a 1.5 degree temperature rise. More than 83 million climate
> refugees are now on record as fleeing from disaster or loss of livelihoods.
>
> “Climate change unchecked is the crisis that threatens everyone and will
> leave whole regions uninhabitable. We are already witnessing extreme
> weather events with destruction and lasting devastation for too many of our
> people. Governments are not taking responsibility for the high ambition
> that is vital.
>
> “Every Government must raise their ambition and determine national
> development plans including Just Transition measures to protect workers,
> their families and their communities. All employers must have a plan for
> climate proofing their industries and workplaces and Just Transition
> measures must be at the heart of these plans,” said Burrow.
>
> Taking inspiration from young people, union representatives in workplaces
> will, in the last week of June, invite employers to sit down with the
> workers in workplaces to discuss plans to reduce emissions and climate
> proof workplaces.
>
> “Unions must be engaged in dialogue at all levels to ensure that the Just
> Transitions measures agreed are adequate to build people’s trust in a
> process that the overwhelming majority understand is urgent. Without Just
> Transition the critical ambition we all seek will be blocked by fear and in
> too many cases fear that is fueled by the corporate greed of global CEOs
> still putting profit above everything else,” said Burrow. •
>
> This article first published on the ITUC
> <https://www.ituc-csi.org/Fridays4Future-Worldwide-15March> website.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________
>
> Jai Sen
>
> Independent researcher, editor
>
> jai.sen at cacim.net
>
> Now based in New Delhi, India (+91-98189 11325) and in Ottawa, Canada, on
> unceded Anishinaabe territory (+1-613-282 2900)
>
> Current associations : www.cacim.net / http://www.openword.net.in
>
> CURRENT / RECENT publications :
>
> Jai Sen, ed, 2018a – *The Movements of Movements, Part 2 : Rethinking Our
> Dance*. Ebook and hard copy available at PM Press
> <http://www.pmpress.org/>
>
> Jai Sen, ed, 2018b – *The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us
> Move ?*, Indian edition. New Delhi : AuthorsUpfront, in collaboration
> with OpenWord and PM Press.  Hard copy available at MOM1AmazonIN
> <https://www.amazon.in/dp/9387280101/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522884070&sr=8-2&keywords=movements+of+movements+jai+sen>
> , MOM1Flipkart
> <https://www.flipkart.com/the-movements-of-movements/p/itmf3zg7h79ecpgj?pid=9789387280106&lid=LSTBOK9789387280106NBA1CH&marketplace=FLIPKART&srno=s_1_1&otracker=search&fm=SEARCH&iid=ff35b702-e6a8-4423-b014-16c84f6f0092.9789387280106.SEARCH&ppt=Search%20Page>,
> and MOM1AUpFront <http://www.authorsupfront.com/movements.htm>
>
> Jai Sen, ed, 2017 – *The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us
> Move ?*.  New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press.  Ebook and
> hard copy available at PM Press <http://www.pmpress.org/>
>
> Jai Sen, ed, 2016a  – *The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us
> Move ?* and Jai Sen, ed, 2016b – *The Movements of Movements, Part 2 :
> Rethinking Our Dance* (both then forthcoming from New Delhi : OpenWord
> and Oakland, CA : PM Press), open access *ADVANCE PREFINAL ONLINE
> MOVEMENT EDITIONS @ www.cacim.net <http://www.cacim.net>*
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