Act 2: Climate Strike
September 27, 2019“We’ re fuckin’ dying”
There are interesting dichotomies between the spoken, written and visual languages of dissent. Here we look specifically at the DC Climate Strike, part of the September 20, 2019 Global Climate Strike. According to Jonah Gottlieb of the National Childrens Campaign, about 12,000 school kids and adults participated. Because I wanted to capture more than photographs, Debbie Messina, a journalist and my wife, went along to interview some of the strikers. Here are excerpts from three interviews.
Donovan Weber said this about the sign he brought to the strike;
“I wanted to make my message short and bold. It’s our future at stake. It’s our children’s future at stake.” Talking about industry, Donovan’s remarks were sharp. “I don’t want them (industries) changed, I want them out. They won’t change unless they are removed.” That industry provoked Weber’s ire was palpable.
Keely Ferrando, media coordinator and a strike organizer, was concerned about more than just the environmental impact of climate change.
“It’s important to anyone who walks and breathes to have a functioning ecological system.” But she also fears climate change “…is going to have severe economic issues; possibly economic collapse.”
And Sam Schulman, one of the strikers reporting for his school newspaper, said this; “The planet is literally dying. Sea level rise is wiping out coastal areas. Ocean life is dying because it can’t handle rising temperatures. It’s hard to get people to care. Legislators are not changing their minds. We need to continue to bring attention…keep the conversation going so people will care. I’m worried less for myself and more for people with less resources than I have.”
Before introducing a line-up of speakers, the co-MCs for the strike sounded off five demands:
Over the next 90 minutes about 30 people addressed the crowd. Most were students. Stepping out of the Capitol at various times, Representatives Nanette Barragan, D-CA; Kathy Castor, D-FL; John Garamendi, D-CA; Raul Grijalva, D-AZ; Jim McGovern, D-MA, and Jerry Nadler, D-NY each made brief remarks. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was expected to speak but didn’t make it out.
In the days following the strike, some criticized the strikers suggesting that they were kids being manipulated by parents and politicians. On Twitter, one young speaker was called “deranged.” Those exaggerations were off-base and unwarranted. Were people excited? Sure. Did they carry banners and make some noise? Yes. Just like my friends and I did in our youth for causes that mattered to us.
The kids in DC weren’t suckers. And they damn sure weren’t deranged. Frankly, it was refreshing to see several thousand engaged young adults come together in an organized fashion for an important cause. Perhaps the students are becoming the teachers?
The strikers spoke with a collective sense of urgency. I believe that is appropriate. To consider the edgier side of dissent and transitions from what they had to say to the signs they carried, take a look at the photographs for Act 2.
Post Note:
As the week of Sep 23 moved from Tuesday to Thursday - from Pelosi’s call for an impeachment inquiry to the Trump-Zelensky phone call to the whistleblower’s letter to Joseph Maguire’s testimony - I considered scrapping this article on climate change. Then I thought better. Svante Arrhenius made some of the first calculations of atmospheric cooling in 1896. Today we know a hell of a lot more about climate change than we do about Trump-Zelensky-whistleblower-Maguire. We’ll come back to the events of this week in a future Act. But we’ll do that when we move further from “what we think we know” to “we know.”