-Greta Thunberg, 9-23-2019
You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet, I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?
This past Monday morning, September 23, 2019, on the Autumn Equinox, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the opening of the U.N. Climate Summit in New York City, with these chilling words.
We all must take time to listen to her and the voices of young leaders the world ‘round who speak with her in this stunning and unprecedented time of collapse, chaos and the call to courage.
Last Friday, September 20, we filled our church bus again with 21 folks from the 6 churches of McMinnville Congregations and Climate Movement, joining some of Oregon’s youth leaders on the steps of the State Capitol in Salem for our part in the Global Climate Strike. We were one of 4,600 events taking place in 139 countries leading up to the UN Emergency Climate Summit which convened this morning.
Students worldwide are saying: “School children are required to attend school. With the worsening climate destruction, going to school seems pointless. Why study for a future, which may not be there? Why spend the effort to become educated, when our governments are not listening to the educated?” This Strike is part of a progression of actions of Fridays For Future. FFF is a movement that began August 2018, after (then) 15-year-old Greta Thunberg sat in front of the Swedish parliament every school day for three weeks, protesting lack of action on the climate crisis. She posted what she was doing on Instagram and Twitter and it went viral.
On September 8th, Greta decided to continue striking every Friday until Swedish policies, in line with the Paris agreement, provided a safe pathway to well under 2-degree C. The hashtags #FridaysForFuture and #Climatestrike spread and many students and adults began to protest outside their parliaments, local city halls, and legislative assemblies all over the world. For Greta and millions of young people and adults worldwide, this week marks 52 Fridays on strike.
As young climate strikers have shown, there is huge power in sustained action, week after week, to match the scale of the climate emergency. These dates in September are only a beginning to the sustained mass mobilization needed to pressure world governments to act in line with climate science and justice. Millions of school climate strikers have been leaving their classrooms every Friday. Now they hope everyone else will join them. Going on climate strike means people everywhere walking out of their homes, their offices, their farms, their factories. Everyone is needed to disrupt business as usual: from sports stars, actors and teachers to food industry workers, psychologists, delivery drivers and everything in between. We can all take part, whatever our circumstances, by refusing to accept the status quo.
By the time we got to our own Capitol steps, 100,000 people had already come out to a climate strike in Melbourne, Australia. Students in New Dehli were striking because they are running out of water, Indonesians because their forests are burning. Some are protesting new pipelines and mines, or the banks that fund them; some highlight the oil companies fueling this crisis and the politicians who enable them. Others are raising awareness in their communities and pushing for solutions to the climate crisis with justice and equity at their heart.
Friday, in Salem, we stood with Oregon’s youth leaders. They have been camping out in our Capitol building the past three annual legislative sessions fighting for passage of the Clean Energy Jobs bill and other legislation to make emission reduction a priority in law. As our own (Republican) Senator Brian Boquist threatened violence and 11 other GOP senators refused to show up so there wouldn’t be a quorum in the Senate so the Clean Energy Jobs Bill (cap and invest legislation) wouldn’t come to a vote, youth leaders from around the state stood in the hallway forcing these Senators to look them in the face and walk past them on their way to the Senate floor to kill climate action for 2019.
Oregon is still uniquely positioned to deliver a huge climate win and our youth leaders know it. As we stood with them on those well-traveled steps, September 20, the message was clear on their signs. The kids always seem to get it right with their words: “We demand a climate recovery plan! Climate Action Now!” These are amazingly placid for teenagers, but straight to the point. “SEX!!!! (now that I’ve got your attention, stop screwing with the planet!)” is a little more out there. The attitude favorite was actually the plain cardboard sign done in ink pen, held up by the girl in pink knee-high socks and combat boots: “Plant trees, BITCH!” I also loved: “It’s So Bad Even Introverts Are Here!” That one speaks to how hard it is sometimes for folks like me just to show up.
The message of the day was: “The biggest threat to our Planet is the belief that someone else will save it!” Listen carefully to these short clips of three young articulate Oregon leaders, speaking their conscience and calling us to action:
It is absolutely time for us to “vote out the climate deniers and those stuck in inaction.” It is time for us to take our youngest leaders seriously and truly hear what they are saying: “This is our moment. It is our movement. It is time for us to rise and create real change!!!!.” I have been thinking about Greta’s words to the U.N. this morning:
You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?
All around the Planet, amazing young leaders like Greta Thunberg and those who spoke to us in Salem are taking moral responsibility to work together and create real change. They don’t want adults to look to them for hope, they want adults to be adults…to be powerful parents, teachers, moral and political leaders, using the wisdom, power and authority we possess so our children may live and thrive and have a future. This is not so much for them as with them. Let’s not patronize our young people by leaving our future to them…like it’s all up to them because it’s not. They are fighting for survival and they need us in the fight beside them. Let’s rise with them, following their lead when it’s the right thing to do, leading when that’s right but always walking together to create a new future of hope.
Since our grandson Jackson’s earliest months, I’ve been carrying a photo of him on that sign reading “I’m here for him.” I don’t know for sure if that’s the best of captions for today, but, on Friday at our Capitol I found lots of parents and grandparents who want the best for their children and all of us. I like this photo a lot. And the truth is, I don’t always know what to say on a sign. Sometimes we look to the Gretas of the world and the best message is simply, “What Greta Said.” And then we go off again in search of our own voices.
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