Why Our Strikes Still Matter — Join Us on September 20th
We’ve entered the final run for the preparation of the third Global Strike, which will take place on Friday, September 20th. Now it is time to make sure there will be a lot of people joining us. So, the first thing we have to do is obviously to tell our friends to join the strike.
But in the past days, a few of mine have asked me if it was still useful to go on a school strike after we have already had two of them in the last 6 months, and nothing seemed to change.
That’s a tough question to answer. A question that needs more than a few sentences to be answered.
As you know, I have been involved in the Fridays For Future movement for about ten months now. I have helped to organize the strikes from local to global levels. I have given a big part of my free time to this fight. So (and with the title of the article), you can easily understand that my final word will be that of course, strikes matter, and that I will ask you to join us on the next one. But why? Here are the four most important points to me:
1| For years, people kept saying that young generations didn’t care about their future. I’ve heard that so many times. FFF is proving they were wrong. FFF is before all youth raising and fighting for their future. That’s what we are. I don’t want to hear anybody say my generation doesn’t care anymore. Let’s keep fighting, otherwise they’ll resume saying so.
2| Even if that’s what we call greenwashing and even if that doesn’t make them act for real, since our movement exists, there is no political speech without the Climate Crisis being mentioned (Even Trump! What he says is wrong but he talks a lot about it). Climate is everywhere on TV and in the newspapers now. Still not enough, but far more than last year. I’m afraid that if we stop striking, the media attention will slowly decrease, and I don’t want that.
3| We’ve achieved amazing things. Would you have ever believed it was possible? I would not. Of course we have not saved the world. Firstly, it’s not our job, we’re not policymakers, we’re teenagers. Secondly, a lot of people still don’t know much about the problem or simply don’t care, so it’s very difficult for us to have an actual impact on real things, like carbon emissions of companies. But we have put Climate on the front stage of everything, and that makes people hear more and more about it. So we definitely had an impact. That’s what most people tell me : we didn’t have any impact. I know we don’t have time but changing things in this world isn’t possible from one day to another. Let me recall you that we are one year old. One year. I personally think that achieving what we did in that short period of time is rather good, don’t you think? Just imagine what else we can achieve in just one more year…
4| Oh and finally, I’m gonna be a bit self-centered. I have met awesome people thanks to the strikes, lived wonderful moments and learned so much, I just don’t want that to stop!
Yes, we’re teenagers. Yes our politicians are “listening” to us while continuing to destroy our future. That’s exactly why we HAVE to continue to strike. If we stop, they win. If we continue, they will be forced to act. When saying so, I’m always asked “when?”. Only the amount of pressure we put on them can influence the answer. Only the number of people joining us can determine it.
For years, leaders, people with power or money have been “allowed” to do everything they wanted. But time has come for them to be forced to act. I want them to wake up every morning with us in mind. We won’t give them a second of rest.
On September 23rd, a lot of them will gather in New York for a UN Climate Summit. This can be even more important than the COPs at the end of each year, because heads of states usually don’t attend to COPs. That’s why we are striking on the Friday before the Summit. To remind them that we are watching.
If you care about your future, you should join us.
You know what to do.
See you on the 20th !
Clement
