From Whangārei to Invercargill, thousands are expected to take to the streets in Friday’s climate strike.
But it is not just about the climate crisis: The event is led by a coalition including Toitū Te Tiriti, Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa, and School Strike 4 Climate.
They have six demands. To keep the ban on oil and gas exploration, end the Fast Track Approvals Bill, toitū te Tiriti o Waitangi, climate education for all, lower the voting age to 16 and to “free Palestine”.
Because the fundamental thing about climate activism is you can’t just separate the environment from everyone and everything that happens within it. This includes political structures, which is why the voting age thing is in there.
I don’t understand how this isn’t more self evident to people when the most common point that comes up about personal solutions to reduce your emissions like EVs and solar panels etc is that many people can’t afford them. This speaks to more than just ‘environmental stuff’ being part of addressing climate change.
I get that everything is connected, but it’s much easier to bring attention to a cause when you’re only campaigning for one thing at a time.
Yeah maybe but in honesty, all this hand wringing about the messaging and the “right way” to protest is just a derailing tactic that comes up no matter what people do.
Protesting too many things at once? Not focused enough
Protesting one big thing? Too vague, not practical enough
Doing a peaceful march, signalled ahead of time in coordination with the authorities? Useless, what does it achieve
Carrying out civil disobedience? How dare you interrupt people’s daily lives, this only hurts your cause
Etc etc etc. I feel like if people actually care about the underlying cause they have to move past just doing their best political pundit impression about the optics and they how think it plays with the public, as if they’re somehow above it all
You’re talking absolute nonsense. One of the most effective protests I’ve seen was the original school strike, they had enough people to take over an entire street through sheer force of numbers, and completely filled parliament grounds.
Numbers speak more than anything, a thousand people protesting peacefully will carry more weigh than ten nutters shutting down SH1.
It doesn’t matter how you protest, it matters how many protest.
You’ve missed the point I was making, but quick with the insults as always.
I understood your point, it just wasn’t a very good one.
That’s ok, I’ve seen what you think is a good point