To: Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice mailing list
October 2, 2021
Re: The “Fridays for Future” climate protests around the world on September 24

Youthful climate strikers say:
Politicians fiddle while the world burns

By Pete Brown, Detroit Workers’ Voice

On Friday, September 24th, demonstrators gathered in 1,500 locations around the world for a renewal of the climate strike initiated by Greta Thunberg in 2018. This was the first large, in-person, in-the-streets climate protest since the beginning of the pandemic. Since then Thunberg’s Fridays for Future protests have been largely online. But this year, with the relaxation of some COVID restrictions, organizers felt confident to resume protests, and youth around the world readily responded.  Especially large protests were held in major cities of Europe – Paris, Rome, and Berlin. There were also protests in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Warsaw, Istanbul, Milan, Turin, Vienna, and Helsinki. Smaller but spirited demos took place in Nairobi, Kenya and New Delhi, India. Demonstrators in Bangladesh railed against the effects of global heating on their country. There were also protests in Baluchistan and Japan. Protesters in Uganda targeted the East African Crude Oil Pipeline being built in the Lake Victoria basin, a source of water and livelihoods for 40 million people. Tens of thousands marched in Montreal, Canada. In the U.S., demonstrations were held in New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Portland. (1) This edition of Fridays for Future was not as large as similar demos in 2019, before the pandemic, but as the climate crisis deepens and news about COP26 spreads, more and larger protests are expected.

Over 400 protests were held in Germany. Thunberg herself spoke at a rally of 100,000 people in Berlin, outside the Reichstag building. This occurred just days before German parliamentary elections, in which all three major parties – the center-left SPD, the center-right CDU, and the Greens – were making promises about dealing with the climate crisis. But Thunberg expressed skepticism towards all the politicians’ promises, saying “It is clearer than ever that no political party is doing close to enough” (2), and “They simply don’t give a damn about us. … You must vote but remember that voting only will not be enough. We must keep going into the streets.” (3)

Climate strike demonstrators in New York emphasized the need to stop Line 3. This is an oil pipeline being built to bring Canadian oil into the U.S. through Indigenous lands in Minnesota. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe were present at the demo in New York. They pointed out that even though it was the Trump administration that gave permits for construction of Line 3 to be built, since taking office the Biden administration has defended the permits and is allowing construction to continue. (4)

Demonstrators in Portland decried the excessive heat, the continued drought, and the devastating wildfires raging in the western United States. (5) This past summer hundreds of people collapsed and died of heat stroke in the Northwest, in Oregon and Washington but especially in British Columbia, as the temperature soared above 110 degrees Fahrenheit in many places. Forest fires burned out of control and threatened cities like Lake Tahoe and national monuments like the 4,000-year-old trees of Sequoia National Park. Thousands of people were forced to evacuate their homes and hundreds of homes were burned. Even today, after the summer heat, school children are kept indoors in some places to avoid playing outside in the smoke-polluted air.

The overall theme for the Global Climate Strike was “Uproot the System” and many demonstrations carried banners calling for “System Change Not Climate Change.” These calls to change the system are positive steps forward, but there is no single interpretation of them in the present movement, which needs to develop further. Fridays For Future puts forward climate justice and equity as one of its main demands, along with keeping temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Centigrade and listening to the science. How to achieve these demands and what more exactly they mean are yet to be determined.

Youthful climate strikers should continue to hold the bourgeois politicians’ feet to the fire and demand significant action to reduce carbon emissions. These demonstrations could be one step towards the masses having a say on the environment.

Notes

(1) Karla Adam and Rick Noack, “Young climate activists join Greta Thunberg for first major Fridays for Future strikes of pandemic”, September 24, 2021, Washington Post.

(2) Kate Abnett,  “World's youth take to the streets again to battle climate change”, Reuters, September 25, 2021.

(3)  Angela Dewan, Aditi Sangal, Isabelle Jani-Friend, Melissa Mahtani and Meg Wagner, CNN, “Young people rally at climate protests around the world”, September 24.

(4) Ibid. 

(5) Courtney Vaughn, “Portland students walk out of class for climate strike”, Portland Tribune.

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