Get ready to take part in September’s global climate strikes
In August 2018, at the age of 15, Greta Thunberg, a teenage Swedish school student, took time off school to demonstrate outside the Swedish parliament holding up a sign calling for bold climate action. Her “school strike for the climate” began attracting media attention and other students then engaged in similar protests in their own communities. Together they organized a school climate strike movement, under the name Fridays for Future. After Thunberg addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, student strikes took place every week somewhere in the world.
Strikes began to be organised around the world, inspired by Thunberg, starting in November 2018. In 2019, there were at least two coordinated multi-city protests involving over one million pupils each. On 15 March 2019, school strikes, urging adults to take responsibility and stop the climate change, began taking place in over 2000 cities worldwide. An estimated number of 1.4 million pupils from around the world participated in the events.
One again, millions will take part in global climate strikes on the 20th + 27th September. It is on course to be the largest global mobilization against climate breakdown, with over 6000 people in 150 countries pledging to organise events to date.
People will walk out of their workplaces and homes to join young climate strikers on the streets and demand an end to the age of fossil fuels. Many unions around the world have declared support for the student strikes and will join in a variety of actions in political protest on September 20.
Last year’s UN intergovernmental panel on climate change’s special report on global warming was clear about the unprecedented dangers of going beyond 1.5C of global heating. It is time for all of us to unleash mass resistance – we have shown that collective action does work. We need to escalate the pressure to make sure that change happens, and we must escalate together.
So let’s join on climate strike this September. People have risen up before to demand action and make change; if we do so in numbers we have a chance. If we care, we must do more than say we do. We must act. This won’t be the last day we need to take to the streets, but it will be a new beginning.
The range of actions is huge: from people downing tools and walking out of work to join strikes, rallies, music concerts and marches. From teach ins in libraries, people’s assemblies discussing actions and policies benefiting their local communities, protests targeting fossil fuel companies responsible for the climate crisis, and the banks that fund them; to spending the day raising awareness in communities and pushing for solutions to the climate crisis that have justice and equity at their heart.
#FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike
