Skip to main content
Read page text
page 72
FEATURE The adults aren’t going to protect you Her parents have even suggested that she drop out of university altogether. ‘All my life I just wanted to be a doctor, to study science. To have to give up my future is very frustrating,’ she says, adding that she’d prefer to spend her time on ‘science research and more sleep’. The example set by others keeps her spirits up though, particularly the courageous actions of indigenous people: ‘They have no protection from the police. They will go to jail and face violence. And still, people fight!’ Her advice to other young people is ‘to join groups and start striking – the adults aren’t going to protect you’. This is my future, I don’t want to sit this out 72 ETIENNE DYER, CORALIE POTVIN, OUSSAMA KIADALI Black Friday in Montreal dawns way below freezing. Across the city, picket lines block the entrance to lectures at the Universities of Concordia, Montreal and McGill and secondary-school students walk out of class as LPSU and Climate Strike Canada put their plans into action. Despite the intense -4C° cold, St Catherine Street is defiantly alive with placards, chants and protesters. Activists call to shoppers ‘take it! It’s free!’, pushing racks of free, second-hand clothes along the road. Among them is Etienne Dyer, a 19-year-old student who is skipping classes from Saint Laurent College. He was arrested at the 27 September global climate strike in 2019 with 40 others, many of whom were his friends from college. And he’s prepared to be arrested again. ‘This is my future,’ he explains. ‘I don’t want to sit this out.’ Alongside Dyer is Coralie Potvin, a 20-year-old Cinema student at the University of Montreal whose hair is dyed half yellow, half pink. When it comes to climate protesting, Potvin says her parents ‘don’t get it. My dad says silly things like: “we are not dead yet, calm down”.’ She is protesting today to ‘stop the excess. I hope people understand that if you need to buy something, buy it, but if not, then don’t. I hope people learn about it and think about it. We should be done with capitalism.’ The number of protesters grows to about 400 by the afternoon, including 12 teenagers aged between 13 and 17 from XR Youth, who glue their palms to the shop windows of American Eagle Outfitters and H&M. They have signs around their necks saying, ‘ne pas tirer, je suis collé’ (don’t shoot, I am glued). A line of police forms a blockade of the store fronts while May Chiu, a mother of one of the protesters, watches on anxiously. ‘What these kids are expressing is a real cry for help, and it is time for adults to listen,’ she says. Teenagers sit in the road. They jump, dance, chant and sing themselves hoarse in support of their glued peers. Sometime after 6.00pm the local fire brigade proceeds to unstick the super-glued activists, who are being rallied with speeches by François Léger Boyer and others. ‘People consume and they think it is OK, but it is causing a climate crisis,’ says Oussama Kiadali, 17, a high-school student and spokesperson for XR Youth who protests every Friday. He wants companies and governments ‘to tell the truth about what they emit’. He goes on: ‘we want [our own] kids, we want normal things, but people are dying now, today, because of Canadian industry.’ By 6.45pm, lipstick-drawn hearts and supportive messages next to super-glued handprints are the only evidence remaining of the protest. Twelve teenagers succeeded in closing two high-street stores for a few hours on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. On Saturday, local news showed a few seconds of the protest in reports about the best deals and how much money the billion-dollar companies made in profit from this year’s Black Friday sales. Meanwhile the young campaigners are already focusing on their next targets. Karcher is fighting to seal the divestment win at her university while Torres, Lim and Léger Boyer are all working on events with indigenous communities in the more remote parts of Quebec. l LUCY EJ WOODS IS AN INTERNATIONAL FREELANCE JOURNALIST SPECIALIZING IN ON-THE-GROUND ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING. 1 ‘The fashion industry emits more carbon…’ Business Insider, 21 October 2019. nin.tl/FashionPollutes NEW INTERNATIONALIST
page 73
VIEW FROM AFRICA Confessions of a frequent flier At the moment, my career as a political analyst involves a lot of travel to conferences and speaking engagements around the world, amounting to hundreds of thousands of miles in planes, trains and automobiles. I am probably burning several times more fossil fuels than the average Kenyan, and maybe significantly more than the average Western middleclass person. I feel increasingly guilty about this and I’m actively exploring ways to make amends but, like most people, I don’t know where to begin. How can individuals whose work and lives contribute significantly to environmental destruction be part of the solution? I’ve tried to be deliberate about efforts to mitigate my impact. For example I don’t drive at the moment, am attempting a low-plastic lifestyle and travel with reusable cups and bottles. When in towns that I am familiar with I primarily use public transport. But I’m the first to admit that after 10 flights in four weeks, the last thing I want to do is be on a subway trying to get to a place I don’t recognize in a country where I don’t speak the language. So, many times, I’ve just opted to take a taxi. Yet the ravages of climate change are front and centre like never before. At the time of writing, Australia is quite literally on fire – millions of hectares of forest ablaze after unseasonably high summer temperatures turned the countryside into kindling. In Indonesia, unseasonably heavy rains have caused flooding, and with that death and displacement. In my own country, Kenya, 140 people died between October and December 2019 in an unprecedented long and heavy rainy season. Ocean temperatures are rising and leading to heavier rainfall, affecting food production cycles; temperature records all over the world are being broken. How can our choices make a difference when the biggest culprits in poisoning the environment are large corporate interests? Several banks and consultancies have attempted to put a price tag on fixing climate change, and they range from $30 billion to $300 billion, both of which are far less than the total net worth of the world’s billionaires ($8.7 trillion). Individual choices are certainly important, but they can never equate to the systemic choices needed to shift the entire logic of the global political economy. It’s also worth noting that the solutions to climate change are not insulated from the vagaries of global inequality. Growing up, I remember being indoctrinated into the belief that individual farmers cutting down trees for firewood was the biggest threat to the environment in Kenya; not the large industries that were clearing out hundreds of thousands of hectares of land for unsustainable and toxic commercial farming. Discussing individual responsibility for climate change should never detract from corporate responsibility for the same. Knowing this doesn’t necessarily reduce my guilt. I hope to plant a few trees in a place in Kenya that needs them and I’m going to keep trying to use bicycles and public transit more regularly, even in a city that doesn’t have the infrastructure for it. Given the size of the problem we face, I know it’s not enough – but it’s a start. l NANJALA NYABOLA IS A POLITICAL ANALYST BASED IN NAIROBI, KENYA. SHE IS THE AUTHOR OF DIGITAL DEMOCRACY, ANALOGUE POLITICS: HOW THE INTERNET ERA IS TRANSFORMING KENYA (ZED BOOKS). MARCH-APRIL 2020 73

Page Text

View plaintext

FEATURE

The adults aren’t going to protect you

Her parents have even suggested that she drop out of university altogether. ‘All my life I just wanted to be a doctor, to study science. To have to give up my future is very frustrating,’ she says, adding that she’d prefer to spend her time on ‘science research and more sleep’.

The example set by others keeps her spirits up though, particularly the courageous actions of indigenous people: ‘They have no protection from the police. They will go to jail and face violence. And still, people fight!’

Her advice to other young people is ‘to join groups and start striking – the adults aren’t going to protect you’.

This is my future, I don’t want to sit this out

72

ETIENNE DYER, CORALIE POTVIN, OUSSAMA KIADALI

Black Friday in Montreal dawns way below freezing. Across the city, picket lines block the entrance to lectures at the Universities of Concordia, Montreal and McGill and secondary-school students walk out of class as LPSU and Climate Strike Canada put their plans into action.

Despite the intense -4C° cold, St Catherine Street is defiantly alive with placards, chants and protesters. Activists call to shoppers ‘take it! It’s free!’, pushing racks of free, second-hand clothes along the road. Among them is Etienne Dyer, a 19-year-old student who is skipping classes from Saint Laurent College. He was arrested at the 27 September global climate strike in 2019 with 40 others, many of whom were his friends from college. And he’s prepared to be arrested again.

‘This is my future,’ he explains. ‘I don’t want to sit this out.’ Alongside Dyer is Coralie Potvin, a 20-year-old Cinema student at the University of Montreal whose hair is dyed half yellow, half pink. When it comes to climate protesting, Potvin says her parents ‘don’t get it. My dad says silly things like: “we are not dead yet, calm down”.’

She is protesting today to ‘stop the excess. I hope people understand that if you need to buy something, buy it, but if not, then don’t. I hope people learn about it and think about it. We should be done with capitalism.’

The number of protesters grows to about 400 by the afternoon, including 12 teenagers aged between 13 and 17 from XR Youth, who glue their palms to the shop windows of American Eagle Outfitters and H&M. They have signs around their necks saying, ‘ne pas tirer, je suis collé’ (don’t shoot, I am glued). A line of police forms a blockade of the store fronts while May Chiu, a mother of one of the protesters, watches on anxiously. ‘What these kids are expressing is a real cry for help, and it is time for adults to listen,’ she says.

Teenagers sit in the road. They jump, dance, chant and sing themselves hoarse in support of their glued peers. Sometime after 6.00pm the local fire brigade proceeds to unstick the super-glued activists, who are being rallied with speeches by François Léger Boyer and others.

‘People consume and they think it is OK, but it is causing a climate crisis,’ says Oussama Kiadali, 17, a high-school student and spokesperson for XR Youth who protests every Friday. He wants companies and governments ‘to tell the truth about what they emit’. He goes on: ‘we want [our own] kids, we want normal things, but people are dying now, today, because of Canadian industry.’

By 6.45pm, lipstick-drawn hearts and supportive messages next to super-glued handprints are the only evidence remaining of the protest. Twelve teenagers succeeded in closing two high-street stores for a few hours on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. On Saturday, local news showed a few seconds of the protest in reports about the best deals and how much money the billion-dollar companies made in profit from this year’s Black Friday sales.

Meanwhile the young campaigners are already focusing on their next targets. Karcher is fighting to seal the divestment win at her university while Torres, Lim and Léger Boyer are all working on events with indigenous communities in the more remote parts of Quebec. l

LUCY EJ WOODS IS AN INTERNATIONAL FREELANCE JOURNALIST SPECIALIZING IN ON-THE-GROUND ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING.

1 ‘The fashion industry emits more carbon…’ Business Insider, 21 October 2019. nin.tl/FashionPollutes

NEW INTERNATIONALIST

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content