Written October 2024
I used to get up here, as a much too young a girl, and I would say things like protect my future! I want to grow up and live my life! I want a planet that sustains life! All still messages that I would endorse. But I stand here today in a very different context. The future I feared as a kid is real. We live in a climate crisis. We have been, for years. And the longer and longer I have tiered, vainly, with my written word, my chants, my pleading. On meetings, in letters at protests, to get political leaders to take action, the more and more my understanding of this crisis has grown. I am no longer a kid, and yet I’ve never felt so hopeless.
In florida people write the names of their children on their arms so they could be identified the next day as a hurricane of momentous portions learned down on them, because gas prices and shortages prevented them from evacuating. During the first hurricane to hit floods in the last few months, i saw photos of police, guarding grocery stores from looter, or as I would describe them, people trying to survive the aftermath of climate chaos.
Honestly the organizing of this strike, was a tad selfish for me. I felt like I was going to get lost in the helplessness and loose myself to apathy. But seeing you all here today, caring, remind me that we can’t. The cops who stood outside the grocery stores have lost themselves to apathy, they’ve abandoned their humanity in favour if defending a corruptions interest – but that not what we’re going to do. we are here, we are embracing the hope, and the anger that comes with it, even though it’s hard and it’s painful.
I am reminded a lot, especially in the last month, of hurricane Hatrina. And I’m aware that I am talking a lot of the us, but I think this is really a case study worth looking at. Over a thousand people died and the majority of those people where Black and Latino. When the hurricane hit, the first county to offer aid was Cuba. Cuba offered, at no cost to the us government, 1586 doctors and 26 tons of aid. The US refused because of ideological differences between the us and Cuba. Despite the Cuban doctors assurances that their mission was not political and was simply with the aim of saving human lives, they where not allowed to come and people me died.
I think my point here is that this is not how we will collectively survive this crisis. The climate crisis is here. We must fight every day to stop the rise of temperatures before it is to late to lower them again, and I don’t even want to talk about how soon that date of no return is coming up, but we also must care for one other, all people, all around the world, and (I can’t believe i have to say this) people in front of you in real life suffering from the effects of this crisis. we cannot let them take our empathy, we must stand together and we must save each other.
We’ve been conditioned to allow the absolute inhumanity of corporate greed and capitalism, and except it as a fact of life. That’s just how the world works and so on. We have become numb to horrible things because capitalism robes us of our time, to come together in collective grief. It robs us of the time to learn and unlearn and grow and understand our world.
So let’s unlearn some things right now.
It is not a fact of life that big polluters get away with not paying for the disasters they have caused because they’ve made enough money off their polluting to get good lawyers.
It is not a fact if life that children and adults live under what has been called “modern day slavery” in the democratic republic of Congo, exposing themselves to toxic fumes and dying, for our cellphones, batteries, vapes and laptops, simply because that country has a large supplies of colbolt and there are people and corporations who want to profit it.
iIt is not a fact of life that the rcmp can violate the human rights if indigenous land defenders to defend the corrupt interest of a logging company which wants to cut down old growth trees in a protected area. committing acts of violence to “defend” corrupt interest at the cost of a vital ecosystem of carbon capture – if you don’t know what i’m talking about research fairy creek. the rcmp have actually been held accountable by a b.c court for “infringement on civil liberties and the rights of the press” in this case. It it super recent, still ongoing and everyone in this country should know about it.
What I hope you understand is that you are more important than corporate greed. The people and wildlife and nature, that’s what really matters. we must have solidarity with one another, despite every effort made to drive us apart. We need that solidarity, to stop this crisis and to live with the damage that’s been done. We can’t be driven apart, we have to stand together, this is too important, we are too important.
Thank you all so much for being here and caring.
Photo By Marlo Richie