A PSA FOR STUDYBLR ABOUT STUDENT CLIMATE STRIKES
Hello everyone! As I’m posting this it’s been two days since the second Global Youth Strike 4 Climate, so now seems like a good time to bring this up.
If you don’t already know about the student climate strikes (I hope that most of you do already, but I’ll explain briefly anyways), this is a movement started last year by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg aiming to pressure global governments and corporations into taking radical action to combat climate breakdown before we reach a point of no return in 2030. The global protest two days ago surpassed 1.8 million students striking all across the world, but smaller scale protests take place every single Friday to maintain pressure.
I work within the UK’s student climate strike organisation (UKSCN - UK Student Climate Network), mainly helping to run one of the regional social media accounts, and I’ve been helping to organise and run my city’s climate strike since the UK movement began back in February. So you could say that I know a fair bit about this by now.
“But timeforgermanic!” I hear the bloggers cry. “Why are you bringing this up now? What’s so important so suddenly that it needs addressing immediately?”
Maybe it’s not as big of a deal as it currently seems to me. Maybe there is a big student strike presence on studyblr that I’m just not following. But what I want to address is the apparent silence within the studyblr community on this topic. Strike days come and go without a whisper on here. A few PSA posts and memes about “friendly reminder we have ____ years to go before climate change is irreversible!” and that’s… it. No follow-up on actions that students can and are taking. Just panic and a reminder to use a bamboo toothbrush.
(Not that I’m trying to attack bamboo toothbrushes. Little changes are wonderful, but what’s even better is pressuring the small handful of companies producing most of the world’s carbon dioxide and the governments that turn a blind eye to them into growing a fucking spine and taking responsibility for the planet they’re destroying.)
Again, this could easily just be me trapped in a small sphere of studyblr climate inactivity, and just beyond my dash there are blogs that are way, way bigger than mine posting relentlessly about this, rallying the Tumblr student community to action just out of my line of sight.
Or, equally, maybe there isn’t. Which is why I’m making this post anyways.
I cannot express enough how crucial it is for you all to join in this movement.
The world itself needs climate action. We need this to be the thing that studyblr talks about. We need to make the online community aware of the movement and create a culture of environmentalism online which reflects the tireless efforts of the students out there in the streets. Studyblr is such a wonderful, interconnected, supportive community, and once just a few people on here start talking about a certain idea or issue, it spreads like wildfire. I’ve seen it happen. So, please, I am begging you all, let the student strikes be something we talk about. Not just talk about, but that every single one of us who are able to participate and promote it. Share your strike stories and pictures - I’ll be keeping an online diary on my blog of strike planning and marches over the summer and for as long as these protests last. Because the fact that I haven’t seen one single post encouraging student strikes in studyblr is just sad. We are an online community of thousands of students. When it comes to student strikes for climate, we can do better.
To everyone who is able: please, please, please, please join in your local strike. Find their social media and keep up-to-date with future strikes and any other actions they may be planning (in UKSCN, for example, we recently ran an e-mail pressure campaign in a bid to get our MEP candidates to pledge to push for a Green New Deal in the EU in the run-up to the European elections - we successfully pushed 55 candidates to make the pledge). This a crucial student-led movement that our online student community should be making an effort to promote, not sweep under the rug and quietly forget about. Silence will not suffice during the sixth mass extinction.
Expect to see a hell of a lot more environmentalism on my blog from now on. I hope others will join me and bring this to the forefront of studyblr.
Thank you. <3
PS: I say ‘those who are able’ because I am fully aware that some people who have anxiety, are on the autistic spectrum, etc. may have difficulty dealing with the mass crowds that form at some of the major strikes. My city’s monthly strike consistently exceeds 1000 participants and I have a friend who can’t join in because getting swept up in loud crowds of people gives her panic attacks. If this or anything like this applies to you, please do not feel like I am attacking you for it. I know that not everyone can handle the atmosphere at strikes and if that applies to you then this post isn’t aimed at you. But please, even if you can’t strike yourself, reblog and spread the message and promote strikes in your country or local area, and help make this a topic that gets widely discussed in studyblr.
PPS: If you have any questions about the movement and striking, please don’t hesitate to ask! I’m always happy to talk about this and help in any way that I can!
