#youth climate strike

[feckcops]

Students occupy schools and universities across Europe in climate protest

“In Germany, universities were occupied in Wolfenbüttel, Magdeburg, Münster, Bielefeld, Regensburg, Bremen and Berlin. In Spain, students in occupation at the Autonomous University of Barcelona organised teach-outs on the climate crisis. In Belgium, 40 students occupied the University of Ghent. In the Czech Republic, about 100 students camped outside the ministry of trade and industry. In the UK occupations were under way at the universities of Leeds, Exeter and Falmouth.

“The most radical actions were taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, where youngsters occupied seven schools and two universities. On Thursday, occupying pupils forced one high school to remain closed for a third day, while students at the University of Lisbon’s faculty of humanities barricaded themselves in the dean’s office.

“Young people also stopped traffic in the Portuguese capital with street blockades in solidarity with the occupations. The radical action comes despite harsh responses from teachers at one school who called police to evict pupils who began occupations last week ...

“A statement by the campaign read: ‘End Fossil: Occupy! is radicalising the youth climate movement in tactics and demands. Occupations instead of strikes. End the fossil economy instead of listen to the science. End Fossil: Occupy! is reigniting the fire of the youth climate movement last seen in 2019.’”

[humanrightsconnected]

Today marks International Youth Day 👧👦! As we pay tribute to the many young people who are working relentlessly to uphold human rights around the 🌎, read our blog post on how youth activism is playing a pivotal role in the fight against climate change! Also, explore the many ways how you can join the fight to end the climate crisis 🌊🔥🌳🥤🌪️! 

[xulingkelley]

SKIP SCHOOL FRIDAY SEPT 15TH Join XR Youth Boston & Boston Friday's for Future on Friday , September 15th at 2pm at Boston City Hall Plaza for Global Climate Strike.

his strike is part of the Fridays For Future September 15th Global school strike for climate. The global demand for this strike is "an end to fossil finance". This means divesting from new and current fossil fuel projects and making massive investments in community owned renewable energy projects, as well as making reparations for the historically marginalized people who have already had to face the brunt of climate change.

Boston will be holding a rally and die-in at City Hall Plaza. All ages are encouraged to join in!

RSVP using THIS LINK to be sure to get reminders and any updates.

This event is organized by XR Youth Boston and the Boston Fridays for Future group.

[janemacneil]

Youth Strike For Climate, Liverpool, September 2022

[cock-holliday]

I think something extremely worth considering about the ICJ hearing is this: most of what feels underwhelming and angering about the ruling is irritation at the legal system and not at the ruling.

So, people pissed at the ICJ are right, and people saying “no this is actually a huge win” are also right.

It’s something that I, someone with a law degree, fucking loathe about the law.

Half a year back, a Montana judge ruled in a landmark case that companies were infringing on the right of the youth to have a clean environment. It was an historic move, and came after substantial long-haul efforts. It seemed like an impossible task and yet it was accomplished.

It’s also largely symbolic. Anyone who didn’t declare this the end of the climate crisis was labeled a doomerist, but functionally…what is going to be done now?

As of Jan 2024, not much!

The ruling followed up with “so now we turn to the state to address it.” And the state of Montana is red as all hell and full of climate denialism. So then what? If Montana doesn’t want to *do* anything, what then? Will the state be punished? Injunctions? Fines? Anything?

When you are fired from your job unjustly, you must prove you were fired unjustly, which can take years. If they decide the company was right (or maybe not wrong) to fire you, you get nothing. If they find that you’re right, you just get money. Which helps you, undoubtedly! Does it hurt the company? No. So for as long as they are profitable they can “afford” to violate worker rights.

Megacorporations engage in slave labor and generally when found to participate incur fines and prommy not to do it again. Companies like Heineken have faced lawsuits ranging from intentionally misleading consumers, unlawful dismissals, environmental destruction, slavery, and more. Companies like Coca Cola have murdered workers abroad staging strikes. Not murdered as in a word used to make their disregard hit your ears appropriately, I mean sent militias to gun down. They were found guilty of this in court. The company was found to be running death squads. Can you still buy a coke at the store or was the company shut down?

If you steal a dollar from the register at work you can be fired and go to jail. If your boss steals thousands from your paycheck, it’s an oopsie and if you take the time to prove it, you just get your money back. If you don’t get fired for looking, also.

The law is a tool of subjugation and on occasion we can study the tools and bend them like the bottom of a chain-link fence to let someone escape. But it is not a force for total liberation.

The law will never be capable of achieving liberation because the law is what impedes the liberation. It is legal to use slave labor in prison, it is legal to starve you, it is legal to kick you down and if you dare bite the hand that slaps you then it is legal to put you down.

The UN special rapporteur for torture came to a “school” in Massachusetts that was abusing autistic kids and the UN condemned that school for torture. The school is still operational today. The FDA said you had to stop torturing kids during covid and then covid “ended” so now all bets are off. There are people fighting against it every day but if someone burned down that building and sent all the kids home, the state and federal government who ignores the torture would descend upon that arsonist like a tidal wave.

The law is…underwhelming, disappointing, unfair, because it is not made for us, the people. It is made by those in power to keep their power, and little tweaks can undoubtedly be the difference between life and death for some, but it is never going to free us all. The law cannot be ignored as a factor in liberation but it is not a source.

That’s not what the law is.

Freedom is sought elsewhere.

[anarchywoofwoof]

A federal appeals court on Wednesday evening granted the Biden administration’s request to strike down a landmark federal youth climate case, outraging climate advocates.

“This is a tragic and unjust ruling,” said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit.

The lawsuit, Juliana v United States, was filed by 21 young people from Oregon who alleged the federal government’s role in fueling the climate crisis violates their constitutional rights.

The Wednesday order from a panel of three Trump-appointed judges on the ninth circuit court of appeals will require a US district court judge to dismiss the case for lack of standing, with no opening to amend the complaint.

The decision affirmed an emergency petition filed by the justice department in February arguing that “the government will be irreparably harmed” if it is forced to spend time and resources litigating the Juliana case. It’s a measure the justice department should never have taken, said Olson.

“The Biden administration was wrong to use an emergency measure to stop youth plaintiffs from having their day in court,” she said in a statement. “The real emergency is the climate emergency.”

The lawsuit has faced numerous obstacles since it was first filed in 2015. A different panel of judges on the ninth circuit court of appeals previously ordered the case to be dismissed in 2020, on the grounds that the climate crisis must be addressed with policy, not litigation. But a US district court judge allowed the plaintiffs to amend their lawsuit, and last year ruled the case could go to trial.

Olson said the fight for the Juliana plaintiffs is “not over”.

“President Biden can still make this right by coming to the settlement table,” she said. “And the full ninth circuit can correct this mistake.” The Biden administration has not indicated it will come to the settlement table.

Litigation filed by Our Children’s Trust has seen success elsewhere. Earlier this year, Montana’s supreme court upheld upheld a groundbreaking decision requiring state regulations to consider the climate crisis before approving permits for fossil fuel development. Youth plaintiffs have similar pending lawsuits in Hawaii – which will go to trial in June – as well Florida, Utah and Virginia.

In December, Our Children’s Trust filed another federal lawsuit on behalf of a group of California youths, targeting the Environmental Protection Agency.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dharna Noor at The Guardian:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday evening granted the Biden administration’s request to strike down a landmark federal youth climate case, outraging climate advocates. “This is a tragic and unjust ruling,” said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit. The lawsuit, Juliana v United States, was filed by 21 young people from Oregon who alleged the federal government’s role in fueling the climate crisis violates their constitutional rights.

The Wednesday order from a panel of three Trump-appointed judges on the ninth circuit court of appeals will require a US district court judge to dismiss the case for lack of standing, with no opening to amend the complaint. The decision affirmed an emergency petition filed by the justice department in February arguing that “the government will be irreparably harmed” if it is forced to spend time and resources litigating the Juliana case. It’s a measure the justice department should never have taken, said Olson. “The Biden administration was wrong to use an emergency measure to stop youth plaintiffs from having their day in court,” she said in a statement. “The real emergency is the climate emergency.”

The lawsuit has faced numerous obstacles since it was first filed in 2015. A different panel of judges on the ninth circuit court of appeals previously ordered the case to be dismissed in 2020, on the grounds that the climate crisis must be addressed with policy, not litigation. But a US district court judge allowed the plaintiffs to amend their lawsuit, and last year ruled the case could go to trial. Olson said the fight for the Juliana plaintiffs is “not over”.

A 3-judge Trump-appointed panel on the 9th Circuit struck down the Juliana v. United States youth climate crisis lawsuit. The case can still be ruled by the full 9th.

[chainmail-butch]

Vote blue no matter who, right?

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 20 August 2018, the first day of the school year, 15-year-old autistic school student Greta Thunberg began a solo school strike demanding government action on climate change. Instead of going to class, she printed leaflets declaring "We kids most often don’t do what you tell us to do. We do as you do. And since you grown-ups don’t give a shit about my future, I won’t either. My name is Greta and I’m in ninth grade. And I refuse school for the climate until the Swedish general election." Then she headed to the Swedish parliament building where she protested alone. Within a couple of days a handful of people began to join her, and she gave numerous interviews to journalists, making headlines around the world. Within a few months, hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren in hundreds of towns and cities around the world organised their own walkouts. While Thunberg as inspired many young people, some commentators have pointed out that she received much more favourable media coverage than Indigenous youth who have been using direct action and fighting police to protect biodiversity and fight climate change for years in places like Standing Rock in the United States. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2062088090642997/?type=3

[kp777]

By Damian Carrington

The Guardian

June 15, 2023

Rich countries are signing a “death sentence” for millions of poor people around the world by failing to phase out fossil fuels, the climate activist Greta Thunberg has told governments. She warned on Tuesday that with annual greenhouse gas emissions at an all-time high, only a “rapid and equitable” phaseout of fossil fuels would keep global temperatures within the scientifically advised limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. “The coming months and years – right now – will be crucial to what the future looks like. It is what we decide now that will define the rest of humanity’s future,” she told a press conference at UN talks in Bonn, where governments are meeting to discuss the climate crisis. “If we do not [phase out fossil fuels], it will be a death sentence for countless people. It is already a death sentence for countless people,” she said. Thunberg last Friday announced the end of her school strikes, which she has been undertaking on Fridays since 2018 in protest at political inaction on the climate crisis. The campaigner has left school but intends to carry on speaking out on climate issues, while also giving the spotlight to youth voices from the developing world. She said a lack of political will to halt fossil fuel exploration and use was threatening to raise global temperatures by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, which could lead the climate to pass “tipping points”, a cascade of impacts that could create runaway global heating. “We are still rushing towards the cliff. We could trigger feedback loops that are beyond human control, that would throw countless billions under the bus,” she said. The question of phasing out fossil fuels is expected to be a flashpoint at the Cop28 UN climate talks later this year. The summit will take place in Dubai, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, a major oil and gas producer. Many countries would like to see Cop28 produce a formal resolution to phase out fossil fuels, or at least to discuss such a phaseout as an official agenda item at the summit. But some countries, chiefly fossil fuel producers including Saudi Arabia, are staunchly opposed, and the UAE presidency has been cautious, saying there is not yet agreement on the agenda. Chairing the talks will be Sultan Al Jaber, a minister in the UAE government who is also chief of the country’s national oil company, Adnoc, which is planning a massive expansion of fossil fuel production capacity. Eric Njuguna, a climate justice organiser from Kenya, speaking with Thunberg, said Al Jaber’s dual role was a conflict of interest, and called on him to resign. “It is a stab in the back for poor countries to have a fossil fuel CEO on top of efforts to constrain the climate crisis,” he said. Al Jaber has told the Guardian he will bring a “business mindset” to the talks, and pointed to his role as co-founder of the Masdar renewable energy company in UAE. He visited the Bonn talks last Thursday, and told a public meeting: “The phase down of fossil fuels is inevitable.” But he stopped well short of promising to put a phaseout of fossil fuels on the Cop28 agenda. The talks in Bonn, which started last Monday and will end on Thursday, are to lay the groundwork for Cop28, the conference of the parties under the UN framework convention on climate change, which begins on 30 November. Progress at Bonn has been slow. Last week’s discussions were characterized by disputes over rich countries that are failing to provide financial assistance to developing countries, to help them cut their greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of the climate crisis. Alden Meyer, a senior associate at the thinktank E3G, said: “Much more work remains to be done to land an agreement at Cop28 for a just and equitable reduction of fossil fuel production and use in a time frame that’s consistent with the Paris [agreement] 1.5C goal.”

[scottishcommune]

The system’s attempt to break the revolutionary youth spirit is present in every context and in all of us. The time we are in at the moment is a time of chaos, which brings dangers, but it also includes a lot of chances and possibilities. Florian reminds us that if we know how to use these chances and possibilities, we can take big steps forward together. He analysed that since the breakdown of real socialism (in Kurdish discourse, real socialism is the name given to the form of state socialism that dominated the 20th century and peaked in the Soviet Union), the world has been in crisis. The world’s powers, the US, Russia, and China, struggle and fight to define a new world order. In the last 30 years, a war has been going on that is spreading with increased speed. The attempt to build a new world order, with the US being the leading force, has failed. There are new forces that want to have a “bigger piece of the cake”. The hegemony of one superpower has been rejected.

We should not get bogged down trying to take a stance in every conflict. Instead, we need to look at the third party- where are the democratic structures, the youth and the women in the current global crises? In this period of a third world war, we can see destruction, suicide, genocide and ecological catastrophes all around us, but there is also a lot of hope. We have seen the greatest strike of history in India, uprisings against climate breakdown globally and massive youth demonstrations in France.

The problem we are facing is not the lack of motivation or upset with the current state of our world but the fact that our enemy is very well organised through different forms, militarily, politically, and culturally, while we are often split and divided. Yet even though “the enemy might be big, it doesn’t have the power of the people- we are the people”. If we manage to be united rather than divided by our diversity, we will be an unstoppable force. He ended his speech with Ocalan’s words: “Young we have started, and young we will succeed”.

[ruledbyscorpio]

peaceful protest is just never going to work anymore. i keep thinking about this as i watch youth climate strikes and marches for abortion access and the modern things that have gotten groups of people together peacefully. not to disregard the work of these organizers! they’re doing what they feel is right and, unlike most, they’re doing something.

that doesn’t change the fact that the efficacy of such protests is next to nothing. i’ve been in rooms with politicians and business leaders and you have to understand: they’re laughing at us. behind closed doors where decisions are actually made they see us in the streets and they laugh about how fucking pathetic it is.

let’s talk about history for a moment. the common example of effective peaceful protest that people in the US give is Dr. King and the earlier wing of the civil rights movement. peaceful protest did work there, but it was because of a collection of factors that we simply don’t have in the modern day. in the case of early marchers, they were clearly in the right. the cops gassing and beating teenagers for ordering a soda were fucking comic book villains. also, there was enough support from within the political establishment that someone was listening and receptive to demands. the movement had a deeply charismatic spate of leaders in Dr. King and his co-organizers. it was also the boundless fifties and activist sixties; a time in history when things were changing and people could see their lives meaningfully impacted as a result. there was also simply massive numbers of people mobilized consistently, giving them an ability to sustain pressure across time and locale. the work of the movement was important and groundbreaking and i by no means dismiss its efficacy and importance.

they still killed Dr. King. they killed generations of leaders after him, too. it took miles of effort and too much blood for grudging concessions of bare-minimum legislation. the lesson to be learned from this period is not that peaceful protest works, it's that even so-called peaceful protests are never peaceful for the oppressed. was it peaceful for the students sprayed violently with firehoses? for the victims of retributive violence? i apologize if this sounds callous, but was it peaceful for Dr. King?

beyond the misnomer of 'peaceful' protest - has there ever been a movement that wasn't brutalized by the long arm of the state? this question is especially important when the state is a vehicle to protect capital. beyond the fact that peaceful protests are only ever peaceful by the oppressed, the other lesson is that they still only work when the stars align into a perfect storm of factors. had even one thing been different there's a nonzero chance there would never have been civil rights laws federally in this nation. even the ones we have today still fail to meaningfully liberate people who aren't white. even effective peaceful protest is neither peaceful nor entirely effective.

let's do another, more modern history lesson. harken back to summer of 2020 and the massive wave of protests that swept the country in the wake of continuous and sustained racist violence imposed on the people. remember what happened in Portland? at the first hint of protests becoming non-peaceful we were gassed, shot at, beaten, kidnapped off the streets, killed by proud boys who were usually off-duty cops. a member of my community committed suicide after being taken in one of the unmarked Fed vans and mercilessly interrogated and harassed. and the cops shot first. they simply did. they were the ones who turned the protest away from peace.

the reason this response was so extreme is because we actually posed an organized resistance. the action on the streets that summer was enough to scare powerful people so much that they called in the fucking federal attack dogs on their own city. to this day, more than three years later, much of the downtown is still boarded up. and then, of course, most of the media about the death of Portland and how unsafe this city is was planted by cops, business owners who wanted more cops, and politicians who wanted anything other than change. if this city is dying it is because they nailed up plywood over the beautiful displays and made it impossible to exist publicly in peace if you're anything other than well-dressed and white. in their desperation to hold onto power they kneecapped their own businesses and bought policy that made the city even more dangerous than it was. the extreme policing of poverty only serves to make poverty more visible.

the point i'm trying to make with this anecdote is that peaceful protest will never work. furthermore, they let us protest peacefully. it's a release valve allowed by the powerful so we don't organize into a real, organized movement.

my second point is that they're really fucking scared of even a few thousand people in one city. so scared that they'd shoot themselves in the foot to hit us with the shrapnel. to me, the extremity of response demonstrates the efficacy of tactics. compare the few bored cops at a youth climate strike to the wholesale military that came down on a protest that broke a couple windows.

at this day in age in the fight against climate change and capitalism we don't have the numbers, momentum, charismatic leadership, policy support, or visible cartoon villains to make a mass movement of nicely asking for change feasible in any way. i would take critique on the cartoon villains point - thanks elon - but the fact of the matter is we don't have the same social factors now as the more successful peaceful movement did.

additionally, capitalism persists as it has the power to absorb and assimilate any challenge to itself. consider the recent movement for Black lives. it did have meaningful impacts, such as a greater awareness of racial justice, or the rare defunding of a police department, or a broader culture of DEI in companies and institutions. these are all important, but they're also tiny in comparison to original demands. and look how police funding has spiked since. saying #blm became normalized and acceptable to placate us away from real change. because of this absorbent power of capital, any protest of the status quo and its hydra head of evils that does not seek wholesale dismantling of the system will not succeed. of course, wholesale dismantling of the system will not be peaceful. this is the other meaningful critique of peaceful protest; was it coincidental that backlash against the civil rights movement had an extreme uptick when it started challenging the capitalism within white supremacy? of course it wasn't. nicely asking the people who hold the world in a chokehold to loosen their vice grip doesn't work when we can't speak via a throttled neck.

i hate violence. i can't kill a spider in my apartment. i am deeply fucking sensitive and soft and emotional. i have no desire for martyrdom. few do. but i look into the eyes of the world and it breaks my heart. i will probably never have children even though i have always wanted to. how could i ask a child to live in a world that burns around her? burns hotter and longer and fiercer than it does around you or i now. and the flames are already pretty high. as much as i hate violence i will throw a brick that is placed into my hand because i hate the theft of my hope and my future more. and i believe with my entire soul anymore that nothing will change until we start picking those bricks up.

when i indulge in fantasy i want them afraid. i don't want the ceo of shell or chevron or exxon or the politicians they own to have a single restful night of sleep. i want them so afraid that changing their policy seems like the better option. i want them to fear us more than they love their paychecks and dividends and yachts and shares in a colony on mars. when i die of cancer from the microplastics in my bloodstream i hope i can breathe my last on one of their doorsteps. i hope i remind them of their daughters, their grandkids, the future they've sold to buy another fucking house. they will burn in the next life. i wish they didn't leave us here to do so in this one.

i feel as though i should end this essay on a hopeful note, on community building and knowing your neighbors and growing a produce garden in your street's empty lot. i should exhort my peers to organize and meet me in the streets. but the truth is, i don't feel very hopeful. hundreds of thousands of years of humanity and i feel like i'm living in the third to last generation. none of you reading this may live to see the end of life as we know it, but i fear it is coming. and it's none of our faults. there was, in fact, nothing we could have done. yes, there are things we can do now! and we should do them! i am not giving up. i hope you don't either. but how can i not buckle under the weight of the immense cruelty of a selfish few?

desperately i want to be wrong. i dream that peaceful protest wins out. i pray that we can lean into the deep well of human compassion and ingenuity. i'm not a natural cynic - quite the opposite! i do, in my heart, hold onto deep hope that this entire pessimistic view of the world will be misproven.

i don't think it will. i think the powerful will still eat cake in versailles while the bombs fall.

i am also deeply committed to living as whole and fulfilled a life as i possibly can. barring a chance to personally [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] this is how i protest. i choose joy. i am alive here, and i will wring every piece of love out of this world and this life that it has to give me. i have always been deeply idealistic. i won't let them strangle that out of me. and, to return to the original line of thought, i will viciously fight for my right to the future. i will not ask nicely for that to which i am entitled as a living thing, not when it has been stolen and ripped away from me by other people. i will not extend the healing grace of peace to those who have the blood of the entire world on their hands. nor should you. i hope to see you on the streets someday.

[theoppositeofprofound]

I’m going a wild about John again, because imagine. You are a little boy born in Aotearoa in 2005 or 2006. Not very poor but not very rich, you grow up playing with hand me down toys your mum played with decades ago, buying your best friend down the street mince pies cause your allowance is a little bigger than his. You’re Māori and proud of it but you’re only tv-and-preschool conversational in Te Reo, you know your descent by heart but you also once won a bet with it. You love the earth the way everyone does, fiercely but absently. You love people so much it sometimes hurts. You’re young and so certain you’re going to change the world. This is the generation!

You’re also very, very clever, so clever that you get a scholarship to an expensive boy’s school your nana could never afford on her own. You wow all the teachers, stay at the top of the pack, pick up a glib attitude to fend off any attacks, learn a certain disdain for your crueler, more entitled classmates. The strength of your grades keeps you at top unis all the way through your terminal degree and you learn to loathe the rich kids who buy a new iPad every year and assume they’ll always have a escape from the consequences of their actions. Between academics you do a bit of light activism, some climate strikes, some protests.

After all, you’ve grown up in a world slowly dying and your youthful certainty that this is the generation to fix things is giving way to mild panic. Nothing you can’t joke about on twitter, but enough to have you rethinking your career. People are dying out there.

You devote everything to medicine, do a few years with the Peace Corp, see the victims of the first droughts and floods. You help develop a more method of freezing food-to cut down on global transportation costs, reduce emissions, reduce global food shortages. It never gets fully implemented because companies don’t want to switch over, no incentive they say. You campaign in that for years. As you do you start to think, what if we could freeze people instead of food? Save them, put them on ice until the earth can heal. You make more contacts in the medical field, an enterprising duo working in human cryogenetics who haven’t already gone to suck up to the fat cats. Your collaborative research shows great promise with victims of acute injury but you’re still working on scale and a few other kinks.

In the meantime, your earth is dying. You see your own country begin to drown. The extinctions kick into full gear, the Great Barrier Reef goes two decades earlier than anticipated. The human population hits 10 billion by the time you’re thirty five, as birth control availability gets scarce in crisis hit areas. Desertification exacerbates starvation. The last typhoon season kicked off a refugee crisis that turned your own nation—your own nation!— nasty with selfishness.

It’s getting harder and harder to justify putting humans on ice on earth, not when their security could be so easily compromised. Mars is a nonstarter, only idiots try to go to Mars. No, you have to look farther. You stake your whole career on a plan as reckless as it is brilliant and you’re so sure that for once the world will go right! This is the generation that will save the world, and just in the nick of time.

They cancel your project, they shutter your facilities. They give no true explanation, only a refusal. For the first time in your life you know despair, true and absolute.

And for a moment in that heartbreak, that bubbling, scorching fury, you feel an echo of the planet’s pain. A child of the land, raised on promises that you alone can protect the earth, you find that for once you’ve been given a miracle.

[female-malice]

"School strike week 251. Today, I graduate from school, which means I’ll no longer be able to school strike for the climate. This is then the last school strike for me, so I guess I have to write something on this day. When I started striking in 2018 I could never have expected that it would lead to anything. After striking every day for three weeks, we were a small group of children who decided to continue doing this every Friday. And we did, which is how Fridays For Future was formed. Some more people joined, and quite suddenly this was a global movement growing every day. During 2019, millions of youth striked from school for the climate, flooding the streets in over 180 countries. When the pandemic started, we had to find new ways to protest. With time, we started to get back on the streets again. We’re still here, and we aren’t planning on going anywhere. Much has changed since we started, and yet we have much further to go. We are still moving in the wrong direction, where those in power are allowed to sacrifice marginalised and affected people and the planet in the name of greed, profit and economic growth. They continue to destabilise the biosphere and our life supporting systems. We’re rapidly approaching potential nonlinear ecological and climatic tipping points beyond our control. And in so many parts of the world, we are even speeding up the process. There are probably many of us who graduate who now wonder what kind of future it is that we are stepping into, even though we did not cause this crisis. We who can speak up have a duty to do so. In order to change everything, we need everyone. I’ll continue to protest on Fridays, even though it’s not technically “school striking”. We simply have no other option than to do everything we possibly can. The fight has only just begun."

-Greta Thunberg

[mysmorgasbordoffantabulosa]

So sorry to bring this up i want to leave it in the past as much as the next person but something that ”bothers” me about paris pap walk is that if tae were gay/taekook were real, tae doesnt strike me as someone who would go such lengths to prove hide it. He openly supports the gay community and lgbt artists and art etc. I feel like he, not to mention jk, would see his opportunity to normalize gayness in sk, maybe not outright come out but he would not accept fake dating a woman. Like who else has such impact to make a positive change for the lgbt community than the biggest boy group in the world like hes on top of the world, i dont see that he would hide like this unless he was absolutely forced to. And i feel like, while not korean myself, sk is ready for more openly gay artists etc. Thoughts on this?

Firstly, I leave this here...

So whilst there have been some minor wins for the LGBTQ+ community in SK this year, they still have a long way to go.

It it's favour though is Korean youth, particularly Gen-Z who are more liberal than their parents. Also, Judges the ones helping to make greats strides in SK. Against it currently is SK's gaining population who help decide the legislature and therefore the laws that would benefit LGBTQ+ people. Unfortunately, politicians are too right leaning in SK to allow for change.

What could influence SK is the Chaebol companies (Samsung / LG / Hyundai, etc.), with massive international appeal if they are seen as progressive companies who support LGBTQ+ rights internationally, there should be pressure for LGBTQ+ groups in SK for the same level of support.

As for Taekook, they have to hide at least prior to enlistment, but likely for a few years yet, because the climate isn't there yet for them to be open.

The Paris thing... (and the whole Taennie thing) seems more and more a YG plot that - and it seems on the surface - HYBE initially allowed to happen, but as things escalated the pulled back from it and YG used it to deflect from shit news coming out at YG. Similarly with the whole JK leaked video.

Whilst it's clear, BTS as a whole are very progressive, SK is still 10 to 15 years behind the rest of the likes of UK/USA/Europe on these progressive policies.

[etakeh]

There was a march in Portland today.

I think we really need to bring this energy to our everyday lives, re: cops.

They are alone on the sidewalk and nobody is talking to them.

(march was Portland Youth Climate Strike)