Students Feel ‘A Desperate Urge To Do Something’ With Climate Strikes
SAINT JOHN – On many Friday mornings in the past year, the square and streets outside of Saint John City Hall come to life with groups of varying sizes carrying posters and megaphones, chanting and making pleas for a change in how the city views climate change.
At one of the events in late September, Kiefer Sullivan stands in front of the crowd, megaphone in hand, urging on protesters on with energy and passion.
“There’s always hope,” says Sullivan, a Grade 12 student at Saint John High School. “Change right now is more possible than it’s ever been. Because on a united scale young people, people who are educated, people who have been fighting this for years, they feel united in a way that they never have.”
Climate change strikes have become a regular occurrence in the last year in cities around the world, with young leaders like Greta Thunberg, the now-famous activist who gave the stirring speech before the UN, pushing for change from her home country, Sweden. Her actions have set the precedent for what would eventually become the Fridays For Future movement, the series of protests which students across the world that are still taking place more than a year after the first one.
Not all of the young people gathering outside city hall in Saint John are as hopeful and optimistic as Sullivan. Some don’t see eye-to-eye on the issues or solutions and they come from different backgrounds. Yet, they all are gathered together to fight for their future.
And the spirit of the protests doesn’t stop when they leave the streets. While wandering the halls of Harbour View High School it isn’t rare to hear murmurings of upcoming protests or of experiences of previous ones. Some teachers even participate and encourage their students to do so. The more the protests seep their way into everyday life the more people believe that this fight is worth it.
Though the amount of protests has slowed down in recent weeks, the excitement surrounding them has not as more and more students join their school’s Climate Action groups.
For example, Harbour View’s Climate Action group meets regularly on Tuesdays to discuss how the student body can tackle climate change in daily school life.
AJ Geurts, a Grade 12 student at Harbour View, says the protests show that students are serious about wanting to be part of positive change for the environment.
“It really showcases that teenagers are more than just the stereotype that’s represented or the stereotype that adults see us as,” says Geurts, who attended the same protest in late September. “We really want change, and we’ll fight for change and do what we need to do for change”
This sense of wanting to be taken seriously is a major part of these protests. Everyone works hard to look like more than just a group of kids, but instead a group of people coming together in order to voice their concerns over a serious problem.
There is even a bit of anger against those who ditch the protest or are taking advantage of the issue to skip class.
“If a bunch of people are just coming to ditch, they’re going to take those privileges away and were no longer going to be allowed to rally like this,” says Kameron McKillop, a Grade 11 student at Harbour view.
It is also apparent that this fight is not just exclusively against big oil or the powers that be. When speaking to many of the students at the march and outside of the march it becomes apparent that many of these protesters take actions in their own life to help combat this problem.
“I really try to make a conscious effort to buy local,” says Geurts.
Sullivan has “cut beef out of [his] diet” and McKillop uses a “reusable water bottle.”
Though these individual acts on their own may not add up to much, when everyone attending these strikes makes these little changes the effects become noticeable.
Some who attend the strikes are skeptical of their impact on decision makers, but most remain hopeful. That sense of hope permeates through the protests as the participants chant and shout with both fists and DIY signs planted firmly in the air as passersby honk wave and smile back.
Though some drive by with looks of disappointment and the occasional political candidates drop by to share their own ideas and try to convince the students what they’re doing is wrong, the excitement at this late September rally is impossible to ignore.
Beyond the differing opinions and people at these rallies, there is a unifier. Hope, between cynics, optimists, Liberals, and Conservatives, everyone wants a future. There is a desire to fight, to stand with something greater, as Sullivan says.
“It’s not easily described in words, more so in relation of feeling,” he says. “It’s aweing, but it’s also a responsibility more than anything. I feel it’s not just a desire to do this; it is a need, a desperate urge to do something.”
Connor Campbell is a co-op student with Huddle from Harbour View High School.