Students Strike for Climate Action, a Green Recovery

Lauren Lancaster reports.

On Friday 25th September, concomitantly with the global day of climate action declared by Fridays for Future, the USyd Enviro Collective took action to show solidarity with School Strike 4 Climate Sydney. A number of decentralised, socially-distanced protests took place across the CBD, with Town Hall, Martin Place, and Hyde Park (where the Enviro Collective was located) becoming the locations of flash climate protests. 

According to the Fridays for Future map, strikes were held in 3133 places worldwide. 

Collective members and fellow student activists met as a contingent just before 11am at Museum Station. The group then walked to Hyde Park Fountain, where they set up a speak-out event, complete with the USyd Climate Strike banner, signed by hundreds of students from across the University’s campuses over the last several months. 

The speak-out began with an Acknowledgement of Country and opening speech by SRC Environment Officer Prudence Wilkins-Wheat and Enviro Collective member Isabella D’Silva chairing. Both speakers reminded the protestors that environmental justice is indelibly linked with Indigenous rights and freedoms, particularly as rural Indigenous communities bear the brunt of climate-induced weather extremes and are too often the victims of dispossession and environmental violence by coal, oil and gas companies.

 Police loitered at the fringes of the group, approaching Prudence to tell her of a former State Premier’s funeral happening nearby at St Mary’s Cathedral. It emerged later that Scott Morrison and a number of Senior Cabinet ministers had attended the event just across the road. 

First year law student and School Striker Varsha Yajman spoke on the need for urgent and united organising within the student-led climate movement, reflecting on the Cuts Campaign organising and saying that “what we did for the education campaign [at Wednesday’s protest and City Rd occupation] we must do for the climate movement”. 

SRC President Liam Donohoe discussed the immediacy of climate change around the world, arguing that action on global warming cannot be divorced from a recognition of capitalism as the driving force of ecological violence and rising temperatures. He referenced extreme weather events occurring in increasing frequency; “whether it’s California, whether it’s South America, whether it’s Lebanon or Australia, the one percent are acting like these bushfires are not part of a greater pattern”. 

He urged the community to realise that corporations are simply “angling to make enormous amounts of money out of green capitalism”. He also reminded protesters of the insufficiency of the government's  current climate targets: “no amount of commitment by 2050 will mean shit to us in 20 years when we already have crops failing, temperatures rising”. 

Enviro Collective member Maria Veloso spoke on the singular threat climate change poses for the Global South, emphasising the responsibility of the environmental movement to “fight for the rights and future of the people who don’t have the voice to do it themselves”. Alana Ramshaw drew attention to the real-time sea level disaster in the Pacific Islands where “the seas are eating their shores”. Both speakers called for protesters to keep up the pressure, as “we have a choice - be complicit or demand more - demand action and responsibility”. Amelia Mertha expanded on the theme of justice for Indigenous peoples and lands, emphasizing that we must “move towards an environmental justice that does not see the marginalised communities as problems to be fixed but human rights worth defending”.

SRC Environment Officer Sofie Nicolson and Caitlin Doyle from School Strike for Climate both spoke on the economic impacts of the climate movement, and the necessity industrial action to achieve just outcomes for those in primary industries and workers in developing countries hit hardest by an ever-more extreme climate. 

After the speeches concluded, a contingent marched back through the Park to Hyde Park South, where I led a speak out on coal seam gas and the need for an aggressive global moratorium on coal seam fracking projects. Another contingent marched to the Captain Cook statue in Hyde Park East, laying out the Enviro Black Lives Matter banner and other protest signs at the foot of the statue. Protesters spoke out about Indigenous land and water theft and the continuing colonial violence perpetrated on First Nations people through environmental inaction.

Nearby, Extinction Rebellion climate protesters, and were met with hostility from local area command Police Chief Paul Dunstan, who issued a casual verbal move on order, despite the group consisting of 14 people. The contingent argued against the arbitrary warning, and were finally allowed to stay. Multiple members led chants of “Scomo, fk you, we deserve a future too!” and “Bulls**t come off it, our environment is not for profit!” before the police demanded that there be no swearing, at which point there were various calls of “Climate Justice! Worker’s rights! One struggle, one fight!” and “What do we want? Climate Justice! When do we want it? Now!”. After about 30 minutes of chants, the contingent moved back over to the fountain, reunited with people from the other contingent and concluded the action just after 1pm. 

The climate actions around the city are an important continuation of the momentous School Strike movement. Hopefully, they remind politicians that climate change does not pause for a global pandemic. They sent a powerful message that you can’t have pandemic recovery or jobs on a burning planet, and we must fight back now more than ever to achieve change.