Fridays For Future

Fridays For Future is a movement that started in Sweden and was initiated by a 16 year old high school student, Greta Thunberg. Greta is a climate activist and began the movement, which is also known as School Strike for Climate. The strike is students that choose to not go to school and instead go to climate rallies that are pressuring for climate change. Approximately 20,000 students in Melbourne attended a rally while tens of thousands attended a rally in Montreal as well as many other cities around the globe. In January this year, more than 3500 scientists and academics signed an open letter supporting the movement and approximately 45,000 students protested in Germany and Switzerland alone.   Our BEAT (Brentwood Environmental Action Team) organized our own Fridays For Future event. This past Friday, many students gathered on Campbell Commons for an environmental strike during tutorial. All students were encouraged to wear green and blue in support of Greta, her movement, and our planet. Students such as Sanjana V, Jessica P, Daniel W, and many others took the strike to the next level and chose not to go to academic classes. These students went around the surrounding areas of the school as well as Mill Bay, to pick up garbage. “We won’t need an education, if we have no healthy planet to live on”, said Sanjana as she held a sign high on Campbell Commons during the official strike during tutorial.  A lot of the students feel very impacted by the issue of climate change. “The climate strike is a global phenomenon and has gained the attention of a massive group of students on an issue that needs to be addressed”, said April L, another striker that didn’t attend all of her academic classes on Friday. All of these students feel the impact of this environmental crisis and stand strongly with this issue. We look forward to seeing more possible strikes in the future.  Hannah C, Alex ‘19