In a crisis you have to change your behaviour and adapt. That is how Fridays for Future responded to the lockdown measures and organised a fifth digital global strike.
They had said they would and they did. Not even the coronavirus pandemic, which for months has been forcing millions of people to stay at home, has stopped the global climate strikes by Fridays for Future. Unable to take to the streets physically to protest against the climate crisis, activists opted for technological alternatives.
An address from Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist who in August 2018 inspired the global climate protest movement, was not to be missed.
"Today we had planned a big global climate strike with millions of participants. But in an emergency you have to adapt and change your behaviour. The climate crisis is still ongoing and we must fight every crisis," she wrote in an Instagram post as the caption to a photo of her purple coat and the famous skolstrejk för klimatet sign — school strike for the climate in Swedish — that have accompanied her at every protest.
On the occasion of the Global Digital Strike — as this virtual strike has been called — the Italian Fridays for Future made public the seven points of their new campaign, conceived as a necessary plan for the country's revival, to recover from both the economic and the climate crisis. The name Ritorno al futuro was chosen precisely because "after the end of the lockdown we will need to try to tackle the economic crisis ahead of us by imagining a different future from the one we were expecting," the young activists explained to Radio for Future, the LifeGate radio programme that gives a platform to activists' voices. "We think it is important that public opinion and politics also address the climate crisis."
There are seven principles that activists would like to see followed to restart the economy, because the economic crisis can and must be tackled at the same time as the climate crisis.
Even at a physical distance, Fridays for Future demonstrated, once again, that they are a united movement. Among all the day's activities, one that stood out was a 24-hour livestream on YouTube in which young people from all over the world took turns sharing what it means to fight the climate crisis in their countries, comparing different realities and exchanging advice.
At a local level, the Italian movement asked its participants to geolocate themselves outside Palazzo Chigi and organised a webinar — a moment of discussion with experts from various sectors — which also featured climatologist Elisa Palazzi and scientist Giorgio Vacchiano. In the afternoon, a link-up was opened with all Italian cities, which proposed different activities centred on the theme of recovery after coronavirus and the climate crisis. Particularly striking was the protest by activists in Germany, who covered the lawn in front of parliament with a carpet of colourful signs.
In the run-up to this global strike, a week ago a letter to Italy was sent in which the movement launched an appeal that everyone can sign: once we have come through this pandemic, we must rebuild a new world. The letter explains how the ecological transition is the best path to boosting employment and redistributing wellbeing, to creating jobs while at the same time preventing new crises caused by global warming from striking the planet.
Watch all the climate figures explained by Fridays for Future
An appeal that was immediately signed by dozens of scientists and has been joined by the biggest names in the Italian environmentalist landscape — such as Greenpeace, Wwf and Wwf young, Legambiente, Terra!, Stop-ttip. A list that is set to grow longer, with the aim of extending to the world of trade unions, associations and local committees.
