Fridays For Future—a youth-led movement launched in August 2018 when Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, then 15 years old, skipped school to demand urgent action on the planetary emergency—announced Tuesday that the next global climate strike is scheduled for March 25.
"Join us and strike for climate reparations and justice, demand that the people in power prioritize #PeopleNotProfit!" tweeted Thunberg, whose initial solitary school strike sparked a worldwide mobilization that has brought millions to the streets in cities around the globe over the past three and a half years.
"The catastrophic climate scenario that we are living in," Fridays For Future explained in a statement, "is the result of centuries of exploitation and oppression through colonialism, extractivism, and capitalism, an essentially flawed socio-economic model which urgently needs to be replaced."
"Climate struggle is class struggle," the campaign noted, adding:
For years, the ruling class, primarily through corporations and governments from the Global North dominated by affluent, white, heterosexual cis-males, have exercised their power, gained through colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and exploitation, to destroy the Earth and its occupants with no remorse.
They deliberately sacrifice the Global South's ecosystems and peoples for the sake of their so-called "development" and everlasting "economic growth." Meanwhile, the working class is used as tools to build the very system that is destroying them
The solution, according to Fridays For Future, is climate reparations, which it defines "not as charity, but as a transformative justice process in which political power will return to the people."
"This should not be in the form of loans," the campaign stressed, "but a follow-through on the demands from Indigenous, Black, anti-patriarchal, and diverse marginalized communities to get their lands back, giving resources to the most affected communities by the climate crisis for adaptation, loss, and damages—a redistribution (and in most cases, collectivization) of wealth, technology, information, care work, and political power both from the north to the south, and from top to bottom."
Noting that "rich nations are responsible for 92% of global emissions, and the richest 1% of the world population are responsible for double the pollution produced by the poorest 50%," Fridays For Future said that "colonizers and capitalists are at the core of every system of oppression that has caused the climate crisis, and decolonization, using the tool of climate reparations, is the best kind of climate action."
"The richest capitalist 1% must be held responsible for their actions and willful ignorance," the campaign added. "Their profit is our death. Their profit is our suffering. Together with different sectors of society across the world, led by the most marginalized, let's bring back the power to the people whose power has been stolen."
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Common Dreams staff.
Common Dreams staff | Radio Free (2022-01-25T17:53:19+00:00) Fridays For Future Announces Global Climate Strike for March 25. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2022/01/25/fridays-for-future-announces-global-climate-strike-for-march-25/
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