Dynamic Island. A blacked-out panel around the iPhone’s notch that expands and contracts to show notifications and widgets. It also the thing which got people & reviewers talking about the new iPhone 14 Pro and models above. Or was it the media – chasing after it’s eternal drive for stuff with flash value – talking too much over a simple status indicator?
Now, the dynamic island is worth talking about, for all it’s worth (sub-pixel anti-aliasing, anyone?). For me, it was a bit of a, well… notification about how the media operates. The fancier stuff, like the island itself or the phone’s launch, gets the media’s attention. The ones which aren’t – like climate change – are left in the backburner until the next wildfire even if they are exponentially more important than a glorified notch.
Enter GCS, short for Global Climate Strikes, with the most recent one being held on September 23 this year.
What is a GCS?
It’s Fridays For Future’s flagship climate strike, held about twice a year with all of its chapters (eg: FFF India) striking on-ground and/or digitally on a common theme.
The theme ranges from #FightFor1Point5 (which demanded global leaders to limit global average temperature rise to 1.5°C, as agreed upon in the 2015 Paris Agreement instead of adjusting the target to a rise of 2°C) to #PeopleOverProfit (which…well, you guessed it). If you’re from India, you should be able to find an FFF Chapter close to you (eg: FFF Pune, FFF Chandigarh, etc.) and stay updated about when the strike’s held.
And about the ‘strike’ bit. I admit it’s a bit of misnomer (given what comes to mind), but GCS is all about peaceful marches with banners and activities like signature-drives, webinars and workshops.
Why are these strikes held?
If you don’t see the media covering climate change until there’s a flood or another (potentially hollow) promise made by our leaders, you aren’t imagining things. Our media relies on shock value and clicks which ensure the highest possible viewership.
Amidst prime-time coverage of political barbs exchanged almost second hour of the day, climate change doesn’t get the attention it deserves. And GCS aims to fix this, along with driving climate demands among policymakers and getting more people to join the ranks of FFF’s climate justice movement.
It does so by focusing on a single theme as aforementioned. Say, in this September 23’s GCS, strikes were focused around the people most-affected due to climate crisis, who also have a negligible role in contributing to the same.
“Conducting strikes and being a part of it makes me feel that this is the best thing we can do to make people aware of the same at a refined level, people often get scattered while talking about the environment, because in itself it’s vast topic to discuss. Some talk about the plastic pollution, some about the air pollution, some for glaciers, and some for the temperature rising, all in all the main motive is to bring all the people for one demand and that is Climate Justice,” says Sarah, a climate activist who coordinates FFF’s Uttar Pradesh chapter when I asked her about the same question you see here in bold.
A single, universal demand for climate justice might just be the best reasoning for a GCS.
Okay, convince me to join a GCS in thirty seconds…
If you want reasons on why should you strike in a GCS, know that it is also about having fun, and bonding with a community that thinks the same as you, as much as it is about climate justice.
And if there’s something you want to learn, like graphic designing or leadership skills, volunteering with an FFF chapter is a great choice; it’s a no-judgement zone where you can do mistakes, experiment and explore. I assure you of that as a content-writer who took up graphic designing from scratch in FFF India.
Sarah is confident about the impact she – and any individual – can make. “I feel like even if I make an impact on a single person who wants to be a (businessman, industrialist or it could be any job or anything which includes the ignorance of climate change just for the profit of themselves) that might make a change, he/she will remember the words written on my placards and he/she might change his/her thoughts and might be it can make them even launch a better startup, and all of this is a hope, a hope for a change, a hope for a better planet, a hope for a safer planet,” she said while touching upon the need for people to strike in a GCS.
So, now you want to strike in a GCS? ?
I am happy to help! The ways to strike are in your hand; you can choose to go on-ground with a chapter near you or strike digitally posting a picture of yourself holding a placard with all the relevant hashtags. And for maximum impact, you can sign up with a local chapter close to you.
FFF has a neat tool to help you see a chapter near you hosting a Global Climate Strike, which you can check out from here. And if you’re looking for ways to strike or organize one, FFF has a concise FAQ on that too. Check it out here.
I recommend following Fridays For Future India to stay up to date with strikes across India, and a local chapter near you. A simple search on the lines of ‘fridaysforfuture <You State/City Name>’ should mostly get you straight to a local chapter on Instagram.
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Remember the iPhone’s Dynamic Island? Minus its fancy marketing, and that is what Fridays For Future’s Global Climate Strike really is, for climate justice. It’s about getting people to talk about climate crisis as much as we do about our school/college syllabus or the newest iPhone launch. And then some – scratch that – a lot more.
Light.