Photo: Henry Broadbent
This year’s School Strike for Climate was a broad-church action, held collboratively today by Toitū Te Tiriti, Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa, and School Strike 4 Climate.
Hundereds of people from across the motu marched, demanding the following of the government:
Keep the ban on oil and gas exploration
End the Fast Track Approvals Bill
Prioritise climate education for all
Lower the voting age to 16
Toitū te Tiriti o Waitangi
End our governments complicity in the genocide of Palestinian people.
The core kaupapa of the march, and one that was expressed throughout speeches in Parliament and at Civic Square, was one of intersectionality. 'Social justice is climate justice' and variations could be seen on placards, and heard shouted by the crowd. Those organising the march and those protesting are clear-eyed in percieving climate exploitation as linked, inextricably, to wider social and economic issues. Indigenous liberation, Palestinian liberation, an end to resource extraction and wealth inequality—to fight for the planet is to fight for all these causes; to fight for these causes is to fight for the planet.