Posted
Every Friday night, 15-year-old Harriet O'Shea Carre
can be found hanging upside down from an aerial hoop in an old train
shed in Castlemaine, Victoria.
It takes an impressive amount of
upper body and core strength to hoist herself up and twist her body into
unnatural shapes on the apparatus.
But Ms O'Shea Carre says performing in her aerial circus class is much easier than her other hobby: taking on politicians and big business in the fight against climate change.
She is one of the founding members of the School Strike For Climate (SS4C) movement in Australia. Ms O'Shea Carre has just taken her fight all the way to New York City, where she was invited to attend Saturday's United Nations Youth Climate Summit.
"I feel much more comfortable doing aerial than talking to politicians and going on strikes because I just have to trust my own abilities," Ms O'Shea Carre said."Whereas with the strike, it's totally reliant on other people and their perspectives of me, and you have to put yourself in a really vulnerable position where you're being criticised and judged by others, in the hope that it will bring forth some sort of action.
"I would say that aerial circus is a really good output of the stress."
Around the world on Friday, millions of students — including Ms O'Shea Carre — and their supporters skipped school and work to attend what was touted as the biggest climate protest in world history.
Organisers estimated around 4 million people in more than 163 countries turned out, including an estimated 300,000 Australians.
'I read about this girl doing this school strike'
It was in October last year that the "Castlemaine Three" — Ms O'Shea Carre and her friends Milou Albrecht and Callum Neilson-Bridgefoot — started the Australian SS4C movement in the town of Castlemaine, 120 kilometres north-west of Melbourne.
The teens stumbled across an article about Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who has been credited with beginning the global student climate movement.
"Milou read an article about Greta Thunberg when she was pretty much solo striking," Ms O'Shea Carre said.
"She was really excited about it and she came to me on the school bus and was like, 'Harriet, there's this awesome article I read about this girl who's doing this school strike.'"
After penning an impassioned letter to the editor of a Melbourne newspaper, the three teenagers and about two dozen classmates took the train from Castlemaine to Bendigo to protest outside the offices of their federal members of parliament, MP Lisa Chesters and Senator Bridget McKenzie.
The Castlemaine strikers then decided to hold a global SS4C on November 30. When their rally went viral, Prime Minister Scott Morrison famously called for "more learning in schools and less activism in schools".
David Carre, Ms O'Shea Carre's father, says the Prime Minister could not have helped more to galvanise the youth.
"It's like a red rag to a bull with these teenagers to tell them that they should stay in school and shouldn't go on strike," Mr Carre said."It was probably the best thing he could have said in terms of mobilising these young people.
"To be so dismissive of them, and to suggest that they're trying to get away with wagging school, that is just quite offensive."
More than 10,000 went on strike on November 30. Another was held in March 2019, with 1.5 million striking around the world.
"We're at a point in time where it's an emergency, and we're not seeing any action from our leaders," Ms O'Shea Carre said.
"And if the people who are leading us aren't doing any leadership, then I will."
From Castlemaine to NYC
Ms O'Shea Carre was invited to attend the first United Nations Youth Climate Summit in New York City alongside Ms Thunberg.
While her parents and friends marched from Castlemaine to Melbourne, Ms O'Shea Carre joined the rally through the streets of Manhattan.
"It's so inspiring to be here," she told 7.30 from New York.
"There are so many people, I'm really excited to be involved in it."
Ms O'Shea Carre says the group will keep striking until they get action.
"We're not going to stop because there's no point in having an education on a dead planet, and at this stage, that's what we're headed for."We're going to keep going and keep fighting because we're not going to let our future go away."
No comments:
Post a Comment