Talk the Talk but Don’t Walk the Walk?
My freshman year of college, I took a 13 hour-long bus ride with a few of my classmates from Maine to Washington D.C to participate in one of the largest climate marches of its time. In the college spirit of trying new things, I figured this would be a fun opportunity to do something completely out of my element and normal practice. Not to mention its a unique story I would carry with me in life.
I’m not sure what else I really expected out of the march, but once I was there I could physically feel the vibrations of the crowd’s energy. That said, the march didn’t have any kind of life altering or mind changing influence on me. In fact, sometimes I forget that I even went and it feels like a foggy dream. However, the more I write these words, the more clearly I recall the obscure details of that march and the journey there and back.
Sometime in between that climate march of 2012 and my first few years after graduating, my views on marches became more cynical. I remember marches for other causes when I thought to myself, why don’t they take action instead, volunteer their time or donate to organizations that help their cause? Thoughts like this continued for a few years, until more recently in fact.
I then began to reflect on things I had learned about in my high school history classes. There’s no denying that marches and strikes have carved their way into American history and had a profound influence on policies and regulation. From the labor rights strikes in the early 1900s, the civil rights marches of the 1950s and 1960s, to the more recent women’s rights marches of this decade, massive protests have been a staple in affecting change in the United States. Americans do not take for granted their first amendment right to peaceful assembly.
As you can tell, I actually started this post a few months ago when Greta Thunberg took our nation by storm; a teenager that sails her way across the ocean to attend a United Nations climate meeting originally slated to be held in Brazil November of 2019 but was delayed and moved to Madrid for the beginning of December. My parents gave me hell for not knowing how to navigate the neighboring town and for once going 10 miles in the wrong direction on the highway before even noticing. And yet, I read the comments from strangers online in social media tearing down this teenager saying things along the lines of “she’s a pawn of her parents,” “doing it for the money,” “she’s brainwashed.” What capable teenager do you know that can speak before a public crowd, let alone one comprised of international leaders, or sale across the ocean on a carbon neutral sailboat? I was definitely not that teenager.
Another common criticism is that Greta is merely spitting out the biased information being pumped into her vulnerable, young brain. I remember being a teenager and thinking that my thoughts were my own, when really they were echoes of the opinions to those closest to me, primarily my family. When I started my college studies, my family attacked saying that I had been brainwashed by a liberal agenda, not accounting for the fact that I was merely being exposed to opinions other than their own. I will admit that I was still living in a falsely constructed world, the world of an American college student, still sheltered from the true reality of being an adult.
However, it cannot be said that reciting data collected and agreed upon by 97% of scientists is synonymous with mindlessly echoing the narrative of biased opinion. Greta is no scientist, in fact, she hasn’t even finished schooling and that’s the whole point of her strike! Greta knows to leave the data and the facts to the professionals, and uses her level of understanding and unbridled passion to advocate for the cause she most fiercely believes in. You see, there is a difference between a specialist and an advocate, yet all too often we presume that the advocate need obtain the level of a specialist before they can preach their cause.
I guess I’m trying to say three things with this post. One, I think we forget how important the first amendment right to peacefully protest is. Coming from someone who until recently thought large protests, strikes, walks, etc didn’t mean much, I forget how powerful they can be, important enough to protect as our first amendment right. My second point would be the distinction between advocacy and expertness, that there is a function and value to each position and they are not one in the same. Lastly, highlighting the importance between citing peer-reviewed scientific research versus opinions. In my articles I try to reference scientific literature when possible, but this post is more anecdotal and opinion based. There’s no easy way for me to wrap up this post, but hopefully in this time of political divisiveness, we can continue to question our own biases, inform ourselves with research rather than opinions, and rally around matters that affect the entire human race and all other living creatures.
