I chose the second option, as I went to class and then went to the Wellesley strike in the afternoon. After my last class, which ended early so we could strike if we wanted, I went to the chapel and joined the crowd. People were singing and chanting, and then we began walking to the city hall. The line of people stretched out pretty far, and we kept chanting the same line: “Hey hey ho ho, fossil fuels have got to go!” It became pretty repetitive after a while and several people around me mentioned that we should change it up, but the line was too long to cohesively do it and no one felt “authorized” to do so. Once we arrived, the crowd congregated at a corner of the hill in front of the city hall, with the organizers and speakers at the bottom. Then several speakers went up, ranging from high school students to Wellesley professors, and speaking on various points in various ways, from how protests are not democratic without the inclusion of minority voices to the recitation of a poem. I left early to go to ultimate frisbee practice, but I assume there were more speakers after I left. The strikes were organized to educate, raise awareness, and highlight ways for people to think critically about climate change and most importantly fight against it.
In the moment, I found myself more concerned with trivial things in the moment, like timing my departure or wondering if there was anything else we could cheer while walking, but on the walk back by myself I also reflected on the experience, both my own and the strikes I knew that were happening internationally. At the strike, a speaker asked if we still had hope and the general consensus around me was “yes, but withering.” I felt the same way — part of me doubted if these demonstrations would manifest any real progress. In Wellesley, it seems easier to have hope, when there are more Teslas in the street than I’ve ever seen in my life and several shopkeepers came out to cheer us on as we walked by. But in my hometown, even though I know my high school friends still organized and participated in a local strike, I remembered how stubborn some of the people in my town and surrounding areas can be about climate change, which is such a large and systemic issue with ties to so many problems that tackling it can seem impossible.
Still, seeing the considerable turnout for the march and especially the turnout of local townspeople, not just Wellesley students, gave me a little hope that people are out there who are trying to fix this. If anything, the greatest benefit of the strike may have been raising awareness and proving that there are people who care about the issue. As a clearly visible group, our sheer presence demonstrated to everyone who saw us that this generation will not stand down in the face of crisis. Still, there are limits to every protest and strikes are no exception. While the turnout was impressive, it was still just a fraction of Wellesley’s student population, and in my opinion the march could possibly have been better organized. Although everyone has good intentions, I still think strikes and marches of this type can be inaccessible for some, or intimidating to the point that people won’t want to coeme. And I feel like strikes can be a bit of a bandwagon sometimes, with people just joining in once and then failing to follow up with tangible change. I’m sure my classmates had valid reasons for not striking — maybe a time conflict, or maybe they also doubted the effectiveness of a strike. There are many other approaches to the issue, and I support anyone who invested their effort in another way. I just think people have to be really conscious about the effects, or lack thereof, of their actions in order to be as efficient and effective as possible because this crisis is time-sensitive, and we don’t really have time for wasted effort.