The youth is rising and its consciousness is beginning to rouse! Our house is on fire - and they're sounding the alarm! The time has come for multigenerational action against climate breakdown.
On 20 September 2019 from midday the people of Reading - as with protesters across the globe - followed the lead of young people and supported Reading's Climate Strike. Make no mistake, the event was populous, loud - with peaceful civil disobedience - and squarely spearheaded by youth!
On that day people everywhere walked out of their homes and workplaces together and joined young strikers in the streets to demand climate justice and emergency action to tackle the climate crisis. Governments won’t do it of their own volition; #climatestrike was required to show them what people power is capable of. There is no Planet B...
Reading Trades Union Council flew the banner for climate justice in solidarity with the strike's organisers, represented by RTUC Vice President, Nikki Dancey, Secretary, David McMullen, Kevin Brandstatter (all GMB), Sue Taylor (PCS), Ali McNamara (NEU), John Gillman and Neil Adams (both Unite & Socialist Party). Nikki tirelessly promoted the event among local and regional trade unionists as well as lobbying the Reading & District Labour Party's Trade Union Liaison Officer to do the same and her report back to the RTUC Delegates' Meeting in October was comprehensive.
Some employers - including Reading Borough Council - tolerated absences from work, allowing some of their staff to partake. But all the while such employers use excess packaging on their products, promote carrier bags to advertise their businesses and stock their staffrooms, coffee shops and takeaways with non-recyclable, disposable cups and food containers; supermarkets insist on photogenic fruit - round, smooth and shiny - thus letting masses of perfectly edible, tasty produce go to waste; and the world witnesses that contradiction of capitalism - overproduction alongside millions in want! Governments do little to compel the culture change needed to save our planet.
RTUC was represented in other climes too, with John Partington (TSSA) joining the student-led Climate Strike at the University of California-Berkeley. Anywhere that humans go, responsibility for environmental stewardship follows them.... and humans, of course, are everywhere.
Reading Trades Union Council looks forward to more such events, pressuring businesses, governments and local councils to ACT DIFFERENTLY.
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| John Oversby (UCU) of RTUC and Global Justice Reading |
On 20 September 2019 from midday the people of Reading - as with protesters across the globe - followed the lead of young people and supported Reading's Climate Strike. Make no mistake, the event was populous, loud - with peaceful civil disobedience - and squarely spearheaded by youth!
On that day people everywhere walked out of their homes and workplaces together and joined young strikers in the streets to demand climate justice and emergency action to tackle the climate crisis. Governments won’t do it of their own volition; #climatestrike was required to show them what people power is capable of. There is no Planet B...
Reading Trades Union Council flew the banner for climate justice in solidarity with the strike's organisers, represented by RTUC Vice President, Nikki Dancey, Secretary, David McMullen, Kevin Brandstatter (all GMB), Sue Taylor (PCS), Ali McNamara (NEU), John Gillman and Neil Adams (both Unite & Socialist Party). Nikki tirelessly promoted the event among local and regional trade unionists as well as lobbying the Reading & District Labour Party's Trade Union Liaison Officer to do the same and her report back to the RTUC Delegates' Meeting in October was comprehensive.
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| John Gillman and Neil Adams (Unite & Socialist Party) |
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| John Oversby at the Climate Strike |
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| John Partington (TSSA) joins the University of California student-led Climate Strike in Berkeley |
