By Taylah Eastwell
Homemade signs in hand, Hills school students and supporters gathered in Belgrave on Friday to kick off demonstrations as part of the School Strike 4 Climate initiative.
Held on 21 May, The School Strike 4 Climate is a mass nationwide protest in the name of climate action, which saw thousands of passionate protesters flock to major cities to get their voices heard.
The demonstration is aimed at getting the Morrison Government to say no to funding gas and coal projects and instead invest in clean, renewable energy.
Students also called for an end to coal projects, including the Adani mine, after the federal budget allocated $58 million towards increasing the gas industry.
The Belgrave protest was made up of participants from Stop Adani Belgrave, Extinction Rebellion and Hills Community for Climate Action groups, as well as students and members of the public.
Sassafras resident and Vermont College year 11 student, Mandela, led the protest in Belgrave before making her way to the city strike.
“I am part of the School Strike for Melbourne team in the unions area of the team. I came here as a local student and speaker to speak for my community and strike,” Mandela said.
Mandela has been involved in community environment initiatives across the wider Hills region, works with an ocean organisation to help conduct education programs in her school and is currently organising a tree planting program with year seven students at her college.
“I want to make it known that this is not a choice, a lot of people see climate action as something they don’t need to take seriously, but it’s not a choice, it’s our literal survival of the planet,” Mandela said.
“We only have a short time period where we are able to fix these mistakes and if we don’t take that opportunity we won’t have the chance to fix things up in the future,” she said.
Grandmothers for Refugees member Prue Licht, from Belgrave, was also at the strike and planned to go into the city for the 1pm start.
“I want people to acknowledge that we are actually in a lot of trouble and we all need to do something, not just the people who walk around,” Ms Licht said.
“We all need to vote the right way at the next election. My hope is that people will wake up from this dream that we live in this beautiful place, look at the sun, it won’t be so beautiful sometime,” she said.
Ms Licht said it was “wonderful” to see young people getting involved.
“They are our future, and there seems to be lots of them here. The last climate strike I went to in the city it was amazing to see so many young people,” she said.
