Pop-up Greta is such a trooper! She’ll be in our driveway, physical distancing, throughout this quarantined Earth Day. You and your home-schooled kids can also join the Friday’s For Future pop-up strikes every week at the end of your driveway. Remember, online strikes and celebrations are important, but we all know how they can get lost in the bubbles and noise of the digital world. We can’t gather in big crowds anymore, but by using our driveways we can Spread the Climate Action message out in the real world so no one can avoid seeing it! #FightEveryCrisis #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike #ClimateStrikeOnline #DigitalStrike

We are promoting the idea of Friday POP-UP STRIKES. Bring a sign out to the end of your driveway from 11:30 – 12:30 this Friday so passers-by can see that Climate Change is an issue that’s not going away, that in fact the Covid-19 response is teaching us the true meaning of “Emergency” and WE CAN HEAL THE EARTH with the same sense of urgency as we are applying to this pandemic.

How This Works:
From Sue McKenzie at Climate Action Muskoka: “Len and I held a ‘pop-up’ strike at the end of our driveway on a rural District road last week. 116 cars passed in the hour. We just wave at everyone, smile and hold our signs. If this happened in many places – in town or outside of towns, it still keeps the climate file out there in the community. We are hoping this will grow in Muskoka since we have had to shut down in the three towns. We also asked people to [take a picture of] themselves indoors with a climate sign and post to our FB. [Like you at Climate Action Parry Sound] we are also struggling with what else to do to move forward.”

Wildlife is returning to the canals of Venus as tourism scales back in this pandemic. The skies are clearing in Beijing. It’s not that the pandemic isn’t taking a tragic toll on many individuals, and on the capacity of medical systems; it’s that we are getting a taste of what Climate Change disruption will be like, and we are learning that we CAN respond! We can RESET the economy in a matter of months and even weeks!

This is how Climate Action Parry Sound is adapting to the Covid-19 pandemic:

Climate Action takes a three-pronged approach: we maintain a visible presence every Friday 11:30 – 12:30 to remind people the crisis is not going away; all our volunteers have an online presence at all times to provide information and counter misinformation; and we organize larger events locally and contribute to larger actions in the capital cities at appropriate times. But because of the Covid-19 pandemic the larger gatherings are no longer viable, which means our online presence, including virtual strikes, is even more important. Also, our local Friday presence now involves a single volunteer sitting at an information table with disinfecting wipes to clean pens used to sign our petitions. The messaging might be as simple as a large sign inviting motorists to “HONK for NET ZERO THIS DECADE”.

This Friday we will meet at the MPP constituency office on James St. 11:30 – 12:30 pm as usual, but we will have a focus on Solidarity with Wet’suwet’en defenders. If enough people show up, we will march up to Scott Aitchison’s new MP office on Sequin St. which is the proper place to take a federal issue. See You There!

In case you are wandering what the exact connection is between Wet’suwet’en and Climate Change, we can see it this way:

“We trust hereditary chiefs to see farther into the future, and they don’t see pipelines.”