The Strike

Zoe Nguyen had been worried about climate change since she was twelve, when smoke from the bushfires hung over Melbourne for weeks and students were told to stay inside at lunchtime. At fifteen, she decided that worrying was not enough.

Her plan was to organize a climate strike at her school. One Friday morning, students would walk out of class at eleven and gather in the park opposite to call on the state government to cut emissions faster. She posted the idea on the student council's page, and within two days more than three hundred students had signed up.

The principal, Mr. Hartley, asked to see her the following Monday. He was not angry, she admitted later, but he was firm. He reminded her that students who left class without permission would be marked absent, and he warned her that the school could not be responsible for anyone's safety outside the gates. Then he suggested an alternative: an assembly on climate change, during school hours, with a guest speaker. Zoe thanked him and said she would think about it. She did think about it, for about an hour, and then decided that an assembly was not the same thing.

At home, the debate was just as intense. Her mother, a nurse who had treated patients with breathing problems during the fires, encouraged her to go ahead. "Sometimes you have to make people uncomfortable," she said. Her father, who ran a small building company, was less convinced. He accused her of using the cause as an excuse to miss maths, and he pointed out that his business, and the family's income, depended on many of the things she wanted to change. They argued until midnight. In the end, he agreed not to stop her, on one condition: she had to catch up on every lesson she missed.

News of the strike spread faster than Zoe had expected. On Wednesday, a journalist from a local news website phoned her for an interview, and on Thursday evening the story appeared on the regional TV news. The headline described her as a "teen activist", which made her cringe. One presenter on a talk radio station claimed that students were being manipulated by their teachers. Another praised the school for producing such engaged young people. The comments section under the online article was, as her mother put it, best avoided.

On Friday at eleven, Zoe stood up in her chemistry class, took a deep breath and walked out. For a terrible ten seconds, nobody followed. Then a boy at the back closed his laptop and stood up, and after him came another, and another. By quarter past eleven there were about two hundred students in the park, holding signs they had painted the night before. A camera crew was filming from across the road.

Zoe had prepared a speech, but when she saw the crowd her hands were shaking so much that she could hardly read it. So she put the paper away and spoke from memory. She talked about the smoke, about her mother's patients and about the coral reef that she was afraid she might never see. She urged everyone to write to their local member of parliament, and she promised that this was the beginning, not the end. Then, to her surprise, she noticed Mr. Hartley standing at the edge of the park, listening.

Afterwards, he came over. He told her that he still couldn't approve of students leaving class, and that the absences would be recorded. But he admitted that the speech had been very good, and he asked whether she would give it again at an assembly the following month, this time to the whole school, teachers included. Zoe agreed immediately.

That evening, the strike appeared for forty seconds on the national news. Her father watched it twice. He didn't say much, but the next morning she found a printed copy of the online article stuck to the fridge, and next to it, in his handwriting, a note: "Proud of you. Maths homework is on the table."