This week marks six years since Greta Thunberg first sat outside the Swedish Parliament, striking from school, to protest the Swedish government’s apathy towards and inaction on climate change. Since then, the youth climate movement has grown faster than ever, moving from strength to strength as school strikes, youth organisations, and groups of young people taking back their power have blossomed across the globe. The visible youth action population is largely one of a privileged background: white, English speaking, non-disabled people with enough money to support their actions without taking on work alongside their statutory education or primary occupation. Activism isn’t just for those who can afford to be seen while doing it though. Activism is a collective endeavour everyone should have the opportunity and feel encouraged to engage in.
Protest gives us purpose in an incredibly confusing world.
Before Greta’s first strike, before her work on the climate crisis began, she still was not a quote-unquote “normal girl”. Greta is autistic, and spent years of her childhood and adolescence battling a severe eating disorder. She was unable to attend school in-person, unable to speak to anyone outside her immediate family, barely able to eat enough to stay out of hospital, only able to eat food cooked in her own home in very specific ways.
Three days into her three week strike, Greta ate a pad thai she was given by a fellow striker. She hadn’t met this person before and yet when they offered her food, she accepted it and ate it in front of other people, something she had not done, even with people she knew well, for years. This doesn’t sound like much to an outsider, but to her parents, this will likely have been one of the moments that made them happiest across those last few years. I imagine it may have been difficult for her father to believe as he watched the interaction take place. Though her eating disorder will not have evaporated all at once in that moment, or even during the entire strike, that moment may be one of the most visibly clear turning points in her recovery.
I’m writing about this part of Greta’s life not just because she’s an important figure in the climate movement, but because the role of protest and activism goes beyond campaigning for a better world and helping others, and serves to dispel the cognitive dissonance so many of us feel by living in a society which is so against our values.
Many autistic people have a heightened sense of justice. Once we know a system is unfair, we really struggle to “let it go”. Typically, non-autistic people separate themselves and their lives from injustices happening around them and across the world, pushing it to the back of their minds and focusing on their more immediate priorities: work, friends, family, hobbies, individual issues, making money. Because autistic people find this separation much harder or even impossible, we cannot ignore the constant injustice towards people of colour, disabled people and other oppressed groups. We cannot ignore the terrifying reality of climate change and how much action is needed in contrast with how much is really being done. And this takes up a huge portion of mental energy, energy society expects us to put towards work and social time and other “normal things”. Trying to compensate for this perceived deficit in attention, care, intelligence or however it comes across, alongside the other social and developmental issues autism carries, takes a huge toll and contributes to the increased likelihood of autistic people developing mental health issues.
While no one can make oppression “go away” altogether and total system change will likely take decades, activism speeds up that system change and causes small immediate changes. Taking part in activism, therefore, decreases the cognitive dissonance we experience just by acknowledging that we live in a deeply unfair society and can improve our mental health.
I’m not claiming activism is a cure for mental illness or even that everyone will benefit from it, mental illness is far more complex than that and therapy, medication and other interventions are still very necessary. However, I do deeply believe that activism can hugely benefit the mental health of our generation, especially those who recognise the deep inequalities, injustices, and inconsistencies modern life creates today.
Greta is now one of the most famous young climate activists. She travels the world, has spoken to the most high ranking world leaders, and inspires millions of people across the globe to join the climate movement. But she wasn’t always the young woman she is today. Her friends, family and doctors will have worried that she would never be able to live alone, make friends, or have a job - but now she is flying. That is the power of protest. Protest gives us purpose in an incredibly confusing world.
Greta will not be the only activist who has experienced this, not by far. I imagine thousands of people will have found strength in activism when they couldn’t find it anywhere else. I know I did, and hearing the stories of other activists turn their lives around has only given me more strength, hope, and drive to improve my life so that I can improve others’ lives. Between age 14 -19, I lived almost exclusively in physical and psychiatric hospitals, with very little connection to society, unable to get better and unable to find a reason strong enough to do so. At 18 I was diagnosed as autistic. At 19 I began volunteering as a climate activist online and somehow, this community and the action we take has given me the strength and drive to stay well enough to stay out of hospital. I am not better, I still have a long way to go, but activism gives me enough purpose to do everything I can to stay healthy. At 22, I have volunteered for Teach the Future, got a job working for SOS-UK, attended two protests, visited schools, and started university. I never could have even dreamed of having such a “normal” life before I began as an activist.
Everyone deserves the chance to speak or act for what they believe is right, and we should support them to do so in whatever capacity is safe for them. No one should be held back from activism, our voices matter and we should be encouraged to share them. Protest is powerful, protest gives meaning.
Information provided by 'Our House is On Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis' - Malena Ernman, Beata Ernman, Svante Thunberg & Greta Thunberg
