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Greta Thunberg has a crisply articulated demand
I was a anti-nuclear arms proliferation activist from a very young age, 10 or 11, and took it seriously, nearly getting kicked out of school and organizing classmates to attend large demonstrations. I felt like I was tackling an existential risk to the human race and most of the living things on the planet Earth (30+ years later, I think I was right), and that the grownups around me were not taking this seriously, and that this was probably the most urgent thing for me to focus on as a result.
Watching Greta Thunberg, I find myself recalling all the young activists I knew back then, and the extraordinary young people I've met since through my YA novels. She's an extraordinary speaker, of course, and has a crackling personal presence that carries over through the camera as well, but I think that what makes her especially effective is that she is able to combine sweeping philosophical statements with really concrete, well-phrased, crisply defined demands that are audacious, but phrased in such a way as to be undeniable.
Her most recent Davos speech is a great example of this. First, she tells the press and world leaders that they're not taking the climate crisis seriously and makes a very nebulous, but grand, demand of them: "I don't think I have seen one media outlet or person in power communicating this or what it means. I know you don't want to report on this. I know you don't want to talk about this. Read the rest
Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/t6JcKb-kGkk/divest-now.html