This paper has indicated that existing literature tends towards focussing on ‘the continued dominance of top-down information flows’ on climate change [3] and critiques that the Fridays For Future movement is based on a limited rhetorical imperative to policymakers that they must ‘listen to the science’ [4]. In this study, imperatives are identified as the main theme of protest signs in the case selected, but also that these imperatives had a broader reach and richer, more complex aims than simply asking policymakers to do their job. In other words, imperatives were not simply instruments of delivering political pressure, directed at those in power. The richness and complexity of the imperatives, and the diversity of intentions behind them, indicate the complex negotiation of positionalities by young demonstrators at the climate strikes.
I interviewed Drew, aged 16, just as the demonstration was beginning to march down the protest route. Drew explained that their sign ‘WAVES OF SUPPORT’ (Fig. 2) was a collaborative effort that Drew made with a friend from college. During the interview, I asked, ‘is there anything you’d like to say to someone who is listening?’ and Drew responded in the imperative:
‘Yes, this is a big issue. Fucking listen. God.’
Drew gave a further clarity when answering a follow-up question, ‘what inspired your sign?’:
‘It’s artistic, but also spreads the message that everyone needs to get involved, which I quite like. And the waves of support, like, it shows unity, that everyone’s involved and everyone has a say in what’s happening’
In the previous section I explained that, through the coding process, signs coded as ‘solidarity’ were brought, along with ‘imperatives’, into the broader theme of ‘don’t be a part of the problem’. Drew’s poster, ‘WAVES OF SUPPORT’, is a perfect example of the thematic relationship between solidarity and imperative. Drew intended ‘WAVES OF SUPPORT’ as an imperative that ‘everyone needs to get involved’, that ‘everyone has a say’. Drew’s enthusiasm for horizontal structures, and orientation towards mutual sharing and inclusion, is illustrative of what was found in the study more broadly. Climate strikers positioned themselves in relation to each other as a group trying to seek mutual involvement and uphold each other.
I met Mickey near the beginning of the demonstration, standing near the edge of the rally with a friend. Mickey was aged 17 (name anonymised) and made their sign ‘with my little sister’. The sign said ‘THEY’RE BLOWING UP THE WORLD WITH A BALL POINT PEN – YungBlood’ (Fig. 3). This is a quote from a song by the UK musician YUNGBLUD:
‘When I was younger I had a proper plan / Keep myself naive, take advice from the man. But I turned 17 and I saw in my head / He was blowing up the world with a ball point pen.’ [56]
After I told Mickey I was interested in hearing about the sign, Mickey explained that ‘my parents aren’t exactly too happy about all this, so it’s kind of, every night after everyone had gone to bed I’d get it out, do a bit more work on it…’
‘… they don’t quite understand the importance of what we’re doing today. They think that me getting this day of education will be more important than making a stand against the systematic oppression that is happening … I think it’s really important to do this because if we are successful and, say, however many years in the future I have all these amazing stories to tell my grandchildren about what I did to help.’
‘Making a stand’, as Mickey puts it, was an important goal visible in the imperative language of the signs. As with Drew, above, and in a way that is illustrative of the sample generally, the discourse that Mickey used can be appropriated by an engagement approach, and interpreted as a negotiated position with respect to adult elites. In other words, should the researcher decide to impose a categorizing approach to Mickey’s activism, focussed on engagement and political instrumentalism, it would be possible to interpret Mickey’s sign and words to be ‘making a stand’ against political elites. However, Mickey’s response indicates a far richer negotiation of interconnected positionalities. Mickey considers an intergenerational position in this answer, not just a position of child vulnerability with respect to adults [57], but also Mickey’s relationship as a future adult with grandchildren. Mickey emphasized ‘systematic oppression’ as their target. They did not mention mainstream environmental considerations like emissions targets. Again, like Drew, Mickey’s activism is not one way. It is rooted in a complex ensemble of people – self, parents, siblings, future grandchildren – and interprets those people within intersections of ‘systematic oppression’.
I also encountered climate strikers who framed their action as a means to pressure politicians. These more ‘mainstream’ environmentalist demands were not straightforward, however. Participants presented mainstream demands in complex ways. One participant, who identified themselves as Death (no mortal age provided) and who wore a cowled robe complete with dangling chains and a scythe (Fig. 4) said,
‘I’m here as a kind of counter-protest… you see, what these schoolchildren don’t realise is that climate change is really strengthening the post-life economy,’
It should be said that, traditionally, studies of political activism separate motivations into a binary frame of analysis: ‘instrumental’ motivations, aiming at a particular goal, are divided from ‘expressive’ motivations, which express ideology, values and/or emotions regardless of political goal [42]. I consider Death a prime example of the inability of this traditional definition to grasp the activism at the climate strikes, which is more complex and amorphous.
As others have noted, despite the fact a significant number of climate strikers consider the issue at hand to be no less than the imminent destruction of life on Earth as we know it, the climate strikes are typically cheerful, friendly and even joyful places [42]. Death’s jibe about the ‘post-life economy’ is a joke at the expense of managerial, technocratic approaches to governance at the end of the world. Playful protest is a familiar way to create social knowledge of a problem [58], and I noted, along with the carefully prepared costume ensemble, Death took a lot of care over phrases like ‘post-life economy’. When asked ‘if you could show your sign to anyone in the world, who would you show it to?’, Death responded that lobbyists have power:
‘Well it has to be those in power, really… I feel some sort of grim reaping lobby group might have a good positive impact because they seem to be the people with power these days to make change or keep laws the way they want them… If we could take a lobbying group to Government that would be great… Just keep burning your fossil fuels, keep destroying your planet and I’ll see you real soon!’
Shepard, quoting Jamie McCallum Jameson, explains that protesters can use humour and play to stop protest becoming ‘routinized’, ‘boring’ and to prevent It failing ‘in its mission to capture the imagination of wider groups of people’ [58].
Death was the most playful interviewee, but also, in indicating explicitly instrumentalist political motivations, Death was the most routine and mainstream interviewee in the sample. Death’s intervention in the study illuminates the crossover between instrumental motivations and self-expression, between complex perceptions of the political landscape and ‘Do-It-Ourselves’ [31] practices of being there, doing something, taking action.
Ade (aged 17), whose sign read ‘CUT THE CARP AND SAVE OUR REEFS’ (Fig. 5), started the interview by explaining:
‘I really wanted to get a pun on there.’
While ‘Save our Reefs’ could be interpreted in many ways, it is one of the closer signs in the sample to a traditionally familiar form of political instrumentalist action. It includes the imperative ‘save’, for instance, and could conceivably be interpreted as a mainstream environmentalist demand associated with ‘the preservation of wildlife and wilderness’ [7]. Ade, furthermore, described reefs in a way reminiscent of Dorceta E. Taylor’s concept of the ‘sublime landscapes’, at least in the romantic form of the wilderness evoking strong emotions. When asked what inspired the poster:
‘I went scuba diving once in Mexico, and that was one of the best experiences of my life. And now the reefs are dying, people won’t be able to experience that thing.’
I asked Ade, ‘if you could show this poster to anyone in the world, who would you show it to and what would you say?’ Ade responded, ‘Greta’, and then, after a pause for thought:
‘[I would tell Greta] that she’s doing a good job and she’s really making a change’.
Like Death, above, Ade was a more mainstream and more political instrumentalist voice among the climate strikers in the interview sample. Again, like Death, Ade was playful, and made sure that I had got the joke as well as the political message. Unlike Death, who talked about the Government and lobbying groups, Ade positioned their message with respect to Greta Thunberg, an ‘icon’ of the movement who has a demonstrated effect on the mobilization of young strikers [42].
Between Drew and Mickey, Death and Ade, these illustrations represent of the ‘don’t be part of the problem’ theme of the sample because they all, when interviewed, expressed imperatives like ‘listen’, ‘make a stand’ and ‘keep destroying your planet and I’ll see you real soon’.