Key Action & Message of the Week:
Our key action and message this week are also our strategy – Organize, Strike, Vote. We’ve been organizing our communities in support of a Green New Deal since April. Now, we’re gearing up to help make the climate strikes the largest climate mobilization ever in Canada. And we just announced another slate of Green New Deal Champions we’re going to help to elect on October 21st. Click here to find a Green New Deal Champion near you and get involved.
Highlights from Across the Country:
Normally we only share updates from across Canada here, but this week we’re going global with some highlights from the largest global climate mobilization in history: the September 20th climate strikes:
Hamburg, Germany — over 1.4 million people participated in the Germany climate strikes.
Children at 1 of over 70 climate strikes in India
100,000 strikers in Melbourne, Australia
In the lead up to this Friday, Our Time teams are busy preparing art, delivering class talks about the strikes, working hard to make sure that the climate strikes in their communities are as big and bold as possible.
You may have also heard that Greta Thunberg is headed to Montreal this Friday. She won’t be alone. In addition to thousands of Montreal students and youth expected in the streets, our friends at Indigenous Climate Action are supporting a national Indigenous youth delegation to join Greta at the Montreal Strike.
Election State of Play
The big story last week was the revelation that Justin Trudeau has, on multiple occasions, dressed up in racist blackface and brownface. The revelation sparked some important conversations and commentary about the role that race plays in the election and about how structural racism is a massive problem in Canada.
In terms of how the race is shaping up, polls are showing a mixed bag in the wake of last week’s developments. Trudeau and Liberals have lost some, but not much, support. The Conservatives are inching forward, but again, not by much, and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh saw his own approval rating rise. But, even with this, the NDP and Green remain largely in the same place in national polls they were last week.
And, as always, remember that national horse-race polls are only a snapshot of a single moment in time, and have a lot of blindspots. Whatever is happening nationally, we can elect our local Green New Deal champions by organizing, striking and voting for candidates who are going to fight for us.
Also yesterday, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals rolled out a new climate platform, promising deeper emissions cuts and a national Just Transition Act, which looks a lot like a response to the pressure that youth-led organizing like Our Time and the climate strikes has put on candidates this election. But it’s also hard to trust any climate commitments coming from the party that bought a pipeline.
We endorsed 16 additional candidates this week. Click here to read about how we may move forward on further endorsements outside locations with active Our Time hubs.
Tools & Resources:
- The climate strikes will be our chance to bring in thousands of people to the Our Time movement. At your strike, invite participants to join us by asking them to text VOTE to 67076. Here’s more on how that works.
- Here are some tips on using social media platforms for powerful storytelling during the climate strikes.
- Making Art for the Climate Strikes? Check out the Our Time Art Toolkit
- Check out our map of walk outs from college and university campuses on September 27th. If you’re a student, consider registering a walk out on your campus for September 27th. Register your event here — we’ve prepared a Walk-Out Toolkit to help you with planning your action.
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