This was originally published at Daily Review; thanks to them for doing so.
Hi I’m Tristian, and this is a recap of what happened at the climate strike in Melbourne and at another thing I went to as well. It was a big weekend.
Because I’m Australia’s youngest and best political journalist I thought it’s my responsibility to go along to the School Strike 4 Climate and report on what I saw.
A 15 year old in Sweden came up with the idea for schoolkids to skip school to protest climate change. It’s a good idea because adults aren’t used to kids taking direct action themselves and it f̶r̶e̶a̶k̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶^̶^̶^̶ it surprises them quite a lot.
The rally started at 12 so I got to the train station about 11, there were lots of kids there.
As the train got closer to Parliament the carriages totally packed out with schoolkids, mostly in uniform, but some not. Also, there were some mums and dads bringing their kids, little primary schoolers and high schoolers too.
A lady on the train smiled and asked me if I’d like to be that young again, I said “Not really I’m Australias youngest and best political journalist now and i wouldn’t want to give up that prestige and power” and she said, ‘yeah me too, once was enough’.
Walking up to the rally it looked big already, but over the next couple hours it grew massive, in the end.
I think kids should always lead protests, because their vitality is enriching to any social justice movement, also it’s funny when they chant and their voices break.
All in all I think the kids did an amazing job, they said stuff that was really important.
The only thing I disagreed with was this sign —
It’s not very effective because when I was in high school I would definitely have skipped a month of showers if I could get an extra hamburger.
After the rally I found out about the terrorist killer who murdered a lot of Muslim people in New Zealand, and then about what ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶i̶e̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶s̶h̶^̶^̶ an Australian senator said about it. Then I found out the Senator was having a town hall meeting, so I thought I should go along to that too. It was in a business park in Moorabbin, I went with my mate Brayden. He also hates racists, but he didn’t like pretending to be one so we could get in.
It feels mean to say it, but we walked in and the smell really hit you. I thought there would be more Bayside posh conservative racists but mostly it was dudes.
Before it started some men were looking at a newspaper and discussing how the media treat the Senator badly.
That was sort of the theme of the meeting, the Senator grinning and pretending he’s not playing to violent racists and the people in the room laughing and saying ‘oh no we are of course notviolent racists lol’.
The Senator is a big tall country man so people were pretty excited to meet him.
He wheeled out a quick spiel cobbled together from US conservative talking points, country wisdom and memes he saw on his own Facebook page.
At Q&A time we learned a bit more about the audience, a group of ordinary, decent taxpaying Aussies.
This was the chance for the Senator to explain how bad he feels about the families in New Zealand being murdered by a terrorist.
The Senator has an understated “Atticus Finch” kind of “aw shucks, I’m just a downhome ol’ farmboy” thing going.
“You and me here are super normal, I am your man in Canberra, please tell me all about how the Family Court only wants to destroy the fathers”.
These are the truest things the Senator said:
After the Q&A finished a teenager came up to the Senator and broke an egg on his head and Twitter exploded because it was super funny and great. Not everyone agreed though.
Annabel is my respected journalistic colleague so I want to help her to not be puzzled.
I think the reason we’re all excited about eggboy is because theres not many times in life you see bad deeds get punished right before your eyes.
Bad people get to be celebrities on TV, bad priests get to be cardinals and bad politicians get to be on Annabel’s cooking show and there’s nothing normal people can do about it. But this one Senator said disgusting things and then a boy popped an egg on him.
Theres a joy in revenge served hot, specially when it’s funny and pissweak; this is called “Aussie humour”.
I say it’s not violence, using Tristian’s rule of Violence:
I just wish I got to see it happen myself! But Brayden was sick of it and I kinda wanted to go as well.
Anyway, the point is that kids aren’t just the future, they’re the right now! And judging by this weekend they’re about a hundred times more effective making social change than the media is.
**Except for investigative journos and four corners and daily review because they are legit champs.
Update!
Tristian wants to apologise to Annabel Crabb, her tweet made it look like she didn’t like eggs. She meant she didn’t like real actual violence. Popping an egg is still funny. Tristian didn’t go looking for context to what Annabel said and for that he can go in the bin.
***
About the Author:
Tristian is studying Media Entrepreneurship at Latham University and tweets from @trisjunb. He reports for Daily Review on world news, politics and eggs. Read more by him here
Tristian is a student at Strathfield Secondary College and the younger brother of cartoonist David Blumenstein who can be contacted at nakedfella.com
