Frankly … social
1.5 Degrees’ Social Distancing

Time for another climate demo. Maximilian Buddenbohm was there, observing everything from the overall mood to the ubiquitous cardboard signs.

By Maximilian Buddenbohm

The crises keep getting all tangled up together. The war and climate are factors in the energy crisis, and Covid’s still around too. How does it all fit together? Well, it’s awfully complicated and getting more and more jumbled up. I’m at a big Fridays for Future climate demo in Hamburg, where one of the organizers has just made a blooper, asking the roughly 17,000 people standing in front of her right now to maintain social distancing, if possible, on account of the pandemic: “Please keep 1.5 degrees away from each other,” she blunders. A pretty nice slip of the tongue, which draws good-natured laughter and a round of applause. Feels like we’re mixing up the crises, the demands and the solutions.

Protestors from all walks of life

Previously, even just a few years ago, the Fridays for Future Global Climate Strike was a school strike. From pre-schoolers to high schoolers, the average age of the strikers was low. That has since changed radically since then, with marchers from all walks of life: you see banners that say (in English, by the way) like “TEACHERS FOR FUTURE”, “SCIENTISTS FOR FUTURE”, “DOCTORS FOR FUTURE”, “STUDENTS FOR FUTURE” and plenty more. An old man next to me is wearing a “GRANDPA FOR FUTURE” sign on his back. I should have made one myself. These colourful home-made cardboard signs are still hallmarks of the climate strikes – and they’re ubiquitous here today. “COLUMNISTS FOR THE CLIMATE” – that’s what I should have written on mine. Well, at least I’m here, that’ll have to do for now.

Some of the signs around me are slightly illegible in a rather touching way, written by very young people who – you really can tell – got tired of writing by the time they reached the last letter. And many of them are funny. “NO EARTH, NO BISCUITS” says one such sign: now if that isn’t a compelling clincher, I don’t know what is. “DO AWAY WITH LEAF BLOWERS!” demands one woman on hers: it may just be her pet peeve, but it sure gets a lot of thumbs-up as she walks by – that could have occurred to others, too. Being contra leaf blowers can unite people – might even have majority appeal: after all, only people with leaf blowers are pro leaf blowers.

“CHANGE!”

Six people sitting in a circle on the ground are intent on writing up a sign on a large sheet of cardboard before the march gets going. But they seem to have trouble agreeing on what to write, they argue heatedly and don’t seem to be getting anywhere. They have the best of intentions, but getting six people to agree on anything is where the problem starts. “Oh, it’ll be alright,” says one woman reassuringly, “it’ll be alright,” while a young man beside her rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

Many are carrying signs calling for a Wende: everything must change soon. They call for an energy transition (Energiewende), changes in the way we build (Bauwende), changes in consumption (Konsumwende), mobility (Verkehrswende) and politics/public policy (Politikwende) … At some point I stopped writing them all down. You can tack a -wende onto just about anything under the sun.

Positive vibes

The prevailing mood is noticeably positive. It’s not about what you could do to your political opponents once you’ve vanquished them, I see no sign of that sort of thing. No one’s to be locked up, sent to the gallows or into exile. It isn’t about vengeance or hate – unlike certain other demonstrations. Which may be the only thing of importance to add to all the media coverage of the Climate Strike. The turnout figures, the principal demands, the venues – we know all that already, everyone’s been writing and talking about that. But, in case you weren’t there, and in case you won’t be able to make it next time, rest assured that they’re rather nice, friendly events. I think that’s important.

Then again, one little girl dressed in pink, with a determined look on her face, is holding up a sign saying “BALLET STRIKE FOR THE CLIMATE”. For all the friendliness and niceness, she’s in earnest, and we’d be wrong to smile condescendingly. Never underestimate the concerns of children, we know that from raising kids ourselves.

Detour

The way to the demo is briefly blocked, triggering a wide range of reactions. Several stewards cordon off certain streets and footpaths with red-and-white barrier tape so the countless new arrivals will take alternate routes. As is plain to see, the point is to even out the huge procession a little: Not this way, please go that way. The smiling stewards wave people aside in a friendly manner, pointing to alternate routes and calling out over and over again, “That way! Go that way!”

Almost everyone flocking to the demo follows without a word. Without giving it much thought, without objecting or griping about it, they walk an extra block because they’ve been asked to do so. It’s no big deal, the matter sorts itself out as if it were a matter of course – just as it would at any other big event, of any political stripe.

“Gotta get through here!”

But one of the newcomers is already angry as he comes upon the roadblock, and seems to be alarmed at the sight of this red-and-white barrier tape, which triggers a strange reaction: “Gotta get through here!” he shouts in a decidedly demanding, bossy and devious tone. What do these crazed kids intend to do about it, he bellows, just stand there in his way? Are they off their rockers? A female steward explains the situation to him in a friendly and attentive tone. But the man, already red in the face, is getting louder and louder so the bystanders can hear how upset he is, and the cops in back, too, as he beckons frantically to them: “I’ve got to get through! Now!” The steward goes on explaining. Then the man tries barrelling straight into the tape, saying: “And what if I just walk right through? What then? Well? What are you going to do then? Well?” But the steward simply lowers the tape for him to step over it: “Well, then, just go on through.” He’s gobsmacked, you can tell from the look on his face. He looks possibly disappointed, too: such a good old squabble, such a great reason to get really riled for once, to win an argument, that’ll show ’em! And then suddenly it all fizzles out at after one little move.

A woman walks up to the tape and amiably inquires, “Can I get through here, please? As anexception?” Of course she can, no problem at all. A two-second exchange and then she’s through the barrier and gone.

Another man stopped by the tape grins and asks, “What excuse will get me through here?” The steward replies jauntily, “Go on, think of something. Any good excuse will wash with me.”

Flyers

Flyers galore are handed out at the demo. Flyers about political issues or political parties, campaigns and programmes, flyers describing various and sundry groups and initiatives. I’ve never seen so many flyers at a demo, a real deluge of information. Stacks of leaflets get carried around all over the place. Two flyer distributors walk up to each other, hold out their slips of paper and both wave them away: No thanks, we don’t want to read anything, we just want to hand these out.

An elderly man, even older than I am, takes a flyer from a young distributor and reads what it says. He’s wearing an AKW-Nee (i.e. No nukes!) T-shirt, perhaps from the early days of the movement; it’s a real museum piece, old, yellowed and crumbling. He’s got slogan pin-back buttons on his jacket, lots of them, actually, he’s richly decorated. The slogans are against nuclear power, war or rearmament, against corporations, trade agreements or nuclear disposal sites, anti-everything one could come out against over the past several decades. He’s a veteran of political protest culture, festooned with metal like an army general. And he’s not about to let the flyer distributor off easily, immediately buttonholing him to discuss what he’s reading there. The flyer fellow looks around for a way out of this predicament.

Waving a big cardboard sign like the grown-ups

There’s a little boy in the crowd. He presumably didn’t bring a sign, although sign-waving is clearly the whole point here, as he can readily see, what with so many people around him doing precisely that. All the grown-ups are doing it, his parents are doing it too, so naturally he wants to join in. Children are often eager to cooperate, that’s how they learn. So what does he do? He simply picks up an empty pizza box and holds it up in the air. It’s just an ordinary cardboard box he picked up off the street with no slogans on it, just the name of some pizza delivery service. And they’re not a particularly environmentally responsible company either. The box is basically just trash. Or at least it was until now, now that it has become a sign like all the other pieces of cardboard around here.

This scene might well become the stuff of family history, an anecdote to be retold at family get-togethers in twenty years’ time, perhaps at this kid’s wedding: Remember how he held up that empty pizza box at the rally and marched all the way through the city with it? Whereupon someone who was there at the time shows a snapshot of the boy with the pizza box.

Stories like this one are liable to make it through all these crises: Pizza for Future. Well, why not.