Life

Jake O'Kane: Whatever you do, don't glue yourself to a Belfast bus

With more than 1000 arrests so far, the Extinction Rebellion being played out in London has already broken records. Demonstrators have caused widespread disruption to London commuters by not only blocking streets with sit-down protests but also by gluing their hands to the windows of trains and buses...

Jake O'Kane

Jake O'Kane

Jake is a comic, columnist and contrarian.

Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg is the poster girl for the Extinction Rebellion
Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg is the poster girl for the Extinction Rebellion Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg is the poster girl for the Extinction Rebellion

WHILE this worked in London, I wouldn’t suggest any local protestors follow this example, as I don’t think our bus drivers would react like those across the water.

I imagine myself on a bendy bus as a woman, with her hand glued to my window, runs along frantically. Even if I shouted to the driver there was a woman glued to his window, I suspect the reply would be, "Never worry, she’ll fall off once we go downhill".

The poster girl for the new movement is the suitably incongruous Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish girl with pigtails. Following Sweden’s hottest ever summer last year, Greta went on strike from school and sat outside the Swedish parliament, demanding politicians act on climate change.

To adults who admonished her, saying she should be in school, she replied, "What am I missing? What am I going to learn in school? Facts don’t matter any more, politicians aren’t listening to the scientists, so why should I learn?"

Greta’s act of defiance caught on and children across the world followed her example and left their classrooms to march for change. What makes Greta's story all the more compelling is the fact she has Asperger’s syndrome, which in the past has affected her health. Rather than seeing her condition as a problem, Greta views it as a gift which she believes helped open her eyes to climate change.

This week saw Greta travel by train to London – she refuses to travel by plane – to speak at a rally held by the Extinction Rebellion. She also spoke in the Houses of Parliament to a packed audience including many leading politicians from all parties – Theresa May pointedly refused to attend.

What struck me was an interview that Greta gave to Channel Four News after the event. When asked what she would say to climate deniers such as Donald Trump, she answered she wouldn’t say anything to him, as to do so would be a waste of time. And, when pressed on the problem of individual powerlessness in the face of a global problem such as climate change, she replied that we all have our part to play.

Tragically, while one remarkable teenager from Sweden fights to save lives, there is every possibility it was a teenager who took the life of the remarkable Lyra McKee in Derry last week.

When I awoke to the news last Friday morning that a journalist had been shot dead, it took a moment to register. I then read the name Lyra McKee and had the unsettling feeling I knew that name; once I saw her photo I realised that I did know Lyra.

Sadly, I never got to meet her in person; our contact – suitably, for a millennial – was exclusively online. I can’t remember when Lyra first made contact but we exchanged a few messages over the last couple of years.

Even online, her infectious commitment and enthusiasm came across, and it’s telling that most of her messages involved efforts to help others. The last message had to do with her work around suicide prevention for the young.

In an article she wrote on that issue she stated: "We were the Good Friday Agreement generation, destined to never witness the horrors of war but to reap the spoils of peace. The spoils just never seemed to reach us."

How poignant, then, that she was killed the night before the 21st anniversary of the signing of that same Agreement.

One obvious factor in the gap between what was promised in the Agreement and what has come to pass is the toxic relationship that has developed between our two main parties and the disgraceful political vacuum which has been allowed to fester for the last two-and-a-half years.

Fr Martin Magill, who co-officiated at Lyra’s funeral, congratulated politicians for their unified front with regard to Lyra’s killing, but went on to ask: "Why in God’s name does it take the death of a 29-year-old woman, with her whole life in front of her, to get to this point?"

Why indeed. And why is it that, two decades after the end of the conflict, we still need the blood of innocents to lubricate the wheels of our politics?