- Climate Strike Leicester
It's Time
The poem delivered by Erica Lees-Smith at the September General Strike.

Tick tock
I don’t know about you
But I’ve already started counting down to
The year-consuming, stress-inducing four letters
G C S E Nearly sixteen,
Why would I be truanting, why would you be truanting,
Why should we be truanting?
Well you see, my government’s environmental policy
Is causing me to write apologies
To my school
For missing a day of education
Because instead we’ve got to educate the nation.
Tick tock
A year ago
I didn’t really care much for the climate crisis
Because nobody had told me it was one.
In fact that wasn’t even the term that was used
When we studied it in geography back in year 9
Or discussed it with mates a few random times
Never truly scraping the surface.
A year ago
A young girl,
A brilliant beam of light brightening the dismal skies
Of 2018 politics and calling it a
Climate crisis.
Armed with an aura of certainty and science,
Sixteen years of denying the liars
And compassion,
Unknowingly igniting the fires
Of an international movement.
And as she began rallying behind this justified cause
Something
Snapped
Inside me.
The far-off fantasy of global warming,
A cosy, tourist-centred ideology,
Of businesses profiting with oceans simultaneously,
And something
Snapped
Inside me.
We’ve got time, they said,
It’s okay, they say,
a few centuries left to pass yet,
Not our problem but for our great-great-great-great
Grandkids to deal with
But as it’s become a great-great-great and even greater problem
Now we’re facing the consequences
The reality check has checked in early at the hotel room
And we’re not ready:
Heating’s broken,
Bathroom’s flooding,
And we’re not ready
But we can’t just wave this one away.
Why should it take Western recognition
For true international validation
When for years the great-great-great-great problem has been
The reality check for too many
Each and every day?
Life on earth struggling for breath
Fog and smog clouding our vision,
Literal and metaphorical.
The thing is, we’ve lost our way
In life’s meandering paths,
Amidst distractions of the universe,
Success stored in gold treasures held tight to our chests
But now we must
WAKE UP.
We’re pushing your head back down from the clouds
Your blissful ignorance of the burning abyss
WAKE UP
From your dreaming amidst the flames.
No, “12 years left” isn’t simply a stat
To be memorised or recited
Under watchful eye of an exam hall clock
TICK TOCK
But to be shouted in the streets today
As we rise and say
Enough is enough
To a government who
Won’t prioritise what’s justified,
The victims that are the cost and we’ve lost,
Lose, will lose to the war we waged on humanity
In blood and fire and greedy rage
200 years ago.
Yes, we’re fit to burst
A deep, growling passion
A washing machine churning a sickness inside us
So we cry out in anguish
Despite muted adolescent voices
And millions more that won’t be represented
WHAT DO WE WANT? -
You don’t understand what you’re saying.
How can you, an average teen without a vote,
Spout apocalyptic nonsense when you’re always on your phones?
How can you, an average teen without a vote,
Justify missing school when Britain’s doing just fine,
You’re conforming to this lie.
You see this may be beyond our comfortable lives
But surely if our eyes
Are distracted by this distinct lack of action
Then a generation and a nation
Without the same alleged technological addiction
Can do the same too,
So why can’t you?
This ominous fiery monster
A dragon on the horizon
We ‘don’t stop going on about’
Will seek vengeance
On this tiny little island, the so-called Great Britain,
These unnatural dark forces have
Eroded our planet,
Moulding us like clay jays
To sculpt this postmodern age
Of profit over people
So what makes us any different?
In a world where
Pain and
Despair
Are just another sad news story,
Not a life,
Or a family,
But one in a market of
Seven billion buyers.
In a world where those with the cleanest record
Are to pay the most awful price.
But then there’s unity.
This beautiful alliance of
School strikers in solidarity with
Teachers and doctors,
Bankers and politicians,
As we point towards the light at the end of the tunnel,
Further from the pit of
Commonplace carbon recklessness.
So let’s draw on this inherent unity as
Just one unique species in creation
With scarce privilege or preference over another
And certainly not 'greater' than each other
Death and denial will not take us further
But instead let’s look back together to the foundation we’ve built all this chanting upon,
Not material but just as strong
So that day in x years’ time
If you can’t look people in the eye when they say,
Dad, what did you do in the climate emergency?
Then let's just take a moment to recognise
And maybe then you'll realise
How different things would be
If we didn't choose change over catastrophe:
In a bleak dystopia
It’s hard to recall what life ever looked like before
Back when tall green things proudly reached for the skies
And we didn’t have to cover our eyes each time a monstrous machine shrouded our home with a great carbon coat
Today innovation and tech have come so far, yet we seem so far from where we surely should be,
With cracking ice and rising seas
And we can beat about the bush with a few better bins or plead politely with petitions and pretty poetic presentation
But ultimately understand this:
We can't stand this -
What will come
If nothing is done
See, we’ve not lost this war yet but young people
Were never meant to be
defenders of the earth,
we need a whole new kind of weaponry
As we lead the charge, put an end to all this chaos, our world leaders need to take up the mantle to dismantle a system which doesn't get what's at stake,
And at last make us take
Action.