 One of the really fundamental shifts I think that's happening right now with the nature of power is that, you know, it's no longer sufficient just to be the most materially powerful or the wealthiest. You also need this capacity to mobilize the citizenry. And one way they're calling it is like a power and outcome. You need to be able to mobilize people. That's one of the core aspects of power today. And I think that that capacity to mobilize people is what activists excel at. And so in many ways, even though it feels like you don't have power, you actually are the only, you have this unique ability. It's not easy, but you do have a unique ability as a youth or just as an outsider to spark a social movement or to spark a social protest. And that capacity I think is integral to the new functioning of power. All of you here today are examples of youth who've achieved a lot in their respective areas of activism. So maybe going down the line starting with Naomi, could you please give us a brief description of what you're currently working on? When I was 11, I had 17 students and faculty members who were killed in the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. That's what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about gun violence and how it affected me. After giving my speech at the March for Our Lives, or rather while during writing my speech for the March for Our Lives, I realized that gun violence wasn't a problem that affected me. And that I couldn't authentically speak on something that I haven't experienced. And so I began to think about what I had experienced. And the answer was pretty clear, living every day in the skin as a black woman, being told that I am less than, and being told that I am no more than the stereotypical angry black disrespectful girl. And so I really like lifting and raising the voices of girls of color, as B said, because I feel that we don't get as much attention. I think it's very noticed that a lot of the black activists in this community don't get a lot of recognition because the media glorifies people other than us. And so I'd just like to bring light to that issue. Thank you. Maxime? Yes. So I started being an activist and being engaged a few years ago. It all started with the climate issue, and I organized a few demonstrations and manifestations in my hometown. And then I had to meet with politicians and I could see how the situation was blacked and how it was difficult for us from the streets to have an impact on the real decisions. And so since last July, I represent the Swiss youth at the United Nations. It's an opportunity given by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the Swiss National Youth Council. And so I chose to take that institutional path to share my concerns, my ideas to exchange with youth and to seek for an impact in Switzerland and also an international level. And currently I'm working on different projects. So I co-founded an NGO two months ago to break this cycle of stigma around mental health issues. And I'm also working on a project, I think, to have a philosophical and ethical analysis of political decisions. Thank you very much. Autumn? Bonjour. Bonjour. So my name is Autumn Pellche. I'm 15 years old and I'm from Wacomaconga, Mantoan Island, which is located in Ontario, Canada. And I currently live in Ottawa, which is the capital of Canada. So basically how I started my work, I was eight years old and I decided to speak up for my people, which is the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, and a lot of those communities in Canada are suffering from zero access to clean drinking water. So as an eight-year-old, I guess, I don't know exactly why it triggered me, but it triggered me to speak up for those communities, and ever since then I've been actively working with a lot of different companies, industries, a lot of different people, so that's kind of how I got to where I am. Thank you. Michael. Hi, everyone. My name is Michael White. So I actually started doing activism when I was 13 years old. It's all I've ever done my entire life, and I have throughout my life, various campaigns at various ages have reached certain peaks. So when I was 13, I started doing activism, but when I was 17, I created a campaign that got onto national television, and then when I was 28, we did, you know, co-creative activity at Wall Street. So in terms of what I'm working on now, I think one of the things that's the most pressing issue, obviously, is climate change and the need for an unprecedented mobilization. The largest, probably the largest, mobilization on human history has to take place within the next 10 years, and we have to accomplish monumental tasks, like planting one trillion trees. And so I'm in Davos to really talk about the real challenge of creating a mobilization of that scale and how activists are probably the only social group from which a mobilization of that kind could come from, yet at the same time, we also need the support of industry and governments because those are the key players in deciding whether or not protests will be suppressed and squashed or allowed to grow large. So that's what I'm coming from. And now, Michael, being probably the most experienced person on today's panel, what advice would you give to youth trying to make a change but who don't necessarily have the platform to make a change or who don't know how to get started? You know, it's hard to give advice because I think the thing about activism and the creation of social movements is that there is no formula. So I think that my advice would be that you really can't follow anyone's advice. Like what I have done in my life is I've developed a kind of intuition about what I think will work, and then I test it out, I see what happens, and then I develop a new theory. But I'll tell you one thing that I think is important to keep in mind as a young person is that before every single campaign, when I would tell people the idea for it, they always told me it was a bad idea, across the board. So I'm in Davos, like everyone's telling me it's a horrible idea that I'm here, before October Wall Street, horrible idea. So people, the thing is, is that people outside of you don't actually know whether or not your idea for a campaign will take off, and it takes a tremendous amount of fortitude as a young person to say, I'm just going to do it anyways and see what happens. So I think that's the most important rule. And so you mentioned outside of the youth, you never know if it's going to work. The three of you being youth, we grew up a lot more with technology and things like social media. Do you think social media has been a tool that's helped us have more youth activists or spread the word easier? Naomi, if you want to start us off. I think that social media has been a great resource for people who don't maybe live in a small town, and they can't reach a lot of people by traveling and stuff. So if you're able to post something or tweet about something that you believe in, and then you have access to thousands of people, I think that could be a really helpful resource. But at the same time, not everybody has access to the internet or access to technology of that kind. And so I feel like there could be other ways where we could spread messages and provide resources for people who don't have them. Autumn, what do you think? Well, I think that social media is actually a really good way to be spreading our messages through the youth, because a lot of the youth are actually on social media. A lot of us have phones, and that's how a lot of our messages get across, so I think that has a really big impact on the stuff we do. And now, Maxime, you're also, so you're studying law, so you see it also from a more legal perspective. Social media helps us spread the word. But do you think that we should use policymaking as a tool? But do you think youth activists should use policymaking as a tool in order to further their movements? Yes, definitely. What we could hear from the streets in Switzerland in the last few months and in the last few years, the many climate action was really good. I really support it. But we cannot expect these actions from other people. We have to be the one making decisions. And so to anyone who's here, who's listening here, I would like to invite you to enroll a party, to submit an initiative, to use the tools we have. I was speaking with a Swiss perspective, where it is really easy for anyone to participate in the legislative process. And so we have this great opportunity here to be directly involved. And I would really like to see youth using those tools to create change. And now you live in the rest of you live in America and Canada, where the youth might not have as much voting power. In the sense that Switzerland being a direct democracy, there's a lot of referendums, you can vote a lot easier for what you believe in. What advice would you give to youth who don't feel they have that political power in terms of what their vote means? How could they make a change? Micah, do you want to? I think it's a good question. The thing to keep in mind is that the nature of power is really changing. One of the fundamental shifts that's happening right now with the nature of power is that it's no longer sufficient just to be the most materially powerful or the wealthiest. You also need this capacity to mobilize the citizenry. And one way they're calling it is a power and outcome. You need to be able to mobilize people. That's one of the core aspects of power today. And I think that that capacity to mobilize people is what activists excel at. And so in many ways, even though it feels like you don't have power, you actually are the only... You have this unique ability. It's not easy, but you do have a unique ability as a youth or just as an outsider to spark a social movement or to spark a social protest. And that capacity, I think, is integral to the new functioning of power. So what I see happening is that activism is being integrated more deeply into the functioning of power and to elite circles, which is why we're here. It's very strange that Occupy Wall Street would be here, you know, in this sense. But there is something about the capacity to mobilize people that elites are very curious about and very much want to learn about. And I think what I would say to youth is that they can't steal that power from us. They don't have the ability to steal it. They're going to have to work with us in this endeavor. So it's interesting. And you say we don't have the power to steal it, but now there's been a lot of debate about the voting age and maybe decreasing the voting age to, let's say, 16. What would be your opinion on that? And I'm going to ask the young ones next to see what you guys think of it. Do you think the voting age should be decreased? Well, look, I think that, you know, absolutely, if you had asked me that two years ago, it's absolutely the goal of all activism, I would say, which is about the capture of sovereignty, the capture of political power, et cetera, et cetera. But I think that we've entered into a whole new situation right now with the climate emergency. Like, we basically have 10 years in order to... They're saying that scientists say we have to reduce carbon emissions 7.6 percent per year each year for 10 years. It's a completely, practically impossible goal. And I think in light of that, it really calls into questions about what our priorities are. So, like, you could spend the next 10 years trying to lower the voting age to 16 and we all die because of climate change. I mean, to put it into stark terms. So I think that that's the real challenge for actors right now is to figure out what are our priorities? Do we still pursue the things that we used to want to pursue, like political power, or are we really just, like, doubling down on climate mobilization? Now, Naomi, you don't have political... You can't vote yet. And same with Autumn, what's your perspective on it? Do you think that we should decrease the voting age? I feel that if we lower the voting age to 16, we should make sure that the 16-year-olds are educated because if we have a bunch of 16-year-olds who don't know what they're talking about and we give them the power to vote, what is that going to do? Who's that going to put in office? I mean, will they be voting because they really think that it's the right choice or will they be voting with their opinions swayed by their parents and the people around them? So I think that if we were to, we should make sure that we do a better job at incorporating the science of politics and really how everything works into school's curriculums so that it's not just something that you might not know anything about and then go out to cast your ballot and not know what you're doing. I agree a lot with what Naomi just said. My opinion on that would also be that I do feel in a way that maybe 16 would be a good voting age because really what the politicians are doing, they're making decisions in which is gonna affect our future and the decisions they make today, like I said, it's gonna affect our future and I just feel like we should have a say in what happens and yeah, that's really it. And now you brought up education and how if we're gonna lower the voting age, we should reform education. You work with certain NGOs and you look at things like education. How would you go about helping educating kids on youth activism? Maxime, sir. So that is a really important question. I think we have to rethink our educational system for today's world and we have to integrate soft skills such as leadership, teamwork and others to the curriculum to really prepare young people to be in position in further years to give them access to platforms which make it possible for them to be socially committed and that goes through empowerment, it goes through sharing of knowledge, it also goes through proposing tools and that is really something I would like to see in the next few years coming from the schools, really preparing young people to make their own decisions and to create their own impact. Thank you. And now you mentioned, wait. You bring up so education and that being a barrier, it's somewhat of a barrier to youth activism because a lot of people aren't educated on the issues or they don't know how to start that. But another barrier that we also hear a lot about is age. Autumn and Naomi, you guys are the youngest you're 15 and 13 years old. How has age affected your ability to be a youth activist? Autumn, if you wanna start us off. Well, for me, I started speaking on bigger, larger platforms when I was about 10 years old and I did get a lot of criticism from my age because I was speaking to a lot of higher level people like politicians and it was more specifically in Canada and I think, well in Canada there's a lot of indigenous racism and it was really hard being a young indigenous girl and the types of comments I would get was, for example, she's too young, what can she do? Her opinion doesn't matter. She's only 10 years old or she's only 12 years old and so I didn't let that stop me though and I think that does have a really big impact on what people persuade and think of us and also for another example, when I was 12 years old I told off the Prime Minister of Canada and I just felt that was a really good opportunity for me to express my feelings and express that a 12 year old can do a lot bigger things than they say. So yesterday in the car, actually one of the shadows, a couple walked in and a man started saying that he thought that Trump did a really good job during his speech yesterday and I'd like to say that my mom and I politely disagreed and so we started discussing because of course you want to be able to have conversations with people who don't think the same as you without getting angry and so we were talking about it and it was relatively okay until they started talking about me like I wasn't there towards my mother and told my mother that maybe I wouldn't be able to fully comprehend what they were saying and so I just, I got a little upset. I think it's okay that I got upset because they were telling me a woman of color, an immigrant who comes from the United States what to think about my president and so I got upset and they were telling me how I should think and telling me that I should have an open mind and I told them that I could handle myself but that I appreciated the input and so I think that's just an example, something that just happened yesterday about how age is always a barrier I think especially for me because I was 11, 12, 13 when I started and so I shouldn't know what I'm talking about and I shouldn't be able to clap back in that way and I think I might have been a little rude but it's okay. And Micah, I'd love to get your perspective on this. As someone who started being an activist quite young and who's grown through it, how has your perspective on youth activism changed as your age changed? Yeah, look, I'll be honest with you. I think that being young is a blessing and a curse so on the one hand as we've seen the youth have a kind of fearlessness, right? You have a fearlessness that you will do things when you are young that you will think twice about when you have, I have children so the idea, for example, the idea of getting arrested and going to jail as an activist means something different because I have a four year old and a one year old at home than it did when I was 17, 18 years old. It didn't bother me as much. So on the one hand you're fearless which is a great asset for being an activist. You want to be fearless in order to do activism. A lot of the nature of activism is losing your fear but on the other hand I can just tell you as now that I'm in my almost, I'm like 37 I've been doing activism now for, geez, a long time. The difference, the weakness of youth is a lack of historical understanding. I mean just speaking for myself, I will tell you honestly, I don't think I read a history book until I was 19 years old, 20 years old. Like I just, you completely lack a historical understanding of what has come before you and that's a good thing and a bad thing. So I think that what I would say is like at each stage of your development as an activist you have to push the furthest for that stage. So like if you're young and you're fearless be as fearless as you can and when you get a little bit older like dive as much into history as you can but basically like, yeah, it's a blessing and a curse. And I'd like to go back to something Naomi said. You said we should be allowed to start a conversation about the couple in the shuttle yesterday. Maxim, how would you go about helping people start that conversation? Because it's not always an easy conversation to start whether it be about climate change or political opinions, et cetera. How would you go about helping you start those conversations? Young people you mean? Yeah. I mean, first we should address these issues at school which is the basis for every young, for every young guy or every young girl. And we should really talk about these subjects because they matter a lot and often we sometimes lack of knowledge about these subjects. And so bringing these subjects at school really helps you to have a good knowledge about it and then to have the opportunity to have good arguments if we want to address them to political leaders and not only to reclaim our voice because we're young but also because we know about it. Thank you. And Autumn, you started that conversation but you mentioned how being indigenous you received a lot of backlash for it. How were you able to overcome many of the challenges that came with being a First Nation person? Well, like I said, there's a lot of indigenous racism in Canada and really what I did was I mainly ignored it because it didn't really matter to me and I did have a main focus which was to get my message out. So I never focused on the negativity people were pushing towards me and I just kept on going and just kept on trying to spread my message and it got me through. I'm still here, I'm still doing my work so. And Naomi, how do you deal with it? Because I'm assuming you also receive a lot of backlash for your activism. Yeah, I actually tweeted something yesterday about an article that I disagreed with and somebody told me to tell my parents to get me a psychiatrist because I was clearly filled with rage. And of course it's a little upsetting but it's kind of laughable at this point because it's not my fault that the truth makes you uncomfortable. It's not my fault that you didn't grow up in a household where you talked about issues. I mean, your uncomfort is not my issue. So it's really, you can do whatever you want, I really don't care. But I mean, I was also asked what I would like to say to certain politicians who I didn't agree with, what I would say to change their minds and how I would like to see change in that aspect. But if you can't change their minds, you should elect new people because there's really no point in trying to educate ignorance when they're already set in their beliefs. And that ties in nicely to my next question which would be in today's political climate, especially in America where there's a lot of disagreement, how has that affected being a youth activist? How has that affected the youth's ability to create change? Mike, I guess you've kind of grown through it, how would... Well, I mean, I think one thing I would say that's really interesting and really hard is like, so my first campaign that got national promise was in 1999. In 1999, I created this campaign. I wrote an article for the New York Times and I was on Bill Maher's political incorrect which was like on millions of homes or something like that. But there was no Twitter, Facebook or any of that. So the feedback, the negativity that I got was just like in my local community, right? Fast, go to today, you write an article, like we just heard, you get people on the internet, trolls, whatever, like all over the world sending you negativity. So I think that there is something that you have to... Even I'm affected by that, you know what I mean? So it's like, there is something about the kind of conflicts that are emerging in our society that's being amplified by the ability for someone like a thousand miles away to send you hate on the internet which requires you, the activists, to build an even thicker skin than I think I had to have a 17 year old. I mean, I just had to deal with people on the street saying something. Now I have to deal with people, you know, like all the way in like another country saying something. So I think that's a real challenge. And so I mean, I think that there's a lot of work that needs to be done to kind of like protect our psyche from that very damaging, yeah. And you've discussed writing articles and you actually wrote an article recently about how Davos was reputational suicide for an activist. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, look, I was almost arrested in 2002 in an anarchist protest against the World Economic Forum which that year was meeting in New York City. I was in the streets blocking traffic against the very organization that I am in right now. And so activism, activism has a culture and the culture of activism that I'm a part of, that I've been a part of my entire life is that this is an irredeemably evil space filled with elites who have caused the problems of this world and who will be unable to create solutions to those problems. So to break with that tradition and say that, well, I think the climate emergency changes the nature of the, basically the solution to the climate emergency is going to involve these people here. There's just, there's no way around like for example, planting one trillion trees. There's no way to plant one trillion trees without the resources of industry and government and without their tacit approval. There's just no way to do it, right? So we can protest in the streets and we can do that for the, environmentalism has been doing that for 40 years. We can keep doing that until we fail. So it is reputational suicide. You have to, as an activist, you constantly have to break with the orthodoxy of activism, the industry of activism. You have to break with it in order to be effective. Like I said, when I told people about the idea for October Wall Street, everyone including activists told me it was a bad idea. So if you listen to the orthodoxy of activism, you will just end up repeating the same mistakes that we're all, that is going on. It's very difficult. Now I want to come back to this, but first you've mentioned a couple of times how we have to work with the industry in order to see meaningful change and activism by itself, it's harder to achieve meaningful change. Maxime, you kind of, you see, I don't want to say you see both because you don't work in the industry, but working with NGOs and stuff, you probably have more access. Do you think, how do you think working with industries, like activists and industry working together can help create more change than they are individually? I mean, now we have a new paradigm where industries play a huge role in a lot of topics that a lot of young people are committed to. If we think about climate change, human rights, women rights or whatever, all these subjects are connected with the impact these industries have. And so if we want to change this, if we want to change the way industry works, then we have to be the one directing them. We have to be the CEOs. And we can not, I'm repeating myself, what I said before, but we cannot expect these actions from other people. We have to do them by ourselves. And for this reason, we have to create startups, we have to be bosses. And that's really an ambition I would like to share with you. I would really want to see every one of you seeking for these top positions, these top leadership positions that enabled you to make these changes. Thank you. And I think speaking of startups and industries, there's a whole lot to talk right now and there has been for quite a while about how there's a lot of gender inequality in a lot of the industries. And I was wondering, to what extent does gender affect your ability to precipitate change as a youth activist where everyone should theoretically be so accepting? Naomi, would you? Yeah, so I think that it's harder for women of color in general because we are women and we are not white, which is two things stacked against us. And I feel like that's two stereotypes and two boundaries that you have to break through. And so it's definitely harder as an immigrant. I feel especially affected when people are speaking, not being the most educated on issues regarding immigration and people with refugee status. And so I feel that it's harder. And the activist community is a place that is supposed to be very accepting, like you said. But I have had experiences where I am the cute little black girl who can like help us get the adults to like us, you know? And so it's just, it's bad, but I've distanced myself from those people. And I feel like we really should be practicing what we preach. So we want to be accepting and we want to accept everybody. So we should do that instead of just accepting the people who we think are acceptable. Autumn, what do you think? Well, it's also similar to, again, a lot similar to what Naomi did say. And being an indigenous person in Canada, like I said, like again, there's indigenous racism in Canada. And I do find it harder because even before she mentioned how you see on the media, it's all, the majority of it is people of, that people of non-color, I guess you could say. And you don't see a lot of the girls with color. And I think we should be paid a lot more attention to because a lot of us do have like cultural backgrounds and we have a lot of different perspectives and we come from a lot of different perspectives. And even when I talk, I talk about the work I do and the stuff going on from an indigenous perspective. And so I just think it has not a lot more meaning, but it has a different type of meaning. And yeah, that's really it. So elaborating on what Autumn said, when we think about the most prominent faces of activism today, youth activists, probably not a lot of them are black women or women of color in general. And of course, and it's hard to watch as the media glorifies people who might not, just because they have a message and they have white skin. So therefore their message is more valuable. And so I feel that women of color have been at the forefront of every major movement in the United States, but we don't know their names and we don't know their stories. And I feel that we should. And we should be acknowledging them and we should be paying tribute so that they're not just statistics and they're not just numbers, but they're actual people. I mean, it's also not those activist fault. It's the media that glorifies them and makes them out to be the pioneers of every movement when they weren't. Not anything against those people, but there are a lot more people behind them and in front of them. And so when we only focus on one person and we only use a couple people as the example, it's not really true to what we believe. And having heard that, we're here in Davos today where this session alone, including all the others are happening, but especially this one are being very publicized. You can go online, find the session, rewatch it, et cetera. So going back to Micah, you saying how Davos was reputational suicide, having heard what these girls have to say, why is it important that activists like you are here in Davos today to address all these issues? Well, look, I mean, I think I want to answer that question by bringing some nuance to this idea of working with, okay? So I think that activists are rightly so to be skeptical of working with elites because oftentimes the terms of to work with elites oftentimes means that you have to give away the thing that makes you an activist, the revolutionary edge that makes you an activist. And so I think that what I'm trying to say is that we need to, I'm using the terminology of like a united front. A united front is when people who are adversaries work together on a greater goal without trying to get rid of their differences. So I think it is very important to work with the people, the elites at Davos, but you also have to not give up the very thing that makes us powerful as activists, which is our ability, our adversity. Our adversity is what makes us strong as activists. Our hunger makes us strong as activists. You know, the reason why I came up in collaboration with another person, the idea for Acqua Wall Street is because I was hungry. I wasn't making any money. I wasn't, you know what I mean? And I'm still hungry, I'm still fine. So like I think that it's important not to think that working with means playing nice and being the way they are. Working with means maintaining your edge, but figuring out a way to find some sort of common cause together. So it's absolutely important in the next 10 years to figure out how we're gonna do this massive climate mobilization. While at the same time understanding that if we give up the very thing that makes us activists, then we will never create the mobilization. So it's not a question of just trying to mimic them. It's a question of maintaining our difference from them. Now you mentioned the Occupy Wall Street movement and recently you've come to call it a constructive failure. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, I think it's very important as activists to constantly assess our theories of change. So the dominant story of change that's been floated since basically the civil rights movement in America is that when large numbers of people get into the streets and with a unified demand, largely nonviolent, and present that demand to their elected representatives, then change will have to happen. And I think with Occupy Wall Street, that's precisely what we did. That's the dream I had been chasing for all those years as an activist and that's what we created. It spread to 82 countries, 1,000 cities. It was largely nonviolent, et cetera, et cetera. But they didn't, the change that we wanted didn't happen. So I think it's also very important as activists to not succumb to the naive notion that our representatives have to listen to us if we mobilize enough people in the streets. It's actually not true anymore. It may have been true in the past, but I think it's not true anymore. There is an agreement in the West now that mass mobilizations in the streets don't need to be listened to. It was true under Obama and it's even more true under Trump. So I think it's very, the reason I called it constructive failure is because it failed, but in failing, it revealed something very important for activists about activist strategy and the future of activist strategy. So I just think it's very important for activists to constantly test the boundaries and assess why it didn't get there and try something new. It's crucial. And so you say sometimes that movements, like being in the street doesn't always achieve what people want it to achieve. You girls are activists, but what you say is the biggest barrier to you, I think having meaning you are creating change, but going the extra step and really achieving what you want to achieve. I think that mass mobilization and marching in the streets can have an impact if it's not just a surface gesture. If you're not, if you're just protesting and you're just holding up signs and taking pictures and tweeting about it, even if there's hundreds of thousands of people there, you're not going to do anything. So I do disagree, but I agree to a certain extent. But however, I think what movements should be and I think what protests should be is getting people to become politically active and have people registered to vote so that it's not only a hundred thousand people, it's a hundred thousand people who are going to exercise their right to vote. And when they exercise their right to vote, they can then elect the people who they think is right for office. And so just being able to do something more than just standing in the street, I feel like it could work. And it's not, if it doesn't work, you're not doing it right. Or they could even be the ones running for office. Yeah. And so, Maxime, you offer the idea of running for office. Do you think we're going to see a surge of youth running for office? Because we do see a lot of young politicians, but not many of them make it to many positions of power in political systems. Do you think we're going to be more successful in the future, I guess, if we get my question? I hope so. So last October, we had national elections in Switzerland. And so in the last legislation, the average age was 50.3 years old. And now it's saying to 49. So it's a small step, but I think we're on the right path. And we could see a lot of young politicians being elected. The youngest being 25. And I think we have to share these stories to young people. We have to make them aware that running for an election is possible, no matter if you're 18 or 60, and that you can be elected and that you can submit your ideas and your solutions. And that's also something I disagree with Maika. I don't think activism should only seek for activism. I think they should seek for concrete impacts, for concrete actions, and also take position, take control of the decision-making process. How would you react to what Maxime has said? Well, I would say everyone has to follow their revolutionary intuition, you know? Like I said, like I presented my ideas for campaigns, people would say no, and then I went and did it and whatever. But I tell you what I personally believe is that, yeah, absolutely if you read my writings after Occupy Wall Street, I pursued, I advocated for electoral social movements that would win elections and gain power and all this kind of stuff. And I would tell you today, I think that there's no time. I just don't think there's any time. I think that the climate, the 40 years of environmentalism has failed and left us with basically an impossible task. And we can either say, like a lot of people do believe, we've already lost. So we could just say, well, we've lost, we can move on to other things. Or we could say, okay, we have one last chance, one last 10-year period, and there's no time for anything else. But I think that, again, I just don't think that, I don't think that activism is the kind of thing where you can tell someone else that they shouldn't pursue the direction that they wanna go. So I would say, you go your way, and I'll tell you what I think we should do. And we'll each try. Like everyone has to basically try what they believe. That's the only way to go about it. And I guess kind of leading into the idea of going your own way. Well, Autumn and Naomi again, ties into you two. The movements kind of started from you. You, it wasn't your parents really motivating you, right? If I'm correct. It was you guys who wanted to make a change. How did your family react to that? And how did they support you and you actually becoming a youth activist? So in my household, growing up, politics was always on the news. We always were hearing the president's speech. I mean, we were very aware of what was going on politically and what was going on in the activist world and in general around the world. And so I feel very lucky to be able to live in a household where I'm educated on the issues that's happening. And even though a lot of that education, it would be beneficial if it came from school. I think it's also very important to have real-life conversations about it and not just take tests and listen to lectures on it. And so I feel like that kind of conversation has always been, has always taken place in my household. But I know some of my friends, some other people, they don't know anything that's happening and their parents have sheltered them because they want to protect them. They don't think it's important for them to know. They don't think they should have to deal with that. And so I think that all parents should be teaching their children and exposing their children to what's going on because I feel when you don't, you're gonna have a child who grows up thinking that everything is going to go according to them and when it doesn't, there's gonna be a problem. Autumn, what about you? Well, for me, it was both my own inspiration and inspiration from one of my mentors and really where my own inspiration came from was, I was eight years old and an hour from my community where I used to live on Manitoulin Island, which is also the largest freshwater island in the world. Only an hour from there, there was a First Nations community that was on a boil water advisory for 20 years, so they weren't able to drink their water for 20 years and there's children growing up not knowing what it's like to drink clean water from a tap. And so I didn't know that prior to when I was going there and I went to the washroom and of course I'm used to being able to do all those normal things and on the walls there were signs that said don't drink the water, don't use the water, not for consumption. And so I didn't know what any of that meant and so I got back and I asked my mom, what does all that mean? And she explained to me that the community was on a boil water advisory and what it was and so that's kind of where my first inspiration came from and also prior to that, my auntie Josephine, she recently passed away but she was doing the work that I'm doing right now and it's really hard for me to talk about her so if I start crying, I'm sorry, but yeah, I think it's coming, it's okay. I'm sorry, we can move on to someone else and I'll come back to you, don't worry. Now, Micah, I want to ask you about your perspective on today's movements that we see having seen occupied being a constructive failure, what do you think of movements like Black Lives Matter or March for Our Lives, Fridays for Future that are gaining a lot of media presence and they're on social media everywhere, do you think they're achieving what they set out to achieve? Well, I think that, look, I think that we have to move towards a outcome-based activism, move towards outcome-based activism which means assessing activism based on the outcomes that it has, right? And so my assessment of contemporary movements is that it's a very tricky time to be an activist because there are social forces that want to amplify activism and remove the power of activism at the same time, so yeah. Thank you, yeah. Sorry, I wasn't really... No, I don't want to keep... Yeah, I feel really bad talking about... I don't want to talk over the memory of your aunts, but yeah. Well now, I'm a little lost, sorry. Well, I think a question I really want to ask, like to, I guess, something to empower the audience since we're coming towards the end of our discussion is what motivated you in the first place to do what you're doing today? And I think it's... We'll go down the line and kind of hear from everyone. Why did you start doing what you do? The pain that I had felt my entire life as a girl of color growing up in Virginia, I think that I was angry and I wanted to do something with all the tension that was coursing through my body and I wanted to be able to say something and I wanted to be able to put all of that negativity into a positive place. And so a lot of the motivation for me came from all of that energy and all of that tension that I had built up inside me, but I worked my best. I tried my best to channel it into positive energy and channel it into motivation, so it wasn't just me sitting around feeling sorry for myself, but it was me working so that no other girls have to feel that way. Maxime? When I was 15 years old, I was really asking myself many questions and I wanted to be socially committed to work for COSES, I believed in. And maybe not like the other panelists, I didn't have one specific topic I wanted to defend. It was more engagement I wanted to have and so I started to do this step by step and from what I could talk with a lot of young people, this is a feeling that is shared and a lot of young people want to be engaged and want to have an impact, but often they don't know how. So if I can share a piece of advice with everyone who shares the feeling that I had, do believe in your dreams and put 200% efforts in it, because if you don't believe yourself in your dreams, then no one else will. And yeah, that's what I wanted to share and that's also what motivated me in the first place. Automatically. So I could probably go back to what I was saying, but so yeah, after learning about what a Boil Water Advisory was, it was actually after that, I learned that that obviously was not the only community in Canada that is under Boil Water Advisory and then I learned that there was over 100 Boil Water Advisors in Canada and 40 in Ontario alone. And so that was kind of, it was concerning to me. I know I was only eight years old, but it meant something to me and then just having to think that there was kids my age and even younger that grew up not knowing what it's like to drink water from a tap. And so even with that, my auntie Josephine, she was the Chief Water Commissioner and that's what, that's my title now. So she, that title was handed down to me and that's basically what I do now is I, I said the decision table when decisions are made for the Great Lakes and I have a say in what happens and I advocate for them. And so I think that's what I was gonna say. Thank you and Micah. Yeah, I mean, look, I think about a lot why I ended up on this path. I think there's a biographical explanation which is that my dad is African-American, my mother is white and I never fit in on either side, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't think that really captures like why I became an activist. I think instead it's like, I was born that way. I always, even, I just always remember being fascinated with that. I mean, I was probably predisposed because my parents were also like minor activists in college and stuff like that. But I think that what really ended up happening is that it became my way to escape my destiny. So without activism, I obviously wouldn't be here. And I can tell you for a fact where my brother ended up and where other people in, where the other people in my community where they ended up and where I would have ended up without activism. So activism became my way to fight against the status quo that I was locked into and my way to propel myself out of that, out of that situation into new things. So, and then in the end, it opens some doors and it closes others. So at this point, it's closed a lot of doors. You know what I mean? Like I'm not gonna get a job. I haven't never, I've never worked an actual job. The only job I've actually had was a, I worked for Adbusters Magazine, an anarchist anti-consumer's magazine. You know what I mean? So like, so what it means is when I, if I were to apply for a job at like Facebook or something, I don't, I have no understanding of office culture whatsoever. You know what I mean? So there's things that happen. So once you're, I'm locked on this path, you know what I mean? It'll be forever. You say that, but at the same time, we were talking backstage and you were saying how people told you like, oh, you're never gonna go to university, you're never gonna get education. Well, you know, you did that, you got a doctorate. You say you would never be able to get a job, but you have the educational training to do so. So wouldn't you theoretically? Yeah, yeah, I mean, anything is possible. What I'm saying is that it's a, what I'm saying is there's a certain, there's certain personal characteristics that you have to develop in yourself to maintain yourself as an activist. I'll be honest with you, most activists do not make it past the age of 25, okay? It gets very difficult to make a living as an activist and there's a lot of social pressures to give up activism as you get older. It's easier when you're younger, it really is. And so as you get older, it becomes harder and harder to maintain yourself as an activist. And the way you maintain yourself as an activist is by strengthening certain characteristics that you have, which don't play so nicely with corporate environments, that's all I would say. So I give a lot of talks and I've given talks at corporations so that they bring me in for like one day sessions, but the idea that I'm gonna like suddenly switch gears and become a VP of something, something, something. I don't pursue that dream and I don't think it's really a likely scenario. And I wanna go back to Autumn, if that's okay with you. You talked about so how you never heard about the water issue in other communities around you. I think the general public, we've heard about like Flint and Flint, Michigan, for example, and their problem with water, not having access to clean water. And after all these years, still not having access to clean water, but we don't really hear a lot about the clean water issue in Canada. I mean, why is that and what can we do to be more informed or even to help? Well, it is an ignored, I guess you could say it's an ignored issue in Canada. You don't hear a lot about it. I can't exactly say why it's ignored, but I feel like it's mainly because it's a lot of the remote communities, like you can't drive to the communities that sit to a lot of the communities that have boil water, boil water advisories and you have to fly there. And I actually was able to go to one and it's almost like you're not in Canada when you go there. It's totally different than knowing that Canada's one of the richest countries and it's not a third world country. A lot of the communities are living in third world conditions. And I almost feel like that's why they're not paid attention to because it's really remote. It's, nothing's really there. And I feel like that's also why. And, yeah, that's what I feel like as well. Well, we only have time, first of all, thank you for your answer and we only have time for one more question. So I wanna leave on a note of empowerment. You mentioned anger and I'd like to ask all of you to give advice to someone who's feeling really angry. If he has all this anger, doesn't know what to do with it but wants to make a change. What would you say to that person? What advice would you give them? Naomi, I guess if we can start with you. I agree with Micah in the sense that you shouldn't look to others for what you should do because it's kind of that whole individual aspect of activism that really makes us who we are. I feel that when I was struggling, I always, to figure out what I wanna do, what I wanted to talk about, I would always look up videos of other activists and other girls and I would see what they were doing and I would try to mimic what they were doing but what's really important is doing what makes you happy. And so I feel that we shouldn't look to others. You shouldn't look to others for your definition of success but you should look within yourself. If you want to be successful, do whatever your gut tells you to. If you wanna put up posters because you wanna educate the kids in your school, you can do that. If you wanna write a blog, do that. If you wanna give a speech, do that. Really whatever you feel will have the biggest impact. Whatever is the best fit for you, whatever you're most comfortable doing is what you should do. Thank you, Maxime. I would like, I think you should first consider, so if you're, have hunger and stuff, you should first consider what makes you unique and what makes your position unique and how is your relation with the topic that makes you angry. And then you need perseverance and determination. I mean, we can mention Greta Thunberg. She's been standing in front of the parliament for, I don't know how many weeks, but she's not giving up and that is a great example in that sense. So if you have this seek for change, do not give up and be totally committed to that. And yeah, this is your advice I would give. Thank you, Autumn. I think what I would probably say is that anyone has the capability to be doing what we're doing up here. And for me, mine really came from passion and inspiration. And so I think it's just really what you believe in and also my Auntie Josephine also did have a quote. She always used and it was, just do it. So anybody would go up to her and say, oh, I had this dream and this is what we were doing, should I do it? And then she wouldn't even say anything else, she would just tell them, just do it. So I was gonna kind of relate to that and say if you have an idea or a way you can help, just do it. So that's really my advice. Thank you. And last but not least, Micah. Yeah, I mean, I think that, so I think the greatest danger to activists in terms of continuing their activism is burnout. Burnout is very difficult because one thing that you learn as an activist is that the status quo is so resilient. You can punch the status quo so hard. I had, I really believed that Occupy Wall Street was going to, I thought Obama would have to step down. I mean, it's hard because people don't really remember those times, but there's millions of people in the street protesting. So what I'm saying is you have to hit the status quo so hard and then when the status quo doesn't move, it's easy to get burned out. So I'll give you the antidote to burnout because I've never, I've been able to survive without burnout. The antidote to burnout is that the history of revolution teaches us that social movements and revolutionary moments tend to come when they are least expected. So right before Occupy Wall Street, we asked some leading activists, could something like the Arab Spring happen in America? And they all said no. And then Occupy Wall Street happened one month later. So whenever I'm feeling despair or burnout, then I remind myself, well, that's precisely the moment in which these social movements tend to arise. Thank you all so much for your profound empowering comments. We're now gonna be having a Q&A session with you, the audience. So I just, there's gonna be some roaming mics. If you have a question and a mic makes its way to you, please stand up, say your name, and then ask your question. We won't be taking comments just for the sake of time, so make sure it's a question and please keep it brief. Thank you. So are there any questions? You just raise your hand. Hello, everyone. My name is Angelina Bright. From Washington State. And this question is for Micah. When you stay up late at night thinking, what is your best strategy to stop the Koch brothers? Because they're not responsive to mobilization in the streets, posters, blogs. And I completely agree with you that climate change and mobility at this point is an emergency and a crisis. I mean, it's a tough question because I think what I'm trying to say is that I would like to ignore and bypass all those forces and focus on the climate mobilization. I think the only forces that need to be directly confronted are the ones who are standing in the way and opposing. So I think that like, if they can maintain a kind of neutrality for, I mean, Trump just endorsed a trillion tree campaign. I'm all about the trillion tree campaign. I've been talking about a trillion tree campaign for like nine months, you know? It's a great campaign. So like, if Trump's on board and the Koch brothers want to step aside and whatever, fine. They can continue to exist. I think that we need to like get away from, because it's a distraction. What I'm saying is we don't have much time. So I, and I think, but then I think if they start to stand in the way, then fine. We need to figure out how to like get rid of them or whatever, but I would just say like, let's just like put our blinders on. I know that their existence annoys us, but let's just like ignore them, move forward and do, and try to get this mobilization off the ground and work with whoever's willing to get it off the ground. Everybody, my name is Sabrina Davis. I'm from Washington DC and I'm an activist as well. And I understand when you have burnout or you come up against frustrations. And so my question is for the other three, you explain what you do, Michael, but what do you do when you hit a wall, you get discouraged? What is your advice to other folks when they hit that wall? Cause it's inevitable and constant and you just have to fight through it. What I do when I feel unmotivated and tired, I take a break because I think that a lot of what activists do is they're so busy trying to save the world trying to advocate for other people that they forget to take care of themselves. And so self-care and caring for yourself, maybe journaling, that's, it sounds really cliche, but it's really important because I found myself feeling really badly about myself and about the work that I do because I might not have been making, having the impact that I wanted to have, but that's not my fault and it's not anybody else's fault. And so we really need to take care of ourselves before we try to take care of other people, which I think is sometimes hard to realize when you are an activist. I totally agree with what you just said. A few months back, I had 10 projects I wanted to launch, 10 ideas growing in my mind. And I had my studies, I had to focus on that and besides, my mind was overwhelmed with all these ideas. And I reached a bad position and so, oh, sorry. So it's really important, like you say, to take care of yourself first and to put boundaries, to protect your own personal life. Anna? Well, for me, even from past experience, I went through really bad bullying because of the stuff I was doing and my community wasn't necessarily small, but there was, in my community, there's 4,000 people and this was when I was in grade six, which I was 12 years old and I was facing a lot of bullying and you always hear like, don't let them get to you, don't, I would just ignore it, but it's really hard and what I really did, it did get to me and then one day it really clicked for me and I had to think, wow, actually letting them get to me, I'm actually like listening to what they're saying, it's actually bothering me. And then I was forgetting about why I was doing what I was doing and I was forgetting the whole purpose and so I had to really remind myself to just ignore them, like opinions and opinion, of course, everyone's gonna have opinions, whether it's negative or positive and so I've just really learned to really just not care what people say and so that's really probably my advice is just not caring what people say. Thank you. Do we have any more questions in the audience? I'm 11 from Westport, Connecticut in the U.S. and my question is how do you think that youth can help achieve the sustainable development goals to help our future? Good question. Does anyone wanna tackle that? I'm seeing, oh yeah, you can. So as you probably know, 17 goals were launched by the United Nations and so through my personal experience, I attended different events presenting initiatives in all these movements, in all these topics and I wouldn't say that youth has a special role to play, the achievement of SDGs. I think it's the job of everyone, of policymakers, it's like a common duty and not especially for youth, not only for youth but on the other hand, we could use our creativity that we have as youth to develop strategies and solutions, products, startups that help concretely to achieve these goals. Thank you. Micah, I saw you nodding when she asked the question and I honestly really wanna hear what you have to say. No, I was nodding because you asked a question. It's so hard to ask a question and I was just proud of you for asking a question in front of everyone, that's fantastic. Okay, do we have any more questions? I think there's one in the back over there. So obviously, obviously being young already in itself is very controversial but do you think that having very polarized activists like Greta Thunberg, who's quite radical, do you think that it helps or that maybe it hinders and distracts from the work that they're trying to do? I think that it definitely helps. I think that Greta and so many other activists have inspired a lot of kids. I think that she's shown a lot of people that it's possible. I mean, she's so resilient, as Maxine said and I think that it's great having her as a role model. I think that we shouldn't only be looking to Greta, for example, but to a lot of other people as I was talking about the diversity and who we look up to. So Greta is an amazing activist she is and she's doing more work than some most people I know. However, there are a lot of other kids who are doing great things and so people always like ask the question, who inspires you besides Greta? But I think that assuming that we are going to say Greta in the first place. So I think that we should expand and we should look at more kids who are doing more work and we should accept everybody and acknowledge everybody and not just be set on this one or a couple people. There are a couple of them who we really think are better and who we think are the pioneers, as I said, to every movement. So I think that Greta has inspired me, she definitely has, but we should definitely look to some other examples. Thank you. Autumn, you were about to jump in there. It's like the same thing. Oh, okay. Anyone else have anything to add before we take another question? If I could just add something small. I think one of the basic mistakes that people make when they try to do activism is they think, well, my end goal is to create a mass movement. So I'll start with an idea that appeals to many people. That's actually not true. I think that the idea is that take off and spiral into mass movements are precisely the ones that come from the edge. And what you tend to find is that the social organism gravitates towards the edge. I mean, Occupy Wall Street was an insane idea. It was insane. Not marketing, but the messaging that we did around it was crazy. If you look at the original poster and stuff like that. So I think that you don't have to, it's not about being divisive or not. I think it's about you wanna pitch something from the edge of society, the edge of thought, and you will find if it takes off that people gravitate towards it. When you pitch to the middle, it tends to just kind of fizzle. And this is why a lot of the focus groups type social movements never take off. Cause it seems like a good idea everyone can agree on, but it doesn't excite people. Social movements take off because of how it makes you feel. So. Do we have any more questions? Hi, I'm Luzi Nibauer from Germany. I have two questions actually, if that's okay. One is rather a political one. In terms of the climate crisis, we face a new quality of crisis because we have such a short amount of time that it's left to actually change the pathway we are on. So I as an activist find it very tiring to repeat and repeat and repeat that we have no time when in fact we actually have no time. But it's not a useful framing I find because it stresses people out and then they say don't panic whereas actually we all should be panicking in a constructive way. So the first question would be, what would you think how to deal with the time constraints we have in the aspect of the climate crisis? And the second question is about media. I too complain about media. And I most people do because it's just difficult to deal with a very conservative, very reactionary media world that is in love with white privileged kids. But then I feel okay, we might not be able to change the world of media as fast as we needed to. So my question there would be, what would you advise people to do in terms of messaging, in terms of framing? How to deal with a media that would naturally not put those on the front pages but where we need them to be? Thank you. So the first question about having little time to take action and not panicking and doing something constructive. Micah, do you wanna start us off? Yeah, I mean I can respond to the first one. I think that the, okay it's like there is no time but at the same time we know that that kind of urgency mindset shuts down our creativity. Like it is true that if you're in a panic you're oftentimes not gonna just try to open the door. You know what I mean? It's not in the doors, it's like standing open over there. So it's a challenge. I mean there is enough time but it's close to running out of time. So I think, I agree that the urgency mindset shuts down the minds but at the same time there is very little time left. So it is extremely difficult. But I think that, look at the end of the, I think at the end of this decade there will be no time. So we do our best, you know what I mean? But there is no real answer to it. It's extremely difficult. Yeah, both of those questions were extremely difficult to answer. So. And for the media question, I mean I think it'd be great to send it to you Naomi because you talk a lot about the lack of diversity. Yeah. What do you think? The media does a really great job at glorifying and putting white privileged kids as you said at the center of every movement. I've met so many black and brown girls who have experienced violence and who have to duck from bullets to get to school but then we think of who we actually see on TV talking about those kind of situations. There are so many young girls of color and women of color who have been working their entire lives for them fighting for their voices to be heard knowing that they don't have an equal chance at gaining that attention and getting that recognition yet they still continue. I think that that resilience is so admirable but it's sad when we don't hear their names and we don't know who they are and they're just, they're non-existent to us because when we look on the news, we see the white kids who are making a difference and we see the white kids who are speaking out but then we see some of the same black and brown kids who are saying the exact same thing and are not getting any attention for it. So I think that it's the media's problem. How could we go about fixing it? I think that we can raise awareness and we can stop being so comfortable in the way we look at things. I think that we can challenge ourselves in the certain faces that we think of when we think of somebody who is successful, somebody who has a lot of money, someone who is educated. When I say those words, you might think of a white person but maybe we can start thinking of other people. We can challenge ourselves in the way that we think, like I said. So I think that the media and TV shows and books and movies have conditioned us to think a certain way. So I think it's important if we start to look outside of that box because even I, growing up, have always wanted the white doll or I've always wanted to be the white princess. And just seeing how that is scary, seeing how that affects us. But I think that there's nothing like you said we can really do about the media because that's a really big issue and it's a culture. But I think we can do it ourselves and change the way that we think. I think like Maxime and Michelle was telling us earlier, we have to become the media in a way and we have to grow up and change that ourselves if we wanna see truly meaningful change. Yeah, you have to change the game. If those medias don't want to cover your actions, then well, you don't need them. The system of media coverage is exploding now. You have traditional newspaper, but you also have other opportunities through social medias, through Twitter or whatever. But so change the game, change the narrative and you are the one presenting your actions. And if they don't want to present your actions, then you don't care and you can just use other ways to do it. Do we have any more questions in the audience? Oh, okay, yeah. Okay, so my name is Emily and my question is as an activist, I understand that success would be making a change, but what do you define as failure? Is it giving up? Is it hitting a wall? Well, I'd like to throw this one over to Micah since you coined the term constructive failure, what do you think failure represents? Well, look, I mean, what I'm trying to say is it's very difficult time to be an activist. Cause like I said, when I started doing activism, activism was not cool and there weren't really, no, very few activists. It just wasn't a thing that people wanted to do. So now it's completely flipped where you can be an activist and you're kind of celebrated by the media. And one of the tricks that happens with that though is changing and lowering the definition of success. So like the definition of success for activists for 300 years has been political revolution, gaining control of the government, et cetera, et cetera. So from that metric, Occupy failed. That was at our time, we wanted a kind of regime change, just like they had in the Arab Spring. So what I'm saying is that I think you have to be honest with yourself about defining success and then failure means not achieving that. I think that you also have to be very careful with lowering the bar of success such that it just means changing the discourse. For example, this is one thing that's really irked me about Occupy as people say, well, Occupy was a success. Now we talk about income inequality. I'm like, well, that was not the goal. That is just merely a symptom. If you created a movement as big as Occupy Wall Street, obviously it's gonna change the discourse, but that doesn't mean that you've succeeded in eradicating income inequality or any of these other things. So right now I think they want you to believe that failure is impossible, that we're always succeeding. I think there's a really, at least in America, a very positive narrative around these kind of things. So I think it's up to the activists to define what the success would mean for their movement and really holding to that goal because one of the ways they will push you aside now is to say, no, no, you succeeded, you succeeded. You didn't achieve what you wanted, but you achieved this other thing. So move along, move along. Thank you. Do we have any more questions? We have, sorry, there's a microphone coming. You've spoken on the panel about how important it is going forward that in the next 10 years we significantly change the way that we tackle climate change. The most thorough proposals that have been put forward by politicians thus far, like the Green New Deal and such things, are very much looking at restructuring the way that our global economy works. We know that we're going in one direction and we sort of have to start going the other way if we want to make real changes. On top of how polarizing figures like Greta Thunberg already are, how do you then convince people that the capitalist society that works very well for those in power is no longer suitable? How do you convince me? Okay, so what's being offered to activists is this idea that I heard from a high-ranking WEF person. I won't say who, high-ranking WEF, World Economic Forum person, which is basically that a change of system is no longer possible, but systems change is possible. So we can't have an alternative to capitalism, but we can have stakeholder capitalism, right? So I think what I would say is that, yeah, I think it's a really tricky time to be an activist right now. I think what I'm trying to say is that a lot of the goals and objectives of the last 300 years of activism are being called into question, and while I find it distasteful to agree, find a change of system is off the table, I think that if that's the cost of a massive, I mean, and I don't mean like a fake mobilization. I mean like an unprecedented mobilization that we've never seen before in human history of hundreds of millions, okay, if we can have that, then fine, a change of system is off the table. But at the end of this 10 years, if that hasn't happened, that all the promises that are being made right now turn out to be false, then it's gonna be a change of systems big time. You know what I mean? So yeah, I think just being honest with you is a very difficult choice for activists to take and we all have to choose our own path. Thank you. If we could take a question from the front, please. Great. I've got a question for Micah. So my name is Aurelia McNichol. I did half of my career in industry and the other half as a teacher. So I've been a teacher for 15 years, and I can see in the classroom that many of the students these days feel completely overwhelmed. I think we're in a situation where they don't see, I can remember the English expression, they don't see the tree from the wood. They just feel overwhelmed by all the crisis, the difficulties, and they also find it very hard to be discerning from what's right and wrong and what news, who can we rely on, et cetera. I wanted to see if your experience over the last 25 years of being an activist is similar in a way social media is great, but equally sometimes it's really paralyzing people. There's just too much information, so difficult to know what to tackle, how to tackle it, and to feel powerless. So I wanted to experience. No, I mean, I think it's a really time, tough time to be a young person. I mean, we weren't having these kinds of dire catastrophic conversations when I was 13 years old, we just weren't. And I have a four-year-old child and I think about like, at what age do I start to have these conversations? So I absolutely think it's normal to be having climate grief and all these kind of things. But at the same time, I think that the key is to take that leap. The only way we're gonna get out of this situation is basically a suspension of the status quo. Like, we need to be given a, we need to be given permission by all the society to stop earning an income and start planting trees. It's basically what has to happen. I mean, that's how they planted 350 trees in Ethiopia as they just declared a public holiday. So I think that the only way for young people to start feeling better is if we just give them permissions, like, fine, stop going to school. Like, plant some trees, that's okay. Like, maybe we don't go to school for the next 10 years. Maybe we, like, but you can't just do that until someone says to you, I'll still let you get into college or you can still earn an income. Like, most people can't make that decision. So I think that we should just tell them, like, it's absolutely normal. And then we also have to give them permission to start working on it. Cause how paralyzing is to know that the world is collapsing around you, but you have to take a math test. It's like, why is this mattering? You know what I mean? So we have to give them permission to, like, to act as if the world is collapsing, you know? So. And now I just want to add on, the rest of us grew up with technology and with social media. And I want to ask the three of you, how do you cope with, like, seeing all this influx of information and having had access to that for basically our entire lives? Does anyone want to start us off? I think that I slightly disagree with Micah because we can't stop going to school because then we're not going to be educated. We won't have a formal education. And when we don't have a formal education, we're probably not going to be able to go to college. And then what is the future after that? I mean, we're fighting for our future, but if we don't go to school, what do we do? And so I feel that there are ways to mobilize and do work while still getting an education while still doing school. And I do agree in the sense that I can learn probably more being here and speaking and listening to other people talk than I can by taking a math test and learning what two times two is. But I mean, it comes to a certain extent. It gets to a point where we need to, like you said, prioritize. And so our education is very important because like Maxime said, we want to be the future leaders. We want to be the journalists. We want to be the politicians. But if we don't go to school and we don't get an education because we're focused on something that we can multitask, we're not going to be able to do that. And that's good. I think instead of stopping and not going to school, I think you could just tie it into the education system and kind of make it almost like a mandatory course or however the education system works over here and just make it something mandatory to learn the climate change or environmental science. Thank you. And I want to tie in. I think we talked about sometimes systems like political systems not always working for the change we want to see, but here education isn't necessarily keeping up with the way we need it because you were saying, oh, well, we can't just leave school because I need to be educated so I can go to college. But isn't that kind of where you realize, well, if you can't like education is almost preventing you from being able to do things because of the way education is set up. So I guess my question to you would be before we move on to another audience question, sorry, would be how would you change the education system for it to better fit today's changing lifestyle? Because it's clearly not keeping up. Yeah, sorry. I feel like school today is about passing, not learning. So they don't want to make sure that you understand the concepts and make sure that you're able to implement what you just learned into real-life situations. They want you to know this math equation so that you can pass the test, so that you can pass the class, so that you can pass the grade. I mean, it's just this whole chain and I feel like a lot of what we're learning isn't really related to what we could be doing. I was in Spanish class and we were learning about how a lot of people who are studying in the medical field started thinking about what they wanted to do when they were like my age and by the time they were like 18, 19, 20, they were already a medical intern because they started that entire thinking process beforehand and especially in the United States, you have to get an education and private versus public education is an issue too because I attend a private school but that means that I might get a better education than a kid who goes to a public school in an inner city but that's not fair because then I'm probably going to have the education to be able to go to the high school and be able to go to the college but if their school isn't teaching them what's necessary, they're not gonna be able to do that which means they're not gonna be able to have a successful future and a lot of that is defining success and so a lot of what's considered successful is money and having power, being in a position of power and I think that when we think about we always assume that the brilliant mind is gonna come from a kid with all the resources, the kid who goes to the private school, the kid who lives in the upper class family, the kid who studies abroad, that kid, we don't think about the kids in the inner city and we don't think about the kids who have to worry about where their next meal is coming from because they're not even, they're not thoughts in the back of our mind and so I think that the school system is pretty flawed. Well I think we have time for one last question from the audience. There's one in the front, one in the back. Hello, my name is Willemijn, I'm from the Netherlands and I just have a question, would you be able or willing to partner up as an activist with an entrepreneur to seek for your goals as I seek for my goals? We have developed a destructive product which is a paint powder which can be really impactful in the industry and on climate, but I'm having the same problem as you have that the industry doesn't want me because I'm too disruptive, so I need ambassadors like you to help me achieve actually the goal we all have so are you willing to collaborate in order to make it happen in the time that we have? Maxime, you discussed a lot about entrepreneurship being both I guess a youth activist and seeing that perspective to it, what do you think? Sorry. I think that's a great idea, great idea. I don't really know the details so I'm gonna speak in a general way. Entrepreneurship is often tainted with by the reputation of greedy people only seeking for money but I don't believe it's necessarily true. I believe that business can be used for achieving the SDGs for great purposes and in that sense, I would be more than happy to know more about your project. I can't do anything without asking my mom. Okay, well I think that's all we have time for today. I'd like to thank you, the audience for being such a good audience and I'd like to ask you to join me in thanking our panelists once more.