Published: 30 March 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
ELLA SIMONS WAS 12 when she went to her first student climate strike. A student at Albert Park High School in Melbourne, she was encouraged to attend the November 2018 strike by her aunt. This was the first student climate strike in Australia. Several thousand students and adults in Melbourne attended, according to media reports.
Ella has since participated in numerous workshops run by the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC), started a local AYCC branch in her inner metropolitan electorate of Macnamara, and she became a student organiser in the lead-up to the School Strike 4 Climate national protest in September 2019 that attracted 300,000 people nationally.
Ella says she had been aware of climate change from a young age, but up until this point had not felt its urgency, nor seen herself as someone with agency in tackling the issue.
“I thought that climate change was important, and that something needed to be happening. But I didn’t know about the urgency, and how important it was, and that I actually had a role in this movement,” she says.
“I always saw [climate action] as something that happens by our political leaders. I didn’t realise how much my involvement and everyone’s involvement was so vital to the movement.
“The more I learn the more scared I become, but also the more hopeful I become. I meet so many new people every day – online, and at protests. And they just give me a lot of hope and inspiration, that people really do care, and we really can make this difference.”
The more I learn the more scared I become, but also the more hopeful I become. I meet so many new people, and they give me a lot of inspiration, that people really do care, and we really can make this difference.
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In the months leading up the last national protest, Ella balanced school studies and extra-curricular activities, such as her Jewish youth movement SKIF, with weekly meetings organising the protest.
“I helped with a range of things - the logistics and getting speakers, especially finding Indigenous speakers, which was very important to us. We weren’t allowed by the Victorian police to have a stage, so I built a stage the morning of the strike out of cartons and zip ties.
“We also got megaphones and reusable bottles for all our volunteer marshals - and then had to make sure we trained them to know how to protect people and also talk to police.”
Ella describes the experience of taking on these responsibilities as “somewhat terrifying:
I was in a state where everything felt so important. Just balancing everything was really hard, but it was so worth it and continues to be worth it.”
She credits her parents, family members and school for being supportive of her activism.
“At some point they said to me, ‘please don’t fall behind on school. You have to do that.’ But they still totally understood that this is what I wanted to do, and it was important.”
She also believes Albert Park High School was remarkably supportive of its students who chose to strike, noting the school captain was also a strike organiser. During her time as a student there, the school had been active in educating students about climate change.
Ella feels her passion for climate justice is linked to her Jewish identity. I was always taught about people like Indigenous political activist William Cooper, and stories about the people that saved my family during the war.
As a member of SKIF and Shira Hadasha synagogue, a graduate of a Jewish primary school, and a great-grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Ella feels her passion for climate justice and activism is linked to her Jewish identity.
“I was always taught about people like [Indigenous political activist] William Cooper… just stories about my family, the people that saved my family during the war. People who reached out, and always knowing that there were people who had no idea who my family was but they still cared.
“I don’t know the people that might be on the front lines of the climate crisis, but I still care, and I still want to help these people.”
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Ella Simons is not alone among her Jewish peers in her enthusiasm for climate justice. Prior to the national strike in 2019, her friends in the youth movements Hashomer Hatzsair (Hashi), Netzer and SKIF organised a poster painting session in Hashi’s Melbourne hall before attending the protest together.
She remembers this as a moment of pride that she felt for the Jewish community. “I felt so proud of my friends, and of my Jewish youth group. We were taught about caring for land and caring for social justice.
“To see people coming together, to be representing a community and a minority group, showing everyone that we’re a people that care, and a people that want action, is really amazing.”
The school climate strikes, inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg’s protests outside Sweden’s parliament in 2018, grew into a global movement in 2018 and 2019.
The onset of Covid-19 and the year of lockdowns may have dampened the momentum but it has not dissuaded organisers like Ella. “We saw the opportunity that everyone was at home, and everyone had lots of time. So, we set up student leadership programs. We ran three different series of online workshops, learning about climate change and climate science, but also learning about activism and how everyone can be an activist.
“School Strike 4 Climate social media has a lot of followers, so we used that. We sent out texts, we called people from strikes and events; we have hundreds of thousands of people signed up to newsletters. It was incredible to educate people for when we come back to having these protests in person.”
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Pending the state of pandemic restrictions, the next national school student strike is due to be held on May 21.
The next federal election, which could take place any time between August and May 2022, is also at the forefront of organisers’ minds.
"I want to see our politicians change,” Ella says. “I want to see the people in power change, and I want to see minorities and diverse people in these positions of power. School Strike is going to have a really hard and strong campaign on that.
“We need to pressure politicians to be setting 100 per cent renewable goals by 2030. Obviously, there are economic risks, but we can’t have jobs on a dead planet. If we can’t save the planet, why should we bother with anything else?”
Main Photo: Ella Simons at a student climate event
All photos courtesy Ella Simons
