People Power

I once again dodged the completely unrestricted, fast electric scooters on the pavement to get to the space-age metro station and off to the Expo for Day 2 at the COP.

We split forces today with some attending the daily TUNGO meeting and others taking part in a Just Transition protest. The British Labour MPs for Putney and Newcastle wandered past while we were setting up and wished us good luck. As with all COP protests, we had very powerful and extremely loud speeches so a huge crown gathered as we, alongside Friends of the Earth, human rights groups and women’s groups, demanded a Just Transition with human rights and labour rights at its core “in the decisions” (ie in the text of the COP final agreements).

I then headed once more into the Green Zone (which is miles long and only the super-rich can afford the buggies) for a continuation of the Greening Education Partnership process. Over the course of 2 x two-hour long workshop-type meetings, several things became clear- despite the fact that Education International (the global federation representing most education unions in the world)- was involved originally in the creation of the partnership:

lots of non-teachers are making decisions about what teachers should do
there will be monitoring of how well it is done
monitoring is proposed to be based around key vocabulary and knowledge-based learning rather than skills and hands-on experiences
there is very little knowledge or mention, if any, of primary teaching, early years or children with SEND
there is a preference among these non-teachers for “climate change” knowledge rather than exploration of sustainability and nature
many people present were doing effectively sales pitches for their organisation to be involved and these often claimed to represent teachers

Once I had, several times, stuck my hand up and let the room know that I represented millions of teachers globally and that their voices needed to be heard even though they’re not at COP (because they’re teaching while we’re talking), other actual teachers in the room appeared to be empowered to speak up and many joined in with expressing their desires to immerse young children in nature, take account of emotional responses and collaborate with each other rather than have top-down edicts. A colleague from Kenya shared his experience of overwork and low pay and also shared my favourtie quote of the day: “I don’t teach subjects; I teach students”

I was delighted to share an Emirati coffee afterwards with a teacher from Dublin who used to teach in a Brent primary school (my patch!!- small world…).

Back to the blue zone for a meeting with Juman of the International Transport Workers’ Federation, (another Brent person!). We caught up on the latest regarding lobbying UK politicians and how to follow this up post-COP. The ITF provided all the placards and banners for today’s protests so we then carried all these from the TUNGO office to the starting point of the BIG COP ACTION and March by all the civil society organisations, including unions.

The march was for climate justice and against the powerful ministers in the COP talks, many of whom ignore our demands. But the march was also a solidarity action for Palestine since there can be no solution to climate justice when land is occupied and war continues. There were some restrictions around the Palestine messaging so banners were creative as were chants, in an array of languages! We heard heartbreaking stories from delegates with family stuck in Khan Younis with no food and no hope of getting out safely.

There was a minute’s silence and many powerful speeches with one of the best being from our own union rep from the Philippines, Benjamin: “we are the workers, we are the majority, we are everywhere…in the factory in the field…”. He has been sharing all week stories of the precarious work situation for many workers from his country including those that have been forced to migrate, many to Dubai. On the right of the picture is our rep Joy, who has coordinated our participation in the various protests and she is phenomenal too! So many role models in the Global South…