8 minute read
Tea with a rebel
By Anugraha Sundaravelu
Would you drop out of university to fight for the environment? Talia Woodin did. A youth climate activist and photographer, she speaks to Anugraha Sundaravelu on what drives her and the toll that activism takes on her mental health.
Advertisement
soul I take the train to Brockley on an overcast Thursday afternoon to meet with Talia Woodin. Never having met an environmental activist before, I feel a tad self-conscious in my £10 Primark puffer jacket as I ring the doorbell of a house with an “I’m Voting Labour” sticker on the window...
Talia answers the door, looking like an average 20-year-old in her olive green jumpsuit and shimmery eyeshadow. Eight months ago, she was studying Anthropology at Goldsmiths. Today she is the youth representative for Extinction Rebellion (XR) UK media.
Over a cup of tea (with oat milk, of course), she tells me that she can’t see herself going back. “It would feel like a step backwards because I’m already doing what I want to be doing.”
Photography: Joe Twigg, Talia Woodin
According to a national YouGov poll, 70% of young people aged 18-24 are more worried about climate change than they were a year ago. Having met her fair share of these young people, Talia tells me, “There is a lot of fear [among young people], but that has been a driving force for many of them. It can be quite debilitating, but especially within XR Youth, there are remarkable communities and networks being built on a local and international scale.”
Referring to the youth movement, she says that it’s mostly kids united by a real fear for their futures. “The feeling of being let down and abandoned by older generations has gotten to the point where the youth are turning to activism to try and engage governments,” she says.
“There have been so many movements throughout history whose driving force has been students but having a mass movement this strong that is solely led by kids? It’s crazy!” she says.
Talia adds that it’s no wonder that so many young people feel lost with what they want to do with their lives because they’re given no alternatives. “I’ve been really lucky that it made sense for me, but I have so many friends that go to university because they think it’s what’s expected of them and all it does is gets them into debt.”
It was her disillusionmentwith formal education that made her feel being on the ground made sense. “I think mainstream education systems, especially in the west, hugely fail us by brainwashing young people to fit into this system of needing to learn in order to get qualifications, to make money, to be successful. There are these constant hoops that we have to jump through and at the end of the day, there’s just huge rates of unemployment. It’s ridiculous,” she says.
Talia speaks with a conviction that’s rare in someone so young. Maybe it has to do with the fact that both her parents were actively involved in Green Party politics. You could say that activism was in her blood.
Growing up in a middle class neighbourhood in Oxford, she describes her childhood as “unusual” and “interesting”. Surrounded by wealthy, stereotypical families, her family already stuck out by being a single mother household after her father died really young.
“I was always seen as the ‘hippie’ kid, but I guess I’ve come full circle,” she says laughing. Their family never owned a car or TV; they didn’t go abroad that much, and they never bought flashy computers or iPads.
Her mother appears to be the driving influence in her life but like with most mothers and daughters, they didn’t completely see eye to eye. “A lot of it for her became: ‘The world is evil, and we’re just trying our best.’ I do remember a lot of the time when I was young, not understanding that what we were doing was good because there was no community around it.”
Having a mother who was a passionate, vocal figure in the community did bring with it the tension of feeling different, and she admits to feeling a lot of resentment. Knowing that it was the right thing didn’t make it any easier.
“It’s difficult when you’re 13, and all your friends are shopping at Primark, but you’ve been taught all your life that it was wrong. We only bought from charity shops or got hand-medowns and we’d never shop fast fashion,” she says.
In fact, her first real rebellion was eating McDonald’s and shopping at Primark. “Which is what normal teenagers do, but for me, it was a big deal because that’s not how we lived. But I always say to my mum that I’m doing everything that she did but better,” she says with a smug grin.
So is it all about getting more people to go vegan and recycle? She pauses and says, “I’m always hesitant to talk about lifestyle changes because there’s not much point if you’re not going to be actively engaged in the movement. We know that lifestyle choices aren’t going to get us anywhere. I think it’s a good start but for too many people, saying ‘Oh, I don’t eat meat, so I do my bit.’ feels enough. If we’re not all engaging to the greatest extent, then we are still complicit,” she says.
Lately, sustainable alternatives have become more fad than solutions and Talia says that the problem is the consumption, not the product.
“For example, palm oil in itself is one of the most sustainable plant-based oils that you can get a lot from a relatively small amount of crop yield. It’s the fact that we have it in so many products and consume so much that we have to produce so much, that’s causing so much deforestation,” she says.
Talia’s mantra is ‘Recognise, Research, Rebel’. “I think you’ve got to start with recognising the reality of the situation that this crisis is so much greater than an individual or even collective action. It’s something that’s been going back to the very root of how dominant societies have exploited and oppressed other societies, populations and the natural world,” she says. “Unless we acknowledge that it is still controlled by those at the top that have the power, we’re not going to get anywhere because the people at the top shape our consumption.”
She says that her biggest revelation was understanding the bigger, underlying picture. So what should people do? “Allow yourself to think about it and prioritise the understanding of it. Research is the most important thing because if you just believe everything you see in media that says ‘it’s sustainable’, that’s not getting you anywhere because it’s all just greenwashing. You have to put in the time to research what you’re spending your money on.”
In spite of being so self-assured in her ideals, the mental toll that activism takes on her is visible. “Burnout is real. After the first set of protests in October, I spent about two weeks in bed. I just had the life drained out of me. You just constantly feel like it’s you against the world, and it is. There’s always more you can be doing, and it’s so hard to stop and take a break.”
Again, this is something she’s dealt with from a young age. “I remember being as young as six or sevenand getting depressed about the fact that the society I was living in was causing so much shit for so many people. I remember thinking ‘I don’t want to hurt people and animals by buying clothes or eating certain foods or travelling a certain way.’ It seemed ridiculous to me, and the fact that it was just the way our world worked was something I could never wrap my head around.”
It’s our generation’s existential crisis, and there’s a name for it—eco-anxiety. So how does one deal with it? “You’ve got to find a middle ground. My mum stopped reading the news a long time ago and began working in her community, but it’s still making a difference. If more people disengaged from the news and did small things within their community to make it a more supportive and healthier place, it would make a difference.” she says.
She says that’s what XR has given her—a sense of community, where people care about the same thing and want to do something about it.
It’s safe to say that the ones who really test her patience are the adults. “I have to be so patient because I’ve known this since I was like six-years-old so when I talk to adults I just want to say ‘Come on, get a grip’!”
But being a spokesperson for XR has made her more confident. Enough to turn around to someone older and say, “You won’t be here, so I don’t care what you think.”
Having grandparents with dismissive views herself she says, “If they don’t feel disappointed in themselves at the state of the world they’ve left their children and grandchildren in, then they don’t get a say. There are young people who are giving up so much because they have no choice now and no one can say they didn’t know about it because people have been shouting about climate change for decades. They won’t be here in 20 or 30 years. We’ll be the ones here and having to deal with it.”
“What’s the worst that can happen? We all drown? We all burn? Well, that’s already happening. We’ve got nothing else to lose,” she says defiantly.
She says that’s the reason she could never just get a job and go on holiday with the money that she’s earned. She tells me “Nothing will ever be as important as this,” and I believe her.
Sign up to Kingston’s XR group at kuxrsociety@gmail.com
