Miriam Itzkowitz – Year 11

Two seemingly different topics, Climate Change and Autism, combined after Greta Thünberg, a sixteen-year-old Swedish activist with Asperger Syndrome decided to change the world.

Greta was disturbed by the hypocrisy of society and the government, who promoted climate action, yet did nothing about it. She fell into depression and stopped eating and talking. Within two months, she lost ten kilos. In that time she was diagnosed with Asperger’s, OCD and selective mutism. Eventually, she overcame these issues and convinced her family to become vegan. Additionally, she began protesting outside the Swedish government building, skipping school every day. After the Swedish elections, she continued to protest, only skipping school on Fridays.

Her efforts sparked climate action and protests around the world by many school students, I being one of them. Three weeks ago, I attended the climate strike here, in Sydney. It was a huge success, however, one particular student made a comment which almost entirely defeated the purpose of going to the climate strike. In response to something said over the loudspeaker, he said “yeah, it’s because all our teachers are f-ing autistic”. Ironic, isn’t it? He views autism as such a bad thing, implying that it is the epitome of everything bad, implicating laziness and negativity from those on the spectrum, yet he was there because of an autistic person. I was quite indignant, to say the very least.

Tuesday was Autism Awareness Day, where I addressed the Assembly about this specifically. Additionally, this week is Autism Awareness Week and all of April is Autism Awareness Month, so a lot of awareness about autism should be spread in the coming weeks, to prevent situations such as this one from ever occurring again. It is upsetting to those on the spectrum and we need people to speak up to create an inclusive, safe environment for the more vulnerable in our society.

I urge you all to spread awareness about autism and support those on the spectrum. There are two excellent organisations which are extremely beneficial to those on the spectrum and their families: Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect) and Giant Steps. Here are their website links where you can find more information:

Autism Spectrum Australia: www.autismspectrum.org.au/

Giant Steps: https://giantsteps.net.au/