I read a story this week about a young man being arrested for defacing a famous painting in Canada’s National Gallery. He was protesting Climate Change and picked a painting by the famous Canadian painter Tom Thompson as the image shows here.

I find it troubling to see a public protest - even an individual one- resorting to violence. When the man did this, he knew that there was protective glass covering the painting and assumed he would still be arrested, but not guilty of actually damaging it. But would any other youthful protester know the whole story and simply imitate the practice with lasting consequence. My guess is that this will not please the visual artists who spread the message of climate through displaying depicting of the tragedies of our human impact on the natural world.

I’m more impressed by those who use non-violent methods - though some of them risk arrest as well. A young woman working as a barmaid in New York travelled to Standing Rock to support the Lakota people in their opposite to the Keystone Pipeline. The experience prompted her to run for the US Congress and Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez won the election to become the youngest person ever to be seated there. From there she went on to sponsor the Green New Deal in 2019, her first year of office. It took a while to for that bill to succeed but finally much of the best of it was incorporated in more recent legislation and passed.

The young man wanted to attract attention to something worthwhile - but how it is done also counts. I hope he learns to have bigger dreams of how he will change the world.