The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes
In 1992, at the age of 12, Severn Suzuki raised money with members of ECO, to attend the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Along with fellow ECO group members Michelle Quigg, Vanessa Suttie, and Morgan Geisler, Suzuki presented environmental issues from a youth perspective at the summit, where she delivered an impassioned and articulate speech to delegates. The video of the speech has 1,924,973 views on YouTube and is popularly known as "The Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes".
I'd never seen the video before - clearly coming to it rather late. It was sent to me by someone who put 'Good Teens' Speech' in the subject header. Perhaps she thought that the Teens' Speech film would be shot along similar lines. It's not, you know. It's something else entirely - it's a visual poem, documentary in style, but artistic at its heart. It's also quite serious, but maybe it's time we took young people seriously.
Anyway, on Christmas Day, head over to MySpace at 3.10pm, toggle fullscreen, settle back and enjoy a little bit of history.
