From the department of creative activism: You’ve heard of hunger strikes, but what about baby strikes? Hundreds of Finnish women have signed a petition declaring that they will not bear children for the next four years unless the country’s Parliament scraps plans to build a fifth nuclear reactor in their homeland. The protest has a precedent: In 1986, following the Chernobyl disaster, some 4,000 Finns signed a similar petition to block construction of a nuclear power plant. The government eventually caved and agreed not to build that reactor, but it now claims a new one is necessary to meet the country’s growing energy demands without increasing greenhouse emissions. Elina Venesmaki, one of the organizers of the current petition, said, “This form of protest is logical because this issue doesn’t concern just our generation.”
