Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 August 2007 20:43:58
It's rare that I do two blog posts on one day, but some of the stuff that's going on at climate camp just has to be commented on. The police are wanting to go on site (bad), the camp are coperating with police (good), one of the police punched someone (bad) and the police laison has glued herself to the gate (hilarious).
One of the fantastic things about living with people at the camp is the I hear about what's going on at the same time as the dispatch team. Which means that somewhere down south there is probably a group of very confused people wondering exaclty WHY someone has glued themselves to the gate that the police were leaving by. I know it caused much laughter at our dinner table (ok, so I found it very funny).
There is a serious side to it all though. The person is known to me, and seems to put a lot of empahsis on arrest, and robust argument and debate with the public and the police. I've been arrested with her once before - she went up to the police whilst we were being arrested, and said that she was the organiser and she should be arrested to. So she was. (Why she is part of the liason team is beyond me).
Lots of people criticise non violent direct action for meaningless pubicity stunts, and to me, gluing ones self to the gate of a camp (which is on PRIVATE land) is a prime example of one such stunt. An analogy would be someone chaining themselves to the protest pen at a demonstration - it's a symbolic act that means nothing. It's not even as if the police will be stopped coming in - they were leaving through the gate at the time, and there are other entrances to the site.
At the same time, 12 older people from the village have been stopped from entering the site to show their support. I wonder which story the mainstream media will pick up on tommorow...