Climate Camp 2008 - What's hot and what's not
whats hot and what's not | 11.08.2008 12:07 | Climate Camp 2008 | Climate Chaos | Free Spaces | London
Wholly subjective, light hearted and fun, so lets not get into any knicker-twisting over this. It was scribbled on the back of some cardboard with a few folks on the train on the way home.
HOT
Scandanavian activists
Sun glasses and flat caps
Discussing the relevance of the PGA hallmarks
Forcing a Minister (Wicks) to account for his actions over the course of a week and slowly revealing his scientific illiteracy
Just transition and the efforts of Workers Climate Action
Countless unsung heroes across the camp
Thriving process of horizontal democracy in action.. neighbourhood meetings, spokes councils, plenaries… we are so getting the hang of this.
Keeping the cops off site.. no mean feat to secure such a big Temporary Autonomous Zone for the best part of a week
Large numbers of people turning up faithfully for al of the 3am and 5am alarms
K5 Gate – Hot! Hot! Hot!
Pirate chic
Caroline Lucas’ PA Cath – wonderfully helpful and supportive, and Caroline too of course
MP Norman Baker seeing riot cops in action at close range
The four people who went over the electric fence into the swarm of dogs and riot cops, so that we could say we did it. We salute you.
The phrase “E.ON, F.OFF”
Ridiculously overworked legal observers – who could have foreseen how much observing there needed to be
Bail breaking
The woman running the bakery
Matthew Herbert coming and playing at the Saturday night party
Kid-run workshops for kids on things like consensus
Parris fencing
Twitter
People knowing their rights on the stop and search
Convincing disguises
Wonderfully clean and functional compost toilets again
Inter-generationalism and the general lack of clique-iness on camp.
NOT HOT
People hogging straw-bales at the cost of minging pissoirs. Fine if they went to blockade the gates… not very cool otherwise
K2 gate – did anything happen there?
Crapping on straw bales
Political policing
Riot cops using Ride of the Valkyries as the soundtrack to their presence. We were more bemused by their tackiness and paucity of their imagination than intimidated
Low flying helicopters over workshops
Actually adopting the PGA hallmarks
Emily Highmore, E.ON’s PR ‘guru’ – can’t be a fun job to have right now
People who harassed the bakery woman to bake more cakes or takes their kids cakes out of the oven, ‘right now’
UK activists relying on informal friend networks to provide a structure for mass action rather than having a larger plan that people arriving on Friday night could happily join in on straight away. Lets learn lessons from the five fingers in Germany.
Moonboots bigging up nukes. Not very good timing.
Helicopter announcement about unleashing dogs and batons on the family-friendly Orange groups. Another example of the cops facilitating lawful protest.
Pink slips and everything related to Section 1, Section 60 and another significant shift towards a police state.
Old school cynicism and bitter old slags
‘Weapon caches’ ‘found’ in the woods. We are supposed to believe that we were going to throw ninja stars at the people protecting Kingsnorth?
Alarmist twitter messaging
The Independent’s coverage of the day of mass action – 1 small para on page 30 or something.
Scandanavian activists
Sun glasses and flat caps
Discussing the relevance of the PGA hallmarks
Forcing a Minister (Wicks) to account for his actions over the course of a week and slowly revealing his scientific illiteracy
Just transition and the efforts of Workers Climate Action
Countless unsung heroes across the camp
Thriving process of horizontal democracy in action.. neighbourhood meetings, spokes councils, plenaries… we are so getting the hang of this.
Keeping the cops off site.. no mean feat to secure such a big Temporary Autonomous Zone for the best part of a week
Large numbers of people turning up faithfully for al of the 3am and 5am alarms
K5 Gate – Hot! Hot! Hot!
Pirate chic
Caroline Lucas’ PA Cath – wonderfully helpful and supportive, and Caroline too of course
MP Norman Baker seeing riot cops in action at close range
The four people who went over the electric fence into the swarm of dogs and riot cops, so that we could say we did it. We salute you.
The phrase “E.ON, F.OFF”
Ridiculously overworked legal observers – who could have foreseen how much observing there needed to be
Bail breaking
The woman running the bakery
Matthew Herbert coming and playing at the Saturday night party
Kid-run workshops for kids on things like consensus
Parris fencing
People knowing their rights on the stop and search
Convincing disguises
Wonderfully clean and functional compost toilets again
Inter-generationalism and the general lack of clique-iness on camp.
NOT HOT
People hogging straw-bales at the cost of minging pissoirs. Fine if they went to blockade the gates… not very cool otherwise
K2 gate – did anything happen there?
Crapping on straw bales
Political policing
Riot cops using Ride of the Valkyries as the soundtrack to their presence. We were more bemused by their tackiness and paucity of their imagination than intimidated
Low flying helicopters over workshops
Actually adopting the PGA hallmarks
Emily Highmore, E.ON’s PR ‘guru’ – can’t be a fun job to have right now
People who harassed the bakery woman to bake more cakes or takes their kids cakes out of the oven, ‘right now’
UK activists relying on informal friend networks to provide a structure for mass action rather than having a larger plan that people arriving on Friday night could happily join in on straight away. Lets learn lessons from the five fingers in Germany.
Moonboots bigging up nukes. Not very good timing.
Helicopter announcement about unleashing dogs and batons on the family-friendly Orange groups. Another example of the cops facilitating lawful protest.
Pink slips and everything related to Section 1, Section 60 and another significant shift towards a police state.
Old school cynicism and bitter old slags
‘Weapon caches’ ‘found’ in the woods. We are supposed to believe that we were going to throw ninja stars at the people protecting Kingsnorth?
Alarmist twitter messaging
The Independent’s coverage of the day of mass action – 1 small para on page 30 or something.
whats hot and what's not
Additions
What the hell - I'll rise to the bait
11.08.2008 20:42
What's hot:
All the site cooks especially the London crew who remained constantly cheerful and friendly while serving up delish nosh for 400+ hungry and demanding campers 3 times every day.
Bristol Wireless who provided and set up internet access in a field with dozens of laptops, network cabling, power and a satellite link and who were constantly there maintaining the network and helping users.
Anyone at all who did toilet maintenance.
Thousands of peeps who weren't intimidated by reports of scary policing and travelled to the camp undeterred.
The locals who put themselves through completely alien and humiliating searches in order to visit and tour the camp to guage for themselves what it was really like.
The local woman who approached us in Wainscott and thanked us from the bottom of her heart for what we were doing.
The 200 workshops.
What's not hot:
The "mixed" weather. Every CC has been cold, windy and wet much of the time... and in August! Surely we can do some magic on this?
The paranoid moron who wrecked a post big-action film screening by rushing in and shouting"Everybody out of the tent, the cops are attacking the site!" just because 2 cop vans drove down the lane for a shift change.
Anyone who burst straw bales so there was no seating in the marquees.
Dropping your bog wiping down a compost toilet and having it blow upwards into your face cos of wind updraft.
The individuals who crapped straight on the ground around the site especially the one who laid a steaming greenbottle covered turd within 3 metres of London kitchen.
The tea junkies who expected boiling water to be on hand all through the day for them.
The purple search gloves that made one feel like a deadly disease carrier.
The W Yorkshire cop who even made me take off my open sandals and examined them minutely for secret weapon compartments.
All the site cooks especially the London crew who remained constantly cheerful and friendly while serving up delish nosh for 400+ hungry and demanding campers 3 times every day.
Bristol Wireless who provided and set up internet access in a field with dozens of laptops, network cabling, power and a satellite link and who were constantly there maintaining the network and helping users.
Anyone at all who did toilet maintenance.
Thousands of peeps who weren't intimidated by reports of scary policing and travelled to the camp undeterred.
The locals who put themselves through completely alien and humiliating searches in order to visit and tour the camp to guage for themselves what it was really like.
The local woman who approached us in Wainscott and thanked us from the bottom of her heart for what we were doing.
The 200 workshops.
What's not hot:
The "mixed" weather. Every CC has been cold, windy and wet much of the time... and in August! Surely we can do some magic on this?
The paranoid moron who wrecked a post big-action film screening by rushing in and shouting"Everybody out of the tent, the cops are attacking the site!" just because 2 cop vans drove down the lane for a shift change.
Anyone who burst straw bales so there was no seating in the marquees.
Dropping your bog wiping down a compost toilet and having it blow upwards into your face cos of wind updraft.
The individuals who crapped straight on the ground around the site especially the one who laid a steaming greenbottle covered turd within 3 metres of London kitchen.
The tea junkies who expected boiling water to be on hand all through the day for them.
The purple search gloves that made one feel like a deadly disease carrier.
The W Yorkshire cop who even made me take off my open sandals and examined them minutely for secret weapon compartments.
kriptick
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