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.
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
hmm,
11.08.2008 13:30
Why not, too radical for you?
> Lets learn lessons from the five fingers in Germany.
Lesson 1: They didn't work.
ACAB
exactly!
12.08.2008 14:37
> Why not, too radical for you?
Exactly this sort of macho-posturing as radicalism that puts people off from adopting them.
I am fully down with PGA hallmarks, but I think it makes more sense for the Climate Camp to ccome up with a set of principles that embraces direct action, commitment to horizontality, worker-lead transition, movement building and opposition to the market as a solution to climate change.. and makes them more relevant to the struggle for climate justice rather than just taking on board a set of principles that don't necessarily have the same mass appeal or mass relevance to people now as they did 10 years ago. Its not like the PGA hallmarks were carved in stone and destined to be handed down in perpetuity to every single radical process forever.
another camper
more macho posturing
15.08.2008 11:25
Care to explain what you think is 'macho' about that comment?
(I'm female btw, thanks for assuming otherwise).
> it makes more sense for the Climate Camp to come up with a set
> of principles that embraces direct action, commitment to
> horizontality, worker-lead transition, movement building and
> opposition to the market as a solution to climate change..
So, basically the PGA hallmarks then. A reminder:
"A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social movements' struggles, advocating forms of resistance which maximize respect for life and oppressed peoples' rights, as well as the construction of local alternatives to global capitalism."
"An organisational philosophy based on decentralisation and autonomy."
"A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism; all trade agreements, institutions and governments that promote destructive globalisation."
"We reject all forms and systems of domination and discrimination including, but not limited to, patriarchy, racism and religious fundamentalism of all creeds.
We embrace the full dignity of all human beings."
"A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic organisations, in which transnational capital is the only real policy-maker."
> and makes them more relevant to the struggle for climate justice
Oh dear, 'climate justice', is there any more meaningless term?
Will you build 'climate prisons' for your 'climate criminals'?
ACAB