This is an adapdation of a post I made on my social media site Final Dot Town. It was quite popular and is over a thousands words, so I thought it might be a good idea to save it over here for reference too, with added links for people to be able to follow up on the ideas here.
Right I'm home now so I have a bit of time to post about the thing I did this evening. Just Stop Oil do fairly regular meetups so they can talk to people who are interested in the cause and try and get new volunteers on board. They do a lot of these through zoom but they also do them in person regularly too.
I've been on their contact list for a while so someone called me to ask if I'd be interested earlier this week, and I was available tonight so I said I was. Then they painted stonehenge and a bunch of private jets and I spent a bunch of time arguing about it online, so I absolutely had to go. It was in a cool little cafe in Derby.
Overall I'd just like to say that the meeting was a really positive experience. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming, it was a small group of less than a dozen, several of us being people who had never had been to any of their events before or been involved in their work.
They opened with a quick summary of some of the actions JSO have been involved in recently, primarily the Stone Henge and Stanstead Airport actions, which obviously have lots of new coverage. They were pretty optimistic about how they're going, despite the obvious strong response to the Stone Henge action, and noted that the action against private jets had generally been much better received (the expectation on their end is that eventually opinion will shift on the value of the stone henge action).
They were also pleased to confirm that they've effectively achieved one of their primary objectives: as Labour are expected to take power this year, one of their policies is a ban on all new Oil and Gas licensing, which is a critical part of what JSO have been targeting the entire time they've been active. They consider that their multiple years of actions with this as a key demand has helped put this on the agenda, as every mainstream party besides the Tories (and also Reform, mentioned jokingly as an afterthought) has this as one of their election policies. Whether or not this will keep, given Starmer's flaky history, we shall have to see.
They're hoping to be able to expand to more things following this, plans for which are still in development, but broadly they are linking with similar movements across europe, in an attempt to keep pushing climate policy to the forefront of the agenda, to pressure governments to actually agree to do more. If you liked them painting private jets don't worry cus there's probably lots more of that coming.
There were some little talks given by some of the more experienced members of the group, about what motivates them, why they chose to take action with JSO, about what they've been through as part of it, what they want to keep doing. We also found out about the various things we could do if we wanted to help out (it's not just going and throwing paint on stuff, there's a whole load of people required to make that more than a one-off). They mentioned, and laughed about, their experiences of getting arrested, trials, prison. Not good experiences, but they made it quite clear that their passion for the cause and belief in actually taking this sort of actions was worth the risk and eventual consequences. Being mostly in the same boat and in friendly company helped make this something they could joke about.
We had a chat about our own views on JSO, some discussion on optics and tactics (they quite intimately understand that they're perceived as annoying by a lot of people, but believe that overall it remains effective, and even pointed out how mild their actions are compared to those of many other historic protest movements), and how we may be interested in taking part.
Then we all went to the pub for a post-meeting drink and shared some more stories and just generally had a good time together.
Everyone I met felt kind, welcoming, and passionate. Above all I think this passion and emotion is one thing worth taking away, more than one of the speakers having to take a moment in their talk to gather themselves. These are people that care deeply about the cause, people who have honestly looked at the future facing us and identified that without action as soon as possible we are absolutely fucked. Some of them were parents. Even grandparents, thinking about the world their children and childrens' children are going to have to live in. About how many tipping points we are rapidly racing toward. About how maybe by the time their kids are grown up there won't be any food on the table because of years of crop failures. About how many hundreds people died just this week in Mecca as temperatures hit 52C. They are scared and looking on in horror at the future and choosing to do something about it, and honestly don't understand why more people aren't doing so as well.
I get that they're not the most popular because they're annoying, or they do attention grabbing stunts, or people want them to be more extreme or to maybe do nothing at all and just be nice. It's easy to be a critic. They know how they're perceived. But they don't see that as an obstacle. And I don't really see it as one either . I think like a lot of similar movements they'll get re-appraised in future, and a bunch of people will simply retcon their opinions to have always been fine with this, because the fucking planet is on fire and obviously someone should be doing something. I've seen people quietly do this very same mental 180 about plenty of things - why not this?
They're just normal people who are trying to make a difference. And while due to my own personal precarity I'm not in a position to do anything that could get me arrested or imprisoned (better luck next time Mr Policeman), I'd like to try and help them with that.
DATE OF POSTING: 23/06/2024