is this what democracy looks like?

(ARTICLE – Just Stop Oil is taking action until the Government vows to not grant new oil and gas licenses)

It’s easy for the mainstream media to demonise us. It’s easy for the courts to lock us up. It’s easy for right-wing, fascist politicians to discredit us.

What’s difficult is to take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror and say “I need to do something about this”.

I cry when I watch videos of scientists and ordinary people, around the world, taking to the streets in courageous acts of civil disobedience. I cried when I realised how disproportionate the police’s and government’s response has been to our peaceful, non-violent protesting about a very real and imminent crisis.

I was kept in custody and held in a cell for just under 48h and taken to court for ringing the alarm bell about the state of emergency we find ourselves in – and I am only a statistic: this happens every day to those like me who take a stand. I was treated like a criminal, a threat; in fact the police was referring to us as ‘prisoners’. Is this what democracy looks like? The UK has a rich history of direct actions taken by brave rebels, and this has been stifled, squashed, repressed over the last 4 decades of neoliberal politics.

I still don’t think that we have done anything wrong. This is necessary. The disruption of blocking a road for an hour is ephemeral – the chaos that’s awaiting us if we do not start transitioning to renewable energies will be very much permanent, and much more uncomfortable. Imagine a repeat of the whole fighting-over-toilet-paper-during-Covid, but on steroids, except that it won’t be loo rolls that we will be wrestling out of each other’s hands: it will be bread, medication, water. So really, what makes you more uneasy: an activist throwing soup on a painting that was behind glass, or admitting that we are in a state of emergency and that inaction equals complicity?

I told my mum about my arrests. She suspected it, and she had been worried, but she was understanding. Despite sporadically bursting into tears (and that may be due to not having slept or eaten properly in a couple days), I feel this profound sense of calm. We are on the right side of history. And as I said to my mum, if we had been in 1940, I would have wanted to be part of the Résistance – not the Collaborateurs.