Most of my news from this year’s Camp for Climate Action arrived by twitter:
“climatecamp: Balcony of Shell building occupied, big ‘Shell’ sign now reads ‘hell’…”
“climatecamp: Tarsands activists are now giving speeches at bp headqrtrs having stopped by at national portrait gallery in Trafalgar square”
“climatecamp: Bp is one of the biggest players in the extracion of oil from Alberta tarsands. It is utter madness to destroy this vast part of Canada”
By various (non-twitter) accounts, the four folks from Indigenous Environment Network from Alberta stole the show at the Camp, running workshops and performing hiphop on how tar sands are destroying their communities. On Tuesday a roving demo of over 300 protestors visited various tar sands locations in London, including BP, the National Portrait Gallery and Shell.
An affinity group had earlier scaled the side of the Shell building and occupied a balcony – removing the large metal “S”, leaving the sign reading “hell”. The missing “S” was revealed to loud cheers at an action round-up in the camp days later – here’s hoping somebody smuggles it to the Solidarity Camp at Rossport.
This summer’s camp focused on building skills within the climate justice movement while affinity groups and a roving random rabble targeted London companies to challenge the connections between free market economics and climate change.
The camp was located at Blackheath Common, where 60,000 peasants gathered during the 1381 Peasants Revolt before attacking political targets across the City and almost bringing down the king.
The folk from IEN came to London on a tour organised by New Internationalist.