Climate Camp welcome, say Heathrow villages
Climate Camp tonight set out their stall at the Sipson Community Centre, only
yards from the noise and the hell that is Heathrow. It was standing room only
in a packed hall as activists, local organisers and their MP combined to receive
a unanimous welcome. They spoke with a common thread. Climate Camp was not about bringing violence nor aggression, Climate Camp was a community for whom the penny had dropped – they realised that the future of mankind depended on the decisions
made by this generation.
You couldn’t rely on government – nor the corporations they supported (loud cheers)
and who profited from these activities. Climate Camp, said Leo Murray, had four
objectives:
1) To confront the corporate profiteers
2) To compel the government to cancel the third runway and reduce capacity
3) To raise awareness that flying is the single most destructive thing you can
do, and
4) To demonstrate that less is more, and that solutions lie in our own communities
rather than in far off places in the world.
Unlikely whoops of joy greeted Penny, introduced as an activist who’d only recently
superglued herself to the doors of lastminute.com
“I’ve lived here twenty years, and at fifty years of age I’ve got to say I’d
given up. I’ve said to my wife, what will happen will happen. But tonight you
lot have changed my bloody mind!” said one resident.
Even the local MP, John McDonnell had a thing to say.
“As the local MP”, he said, “I’m formally welcoming Climate Camp to my constituency.
“To be frank, they’re going to put our campaign on the map in a way that some
of us have tried – but not been able to.”
(Indymedia. 20.7.2007)