Will We Actually Overcome?
Robin Ince at the Just Stop Oil March
Billy stands outside the Courts of Justice and sings “We Shall Overcome” and we all join in.
But as I chant along, a negative voice nags me, saying, “Will we? And, if so, how?”
It is something I often feel when I am at Billy Bragg’s Leftfield in Glastonbury.
Each year, you sit and hear powerful speeches by eloquent activists and rousing anthems by all manner of troubadours and you leave with filled hope and ready for action. Then, one year, as you leave, you hear a voice that says, “all of that talk of change and yet a month after leaving the field, another oppressive bully won a seat at the international table and another political party threw away its ambitions for true compassion and ethical policies”.
Another day, another eye of newt and wing of bat under the steamroller of financial progress.
Then, another voice chips in, “where would we be without those sing-a-longs of We Shall Overcome and This Land is Your Land?”
Cynicism is the safest space.
We may look at the failed demonstrations, the activism that didn’t halt the demolition ball and say “well, that was a waste of time”, but how much more rubble might there have been had no one stood up, had every resigned, the most active offering up a vague sigh.
If only we had a few more politicians with the energy I see at demonstrations, but so many will patronisingly explain that “the real world is a lot more complicated than you crazy dreamers imagine”, failing to realise that they have hands in shaping that real world.
What use is there in power if when you get it you hand in your ambitions in return for keeping power and keeping the powerful happy?
I have great admiration for the courage of the Just Stop Oil protesters who, for being caught planning peaceful protest, have been given sentences longer than those given to people who have violently attacked their partners. Violence towards a spouse is less likely to interfere with capitalism and so is of less importance.
I have spoken at a couple of Just Stop Oil protests and a fundraiser and so have had the opportunity to meet the friends and the family of those currently inside prison.
I am confounded to exist in a world where to knowingly trash the planet for profit, and often sow misinformation about science, is good business, and to be committed to peaceful protest to try and preserve the delicate equilibrium that makes our planet so vivacious is tantamount to being a terrorist.
There is a bleak humour in stopping traffic being a crime when so many town and country planners are doing it all the time via poorly thought out routes, lanes and repairs.
I love art and I love art galleries, but the reason I love them is because they offer further opportunities to experience beauty. That is why I understand that throwing tomato soup at a glass covered painting of sunflowers has some reason. If we can be outraged by soup being thrown at a masterpiece, then shouldn’t we be even more outraged by the incredibly complexity and colours of nature being crushed not out of necessity but because of profitability. The world has much technology that is far less damaging than what is used now, but the system to make sure it brings in profits and dividends has not been worked out, and so the companies move as slowly as they can to preserve the lifestyles of a few while destroying the lives of many.
I understand why it is easy to rile people by gluing yourself to the road, but when Richard Madeley yet again mounts a high horse and speaks for “the inconvenienced”, we see very little concern for the inconvenience of your house burning down, your workplace being destroyed in a hurricane, or your seaside bungalow becoming a submarine. Or the grumbling annoyance of food shortages and the mild inconvenience of child deaths.
Whenever I put anything up about climate change protests, I will usually get a smattering of people, some bots, some possibly flesh, saying, “actually, I think these protests are doing more harm for the cause than good”. Generally, I think the people saying that aren’t really particularly bothered, addicted instead to a pasty, grumbling inaction that is made of little more than whining. If you have the energy to whine about protesters, then have another spoon of sugar and trying and get the energy to whine about the industries that are hastening extinctions.
So often, we find that we are not angry about the those creating the problem, but angry with those who are highlighting it.
The job of so many with platforms of political and media power is to make a fairer society for all a ridiculous pipe dream, the notion of pampered fantasists. The press have an interesting obsession when it comes to the class of protestors. They aim to discredit protest by framing it as a hobby of rich brats called Jacinta who dare to break the rules of capitalism with their protests. It is their version of class war. It is a simple way of dismissing protest as a facile hobby and as if it is all the actions of a self loathing aristocracy.
This has not been true of those I have met, activism does not seem to be an old boy network with a special handshake, though a reasonably good power salute.
There are still more old Etonians and Harrovians in Westminster than there are in the average protest march.
As with so many arguments against a good life for all versus profit for the few, these arguments are offered in bad faith and, more often than not, a supercilious sneer.
Standing in the protest, I watched speaker after speaker eloquently express the issues we are facing, both environmentally and politically, as we have seen the right to protest chiselled away enthusiastically under both Conservative and Labour governments. When I go to speak myself, I feel nerves that I no longer feel at any other speaking events.
I watch Caroline Lucas speak and I wish for more politicians like her.
My only regret is drinking that extra glass of red wine the night before, I had forgotten just how many percussionists gather at rallies.
An iceberg crumbles
A species dies
A glacier retreats
The world fries
So humdrum
This destruction
The fires that rage
Don’t make the pages
Fails to stir a paid opinion
The artless typists
Waiting for something
to be truly pissed about
And the complexity of life
And their cosiness with capitalism
Just doesn’t drip ink
Doesn’t lubricate the pen
BUT SOUP!
SOUP !
SOUP!
OH!
The whoops of easy outrage
For soup on sunflowers
Broth on Van Gogh
Like Vichyssoise on Vermeer
Custard on a Klimt
lasagne on a Leonardo
Or Trifle on a Turner
Pot Noodle at a Pissaro
What next!!
Throwing faces at masterpieces !!
Black Forest Gateau on a Gauguin
Is worse than the deforestation of the Amazon
Celery Soup on a Sisley
worse than sewage in the Severn
Placing pate on a Picasso
Is worse than pesticidal genocide
The ability to regrow a rainforest
Or rebuild an atmosphere
May take more effort than
Wiping Vegemite off a Vermeer
Or waffles off a warhol
Better to butcher a planet
Than bouillabaisse a Basquiat
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