[Cc-webedit] [mediateam] From Copenhagen for CC Blog?

[Richard Braude]

I think this should def go up.

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 12:12 AM, Mel Vegan <melvegan at googlemail.com> wrote:
> hey,
>
> Tell me if this is just too personal or story like for the climate camp
> blog, but I thought it was time for a blog update and would be good to have
> one from over here?  if you do want to put it up does it count as incitement
> in which case don't name it?
>
> ---
> Each border I successfully cross, the right to move freely feels more and
> more fragile.  This feeling, familiar to many crossing lands around the
> globe, is new to me.  It heightens at the sight of the policeman's gun, at
> the thought of my vacant passport gaze scanned and delivered to desks across
> Europe via Interpol or whatever else they choose to do with my 2D face and
> the map of my movements.
>
> Did the guy at the coach check in desk have a cheeky glint in his eye when
> he asked 'What's happening in Copenhagen then, so many people going?'  Was I
> equally mischievous when I replied 'These big climate talks and massive
> climate justice protests.'  People are making such journeys to here.  To
> meet, to connect, to create, to fight for justice.  Swarming from such
> varied starting points, thousands and thousands of different routes finally
> joining together.
>
> To Copenhagen, December 2009.  Why?  Bureaucrats have said 'Impossible'.
> Corporations, from their watchtowers, have said 'Only if we get paid'.
> Presidents and prime ministers have ummed, erred, blushed and wanted to
> resort to 'There's a recession!' without calling it that.  Friends have
> naively queried 'How do you know the outcome before it's happened?', media
> commentators have leapt on controversy, big NGOs have asked for more of the
> same and navy blue base layers are the new anarchist black.  To anyone new
> to climate politics it must seem like the entrance to Debenhams at the start
> of the January sale: too loud and too many elbows.
>
> The favourite description of the historical moment seems to be 'Last
> chance'.  But to me, riding from one consensus meeting to the next, meeting
> people from places I've never been, connecting, organising, discussing,
> dreaming, plotting and planning...this mobilisation feels like the beginning
> of something that from here will only grow.  Like a bright dawn with
> corporate lobbyists shut out and stuck under expensive umbrellas.  Like
> morning grey on sullen besuited bureaucrats, forced to remain in their hotel
> lobbies making calls, disparate and un-smugged. Like a 6am rise, giddy and
> determined, before a day to take over streets, tear down fences, block
> bridges and Reclaim Power
> (http://www.climate-justice-action.org/mobilization/reclaim-power-pushing-for-climate-justice/).
>
> I cross all the borders no problems, no questions; a few groups on the bus
> get asked about their accommodation and plans, and produce printed documents
> corroborating their lobbyist status.  My bags weren't checked once and I
> long for the goggles and stink-a-room capsules I left behind.  In the
> convergence spaces in Copenhagen people are busy building everything from
> sleeping spaces to bikes to meetings structures to movements.  One person
> says to me over a midnight tea, "I'm looking at these two weeks like one
> long day - right now it's early in the morning, we're getting ready, and I'm
> excited!"
>
> --
> ooo it's nearly time! http://www.climate-justice-action.org/
>
>
>
>
> -----------------------------
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> request access
>
>
>
>
>