Saturday 3 August 2013

What will you do?

The six ice climbers

These six women took my breath away. I was heading to a meeting one morning in July when Twitter told me that 6 Greenpeace activists were climbing the Shard in London. So when I emerged from the tube, near the bottom of the Shard and saw the huge police and media presence, it brought a huge smile to my face. And I knew it was real!

Lots of media led frothing of the mouth ensued. Why bother, why 6 women, blah blah blah.

The reasons were simple and uncomplicated...

To highlight Shell's contribution to the destruction of the Arctic.

To raise the profile of the campaign.

To inspire people to get involved. In any way that they wanted.

As a moment of activism it's brilliant and breathtaking and I'm sure more successful than Greenpeace could have ever imagined.

I love Greenpeace. I forgive them anything because their passion for their cause is real, genuine, infectious and runs deep through the whole organisation.

I love it when they piss the establishment off. It means they are getting heard and making it uncomfortable for business, media or government.

Every time they do something like this - it makes me give them money. It's like I want to pay the bail of those who put themselves out there to cut through the nonsense that gets reported day to day, the people that make it impossible to ignore Greenpeace.

A couple of days after the successful climb, Victoria Henry 'sent' me an email which included this video.



I've been very busy lately and have only just watched it today. It's fabulous. I urge you to watch it. The bravery of those 6 activists brought a little tear to my eye. It made me very very proud to call myself a Greenpeace supporter.

The 6 climbers were Ali from the UK, Liesbeth from the Netherlands, Sabine from Belgium, Sandra from Sweden, Victoria from Canada, and Wiola from Poland.

The final point in the email from Victoria, for me, sums it all up.

"We don’t have the slick, multi-million dollar PR machine that Shell has. But we have something I think is far more powerful: you and more than 3 million of the most dedicated activists on the planet. It’s time to show Shell that people mean more than money."

I am one inspired supporter right now.



No comments:

Post a Comment