12 December 2009

News from the inside

A serious atmosphere at the climate march

Today we went on the march from the centre of Copenhagen to the Climate Conference. There were a lot of people, reports say 30,000 to 45,000. We didn't have a placard so we wore some of the pledge cards we had collected on strings around our shoulders. Our favorite placard was Blah, Blah, Blah, Act Now! The vegans had the most charming placard, showing a chick with the words "I am not a nugget".

Walking through the streets we found some local people were smiling and taking photos out of their windows, but generally the atmosphere was pretty dark and serious. As Jennie said "I've been on marches before about single issues, but this is so big and important" The people on the march were there because they really care about this. Not for some fun day out. Jennie said she could feel the anger.

Jennie and Freya's hosts had told them that there would be trouble today and when there was a loud bang like a gun going off Jennie got really worried. We found out later it  was a tickertape machine. There were a lot of police and riot vans but we didn't see anyone in the crowd behaving badly. Although as we write this in the cafe area of the Conference we can see live film of police arresting demonstrators. We can understand and relate to the demonstrators. We have all said we don't want to let the world leaders go home and we would sit outside the door to stop them if they don't get the sort of agreement we need.

Darkness was falling as we arrived at the conference venue where people were holding candles and there was some really beautiful music playing. I think it was specially written for the tck tck tck campaign.  Then someone said "Sue?" It was Mark Kaufman who had volunteered for BioRegional two years ago. He says hi to all his friends at BioRegional. There is a great community spirit amongst all of us environmentalists and we are always optimistic at BioRegional. But we all feel a bit numb and desperate about this massive issue.

The BioRegional marchers
Sue, Pooran, Jennie, Freya, Sam, Greg and Stephen