Good news! We are united!

One of the startling things I learned at the excellent People’s Emergency Briefing event held in Bexhill (St Peter’s Community Centre, 3^rd July) was that 86% of the population want the government to take urgent action to deal with the climate crisis.

I mean, to deal with the climate crisis.

Not agree on general principles that the government ought to look as though it’s doing something…

Not explain enthusiastically all the things the government is doing to address the symptoms…

But actually take urgent action to deal with the climate crisis.

We all know about gaslighting. Most of what the government and its corporate handlers say and do is designed to confuse, mislead and divide us. Ahead of the film showing in Bexhill, a slide reminded us of the evasive tactics used by industries – in this case, the tobacco industry – to avoid actually dealing with a problem. It read…

DENY

DISMISS

DISTRACT

DECEIVE

DELAY

… our government has worked through all of those in relation to the climate crisis and, now they know everyone’s generally worried, are trying to pretend they’re doing stuff. In other words, we’re being roundly gaslit – again.

And I guess that’s why people who haven’t seen the People’s Emergency Briefing yet are looking gloomy and saying yes, they know they ought to go, and asking those who’ve seen it already, ‘just how depressing is it?’

Sunlighting

But the thing is, it wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t. The mood in the room was positive, practical and – frankly, uplifting. That’s because that’s what it feels like when you’re finally in a roomful of people who totally and openly accept a thing that’s been lurking in semi-denial behind most of the conversations you’ve been in since forever.

It’s a huge relief! It’s un-gaslighting.

Let’s call it sunlighting!

Comments from the Bexhill Climate Emergency Briefing:

Losers lobby

In other words, all those ‘D’s, the measures the tobacco industry used when it was on the back foot – all that wining and dining of MPs, all the PR circuses, came just before most people rejected tobacco – they are what powers do when they’re LOSING the public conversation. That means, on climate crisis action, WE are WINNING.

The local can overwhelm the national

In other words, there are People’s Emergency Briefing showings, followed by ‘what shall we do?’ meetings all over the country and between us, as the Palestine campaigners say, ‘in our thousands in our millions’ we can make more noise than the government.

And on that very topic, I have a second reason to be feeling great just now.

People don’t like war. They especially don’t like military actions that kill civilians, including children.

One of the startling things I learned at the local PSC’s showing of the student encampments for Palestine film night was this: that the students were re-learning what humans always learn when they come together with a genuine intention to tackle the violence and repression of the establishment. It was what the Greenham Common women learned, it was what the festival generation learned and what the various Occupy iterations learned: how humans like to live – in community and co-operation.

The joy of it

And here’s the joy of it: when I put those two things together — our response to the climate crisis and our response to Israel’s murderous, not to mention ecocidal attacks on Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon — it tells me that most people have the same concerns and most people have a heck of a lot in common around how they’d like to tackle them.

I’ve just heard that in Hastings, the People’s Emergency Briefing event is going to take the form of a citizens’ assembly, a coming together — community and co-operation — to decide what we’re going to do about the problem and how.

I can’t wait – I’m going to that one, too.

See you there….?

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