So it seems that after a flurry of activity for the climate swoop last week where climate activists met at six strategic locations before converging on Blackheath to set up this year’s Climate Camp the mainstream media have largely lost interest in events.
On the Guardian website today we have bibi van der Zee claiming that ‘Five days in and the campers admit things are a little boring – there are no more toilets to put up and the police have vanished. But a plan for direct action should put the zip back into things’
If you took reports like that seriously you would believe that essentially nothing has been going on at camp since the set up on Wedsnesday and Thursday last week. In fact the site has been awash with activity as the camp has hosted roughly 30-35 workshops a day in addition to the daily neighbourhood meetings.
These workshops have covered everything from creating bicycle powered sound systems to the science of climate change and the current state of geoengineering, from creating your own media to understanding the subtleties of carbon trading schemes, from communicating climate science to lay audiences to building your own wind turbines, from direct action and legal observer training to understanding the links between the arms trade and climate change, from consensus based decision making and direct democracy to creating biochar as a green energy source.
In fact there have been so many disparate workshops, seminars and debates that it would be impossible to to attend more than a fraction of them. Meanwhile, the small amount of mainstream media coverage still focusing on the camp (largely in the Guardian) sees the likes of Van der Zee moaning that the camp has come boring because there aren’t campers being beaten up by the police like at the G20. It truly indicates the sad state of corporate media when even the allegedly left wing papers are interested in issues only so long as they are presented with dramatic images of police attacking protesters.
Somewhat bizarrely in yesterday’s Observer Peter Beaumont claimed that ‘the protesters should spend more time convincing others that their actions are sound,’ it’s hard to understand what he believes the workshops on the science of climate change and the careful efforts of campers to provide factually accurate workshops which clearly delineate why they are involved in protesting around these issues, but somewhat unsurprisingly he fails to mention that any workshops are taking place, instead focusing on what he claims are Climate Camp’s ‘often hazy messages and complex inner negotiations.’ Quite how specifically targetting institutions such as the European Climate Exchange, Barclays Bank and Shell, while holding discussions and workshops which communicate precisely why these targets have been chosen can be understood as ‘hazy’ is somewhat beyond me. In fairness it merely appears to be another case of a lazy journalist writing poorly researched rubbish having been disappointed at the lack of sensationalist images of police fighting with protesters.
thanks for this point vs guardian and observers articles
I was a photographer on the swoop on the 26th of August. The atmosphere amongst photographers/journalists as soon as it was anounced during the first major meeting of the camp that we would have to ask permission to take photographs at the camp the mood amongst many/most photographers became incredulous.
No photographer needs to have permision to take photographs of an individual in a public space. No photographer needs to have a minder to walk around a public space. As such, while I had intended to come back and document the subtleties of camp life, I did not see the point in returning (I was not alone in this). I might as well have just asked the police on their views on the camp to get a balanced viewpoint, rather than be an unwitting mouthpeice for climate camp propaganda.
To add to this were the two alleged physical assaults on photographers yesterday by climate camp members. ‘Just been assaulted by a camper – for taking a pic – outside the camp’-Mark Vallee (Twitter), ‘Just been kicked in the chest by a camper, defending a photographer from a camper trying to grab his camera to delete a picture’ Jono Warren (Twitter). Both are seasoned photojournalists, with a history of covering protests.
For what it is worth I was and am still generally positive about climate camp.
Climate camp needs to be able to accept critique, it is far from perfect. If it obstructs journalists in doing their job, it should not wonder why it gets ignored.
Danny, thanks for your comment, however I do feel that you somewhat missed the point.
Having been present for some of the camp’s arrival you write about your intentions to return to ‘document the subtlties of camp life’ as if arriving was the main event and the camp itself was some kind of afterthought. This is somewhat akin to covering a football team arriving at a stadium and then failing to cover the match. This is also very similar to van der Zee’s assertion that having put the toilets up things are boring, which entirely fails to comprehend what the camp at Blackheath is about.
Unlike previous years at Drax Kingsnoth and Heathrow, the camp at Blackheath was not centred around a mass action but was meant to revolve around workshops training and discussions. This was well advertised on their website, alongside the extensive workshop programme, however it seems that mainstream journalists have simply failed to understand this.
I’m far from convinced that taking photos (the medium you work in) of a workshop on geoengineering or climate science would be very interesting or would do a remotely adequate job of conveying the content of the discussions. The original post refers instead to printed text media which complains that the campers have been bored after the set up, as though there has been nothing for them to do, when in fact there have been a plethora of workshops and discussions about climate change and practical steps towards solving the problems, and a second article which ignores all the events which have taken place at camp, complaining of a lack of focus on the issues.
As regards the seperate issue of media access, watch the camp tv film about media policy.
Climate Camp is far from perfect and critiques are certainly welcomed, but they ought to be critiques of policy, events and action – in other words critiques of content rather than the shallow complaints that things are boring because people aren’t fighting police or journalists whinging that as the only people allowed to perform commercial actions on site they are only given 9 hours of access a day.
thanks for this point vs guardian and observers articles
interesting post, thanks. check back soon