Rebel Justice - changing the way you see justice
What is justice? Who does it serve? Why should you care?
When we think about justice, we think about it as an abstract, something that happens to someone else, somewhere else. Bad people. But justice and the law regulate every aspect of our interactions with each other, with organisations, with the government.
We never think about it until it impacts our lives, or that of someone close.
News, views and trues from The View Magazine, a social justice and campaigning platform for the rights of women in the justice system.
Our guests are women with lived experience of the justice system whether as victims or women who have committed crimes; people at the forefront of civic action who put their lives on the line to demand a better world such as maligned climate justice campaigners.
We ask them to share their insight into how we might repair a broken and harmful system, with humanity and dignity.
We also speak with people who are in the heart of of the justice system creating important change, climate activists, judges, barristers, human rights campaigners, mental health advocates, artists and healers.
The View believes that we can rebuild lives with hope, and successfully reintegrate people who have caused harm or been harmed, through the restoring nature of art and creativity, open dialogue and - love.
Rebel Justice - changing the way you see justice
Episode 30 - Just Stop Oil with Zoe Cohen, climate campaigner
This week we bring you Zoe Cohen, a self employed mum who has had a successful coaching career and was previously a senior manager in the NHS. Zoe was one of 51 people who broke an injunction which protects the fossil fuel industry, and was remanded for contempt of court.
All these people are in ongoing civil resistance as part of the Just Stop Oil campaign, whose simple demand is for the UK Government to end all new oil and gas projects, thereby rapidly accelerating the transition to a safer, fairer world. Zoe brings us a privileged perspective of being a campaigner, but also a woman with lived experience of our criminal justice system.
The Just Stop Oil campaign is currently occupying Westminster in a daily protest during the month of October.
For more information you can go to https://juststopoil.org/, and attend an online or face to face talk. Also check out the social media channels:
ps://www.facebook.com/JustStopOil/
https://www.instagram.com/just.stopoil/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-t4U1Azf8AOkCBJILSNBmw
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Welcome to the View Magazine's Rebel Justice Podcast. This week we bring you Zoe Cohen, a self-employed mom who has had a successful coaching career and was previously a senior manager in the nhs. Zoe was one of the 51 people who broke an injunction protecting the fossil fuel industry and was remanded for contempt of court. All these people are in ongoing civil resistance as part of the Just Stop oil campaign whose simple demand is for the UK government to end all new oil and gas projects, thereby rapidly accelerating the transition to a safer, fairer world. Zoe brings us a privileged perspective of being a campaigner, but also a woman with lived experience of our criminal justice system.
Speaker 2:Zoe, thank you so much for taking the time to have a chat with us. I'd like to just start with be to tell us briefly about your background and what you do.
Speaker 3:Uh, thanks Madina. Good to meet you. And thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm Zoe, I'm 52. I'm, uh, a mom. First career was in the nhs. My second career has been being self-employed as a coach for the last 13 or so years. And I guess I'm, I guess I'm probably in my third career now as an activist, although I kind of reject that word a bit. Um, but maybe we can come onto that. So I've been kind of in the process of like transitioning life again over the last four years, so that I'm almost full time, well pretty much full time, a fair bit of the time and sometimes slightly less than full time. Some weeks working with, uh, predominantly with the GIST Oil campaign and also some of the areas of, uh, climate and related activism that I have worked on. And I've been involved since the beginning of 2019. First got involved in Extinction Rebellion and um, also something called Money Rebellion, which is part of Extinction Rebellion and then went on to work on and with Interlay Britain and now just dub oils kind of Christmas time. So it's, yeah, it's a rollercoaster.
Speaker 2:So what sparked your interest in the fossil few crisis and what made you join the Just Stop Oil campaign? And maybe you can go back to this aversion to the word, um, activist<laugh>
Speaker 3:<laugh>. Yeah. Gosh, there's, there's a lot to, to cover all in there. Um, so I guess without wanting to go into too longest earth story in Alina, um, it's not just that the fossil fuel crisis, I mean, it's like much, much bigger than that, isn't it? But I've been, you know, in love with nature since I was a little child. I, I think at most if not all children, if they're given the opportunity, are in love with nature from being tiny. Because when you're tiny you don't see any difference between you and the dogs and the worms and the, the soil and the grass and the flowers. It's just, it is just life, isn't it? And we are life when we're little and until we get socialized to separate ourselves from nature and everything that goes with that and their, their in lies a lot of the problem, doesn't it? And I don't think I've fully ever separated, so I never, I didn't allow myself to fully kind of disconnect from nature, although I did to some extent whether that's what society does to us, isn't it? As well as being in love with nature from a very young age. I was, um, brought up by a wonderful mom who brought me up as a feminist from a pretty young age as well. And I think both from, for both of my parents, I soaked up a sense of social, just, you know, social justice and a dislike of injustice. I've got, um, a Jewish heritage is on my dad's side, so both my dad's parents, um, came from PO Romania before the second World War to escape fashion. And on my mom's died, my mom was part French and her father helped, uh, Jews get outta occupied France in some way. I don't know the full details cause my mom died before learn more. But so, uh, yeah, I guess, uh, kind of concern for social justice and photos is kind of programmed into my DNA and my upbringing and in diff you know, consciously and unconsciously. And you combine that with the feminism and the full of nature and it kind of takes you to a, a place where you just want to put your body on the wheels of the machine and make it stop. So yeah, it's been in me for a long, long time and, um, I guess that journey and my foot took me into my kind of first career of wanting to work in, in public services and I sort was most drawn to the NHS and I was passionate from quite a young age about health inequalities. And that's what pulled me into the nhs, the kind of public health health inequality agenda, which i, I still care about, right? But actually the climate emergency and climate breakdown is the single biggest public health crisis in nationally and globally. And that's, you know, that's not me saying that that's the land and the 200 leading health journals. So yeah, there's many, many reasons to care and it's just, I think it's just part of me, I think is just a further expression of me and who I am and my values, what I care about. And I'm really unable to not do some of this in some way, shape or form. I hope that answers your question to some degree
Speaker 2:Beautifully. I was wondering just stop oil, is it a kind of a branch from Extension Rebellion? So is that how you got into it?
Speaker 3:Yes and no. Extension Rebellion, you know, was started by a very small and amazing bunch of people. Massive respectful back in, um, 2018 or maybe a little bit before, but really spring of 2018. And as I guess social entities do, they more, they grow and they change and they morph and evolve and morph. So more, that's what, you know, where like, um, memorizations of stylings in the sky aren't we? We're no different. We just kind of, you know, morph and change. So I still, I still count myself as, as part of Extinction Re I have a big trial coming up with a group of other women in a few weeks time, which is for a significant extinction re re action we did in 2021. So I still count myself in as, as Extinction re I still count myself as an late Britain. I was to some extent still, I'm a spokesperson from late pro late Britain. So I guess some, some the folk out of Extinction kind of morphed into Late Britain and some of those morphed again into just a oil, so, well there's quite a bit of overlap, but there's also quite a lot of new folk, like people who are in just a poll who've never done any inverted activism before. But, um, maybe I'll ask answer that, answer that question that you asked before there about, um, yeah, I guess I have a problem with the word activism and the use of it and their two things. I suppose like to my mind it, it's just, you know, what's the opposite? It's passivity, right? And um, I'll probably misquote the quote here cause I'm good misquoting quote, but where it's Dante's word, not mine, but you know, the kind of, there's something like there's no greater evil than staying mor than staying neutral in a morally situation. I paraphrase that, but you know, you know what I'm saying? So it's like in this day, day and age, passivity is pretty bad place to be, isn't it? So if, if you're not active about, about some this, about this agenda, not just climate, but the social justice crisis, the cross cost agreed crisis that the races and crisis, that all of it is interconnected. If we're passive about that, we're just a bystander, we alluding with it, right? So we have to call it out. So I, I, I don't like in that sense, but also, um, you'll know I'm sure from a lot of the media, particularly more rightwing the media, the, the more and which includes the, our present government, government of course is they use the term activist as one of the many terms to other, other us, when actually we're just ordinary people. We're just ordinary people. I an ordinary 52 year old mom and we have, you know, hundreds of ordinary people from all walks of life, from ages, you know, 15 to 93 in world and you know, from, um, builders and carpenters to business owners to doctors, social workers, nurses, retired vicars, um, students and everyone in between, right? So that it's, it's just an othering term and we really need to avoid or let, you know, reject that othering because it's how the system brings us down and belittles us.
Speaker 2:Yes, that makes total sense to me. And I hadn't seen it in that light, the constant need of labeling people and putting'em in a box. Thank you for bringing my attention to that as well. The events of this week have brought a lot of attention to the just top oil campaign, the Daily Mail called your organization and Activist<laugh>, um, Radical Eco Terrorists, would you say to that?
Speaker 3:Can I swear? Yes. Oh, great.<laugh>, FOLs<laugh>, what else can you say? And, and following on from the previous point about the word activists and that's like low level of the rank, but you know, eco terrorists, Eco crazies, Eco Crazes, Eco eco extremists, I've seen that Eco extremist, uh, recently as well just today I think earlier. I dunno who did that, but similar kind of monarchy. Um, yeah, it's all othering, isn't it? It's all diminishing, it's all the same gas lighting that we get from the far right and the fossil fuel interests who are basically the same people, aren't they? You know, our government is up to their neck in oil now, less trust. Liz Trust used to work for Shell, she was a fossil, an oil economist, worked for Shell and her, the biggest donor to her Prime Minister campaign was the wife or ex-wife or someone who worked for bp. So it's like all insider stuff, all insider stuff. And then they've been exposed a lot, not enough, but to some degree that they're, you know, following the, this disastrous economic nonsense they've been doing in the last week or so. So they're, they, this government have kind of been to a degree outed, although not publicly enough for following this far right ideology of the so-called link tanks of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which are, you know, they're, they, if you are familiar with, um, 55 Tuf Street, they're, you know, based in Tufton Street and they're linked to other organizations based on Tufton Street, where the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which is just another cover for another far-right Planet Denialist organization. So, yes, sorry, slight, a slight tangent. Theres, you may may not feel that's relevant, but basically it's all othering and it's all diminishing any trying to disempower ordinary people in our fights against this tiny minority of far right neoliberal extremists. They're in what, what these extremists and fascists do you, there's the playbook is they project their horrible onto us all the time onto us, as in us any groups who are trying to stand up to it, any group. So the thing that they are doing, they say that we are doing<laugh>, that they do that all the, not just us, but you know, any groups, that's what they do all the time. And that's part of the fascist playbook, isn't it? And that's where they are. I'm getting a little bit off script here with the sort of wider just world messaging, but that's, I'm just speaking from the heart about, that's what I see happening and I feel passionate about it. I also feel very scared as someone Jewish heritage. It's just like, it just makes me feel even more scared that this, I hardly recognize the country I've been born into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's, it's disgraceful And I, I do hope that more and more people are outed because I do think the general public is not aware of most of the things that are happening. And all we read is these things that just make you see people who are trying to to out them seem like the bad guys. So, um, uh, you should definitely keep speaking from your heart. Now, do you think, going back to climate injustice, that it affects women disproportionately, and if so, in what capacity?
Speaker 3:So do, does, does climate injustice disproportionately impact women? Totally, a hundred percent in a whole myriad of ways. Like, I'm not an expert on this, but there is a lot, quite a bit of literature and research in these areas, but they're, they're multifaceted areas and um, I'll try and sort of like connect to a few of the dots. But there are many, and I'm sure yourself and anyone listening, women listening to this, uh, know will recognize many of them and probably more besides, but everything from, you know, women, this at the micro level, but it's, you know, kindly relevant. Women tend to have lower carbon footprints than men. There's interesting research come out in that in the last year or so, even in the global north, women tend to have lower carbon footprints than men, but we tend to eat less meat, we tend to fly less. We tend to drive not so big cars or drive less and blah blah blah, you know, that kind of stuff. So wo women cause less and in the global, you know, globally women tend to have control of less resource and make less financial decisions, economic decisions, don't they? So it's like whoever spends the money, commits the carbon and commits the carbon crimes if you like. Cause every pound or dollar or whatever we spend is done does harm in today's economy cuz the whole economy is driven by fossil fuels pretty much, isn't it? So there's not many dollars or pound you can spend that don't cause harm. So unfortunately, because we need a massive transition away from the fossil fuel obsessed economy. So, um, there's all of that stuff. And then there's the fact that, you know, girls and women are massively disproportionately impacted by climate breakdown. So, uh, again, I'm not an expert on this. There are academics specialize on this and there's lots of research, but right from girls in countries where they're drought at Afghanistan for example, where drought massively exacerbates the breakdown, the societal breakdown that's and collapse has already been happening for the colonial invasions and all of that kind of stuff. But then massive drought makes it look so much worse. And then you've got the poverty and the hunger on top of that. And then you've got, you know, what families or do families do they sell off their young daughter to get married to some 60 year old guy or something. So that's in that is indirectly climate impacts, right? And it's the little girls that are, are prosecuted and sold that get their hit. You know, that there's all all sorts of other research that talks about, for example, how when food is scarce, it's, it's the girls and women who get less of it and suffer more in communities in the global south where, where women collect water, you know, the water get scar or they have to walk further and further and further and the girl, the girls then have to walk, get, go to school cause they have to walk to collect water. You know, these examples go on and on and on. And then you get the sort of secondary tertiary effects of when you have conflict and radicalization and proper actual extremism, not climate activists, actual extremism, um, which is exacerbated by drought, food, scar and all of that that you know, and hungry tailies. And when that conflict happens, you get everything that comes out of that. You get rape and you get prostitution and you get, you know, blah blah blah blah. And of course it's girls and women who are more disproportionately affected there. So at every level it's girls and women who cause less of all of this show and you get more of it. So yeah, I hope that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Of course. And it's, it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:So how did you come into contact with the justice system? What was your experience of it and do you think it was fair?
Speaker 3:<laugh>. Okay, what a leading question Do you mean the injustice system? Um, so I guess link to what I was describing about how I got when and how I got involved in initially extinction early and then inter late Britain and I've just abroad I've done actions that have directly or indirectly led me to being arrested seven times now. So, which are, I dunno, some people sounds like a lot, sometimes people like raise eyebrows and shock sort of, you name at age mom like me, but haven't been arrested. But I, you know, I compared to some of my colleagues in like Britain and just a and novice<laugh>, there's people with like 20, 30 plus arrest cetera. So not that it's about prizes and counting cuz it really, really isn't, you know, I, I'd really, really rather not have to do this stuff to be totally honest. But, um, when you, you know, when you really connect with the utter terrifying reality of the breakdown of vulnerable world and you re you really feel you've got no choice, you know, when you connect the utter enormity and in urgency of the situation. So, um, yeah, I, I've been arrested seven times. First was April, 2019 in the extinction of, in, in London where, um, thousands of people occupied parts of Central London for 10 days. And, uh, there were 1100 arrests if I remember rightly. And I was one of those, I was, I was really nervous at the time. Um, was one of a smallish number of people who on a particular evening were block road blocking Parliament Square at the different roads in and out of Parliament Square. But I'm, yeah, I'm really, really proud that I did that, uh, because I overcame that initial fear and overcoming that fear and coming out the other side, you kind of go, Oh, that's it, is it, you know, that's how, that's how the system controls us with the fear of that really not that bad. You know, we, I mean I know that there's obviously a lot of people getting a lot of women and women of color and people with mental health issues, all sorts of issues in their lives that it's not gonna be a good thing for them to do. Right. But I'm a middle-aged white woman and I guess probably describe myself as middle class probably. I didn't have a middle class, um, background necessarily, but, so I feel I need to use those privileges that I've got and if I feel like a real obligation to me to use those privileges, take action and to speak out. Yeah. So I, I've been arrested seven times, I think maybe four now for just doing really simple things like sitting on the road, uh, once I was arrested, after having my home raid for being a spokesperson for eight Britain. So I was arrested and handcuffed and put into the metal page in the back of the van, in front of my neighbors. Um, after having, um, seven police come to my house and five of them basically do legalized burglary, which is kind of what is, which is outrageous just for being a spokesperson, um, for daring to speak truth, uh, about the, you know, appalling fuel poverty and fuel poverty, death in this country and the lack of climate action to all connected. Of course, I also, um, last April, myself and six other women carefully broke a number of windows at bar's, Bank HQ in Canary Wharf, and then to call out the fact that bar was the biggest fossil fuel fund in Europe. And they, at the time, at the time, they'd invested, invested in virgin farmers, something like 140 billion into coal, gas and oils into the Paris Agreement. So in the full knowledge of what they were doing that was like, you know, 18 months ago or more, and they're still doing it. They're still investing in existing coal, oil and gas and they're still investing in new fossil fuels as far as well, which is morally bankrupt and economically mad paraphrasing the year Secretary General. So we have our trial coming up, we have a trial, uh, so one of us coming up, uh, in November for that for two weeks. So, uh, we have to convince the jury that of our absolute profound honest beliefs in what we're doing and why we're doing it so that we avoid what could be quite a significant long, um, custodial sentence. So that's crazy injustice, isn't it, when those bankers are literally earning bonuses with, for the violent acts. And I do say they're violent acts cause they are violent acts of sling contracts,<laugh> in the violence of the pen and the violence of the keyboard is vile. And that's what, that's, you know, in my mind that's my way of putting what we were calling out in that HQ building that utter, utter violence perpetrated by the people in that building and the board members in the full knowledge probably of what they were doing, I would argue. And then most recently I had a brief state in prison. I was one of 51 people at my naman taking peaceful action at a place called Kingsbury Kingsbury Oil Depo in the middle end. It's the biggest inland depo in England, I think. And it's a site that an injunction was put on, which is like a kind of private law in this case, to protect the oil companies, fossil fuel industry, um, to stop people peacefully protesting there, uh, as opposed to actually injuncting the bloody companies for destroying our lives and destroying lives and livelihoods around the world. So 51 of us sat peacefully at the entrance way of a road, literally just sitting on the tar. We were blocking traffic coming in and out of the site. We weren't people, workers could come in and out peacefully, completely nonviolently all the rest of it. And, um, we just block vehicles. Um, we were arrested in within about four hours or so, um, of being there for breaking the injunction and we were all taken to police cells. And then as the inju as a result of that injunction, we were then taken before a high court judge within 24 hours. And every single one of us was reminded to prison. And most, most of us in the group, um, spent a few nights, a few days nights in prison. I was in a women's cousin of prison called Foster Hall Inia, um, four or five nights. And there are currently, I think eight, eight members or eight supporters of just stop oil in prison right now. Some of those, some of those people are people who broke the injunction on that day and they were given custodial sentences because they'd taken previous action before and the judge treated them more harshly. And there's also two amazing young people who have been on remand for a couple of months now and are remanded until, well, one of them is remanded until at least February for their trial. And they're, they're, you know, they're innocent, innocent or proven guilty, you know, they're remand, they're innocent and they are reminded for a ridiculous amount of time. Um, that's the guy, he's only 29. Josh Smith and Louis McKenney has been reminded since July and maybe coming out on a bail appeal hopefully soon. But yeah, I mean shocking in terms of, you know, people in the twenties through to older people in the seventies are currently in prison for taking these actions. It's quite astonishing. You were asking me about the justice system and I called it the injustice system and I I I just wanted to make maybe two more points about the injustice and the, the nonsense of it all, I guess one's about the judiciary and, you know, the whole, the legal system and the judiciary, uh, the utter craziness of the individuals and the system that they are part of and create together that criminalizes and imprisons, myself and colleagues, ordinary people for taking action, which is uh, can only be described as morally the right thing to do and is not taking action to hold, to account and imprison the actual criminals, the, the, the fossil fuel companies, then the governments that enable them and the media that enable them and the banks that fund it all, you know,<laugh>, et cetera, et cetera. And, uh, the utter madness of it. And that, you know, there are, there's a chix of light in the sense that there's, there was an open letter from I think about 200 or so legal professional, including some s judges and so on who were joining yacht and saying that government's not taking action to avoid going over 1.5 degrees, which is like near on impossible now, but at least with business as usual as they're going, puts the rule of law under threat. You know, it threatens the rule of law, which is fundamentally what the whole court system, you know, legal system, just a system as opposed to support, right? So that's the kind of ridiculousness that the vast majority, well all the judiciary in terms of the, the sentencing and the approaches that they're using and their inaction towards the actual criminals here is bringing down the very system they claim to protect. So that's just one point I wanted to make. And also I'm sure, um, yourself and women listening or others listening to this, uh, hopefully already understand that the, the prison system in this country is, is ridiculously and just, um, particularly for women, even though women make up a really small proportion of the prison population. My small amount of lived experience now is the majority of the women that I'm at, you know, maybe all of them even in Boston Hall probably didn't need to be there or shouldn't have been there. I can't see how the level of incarceration we were experiencing being locked up for 23 plus hours a day was going to help anyone do anything in their lives other than be mentally, physically unwell and not be able to be a youthful addition to society or to themselves or their spirituality or the greater good or anything. So, yeah, and I, I would say that I would love to see our world in which we have deliberative democracy and citizens assemblies, which would necessarily be 50% women. And I would love to see some of the women Foster Hall and that Citizens Assembly cause my God, they'd make better decisions in our government. I would trust them much more to make much better decisions. For sure.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for standing up for, for this cuz I understand that it is important that people get arrested in a way because that's the way of making people talk about it and bring it to the courts, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Before I, um, got involved with Extinction Reone, so if I go back to sort of 2018 and before, it's like, I don't think I'd ever thought of myself being someone who would, you know, sit down on a road and wait to get arrested. I, it, it never even, I don't think it ends into my head or the, the nearest thing would've been like when I was a teenager, um, cause I'm quite old. So when I was a teenager and Green Peace were really in their kind of heyday of like doing the Rainbow Warrior actions and you know, people like attaching themselves to, to waiting ships and oh, so, you know, all this really stuff and I just, I thought they were earth to heroes and I thought they were like a different category of person. But when I think when Extinction re Iranian came along 2018 and then 20 19, 1 of the fantastic incredible things that the movement did amongst those was democratize, nonviolent, direct action and make it something that's accessible to, you know, a significant number of ordinary people, which is all you have to do is sit on the road as for someone, you know, within next extinct Berlin and Inec Britain and now just a PO and all of those three concurrently, you know, so there's people, there's people maybe like me who in some way or other wanted to put their body on the machine for a long, long time. And you know, I've done all sorts of volunteer work like, um, legal activism, polite campaigning for decades. And as soon as Exel came along and I saw the original bridge booking actions on YouTube and then I, I just cried. I was just like, I couldn't, it was the first time I'd seen all the new people behaving. Like the truth is real and there's something super, super powerful and even to, you know, to this day, which makes it sound like it's eons, but it's like four years ago is that when this week you were referring to the just poor actions, only one in our conversation and like this, this weekend. And they've been ordinary people often for the first time getting arrested in public on Waterloo Bridge for example, in Central London. And you've had like general the members of the public walking past and you know, young women or mothers or children or whatever and they're like, they stop, I open mouth. Kind of like, cuz most people have not observed an arrest and hardly anyone has observed firsthand in arrest of an ordinary person who looks and sounds like them being taken away, dragged away, carried away by police for utterly peaceful actions that are fundamentally to protect life. And it's really a moving thing. It's really moving for people to see and they, you know, some people look away or rush or whatever and that more and more, more and more there support, even if it's quite passive support, there is more support. And, and um, you know, I know over the time I've been, you know, witnessing or out doing outreach was people have been arrested near being, being arrested and, and there being mothers with children. The mothers love tears rolling down their eyes, you know, that they, they know and they know that to some extent what their children are facing and they can see people in front of them getting carried away. And I can get, get emotional now because I can feel it cuz I can, I got all of those memories of talking to, to families and often it's the moms as, as we know and women emotionally connect with this much more on the whole, there are some guys that do of course, but women emotionally connect with it much more readily I think. And that, you know, especially if they've got children, they have tears rolling down the horizon and they know we just need more people. We just wait away and more people, you know, we need thousands of people on the streets, thousands of us, and we can't wait much longer. You know, we can't wait much longer. So David King said last year in the conference in Australia that, you know, within the next three to four years to take'em in the future of humanity. And that was a year ago. And that's not just one person saying that, you know, you know, tipping points are tipping right in front of our eyes right now that the horror that is unfolding all over the world, you know, from Pakistan to Japan to Cuba to Florida and all points in between, it's utterly horrific. And you know, we in the, here in the uk we had 40 degrees only in July this summer. And that kind of summer wasn't forecast till 2015. We had it 28 years earlier. And this net 0, 20 50 is. It's utter. It's far too little, far too late. And the keep 1.5 alive is as well. We're gonna sail past 1.5 in the next handful of years and we, we are just on like a fast track to hell at the moment. And this government are, they've gone into over overdrive on pouring literal petrol into the flames of that fast track to health. It's like metaphorically. And actually we and our kids are locked in a burning building right now and I am screaming to bash that draw down and our government are talking about what color to paint the door, you know? And now they've even, not only they're, they know they're bringing back fracking, they're, they're actively progressing more than a hundred new fossil fuel lights and they're also instituting a review of the of Net Zero. Cause they wanna basically fundamentally challenge, you know, net zero and, and all the rest of it. And, and it's just, it's indescribable. Um, it's indescribable, it's morally bereft, it's economically crazy and it's, I can't think of any other term that more appropriately fits it than she evil.
Speaker 2:Zoe, thank you so much for opening your heart<laugh> in this way and for sharing not only your insights but your experience. I think it would be beneficial for so many people to hear. Just to finish up briefly, you spoke about numbers, you need more people to voice it, meaning need more bodies, Any more ideas of what each one of us can be doing to, to help the cause and to save our planet?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Um, I guess, you know, with absolute love and respect, it's, it's, it's kind of, it's not even saving the planet, it's saving ourselves. You know, there's, we've already done so much collectively the obviously the minority world and the, the rich and powerful most responsible. But we've already done so much harm. We, we, we've gotta try and save, save what we can save now and also save ourselves. To be honest, it's, I'd love to say that writing letters while signing petitions Cetera makes a difference. But it doesn't really, it just, it just doesn't, you know, for tiny little things, tiny little actions it can sometimes, but we're just too, we decades too late for that. Now we have to make government and new fossil fuel projects as the first step. There is so much that needs changing. There's much, much more beyond the new fossil fuels that need changing. But you know, it's, it's one a first step. We, we need way more people in civil resistance. We need way, way, way more people in this nonviolent action, this community of this peaceful mys of ordinary people just resisting this earth and madness. And yeah, we do. And I, and I I guess what is tragic but feels like the case right now, particularly with the shock doctrine that this government are, you know, kind of implementing more and more and getting more and more extreme with is that, you know, many people are living through this kind of what feels like the foothills of collapsed, isn't it? In the, that's what I call it. Footwear in the foothills are some countries obviously around the world have collapsed in climate and economic and societal senses and this country is on the foothills of that. And me feels more like the, it obviously feels a lot worse than foothills to many people who are ordinary already struggling to get by day to day and increasing numbers of people. But you know, someone used to work in public services, public services are collapsing more on the of collapse, aren't they? And everything from drought and crop failure to public services falling over and everything in between. And I think a lot of people are just, are just cutting headlights. And that's this, it's almost a horrible kind of sick byproduct of this shock doctrine treatment that is being done to us. That we are forced to this kind of cat in headlight situation so that we are literally unable to resist. But we have to because there ain't shock doctrine is this, you know, this is the thin end of the wages now that's being done to us right now and it is being done to us. It's an intentional strategy. I mean some of, you know, the climate impacts are just now, you know, we are reaping the rewards, inverted commerce, the sick rewards of, of previous emissions. The emissions that have been put out recently aren't even having their impact properly yet as it take, there's a, there's a lag time. So, you know, we are reaping the rewards of a few, a few years ago missions kind of thing cause they take a little while to kick in fully. But the political shot doctrine is what we are combining with all of that. So I, I guess as a, as a woman and a mom, I would particularly call out to women and mothers listening and grandmothers and not yet a grandmother. And I don't think I'll be, cuz my own daughter has said she doesn't wanna have children partly because of all of this, and she can't blame her to be honest. But anyway, mother's, mother's, grandmother's, um, daughter, sisters, all of us. We need to bring our beautiful feminine energies to this resistance and to, you know, if we, if we have any privileges that we can bring to bear so that we can get on the streets and potentially risk arrest, then we, I feel a strong obligation to do that personally. And I hope others listening to as well, if for whatever reason our protected characteristics or our lives don't allow us to do that, there are many ways to support that don't risk arrest. Um, whether that's from donation or doing behind the scenes stuff or whatever. There's lots of ways to support. So yeah, if you feel moved in any way by anything I've said, please do go to just stop or org and, you know, come to an online talk or a face to face talk and, and find a way to get involved in some way in, you know, growing this beautiful, peaceful community for resistance.
Speaker 1:And this concludes our podcast for today. Thank you very much Zoe, for taking your time to speak to us and shedding a light on the urgency for action. We learned so much and we wish you every success, but just Stop Oil Campaign is currently occupying Westminster in a daily protest during the month of October. For more information, you can go to just stop oil.org and attend an online or face-to-face talk. You can also check the links in the description. For more about the View, please check our website, the view mag.org.uk. You can subscribe or see how you can support our ongoing work to make the justice system more equitable. Thank you for listening.