Rebellion, Sunflowers, and the Impossibilities of Physical and Mental Health.

 

A few years ago.
Me doing something with no risk of arrest.

This is very long. Extremely. Again. Sort of sorry. Turn away. Save yourself.

Chuck paint on a company building and nobody reports about the reasons why if anyone reports at all. A BBC building was scaled and occupied a couple of years ago and not even the BBC mentioned it.

So they chuck soup on a glass covered painting. Nobody was harmed but the painting was recognisable to anyone.

Make speeches at Monument and it won't even get a sentence at the bottom of page 27 of the Chronicle.

So they block roads for weeks. Camp out in Westminster. Face arrests. Dig tunnels. Climb trees. Scale the Dartford Crossing.

It gets headlines. It seems to be the only way to be noticed at all. Nobody wants to chuck soup, or paint at Scotland Yard. Nobody wants to spend weeks underground or to sit up trees on cold nights or on bridges in last night's wind. Nobody is doing any of it for fun.

Unfortunately hardly any of the reports really cover the reasons why. Outrage is encouraged and capitalised on. It's easy to create outrage and stifle rationality.

Talking about reasons is not encouraged. It never was and probably never will be. The powerful have too much to lose. The powerless are too distracted to revolt by the stream of propaganda, half truths and narrow agendas from the powerful. Don't look up. Don't see anything.

Unfortunately though we need to hear the why we mostly just hear the what. An image of soup, of a closed bridge, of an arrest. They sell papers and ratings. Talking about all the new fossil fuel licences the government promised wouldn't happen or about the continuing lack of funding for renewable energy or indeed how many major galleries still take fossil fuel money and how the hyper-expensive art world is often more about protecting the wealth of the powerful and about prestige than it is about art, beauty, meaning, or creativity.

I don't always agree with a tactic but I have much respect for people willing to risk criminal records and freedom for the sake of the planet. They act in ways that I find myself unable to act through circumstance, mental and physical health and, yes, lack of desire and some inadequate excuses too sometimes.

Perhaps disagreeing with a tactic is often a reason to join together not to push apart. MLK and Malcolm X disagreed about tactics. They were apart. But the day after MLK was killed he had been due to meet with Malcolm X to discuss how better to work together. They had concluded that the cause was more important and that uniting may be better in overcoming racism and racist legislation and the elites within power structures whose vested interest is protecting themselves.

Nonviolent campaigners are the heroes. Even when they're annoying! Change sometimes results. Sometimes it doesn't. The attempt is the thing. With the climate, pollution, plastics and so on if nobody tries we are definitely dead. If people try we may get through this. We might even save polar bears though I doubt it.

So Jesus overturned the tables. Ezekiel went naked for years and did many strange things. Men marched from Jarrow. Women disobeyed. At least one building in Gosforth was vandalised by suffragists wanting to vote. Strikers held out for pay, holidays, safer working conditions. Protestors have always been inconvenient. Jesuit priests were imprisoned at military bases. Women at Greenham sometimes were too. A priest I know was arrested at military arms fairs. Indians held out for independence. Quakers refused war. Englishman were martyred for peacefully demanding the religious freedom we take for granted. Every one of them was a hero in their nonviolent actions.

Nonviolence was maintained here. No sunflowers were harmed, just minor fixable damage to an old bit of wood. If they were? Aren't living sunflowers more important than a painting, no matter how culturally important that painting is? Meanwhile, more weather records have been broken globally this year than in any previous year. The rate of change is increasing beyond all predictions and those 20 year olds have every reason to be terrified.

These young nonviolent heroes may not have the right answer to the predicament of the powerful protecting themselves. I wish they did. They're trying though. Desperately trying in desperation for our world. They are offering themselves in this righteous cause.

Neither do I have answers. Sitting at home typing this garbage into my phone definitely won't solve anything. It might be a self-therapy. It might be easy. But it won't contribute to minimising sea level rises, the effects of poverty, pollution, ecocide, or anything else.

My mental health is doing quite well right now even if I did nearly burst into tears on a bus this morning. My physical health isn't so good. Perhaps mental health is helped by knowing I can't do as much as I could so cannot pressure myself into many mentally hard places.

I find now a frustration that I cannot be involved with being more active for the planet. I want to be in a position to try again. I want to act now, as the XR demand puts it. I cannot. I haven't even got the energy for a meeting let alone a prolonged and active campaign. I went to some Climate Action Newcastle meetings. They have plans, campaigns and actions locally that are all excellent and I knew I don't currently have the spoons to be involved.

Fuck it. Can I have my physical health back? Can it stop gradually worsening? And can I keep almost reasonable mental health for more than six months for once in my life? Or can I find more useful outlets that I can do with my limitations? Please.

I won't chuck soup in a gallery. But I want to hold a placard again. I want to sing songs of protest and justice and compassion. I want to be able to be part of the campaign and have a head and body that can sustain it. I want to be able again to be part of the attempts at bringing the change that's absolutely essential. This week I can create many sentences. I know though that I couldn't have joined the good people at Derwentside at the weekend and that I can't be in London protecting the oak sapling planted in Parliament Square.

Life is what it is though. Acceptance. Not resignation. Acceptance. I will need to lie down now. I have no choice. Acceptance. Not a resignation of purpose or potential for usefulness. Acceptance.