100 Calls for Calm...

There are women in Lancashire who every week on Wednesdays, take part in a 'Call for Calm' outside a fracking site near Blackpool. The action that started nearly 2 years ago, still takes place every week and we're in urgent need of you :) Please come or share and invite or all of that... our invitation:
...
"Dear You,

In the summer of 2017, after months of daily protest against the development of a fracking site on Preston New Road (nr. Blackpool), a group of women gathered together to hold a 15-minute silence. There had been so much anger, tension and anguish on this road that we simply wanted it to stop long enough, to 're-set' ourselves from an otherwise continuing escalation of tension.

It was intended as a one-off but was so impactful for those of us who took part... lined up silently against a row of police between us and the site - that we continue to do this weekly.

We held our silence and then... we danced and sang and shared food, good humour and kindness. In the context of all that happened and continues to happen daily (for nearly 1000 days!!) at the PNR site, the 'Call for Calm' is an oasis in the week and a 'welcome mat' for newcomers to protest.
A safer place to be and a chance to 'enjoy' what we're fighting to protect (community well-being and life itself) - instead of feeling our rage grow and grow at the daily witness of ever more aggressive destruction, pollution and toxins clouding our horizon.

If you're reading this post, it would mean everything to us if you could come and be here to share our 100th Call for Calm. We've been accompanied by amazing women over the weeks including Emma Thompson, Natalie Bennett, Amelia Womack, Vivienne Westwood and soo many more... but you'd be the one we'd want to see the most :)

Please help us to make this matter more - the world is currently full of tension and turmoil; our communities torn by division and fear and our planet in urgent need of healing... The 'Wednesday Women's Call for Calm' may not solve any of this but it is a huge show of intent... a way of making clear that resolution cannot come with conflict but with calm."

*Although the Women 'call' this event, ALL are welcome

With love & thaks,
Nanas Julie & Tina <3 span="">

EVENT PAGE HERE: Women's Call 100!

Raging politely

In the Observer today, the headline: 

Ex-BP boss John Browne: ‘It’s going to take a long time to take oil and coal out of the energy system’ 

... leads to an interview with the once-upon-a-time boss of fracking firm Cuadrilla. He brought fracking to UK shores and flooded the halls of power and media outlets with his dream of fracking glory in the UK.

It was so important, so magnificent, so needed... yet today he vaguely mentions that it's probably no big deal afterall; just a bit of a 'test'. Pffft, no harm there then!!

Fuck you
Mr ‘Just a test’
Up yours
Lord “..fracking in the UK doesn’t make much sense.”

After eight bloody years of fighting what this man started in the UK, he flicks it away!! As if nothing much happened. I’ve seen hearts and families broken, lives irreversibly changed and a community under the most intense pressure; having to fight for the right to simply breathe…

YET… media focuses on how awful it is that activists lack manners and need to just calm down… do protest with a bit of dignity, unemotionally maybe? In order to be considerate of gentler sensibilities!

Hush that rage, quell the maternal fire in your belly as you seek to protect your young... just shut up, hold your banner and be polite.

Don't not be, normal.

Is it any wonder we’re seeing a rise in mental health issues? It’s not just the endocrine disrupting chemicals, austerity and illness – there’s a sort-of sense of the insanity around us and at the helm in our world; reflected too in a lacklustre media that peddles anything BUT the issue that trumps all others.

Is the future survivable?

There’s the realisation that those with any power to do anything about ensuring it is – aren’t. They’re squabbling over dates, tweaking at the edges, like a kid pushing unwanted peas round a plate…

And we’re still walking through our days.

Going slightly mad
justifiably crazy
about the inactivity
total stupidity
neutered ability
of systems of state
to operate
in any way fit to satiate the needs of a thirsting planet and its humanity

Today an 8-year plea, a desperate need to make a dream reality... crashed down to land lightly with a whimper...
and a Lord’s dainty slipper kicks it away.

......................

I can't find the words to really describe fully how this feels... the image barely touches the surface