Action group Crude Awakening in collaboration with Climate Justice Action and Climate Camp have organised a day of protest against the oil industry and the oil companies destruction of the environment. The planned mass action is due to take place on Saturday October 16 in central London. A statement on the Crude Awakening website crudeawakening.org.uk says:
"Floods in Pakistan, drought in Russia, huge glaciers breaking up in Greenland...
Our climate system is rapidly sliding into crisis, as oil companies destroy people's lives and the environment to keep sucking up their profits.
Oil saturates every aspect of our lives. Oil profits lubricate the financial markets and its sponsorship clings like a bad smell to our cultural institutions. It flows through pipelines to the pumps, airports and factories of our cities.
The failure of the UN COP15 process showed us – if there was ever any doubt – that government and industry can’t tackle climate change. It’s up to us and it’s time to up the ante.
As a movement, our actions against coal and aviation have made a real difference. Now oil’s time is up.
Together, on October 16, let's give the oil industry a Crude Awakening.
Meet in central London. Be ready to move, to HOLD A SPACE and to leave that space in a way that shows we've been there.
Be creative. Be prepared. Be there."
Thomas L. Blair is a sociologist and political blogger on the Chronicleworld 'for creative renewal in Black Britain and Afro-Europe'. His work is honoured in the British Library's archive of "social, historic and culturally significant web-based material from the UK domain". He won top prize in the blogging competition on The-Latest.
Sumantra Maitra is a freelance journalist from Mumbai, India. He is a correspondent for All Sports magazine, and a foreign affairs blogger for the Washington Examiner. He has written articles for news website Merinews.com and other regional publications. Sumantra runs a blog at DailyWorldWatch.wordpress.com. He provided exclusive eyewitness reports for The-Latest on the Mumbai bombings of 2008.
Brian Usher is photography consultant for The-Latest.Com. He is a highly experienced editorial and commercial photographer whose work has been published throughout the world, appearing in many well known magazines and newspapers. Brian has featured in several books and has been a writer for the Royal Photographic Society magazine.
Heidi Kingstone has spent time in Afghanistan reporting for a number of publications. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Spectator, The Sunday Times and other international journals. She has also reported from places like Iraq, Rwanda, Lebanon, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya. Heidi is The-Latest's Editor at large.
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