Greenwash Guerrillas confront the Guardian – Mon 15 Jun 09

Date­line: the­guardian CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT 2009, Hotel Rus­sell, Lon­don, UK, 08:30–09:30, Mon 15 Jun 09 – Despite cli­mate crim­i­nal cor­po­ra­tion E.ON’s efforts to bag bil­lions of quid from the British State to build new filthy dirty coal fired pow­er sta­tions at Kingsnorth, north Kent and else­where, the Guardian still took its pol­lut­ed mon­ey in spon­sor­ing its Cli­mate Change Sum­mit. What­ev­er next?

* the­guardian MULTICULTURAL SUMMIT 2009, spon­sored by the BNP?
* the­guardian GEOGRAPHY SUMMIT 2009, spon­sored by the Flat Earth Soci­ety?
* the­guardian ABORTION RIGHTS SUMMIT 2009, spon­sored by the Soci­ety for the Pro­tec­tion of Unborn Chil­dren?

The Green­wash Gueril­las, Lon­don Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1 could not let this obscen­i­ty go un-protest­ed!

Vidz at YouTube

• Green­wash Guer­ril­las – 1. Action
» youtube.com/watch?v=NzEASynZxck

• Green­wash Guer­ril­las – 2. Inter­views
» youtube.com/watch?v=M5A6NYpvArs

An excel­lent full colour spoof edi­tion of the Guardian, using the news­pa­per’s own arti­cles from the last year to expose the destruc­tive role E.ON is play­ing in the UK’s fight against cli­mate change, was avail­able en mass for dis­tri­b­u­tion to sum­mit atten­dees, and a cou­ple of plucky com­rades infil­trat­ed the venue ear­ly doors to dis­trib­ute them.

Green­wash Gueril­las actions work best with­out inter­fer­ence from the filth, but because this event had already attract­ed activist atten­tion…
• Green­wash Alert — Guardian Cli­mate Change Sum­mit (17 Apr 09)
» www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/leedsbradford/2009/04/427737.html
…a Press Release was pub­lished in advance…
• Green­wash Guer­ril­las Tar­get­ing Guardian Cli­mate Change Sum­mit (14 Jun 09)
» www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/06/432268.html
…and sure enough Plod turned up mob-hand­ed.

How­ev­er… the cop-in-charge, a Sgt Salt­marsh – EK 10, was unlike any cop I’ve come across before – com­mu­nica­tive, co-oper­a­tive, open to com­pro­mise and nego­ti­a­tion, even charm­ing, while at the same being con­trol­ling and coer­cive. As we donned our white ‘green­wash haz­ard’ suits in leafy Rus­sell Square, he approached us and told us of the pen we’d be restrict­ed to, on the oppo­site cor­ner of a cross­roads from the sum­mit entrance to the Rus­sell Rooms in the Rus­sell Hotel, where­in the sum­mit was being held. But… although he men­tioned that our two infil­tra­tor com­rades were eject­ed from the venue, he said he’d made sure a copy of our spoof Guardian was on every atten­dees seat inside. Whether this was actu­al­ly so remains unver­i­fied. And… I found it easy to nego­ti­ate free­dom from being penned for media news gath­er­ers (myself and a video­g­ra­ph­er doc­u­men­tary film-mak­er), such that when a cou­ple of cop bot­tom-feed­ers tried to inter­fere with my record­ing the event on cam­era, I could say, “We’ve already secured a free­dom arrange­ment for media work­ers with your sergeant – you need to speak to him,” which ter­mi­nat­ed their inter­fer­ence and put them on the defen­sive.

We ini­tial­ly occu­pied the wide pave­ment space out­side the sum­mit entrance, and lashed our TOXIC GREENWASH HAZARD ban­ner to the rail­ings flank­ing the Rus­sell Rooms entrance. A hotel man­ag­er emerged and began tak­ing it down – and in a lat­er con­fab with Sgt Salt­marsh, got his smug grin wiped off his face (oh, for a sen­si­tive rifle micro­phone!). While threat­en­ing us with arrests under Sec­tion 12, Pub­lic Order Act 1986, Sgt Salt­marsh agreed to com­pro­mise over the loca­tion of the pro­test­er pen, and got his under­lings to drag crash bar­ri­ers across Her­brand Street to oppo­site the Rus­sell Rooms entrance. And two non-haz­ard-suit­ed com­rades were “allowed” to hand copies of our spoof Guardian to sum­mit atten­dees as they arrived. But the modus operan­di rai­son d’être of Green­wash Gueril­las – con­sen­su­al­ly run­ning e‑scanners over arriv­ing sum­mit atten­dees, and inter­pret­ing the scan­ners’ “moop-moop-NEEK” noise as “TOXIC GREENWASH DETECTED”, as both a street-the­atri­cal per­for­mance AND a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion-starter – was com­plete­ly negat­ed by Sgt Saltmarsh’s impo­si­tions of Pub­lic Order Act con­di­tions.

But… in con­ver­sa­tions after­ward, he inti­mat­ed that his post-event intel­li­gence report would empha­sise how fluffy, peace­ful, and (if only under the coer­cive threats of mul­ti­ple Sec­tion 12 arrests) ulti­mate­ly co-oper­a­tive the Green­wash Gueril­las were on this occas­sion. Who knows – maybe in future he’ll have no grounds for pre-judg­ing our actions to entail a threat of “seri­ous pub­lic dis­or­der, seri­ous crim­i­nal dam­age or seri­ous dis­rup­tion to the life of the com­mu­ni­ty”, and we can protest with­out arrest threats? But I’m not hold­ing my breath, so to speak – bet­ter by far to only send advance Press Releas­es embar­goed until the action’s start time, or only send them at the action’s start time, so we’ve a high­er chance of peace­ful protest with­out ANY inter­fer­ence and obstruc­tion from the filth.

What­ev­er Next?
I rec­om­mend anoth­er Gov­ern­ment of the Dead protest pro­duc­tion:
“New” Labour Zom­bie Lunchtime Lurch
• Date: Thu 18 Jun 09, 13:00 & lurch­ing onwards to 15:00
• Ren­dezvous: “New” Labour Par­ty HQ, 39 Vic­to­ria St, Lon­don, SW1H 0HA
• Shout Out: Brown bare­ly sur­vived the Par­lia­men­tary Labour Par­ty meet­ing on Mon 08 Jun 09. Since he’s hang­ing on for grim death, we can look for­ward to a peri­od of “Zom­bie Dead Man Walk­ing” gov­ern­ment in the run up to an elec­tion. Can we take the pow­er to the streets? YES WE CAN!!
• Who-What: The Gov­ern­ment of the Dead will be send­ing a whole lurch of zom­bies down there to “New” Labour Par­ty HQ on Thu 18 Jun, from 13:00 lunchtime, when zom­bies could be hun­gry. Zom­bies are not known for their sense of direc­tion, so they could head off to Par­lia­ment and Down­ing Street at a slow shuf­fle, or they might end up stag­ger­ing across St James’ Park to Buck­ing­ham Palace, demand­ing to be dis­solved and put out of their mis­ery.
• Dress Code: this can be ordi­nary clothes, but torn up or blood­stained is a good look, espe­cial­ly with trendy blairite suits; on the oth­er hand, why not go for the goth­ic?
• Make­up: green/white pale skin, good healthy look for a zom­bie, blood, wounds, sores all rec­om­mend­ed; PVC glue gives good skin-peel effect.
• Loco­mo­tion: SLOW, gets there in the end.
» Loca­tion & Pub­lic Trans­port Map: tinyurl.com/NLZLL-map
» Face­book Event Page: tinyurl.com/NLZLL-FB
» Web: tinyurl.com/GotDead-future