‘If you’re not scared, you’re not paying attention’ those were the chilling words of one Just Stop Oil protester in an organised interview last month. Just Stop Oil is a protester-based organisation in the UK. Their demands are to avert the UK away from the impending climate crisis. They also want to target the ‘group of criminals sitting in parliament’ and ‘[the] world leaders driving us to extinction’. 

Within theJust Stop Oil organisation there are many young adults and parents within the organisation who have joined to try and secure a place for their children in the future on this planet. One protester named Phoebe exclaimed ‘You should befeeling shock and horror and fear’ and Anna Holland - famed forcontroversially  throwing soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers said ‘ As a child it’s not unnormal to worry about the future’. 

When asked about why the Sunflowers were targeted, she said ‘In order to create shift weneed to impact art and culture’. They also said 'I don't know if I would call Van Gogh a target of our protest’ and ‘ He used ‘Sunflower’ to represent hope and what’s more fitting for our protest ?’

Just Stop Oil also addressed the media saying ‘We do this for the media’ and we need to ‘Tell the truth [and] call out this criminal government’. And they demanded that ‘[we should] get it in the news everyday’ and to ‘educate and inform’.

One person whose story really interested me was Graham’s. He was an ex-Shell employee. He was interested in creating renewable energy sources so Shell could be more environmentally friendly however he says ‘The research I did, they didn’t implement’ and ‘[the damage of Shell] slowly grew on [him] over time’ and because of that Graham left Shel and joined Just Stop Oil to attempt to stop the climate crisis.

The Just Stop Oil members left us with a chilling message ‘if the government doesn’t listen, we will all die’. And that’s why they are doing what they are doing.  

 

 

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