A new film launching on July 15th gives an in-depth look inside the clandestine world of environmental direct action. 'Taking tea is what the British do whenever they are in a difficult circumstance', says Marina Pepper, obsessive tea maker, community activist and domestic extremist. She's served tea to bailiffs, the police, politicians, and factory workers. What makes her a domestic extremist is that she 'cares passionately about politics on a global level but works on it on a local level' but has 'gone well beyond, in my climate change activities recycling and walking the kids to school. I put my body in the way and I don't mind being arrested'.
A new film launching on July 15th gives an in-depth look inside the clandestine world of environmental direct action. 'Taking tea is what the British do whenever they are in a difficult circumstance', says Marina Pepper (pictured below), obsessive tea maker, community activist and domestic extremist. She's served tea to bailiffs, the police, politicians, and factory workers. What makes her a domestic extremist is that she 'cares passionately about politics on a global level but works on it on a local level' but has 'gone well beyond, in my climate change activities recycling and walking the kids to school. I put my body in the way and I don't mind being arrested'.
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Just Do It, a film that launches in London on July 15th, is a close-up look at environmental direct action. It explores the question of why people like Marina do what they do.
While mainstream media often portray them as violent hooligans and tend to sensationalise their actions as dangerous to the general public, the truth is far from this, and Just Do It puts a human face on the people whose actions are, depending on your standpoint, courageous, empowering, inexcusable, humourous or frightening.
It tells the story of Sally, another character in the film, a Cambridge student who grapples with the prospect of getting arrested as she chains herself to Lord Mandelson's house to raise awareness of the closing of a wind turbine factory.
Or Oscar, who just wants to do something, not content, 'just watching the world go to [s@#$]'. Be they students, professionals, parents, their circumstances are varied but what they all share is a sense of urgency to do something about climate change.
Article continues: http://www.theecologist.org/how_to_make_a_difference/campaigning_the_basics/962680/just_do_it_the_story_of_modernday_outlaws.html
Photo credit: http://www.care2.com/news/member/193692282/2722330
