Five Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for planning to block M25
Campaigners receive longest ever sentences for non-violent protest after being convicted of conspiracy to cause public nuisance
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Passing sentence on each of the defendants at Southwark crown court, the judge Christopher Hehir said: โThe offending of all five of you is very serious indeed and lengthy custodial sentences must follow.โ
Hehir admitted there was a scientific and social consensus that human-made climate breakdown was happening and action should be taken to avert it. โI acknowledge that at least some of the concerns motivating you are, at least to some extent, shared by many,โ he said.
โBut the plain fact is that each of you has some time ago crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic. You have appointed yourselves as the sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change, bound neither by the principles of democracy nor the rule of law.
โAnd your fanaticism makes you entirely heedless of the rights of your fellow citizens. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide that your fellow citizens must suffer disruption and harm, and how much disruption and harm they must suffer, simply so that you may parade your views.โ
Fuck everything about this judge.
How are they harming their fellow citizens? They planned a peaceful protest. Maybe someone else can find where they caused an issue bc I can't.
They planned a peaceful protest
No they didn't. They planned to shut the M25, one of the busiest motorways in the UK. Shutting that would force traffic onto all the roads around it, progressively gridlocking the entire south-east and causing misery for at least tens of thousands of people, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ran into six figures.
There's nothing peaceful about a massive DoS attack on the nation's infrastructure.
BTW before you bleat about protest being banned in the UK, no it isn't. Peaceful non-disruptive protest is enshrined in law and everyone has the right to protest about anything they want. What protesters don't have the right to do is disrupt the lives of those around them or to try to force the nation to capitulate to their demands by holding the country to hostage, which is exactly what those JSO wankers are trying to do, and is why they are so hated by so many people in this country.
JSO's message may well be 100% correct. It's not the message that's the problem, it's trying to force it down everyone's throats. You know how much you hate vegans and evangelical Christians? Well JSO is both of them put together on steroids.
Peaceful non-disruptive protest is enshrined in law and everyone has the right to protest about anything they want.
Name a protest that is non-disruptive and worked. Also giving someone a jail term bc they might cause a problem with a protest is not a valid point.
The planning part makes this suspect for sure.
But there are ways to peacefully protest without blocking a fuckin highway. People that do this should be slapped. I think they do more harm to their movement than a myriad of other options that donโt involve them pissing off everyone just trying to go about their lives.
There are people who would otherwise support their cause that are negatively affected by dumb decisions like this. While I donโt agree with the sentencing for planning a dipshit move like this, these people should consider better ways to make a statement.
Protesting is meant to be disrupting. Also, planning is greatly required to ensure a PEACEFUL PROTEST.
Disruptive for whom? Normal people with the same power as the protesters to change something? People who simply need to go to work to make ends meet?
Yeah, not the best tactic. It is however a great way to piss people off who otherwise would have supported the cause.
Saying anything different about the prospect of blocking a major highway is just downright naive.
Then join them. Disrupt the elites that created this problem and is sentencing them to 5 years. Or you can vote for people that will hold the elites accountable. Instead you are mad at people trying to help save your house.
I don't have a house.
I know you're annoyed, but you're also wrong. Nobody is like "ugh, I'm gonna go burn fossile fuels out of spite now". These kids are forcing everyone to thing about the climate crisis. We're way past little measurements. We need drastic protest for our politicians to start listening.
I wish I had your faith in humanity. Yep there are people that would burn more out of spite. And even more that would elect people being for moderate or no climate action.
This kind of disruption is exactly what climate change is doing - negativity affecting people just trying to go about their lives and make ends meet. Dumb decisions are being made which causes people with no choice in the matter to suffer.
The question is - why are you angry when poor people do it (on a limited scale, for a few hours) but not angry when rich & powerful people do it (to everyone, forever)?
That's the genius of this kind of protest. Clearly too genius for some, tho.
As dismissive your response isโฆWishing away the practical aspects of what I said, by looking at everything from an ideal perspective, doesnโt change real world application and results.
I could likely solve many world problems if human nature wasnโt a factor.
what is human nature? whatever you say? well i say you're wrong and human nature is working together for everyone's benefit. i've also presented exactly as much evidence as you have.
The media and people in general ignore non-disruptive protest. When protesting pollution, bringing motor vehicles to a halt is arguably a pretty good choice compared to, say, the stone henge (which I don't have a problem with either). Whether the optics are good is debatable. The media is mostly corporate owned, and they'll try to make any protest that goes against their interests look bad anyways. Which is probably why they only cover disruptive protests.
True. So the most appropriate solution would be for JSO to perform a LIMITED disruptive protest. This would - and we know because it did - hit the papers and everyone would know about it, spreading the message, and aside from those directly affected would gain them a lot of support.
But then you stop. You've done what you needed to. The message is out there, people are talking and thinking about it. And writing to their MPs to express support. And changing the nation's direction via legitimate democratic process.
This is where JSO went so badly wrong. They didn't/wouldn't stop. They kept on disrupting the lives of those around them. They kept ignoring complaints from the public and warnings from the police. They went on to chuck paint at artwork, snooker tables and Stonehenge*. By becoming a bunch of complete and utter wankmuppets they have destroyed any public support they might have had and are now little more than environmental terrorists.
*Yeah I know the details, decomposable powder blah blah. The point is: NOBODY CARES. The only response they get now is "oh no not fucking JSO again".
There are people who would otherwise support their cause that are negatively affected by dumb decisions like this
(Y) doubt.
The sort of people that wring their hands at leftists peacefully protesting are the same people whose hearts bleed for people who commit hate crimes or vote to dismantle human rights. They're either deliberately trolling or they are victims of propaganda with no ideological object permanence. Either way, you can't convince them by meeting their terms. The troll or the propaganda will move the goalposts, the centrists will follow, and it will be like you never did anything.
Everyone can empathize with people driven to crime because of how deeply they feel the current politics has it wrong. What differs is who people choose to extend that empathy to. If you don't empathize with the left, nothing you hear about them on the news you currently watch will change that. Everything will appear to have bad vibes.
As for the literal effect of blocking a highway for an hour - it causes fewer delays for cars on the M25 than one week of Tory public transit policy. The better public transit, the fewer people need cars, the fewer traffic jams. If such delays are truly unacceptable to you, you should find any candidate that isn't radical left revolting.
