Eight people aged from 80 to 2.5 traveled to London to lobby our MP. Some of us were from the Haven Eco church
The brilliant thing about the Climate Coalition is that it brings together people and organisations that have been campaigning for years (see the Soil Association in the gallery) along with new initiatives. The churches were really well represented and interfaith workshops at St Martin in the Fields that day were booked out long ago so we didn’t get a chance to go there, our own Rowan Williams was a key speaker and has been a campaigner for years.
NOW IS THE TIME…. It is the time for the churches to speak up about climate justice, to put our bodies were our hearts are, the tide is turning and the teachings of Jesus, his radical social justice and compassion are at the heart of this movement.
It was a really great day to be part of and very easy to take part….. we will let you all know about the next one!
Here is our response to our MP who didn’t come to see us. I think that he missed a great opportunity and you can see a photo of us all in the gallery looking sad!
Dear Mr Seely,
We were disappointed that didn’t get to meet with you at The Time is Now Lobby today. We, and a number of your constituents, had travelled to London from the Isle of Wight with a genuine intention of sharing our passion for the future of our planet. We feel that our beautiful Island has the potential to be a shining example of sustainability, regeneration and hope for the future. We would have liked the opportunity to speak to you and share ideas about how this could be realised. We know that you have made positive steps towards this and feel that this would have been a great opportunity for you to show your commitment to these aims.
The Island Echo published an article saying that we were coming to speak to you and we know that you had been informed that we were travelling up today with the intention of speaking to you. Therefore we were disappointed that when we called you at 1pm we were told that you were ‘at Lunch’ and then in subsequent calls that you were in meetings and could not attend. We would value a response to this email which we could include in our report back to the Echo.
Yours Sincerely,
Francesca, Tessa (4) and Alfred (2) Cooper
The Modern Kitchen Garden
And
Rev Alison Morley
Haven Benefice
Words from Steve Dominy our SW Christian Aid representative.
Great to see you yesterday afternoon… am I right in thinking you didn’t get to see Mr Seely or his representative? Booooo. Glad a bunch of you made it up from the Island – it seemed like a really good turn-out overall. Hope you were pleased to play your part! I’ve just seen a guestimate from the Climate Coalition that turn-out was in the 15-16k region and 225 MPs were directly lobbied. So the organisers are very pleased… I didn’t get to the multifaith speaker event prior to the lobby, but a colleague was moved by the words of the Quaker representative (a woman of far younger years than the senior male clerics representing other faiths/denominations!) ‘We must increase our baby steps and break into a run. We must confront injustice and hold our leaders to account. If there is God in everyone, we must act to protect those who have done the least to cause climate change.’
The Haven Eco-Church 