Inflation. High food and energy bills. Food banks. War. Genocide. We live in dark times, but a glimmer of hope can be found through spirit and community. On a chilly but sublime Thursday evening in early Spring, James Sebley and his fellow activists did that.
Get Going Event: Sharing for a Better World was various things: a social gathering; a pitch to get people thinking about how fossil fuels are driving multiple crises including the climate emergency and cost of living; a recruitment drive to activate more people; and a coming together of the local community to share ideas/items. We also collected for local food bank North End Pantry located in North End Baptist Church.
It started off on shaky ground with tech issues affecting our presentation. We couldn’t connect to the projector screen so disaster! People were flowing in and I was panicking, trying to connect Tony’s laptop to the TV using Bluetooth. We realised we could make do and they were right. Tony’s brilliant presentation was interactive and engaging, and gave the audience the impetus to control the direction of the discussion.
We then had a lovely song from the Portsmouth Climate Choir who made up a vast section of our attendance. We then promoted other local campaigns/events before coming to the main focus of our event. Our wonderful volunteer, who with her partner David (famous local activists), turned out to be the heart and soul of the event by coming up with the core seed of why we were here.
Viola had read and was a fan of a book called Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Its themes are honourable harvests and sharing new and old ideas. From this book sprung the idea that I instantly fell in love with: coming together in the name of community to share seeds, books, food, tools and other resources. It worked too – I brought a book about the art of activism, David brought wild garlic leaves for example. There was also a free vegan pizza buffet. Everyone sat in small groups (perfect for a quiz later on, wink wink) and discussed what they had brought and the kind of world they wanted to see. They weren’t telling people what to think, but allowing the onus to be everyone to discover together what we wanted to see in a positive and open way.
Between the songs, David and Viola gave readings of poems, which filled our hearts. Finally, was a chance to push home a message about the corrupt profiteering nature of our fully privatised energy system, which allows greedy gas companies to set the price of our electricity, even though Gas is the most expensive energy source 90% of the time, while we use a record amount of clean cheap abundant renewables. This information was delivered by a dodgy and laughter-inducing quiz. We finished with another Climate Choir song but this time everyone took part and the harmony wasn’t just with our voices; the whole room was joined in community and spirit.
The event had everything and was a warm, special evening I’ll remember forever. We even got a few sign-ups… there is hope.
Photo courtesy of Portsmouth Climate Choir.
