Just Stop Oil activists throw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers after fellow protesters jailed
theguardian.com
Three individuals targeted National Gallery paintings an hour after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed for similar attack in 2022
Climate activists have thrown tomato soup over two Sunflowers paintings by Vincent van Gogh, just an hour after two others were jailed for a similar protest action in 2022.
Three supporters of Just Stop Oil walked into the National Gallery in London, where an exhibition of Van Gogh’s collected works is on display, at 2.30pm on Friday afternoon, and threw Heinz soup over Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888.
The latter was the same work targeted by Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland in 2022. That pair are now among 25 supporters of Just Stop Oil in jail for climate protests.
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What are you even trying to say here? That any bastard with a camera and something to show will magically be seen, or that everyone with a smartphone is going to be aware of everything that affects them? Because neither of those things is remotely close to the way the world works.
You were aware of the JSO protesters shutting down the oil pipeline? If and that's a big "if" so, do you think the average schmuck is? No. But chances are that they're aware of the stunts like the soup.
Yes.
Agreed.
Which helps how? Does it end the reliance on fossil fuels? The world has been aware that fossil fuel dependence is causing global warming. What can you or I do about it? Nothing. We don't control the fossil fuel companies.
This whole idea that somehow "awareness" is going to do anything about this problem after decades of people doing these sort of stunts is ludicrous.
So we rely on isolated groups quietly engaged in direct action at a scale we know for a fact is inadequate to solve the problem while calling for the arrest of people protesting the apocalypse in a manner that can be cleaned up in five minutes?
What's your solution?
How about doing the hard work?
Every time I bring up Karen Silkwood and Erin Brockovich, people get very quiet.
Hard work - got it.
...what hard work?
Do you even know who the two people I'm talking about are? That might give you a clue.
BRB - picking up the law degree and plutonium contamination that would qualify me to do take any action in response to the apocalypse.
Neither of them had law degrees when they started and Karen Silkwood died before she even had the opportunity. But again, you apparently don't know about them or you would know that. I suppose throwing soup is also easier than learning about what activists who put the hard work in did as well.
You understand what a hilariously stupid position it is to insist that any action is invalid if it doesn't follow the actions of these two specific people, and that anyone that doesn't know Erin Brokovich didn't pass the bar before starting her action has an invalid opinion, don't you. I shouldn't need to point this out, nor should I need to point out the importance of diversity of tactics, but here I am.
Then I guess it's good that I didn't say any action, isn't it?
Putting words in someone's mouth is very dishonest.
You've done nothing but vaguely gesture at the concept of hard work, Brokovich and Silkwood. You'll have to forgive me if you've forced me to draw a point out of your vagueries - feel free to articulate one though.
I wasn't being vague at all. I gave two examples of people who achieved success when it came to environmental damage by doing more than performative actions because "awareness."
Throwing soup at paintings and gluing their hands to roads has achieved nothing. It doesn't make people who are already aware aware. It doesn't convince people who don't believe it that they are wrong. It doesn't keep something that is already in the news due to the endless extreme weather events in the news. It isn't what drives legislation.
It achieves nothing other than pissing people who are on the soup-throwers' side off.
I get it that you want easy solutions. There aren't going to be easy solutions.