Shared Planet

This last weekend... the 4th and 5th... I traveled on a coach with 60 other students to London early Saturday morning. We were stocked with sleeping bags, a map, and a sack lunch and told to meet back at the bus stop at 3:00pm the following day. After checking in our baggage for the day, we made our way to the headquarters of the Shared Planet Conference. You can go to http://peopleandplanet.org/events/sharedplanet/ to see more about it. Basically, it pulled together students from all over the UK to learn about and protest Global Warming.
First thing, we followed a conference leader to the very front of a loooonnnnggg parade. A famous artist had designed signs and banners for the marchers to hold and it was all very eye catching. We marched to encourage the government to act on the last of the international talks taking place in Africa coming up soon about climate change. We marched, sang "bp, Exxon, shell, we don't want your climate hell!", and danced to the samba band along with hundreds of other students. The parade ended in Trafalgar Square where the giant I Count movement had drawn thousands of people... you may have seen it on the news. The crowds were incredible! There were all types of protest groups there. We tried to make our way through the throngs of people to find a spot where we could see the giant stage and the speakers there but it was really too impossible.

So we left Trafalgar Square and made our way to Covent Garden where we ate lunch (very expensive… London is the third most expensive city in the world) at a small little sidewalk café. We then, with the aid of our map, walked for about 20 minutes to the headquarters of Shared Planet to register for workshops for Sunday morning. After registering for two workshops: “Unraveling the Occupation of Iraq” and “International Climate Politics,” we watched one of the movies they offer. It was about the Tibetan Football (soccer) team and their attempt to create a national team. Unfortunately, the long day had caught up with me and I fell promptly asleep. I heard it was good though.

The party that night was organized by Shared Planet and had a few live bands playing. We stayed for awhile but then, struggling to stay awake, decided to go to sleep. This required going back to get our luggage, walking to a near sports centre, checking in, and spreading out our sleeping bags a tiny designated spot of this huge gym. Not too many people were there yet so we were able to find a place in a corner and not right in the middle of everyone. We all felt very much like refugees.

The next morning when I woke up, the huge gym was covered in hundreds of sleeping bags full of sleepy college and university students. We checked our bags in for the day once more and sleepily bought some breakfast in a grocery store and ate it on the floor of a near train station, which was warmer than staying outside. We then walked to our workshops.

The “Unraveling the Occupation of Iraq” workshop was led by a man who has been protesting the Iraq war since well before the current occupation. He basically related some of his experiences and explained what his organization protests. It was interesting but didn’t relate too much new information. The second workshop was mostly about the carbon market. I knew something of this “Economist’s solution to carbon emissions” but not much. It was very interesting and, sadly, would have been even more enlightening if I had been less sleepy. Oh well.

We had a couple hours left in London so we decided to get some food. We found a small café and ordered our bagel sandwiches. We returned to Covent Garden because it was close and walked around the vendors. We returned to get our luggage and found ourselves back on the bus home. I slept the whole way back to school. We were soooo glad to be back!!