Im all happy from the success of the campaign to protect our public forests from the Infrastructure Bill but Im also feeling a bit bloody sad too. Already out of the woodwork large & corporate NGOs are using their resources to claim they are the ones that saved our forests. They bloody didnt. They were A PART of it, it was Hands Off Our Forest of Dean that put the majority of the work in, spending months trying to convince everyone that they needed to step up and do something about it. They ran themselves ragged trying to get people to listen and help them. Peers from the House of Lords listened and so did I as Save Our Woods. We worked together to get our public forests exempted. In the last 24 hrs 38 stepped up too which was amazing! But believe me when I say, the hard work had already been done. Let me tell you why this matters. Its NOTHING TO DO WITH EGO and EVERYTHING to do with how we are going to protect our environment. With the billions of resources (money, people, networks, media etc) that environmental NGOs have they have not managed to prevent the catastrophic decline and destruction of our environment. Im not saying theyre of no use and what they have done is great, however Im saying with what goes into them and what they have, the results arent great. Something has to change! Change is only going to come when you work from the bottom up. Empower PEOPLE in their communities to protect the landscape around them and join with others trying to protect our landscapes. When you run a grassroots campaign you do it with no money, no resources and no or minimal experience. So you work hard, it takes over your life and you sacrifice a lot to fight for what you believe in. So it is absolutely devastating when after youve slugged it out for months and successfully won your campaign an NGO jumps in to claim the credit. Which gets them even more resources and money and leaves the grassroots campaigners exhausted, deflated and horribly dissapointed. We should ALL be working together. Corporate attitudes are what has got us into this greedy mess and its certainly NOT getting us out of it. Sorry for the rant but Im FUMING. Whatever you read, please remember that it was Hands Off Our Forest that put the hard work in to this campaign and the rest of us just helped them. It takes much more than a petition to win a fight like this. Peace
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 18:01:46 +0000
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