Just Do It: A Tale of Modern-day Outlaws Page #9

- Yes.

Good, nice, like it.

Are you pleased with your choice?

- No.

- I wasn't either.

I think they're trying

to trick everybody.

All right, well,

you didn't vote for me, I'm guessing?

I'm standing as an independent,

Sophie Nathan.

I set up my own party

called the Post-Capitalist party

for a life beyond profit and growth.

You never know.

Fingers crossed.

Back out near Heathrow,

Lily and the Plane Stupid crew

are about to try something different.

Today, we're starting the first big

project of Transition Heathrow.

We've taken a piece of land

which was in a state of disrepair.

It's got these beautiful green houses.

We'll have a land clearing weekend.

We're going to get our community down

and get people to decide

what they want to happen here.

I'm a council tax payer.

They're welcome in this village.

The locals have been backing us

in this project.

They keep dropping around

bags of food

and just dropping in blankets

and sleeping bags and everything,

making sure we're warm,

joining us at night.

So everybody's really excited

about what it could become.

When Climate Camp came and these

young people came to support us,

we haven't looked back.

It's the autonomy of a project

like this that makes it direct action.

It's disregarding the existing power

structures and doing it ourselves.

When my life's over,

I hope that my contribution to it

added something positive

rather than took something away.

If you want the future world to be

a certain way, or to be different,

then we should start to pre-figure

that future world in the here and now,

and be the change we want to see.

We've started something

and our hearts are into finishing it.

So we hope we are winning.

If we're not,

we'll take a rain check

and we'll be in there doing something.

- We'll be in there doing something.

- Will it be legal?

It won't be legal.

You can definitely bank on that.

Don't know the meaning of that word.

I want to see a future

where people work together

and create things together and have

control over their workplaces

and their housing and their lives.

That's really important to me.

I don't want to sell my time to people

to do jobs I don't care about to gain

a lifestyle which won't make me happy.

I want to carry on working with people

in this way.

Everything's changed for me

about the future.

If you were going to sum it up

in one word, it's anti-capitalism.

But, for a lot of people,

that doesn't mean anything.

I think what we need to understand

is the connections.

The system that puts profit over

people is the same one driving this.

Revolution!

I can see the end of capitalism

as the only rational solution

to solving climate change.

I've tried thinking and reading

about all sorts of different things.

Every time it comes back

to money and power.

I see capitalism as the epitome

of money and power.

It worries the people

in power what we're saying.

You've got to ask why.

Because it's not threatening

to anyone.

It's asking for a better quality

of life for everyone else.

If capitalism wants to stop that,

then capitalism has to go.

The yield of something is limited

only by your imagination.

A site like this is giving so much

in different ways,

in ways that I didn't think about

before we started talking about it,

like being drawn together

by principles of growing.

They're rebuilding a community

blighted by the threat of the airport.

We're doing a fundraiser

for the Grow Heathrow project,

a thank you to everyone

who's helped set up this project,

who are currently involved

in keeping it all going,

and a way to celebrate how much

we've achieved in such a short time.

Because we couldn't have done it

alone.

Yeah, I'm the sous chef.

He's in charge, he's head chef.

I'm just helping out.

So our tale is coming to a close.

But before we say goodbye,

Rowan's got one last story for us.

We had a plan

to shut down Didcot Power Station.

We ended up at four in the morning,

a convoy of maybe 20 of us.

Cycled straight past

security barriers,

split into two groups.

One group was headed

for the coal conveyor belt,

and the other group

headed for the chimney.

I was in the chimney team.

Got to the base of the chimney,

cut the lock off the gate.

We got inside.

We ran up this chimney.

We thought we were being chased.

And it was a spiral staircase,

a square spiral staircase going up.

We had no idea

of how high we were.

It was pitch black.

We only had torches.

You can't see anything.

It's just a void below and above.

It was like, "We're screwed. "

We thought we were halfway up.

And then someone was like,

"I can see stars. "

And we realized we were at the top.

We cheered and it was amazing.

We got out on top

and it was like a flood of endorphins,

an unbelievable feeling.

The police begin removing the

other crew locked on a conveyor belt.

Give me a feeling about

what your intentions are.

- We intend to be here three days.

- Three days?

Any particular reason why three days?

Because that's how much food

we've got.

By day three, the power station

had stopped burning coal.

Their supplies running low,

but mission accomplished,

Rowan and crew came back down

to face the consequences.

So were you making a point

or stopping emissions?

We were doing both.

We were making a point

that this shouldn't be continued.

We were trying to make a point

to RWE NPower,

who owned Didcot Power Station,

that this isn't a good thing to do

and you shouldn't plan to build

new coal firepower stations.

At the same time, we were directly

stopping carbon emissions.

I'm not in the way now.

Are you going to stand up for us?

She's not actually in the way.

You're quite right.

This is what I'm living to do now,

cos it needs to be done.

I hope that doesn't sound nonsense.

It's what life is all about.

There is more to life than

being judged on your ability to shop,

based on an income

and what you've accumulated.

I think we all still agree

that the spirit is still

an important aspect of humanity.

And it's to be expressed and lived,

and I try to do that.

I can't help doing that.

People think "I can't glue or lock on,

I don't want to be arrested. "

It doesn't matter. Get involved.

I started off making tea.

Now I'm just like, "Oh, bloody hell,

come on, let's sit down here. "

If anyone out there is thinking,

"I want to do more", just do it.

Doing something is better

than nothing?

Absolutely.

Doing nothing about climate change

makes climate change worse.

So even doing a little something

is better than doing nothing?

And I don't mean "I recycle".

I don't mean that.

I mean civilized disobedience.

Do it.

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