Well, what a year! I don't think I've ever written an annual round-up like this before - it must be the new website going to my head... So, what did we actually do?
Digging through my exceedingly scruffy and scribbly 2009 diary (and equally scribbly memory), the thing we did most often was to have campaign stalls - sometimes tables at green fairs (I think we did 7 or 8 of these - in churches, pubs, Southampton Uni, all over the place really), sometimes a bunch of us with tabards and clipboards getting signatures in one form or another depending on the campaign - a lot of Big If (against new coal) and a LOT of Airplot including I think 3 dedicated Airplot weekends (certainly 2 local MPs have signed up, though we still need to poke our main target MP as he's finding it hard to make the right decision). This year we definitely moved away from the static table and towards roving bands - works for us! We even roved as far as Portsmouth... So, plenty of street campaigning, but what else?
After two of us went up to London for the Networkers' gathering at the end of Jan, we hosted an NVDA training day in Feb and a regional skillshare in March. Then there were Age of Stupid screenings - some we hosted, some we just publicised more widely; all good practice as we also had screenings of 'A Time Comes' (Kingsnorth activism) and 'End of the Line' (over-fishing), the latter being in real cinemas in Southampton and Winchester with local volunteers running campaign stalls.
The summer saw volunteers off to the festivals (I bumped into one at WOMAD) plus lending support to campaigns such as Climate Camp, Save Vestas (Isle of Wight wind turbine factory) and the Wave/Climate March. We planted an Airplot apple tree (see the photo) and later rescued it when the venue closed down, and others from the group could be seen now and again at direct actions at home and abroad. We also managed our own small and chilly Climate rally in Southampton for those who couldn't make it to Copenhagen itself...
Anything else? Yes actually - in the middle of this I managed to get married and acquire a house. We also said goodbye to quite a large proportion of our core group as several graduated and moved on to other things. So, 2010 sees the group smaller but with new members starting to appear and some longer-standing ones lending their considerable experience - there are several events already booked in for Feb which should see some volunteers getting active for the first time and some shiny new campaigns. Also, a re-launch event in the pipeline - details TBC so watch this space!
Still wondering about getting involved? You know you want to...
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