20 volunteers, 3 petrol stations, 4 banners, hundreds of leaflets, 3 police officers and one big bright shining sun... yup, it's Shellday!
Following major actions at Shell premises all over the world, Shellday was always going to be a big event, but I wasn't expecting quite such an impressive turn-out. For the first part of the day there were 20 volunteers at the first garage we visited in Southampton, many of whom had never been on a Greenpeace demo before but had been following the campaign online and decided join us for this massively important point in the campaign to Save the Arctic (or indeed #savethearctic if you like to tweet).
There was great support from passers-by - lots of beeps and thumbs-up - plus both the garage staff and police were pretty relaxed (the police seemed more concerned about us getting our bags stolen!). So, peaceful not-on-Shell-property demo in place, we leafleted until we could leaflet no more before moving on to the garage in Chandlers Ford. Much the same response there - including the patrons of a local pavement cafe who took an interest and were concerned we'd been moved on by the policeman who'd dropped by to see what was happening - fortunately this wasn't the case, it was just a few of us nipping off to get something to eat - so, everyone (with the exception of Shell presumably) was happy. It'll be interesting to see the event in print as one of the local newspapers said they would run the story - and to make it a 'hat-trick' for Southampton on Shellday, after Chandlers Ford comes another Southampton garage.
So don't forget, if haven't already done so, please tweet (using #tellshell) to tell Shell stay out of the Arctic and visit the campaign website were there are lots of other things you can do. This is just one event of many - 50+ around the UK today, plus events all over the world including in Canada, Russia, Lebanon, Hungary, Sweden and many more. Shell have been told...
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