A lovely London day out!

This past Saturday was a very special day for Greenpeacers in London and made me appreciate this wonderful city once again. For the first time (well at least since I joined last year) all 11 London networks plus some friends from around the south east of England joined together in one massive day of campaigning and fun in central London. Our mission: turning VW away from The Dark Side!

I was allocated to team Endor (for all of you non-Star Wars freaks, this is the forest moon which is also home planet to the ewoks) which had set up outside the Tate Modern on the South Bank. Our team consisted of people from many different networks, including Islington, Greenwich and of course the West London group (yay). When I arrived the team had already been working hard and collected many signatures and were in high spirits. Our stormtrooper, Gillian, braved the freezing cold and hordes of little kids wanting to have a picture taken with her and swung her light sabre relentlessly (it has been pointed out by a few savvy walkers-by that stormtroopers actually don’t use light sabres, only the Jedi do).

People were mainly friendly and intrigued by our mission and we managed to collect many signatures. After more than 3 hours of campaigning we packed up and were invited by the friendly girls from the mulled wine stall for a lovely, steaming hot cup of mulled wine! Refreshed and warmed up we all headed over to Trafalgar Square where all the teams of the day met up for a final photo shoot. It was a nice surprise to find out that Santacon had chosen the same place to meet up and we were greeted by thousands of merry santas! Furthermore there was a friendly bunch of free-huggers, a dancing batman and street artists, what’s not to love?

The stormtroopers had their picture taken from any possible angle and with all the santas, too, and were then finally allowed to get out of the costumes we all headed to a pub in Islington afterwards for a well-deserved pint and pizza!

All in all it was a very successful day and hopefully all this work will help us get our message across to VW: Live up to your green image and turn away from The Dark Side!

Thank you Greenpeace for a lovely day out and about!