Just Stop Oil activists jailed for throwing soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers
Just Stop Oil activists jailed for throwing soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers
This was the one soup-throwing which did any damage at all; in this case to the frame.
The penalty is appreciably worse than for minor violent attacks.
I said this before when JSO used "washable" paint on Stonehenge: they are punching in the wrong direction. Billionaires don't care about human life, so why would they care about a painting?
These works belong to humanity, and by defacing them, you aren't winning converts—you're just pissing people off. Go vandalize something that belongs to the billionaires making things worse for the rest of us; unless you can win people to your cause, you're going to remain small-time vandals that get outsized prison sentences and unflattering media coverage.
Unless you can demonstrate an actual harm that these people are doing to the cause, I am going to give them my support for doing SOMETHING. If it moves the needle a millionth of a percent in the right direction, tear down all the art galleries. We only have one planet.
Many of these cases have had jury nullification, which means a jury of twelve people who have been vetted to remove bias, all unanimously agreed to say "fuck you" to the legal system rather than lock up JSO activists.
That tells me that there is considerable public support for them, whatever you say to the contrary.
Edit: Here's a study about the actual problems facing the climate movement. Support isn't the issue:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01925-3
Abstract:
Mitigating climate change necessitates global cooperation, yet global data on individuals' willingness to act remain scarce. In this study, we conducted a representative survey across 125 countries, interviewing nearly 130,000 individuals. Our findings reveal widespread support for climate action. Notably, 69% of the global population expresses a willingness to contribute 1% of their personal income, 86% endorse pro-climate social norms and 89% demand intensified political action. Countries facing heightened vulnerability to climate change show a particularly high willingness to contribute. Despite these encouraging statistics, we document that the world is in a state of pluralistic ignorance, wherein individuals around the globe systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens to act. This perception gap, combined with individuals showing conditionally cooperative behaviour, poses challenges to further climate action. Therefore, raising awareness about the broad global support for climate action becomes critically important in promoting a unified response to climate change. Global support and cooperation are necessary for successful climate action. Large-scale representative survey results show that most of the population around the world is willing to support climate action, while a perception gap exists regarding other citizens' intention to act.
The abstract of that paper says that the real problem is people's lack of awareness of how incredibly high the support for climate action is, because that informs how likely they are to act.
In which case, all this hand-wringing about which actions increase or decrease support is a red herring, because the support is not actually in danger.
I would suggest that the real problem is people who handwring about the support creating the perception that the cause is less popular than it is.
The worse part is that they started with a plain wrong argument, this is not to attract the attention of billionaires, altough it can too. This is to catch the attention of everyone, to create a higher mass that is needed to change something, and tbh they are making more people aware of the issues, even if they get some stupid arguments against them when they are really doing no real harm as far as im aware.
Here's one study Pennsylvania University https://web.sas.upenn.edu/pcssm/commentary/public-disapproval-of-disruptive-climate-change-protests/
Do with it what you will.
Unless you can demonstrate an actual harm that these people are doing
The actual harm that people are doing is making the fight against big oil look like it’s being done by clueless morons. The proof is all the comments saying this very thing.
Yes, yes, they did something, and kudos there but not all press is good press.
But it’s not moving the needle, not at all ! It’s only fuelling antipathy towards environmental activism, and you can bet your favourite thing rightwingers are using that to pull centrists into their side.
These people didn't get a jury nullification, though, so clearly that doesn't apply here. I don't have a problem with all of their actions, just these that cause permanent or potentially permanent harm to historical artifacts.
And I disagree with your premise that history and its artifacts are a worthy sacrifice for any cause; that's how we get ignorant people and despots who weaponize that ignorance.
Doing "something" doesn't mean it's effective or worthwhile. I could throw soup on a painting, or I could spray paint a billionaire's mansion. I could paint Stonehenge, or I could sue the polluters. I could deface historical artifacts, or I could lobby a politician.
What they did is so dumb, and while I appreciate people who want to see anything done, making the news isn't some kind of event that will realistically "move the needle" and suddenly open the eyes of the ignorant.
This isn't to trigger billionaires. It's to trigger EVERYONE ELSE.
It’s triggering them. To think environmental activism is a joke.
Good job!
To do what, exactly? Become activist? Because regular people aren't going to see this and go, "Hmm, yes. I think I'd like to go pour gasoline on the Constitution."
If that's their plan, it seems to me they're effectively holding regular people hostage, while the billionaires causing the problems roam free and careless. "We're gonna keep breaking shit until you all do what we want!"
Regular people's power comes from voting and organizing, but you have to convince not just the activists like yourself but the moderates and centrists that your cause is worthy of giving up their status quo.
I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v0dYQ9t5WU
Tom Nicholas is really great in this piece. SLRPNK link
I'll just leave this here: https://web.sas.upenn.edu/pcssm/commentary/public-disapproval-of-disruptive-climate-change-protests/
Ya so they threw soup on a protective pain of glass in front of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, the painting is fine. The article confirms this but tries to downplay it for some reason.
From TFA “The pair of you came within the thickness of a pane of glass of irreparably damaging or even destroying this priceless treasure, and that must be reflected in the sentences I pass.”
Sooooo fucking close...
What's the earth worth?
Ah nevermind.
They jailed the suffragettes for pulling off ridiculous tactics. The suffragettes still won, because they were right, no matter what protest tactic they used.
Please elaborate on the suffragettes’ “ridiculous tactics”.
They won in spite of their tactics, because the terrorism they caused didn't actually work.
The boycott makes a innocent sufferer of the bus company. Had the company defiled city and state laws its franchise would have been canceled. The quarrel of the Negroes is with the law. It is wrong to hold the company hostage.
-The Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery Alabama, Dec 8, 1955
The white man's economic artillery is far superior, better emplaced, and commanded by more experienced gunners.
Second, the white man holds all the offices of government machinery. There will be white rule for as far as the eye can see.
Are these not the facts of life?
Let us be specific, concrete. What is the cost is the bus boycott to the Negro community? Does any Negro leader doubt that the resistance to the registration of Negro voting has been increased? Is economic punishment of the bus company - an innocent hostage to the laws and customs of Alabama - worth the price of a block to the orderly registration of Negro voters?
-The Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery Alabama, Dec 13, 1955
Posting this for no particular reason every time I see folks complaining about protestors "not protesting the right way"
People who get angry at Just Stop Oil tactics are just showing their ignorance of civil rights and protest history.
Yeah I just pissed on some lady to stop big oil. Like The Civil Rights Protestors!! And they’re telling me I protested wrong! HA!!
I'm all for stopping oil, but this fills me with sadness
I'm all for stopping oil, but this fills me with sadness
Why? Because they got some glass dirty?
Why was soup chosen over any other liquid?
Hard to find Rams' Blood in a can at the grocery store, this time of year.
Oil is yucky?
I mean they are at least right that it was painted with oil paints but painted way before oil was a problem. They should be throwing soup on gas pumps, just go around and dump it all over the pump. Dump it on oil trunks too, like inside the cabs.
I would be 100% for this.
I hope that young people learn from this.
Same. I hope they learn this is an extremely dumb way to protest oil.
Redirect your resources into sinking megayachts, kids.
Yeah: the lesson here is that if you're gonna get punished like an ecoterrorist for harmless protesting anyway, you might as well just do actual ecoterrorism instead.