Quakers host major climate justice festival

‘Quakers recognise that our current economic system fuels inequality and climate breakdown.'

Almost 1,000 people gathered at Friends House last month as it played host to a major climate festival.

With speakers including Mikaela Loach, Jeremy Corbyn, Mick Lynch and Naomi Klein, the ‘And Still We Rise’ festival aimed to forge global solidarity, and build solutions to intersecting global crises.

As one of the many workshops on offer, Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) held a session on spiritual activism. Paul Parker, recording clerk for BYM, said: ‘In this bumper election year, seeing all our struggles as interconnected has never been so important.

‘Quakers recognise that our current economic system fuels inequality and climate breakdown. We were delighted to support this festival, and all those working so hard for global climate justice.’

Elections are due in at least sixty-four countries this year, as well as the European Union, representing forty-nine per cent of the world’s population. ‘Meanwhile, from wildfires in Chile to floods in Pakistan, countries who have done the least to contribute to the climate emergency find themselves on the frontline of dealing with it,’ said BYM.

Sheila Taylor, from Bermondsey Meeting, who attended the festival, told the Friend: ‘It was an extraordinarily successful event, with amazingly diverse speakers and audience.’

She particularly enjoyed the concluding ceremony, when ‘the very last speaker, Mick Lynch, of the RMT union, looked across the packed hall’ and paid tribute to Quakers: ‘It’s appropriate that we’re here in the Society of Friends. Because that’s what we’re trying to build – a society of friends – around the world,’ he said. ‘And it’s great that we have the peace banner at the back – we must have that up again. Because this organisation who are hosting us today of course has stood out for centuries in the name of peace, in the name of dissent, in the name of the struggle. They’re not perfect. None of us are. And they have their own history. But it’s great that we’re here in the Society of Friends, trying to repledge ourselves – if you like – to the work that we all do in our own ways, and for the society that we want to build for the future.’

Other speakers at the event included indigenous activists from Latin America, defending their land from destructive mining corporations; Sri Lankan garment workers; and workers’ rights advocates from Pakistan.

The festival on 24 February was organised by the charity War on Want.

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