Caravan blog 3: Taking Brussels by storm!

We set off early from Lille, where we had been hosted by members of the Confederation Paysanne. We have had an incredibly warm welcome in all the places we’ve stayed, and Lille was no exception. Everyone from the caravan was put up by someone from the Confederation in their home, and we left early on Sunday morning well fed and well rested.

This was just as well, because from Lille we travelled to Brussels where we were being hosted by the Corporate Europe Observatory, an organisation campaigning against corporate lobbying and influence within EU policy. They had an action packed agenda ready for us, and we soon set of for an activist’s tour of Brussels...

Our first stop was the European Commission. The Commission is heavily influenced by corporate lobbyists who have been successful in pushing through aggressive trade agreements and flawed climate policies which favour high carbon industry, intensify the exploitation of natural resources and discriminate against developing countries. The EU’s climate policy is mainly based on carbon trading and other false solutions that benefit big business without tackling climate change.
 

We were joined there by the Belgian clown activists, who proceeded to entertain us with a bit of climate theatrics: they had created a huge makeshift thermometer, and as the temperature went up, more and more of their clothes came off! You may be pleased to hear they retained at least some of their dignity!
 

Having made a big noise outside the Commission, we moved on to our next target: BusinessEurope. These guys have co-written the aggressive Global Europe free trade strategy and are lobbying against effective action on climate change. Its members include big polluters like Arcelor Mittal, Bayer and Shell. We covered the front of their building with posters, labelling them as ‘climate criminals’, and demanding ‘system change, not climate change’. Again, members of the caravan spoke out to tell people in the building how their actions were causing destruction, displacement, and even death to people in their communities. Not to mention the impact they are having on climate change. Needless to say, no-one from BusinessEurope was prepared to come and speak to us.
 

From one bunch of climate criminals to the next, we were soon back on the bus and heading for a corporate giant that must be nearing the top of the list for environmental and social destruction, exploitation and devastation: Monsanto.
The world’s largest agrochemical company and promoter of genetically modified (GM) crops, Monsanto are now hoping to gain carbon credits through the production of crops which can be grown without ploughing the soil (ploughing the soil releases CO2 into the atmosphere). However, they are planning on doing this despite the fact that these very GM crops are replacing valuable forests and ecosystems, and displacing indigenous and rural communities, along with the traditional and environmentally sustainable farming methods that many of them use.

We turned up at the Monsanto offices armed with our banners, posters, and stories from the global south about the devastating effects of Monsanto’s GM crops, only to find that, according to the woman on the intercom, the whole of the staff body were in a meeting and unable to meet with us. Funny, they seem only too keen to meet with southern farmers when it suits them (i.e. when they visit them in their homes to con them into buying GM seeds). Having ruined the lives of many southern farmers, Monsanto no longer seem so keen to talk to these people when they come knocking on their door.
 

By the time we left Monsanto HQ we had picked up a police escort, who followed us to the Canadian Embassy. They had obviously got confused about who they were supposed to be keeping tabs on, as neither did they arrest the climate criminals working for Monsanto, nor did they charge anyone in the Canadian Embassy for failing to prevent murders in the name of Canadian multinationals in Colombia. I can only assume that something was lost in translation.
 

At the Embassy, one of the caravan members – a Canadian named Dave – entered with Jose Goyez (see previous blog) to demand that Canada take responsibility for the murders that have been occurring in Colombia by paramilitaries acting on behalf of the Colombian government to protect Canadian mining companies’ interests in the area of Causa. It took a long time for anyone at the embassy to even agree to see Dave and Jose, despite the urgency of the situation. In the end, they agreed to look into the claims, although it’s likely that this was a ruse to make us leave.
Since then, news has broken in Canada that three staff and former staff of a Canadian mining company, Blackfire Exploration Ltd, in Mexico have been charged with the murder of a Mexican activist. We very much hope that this means the Canadian government will now act on the abuses occurring in South America by Canadian multinationals.
 

Our activist tour of Brussels complete (or nearly – it’s astounding the amount of corporate and climate criminals in Brussels!), we headed back with our hosts for an evening of debate and discussion around GM soya, EU trade policy and renewable energy alternatives. It was quite a day, and a great evening, and I couldn’t sleep that night for dreaming about Copenhagen. There’s a lot of speculation now about what we should expect from the coming days, and many hopes and aspirations for what is to come. Although there don’t seem to be many people who hold out much hope for an agreement that will truly bring about climate and social justice, there’s a strong feeling that we will find hope and inspiration in each other, and that this may be the start of a new and progressive form of activism and campaigning. I’m definitely amongst those holding out hope.

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