Postcards, fast-forward

Posted by brianfit at 7:24 AM, July 4, 2004

Frode posted the neat summary below of the Iceland tour over at the cybercentre, and I thought I'd cross post it here. It was in response to someone who was aghast that we could talk about football and other diversions here rather than being full-time deadly serious outraged environmentalist grump-butts. To each his own. I've been a part of this campaign for more than a year now, and part of what has made it successful has been the optimism, humour, and willingness to try new things which Frode and the rest of the team have been putting out there. Emma Goldman's phrase still holds for me: I don't want to be a part of any revolution I can't dance to.

Just before I left the ship, the captain was showing us a collection of cards that he'd bought in a local shop. (He's a stamp collector.) One of them was a Greenpeace "Stop the Slaughter" postcard from a couple decades ago. I recognised it, because I used to hand these things out by the dozens every night when I was a canvasser for Greenpeace back in the 80s. There was something deeply encouraging about seeing that postcard -- handwritten from a woman in Wisconsin -- which spoke to me about persistance, and about how the smallest of efforts can carry on. But it also said something about how much Frode has done to make this campaign more effective, and how far Greenpeace has come since those days. Lecturing Iceland with a hectoring message and a shocking image sure made us feel better back in the 80s. But expressing our outrage isn't what it's all about. It's about doing whatever it takes to save the whales.

FRODE'S POST:

MV Esperanza in Reykjavik Wednesday this week: Several hundred persons on open ship, reception with OSPAR delegates (www.ospar.org) from among other Holland, France (incl. their commissioner to the International Whaling Commission), Spain, Sweden and Norway and even more importantly visits from Icelandic politicians and officials. We’re broadening from a debate on whaling in a vacuum to a debate on whales facing a multitude of threats; climate change, marine pollution, sonar, bycatch AND whaling. It’s very important for the work here.

The recent days we’ve seen a large pic of handshakes between the president of Althingi (the Parliament) and Greenpeace in the main paper Morgunbladid. "Oh well, just handshakes" you may think but this gesture would've been totally unthinkable some months ago. We’ve seen a local in an inflatable take action against us. That is, what looked like an action against us, was actually an action to greet us welcome because of the new approach. He waved us goodby with a GP flag when we departed! We’ve seen the youth branches of political parties from a fisheries community come onboard for a very good discussion. In the very same community at least 10 % of the poulation visited the ship. We’ve seen encounters with mayors, the tourism industry and other players. Too mention a few things.

July 5th we’ll issue the result of a new polling on whaling in Iceland.

It’s raining cats and dogs today. I couldn’t care less.

Feel free to contact me on frode@nordic.greenpeace.org if you’ve questions or input.

Frode