November 2008: I’m sitting in the bright autumn sunshine by a busy road in the heart of Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England. I’m at the Camp Bling road protest site (www.campbling.org), where three years ago we first built a small tree house with a view to occupying the route of a highly controversial and hotly opposed dual carriageway scheme.
The occupation by local activists was purely a strategic one to deter central government decision makers who might provide construction funding for the local authority project, but we unintentionally sparked off the beginnings of a thriving and often lively community and counter-culture within the seaside town.
For many people who have been disempowered by local representative politics, we provide a different space to drop into: somewhere to spend time, to share stories and company, and somewhere to be part of a situation that for once is on our own terms. The action to defend the site is less abstract and much closer to home for them in comparison to dealing with issues such as climate change on a global level.
Many of the past and present occupants have also arrived via the mainstream environmental movement. Experience gained from many campaigns both won and lost over the years has helped our understanding that overall the world situation continues to deteriorate, as the issues we voiced begin to gather apace and run out of control.
On September 23rd we marked three years of community occupation with an emergency relaunch in response to environmental catastrophe as it unfolds. What started as a campaign against the road has now also become about a different view of how we see the world after our very own paradigm shift. The age of exuberance is long over, now we prepare for crash in the only way we know how – by facing up to it together.
Years ago when I worked in the auto industry, there was a marketing term known as ‘white space’ which defined an unoccupied gap in the market. I think about the definition often and consider that Bling has now joined the handful of others in the environmental equivalent of this phrase. Events had overtaken us and our single issue message to the point where we felt compelled to take the leap to become overtly and explicitly counter-cultural in all that we do.
Another way of saying this is that we couldn’t hold back any longer for fear of challenging the business as usual mindset. Thanks to the thinking of people like Jan Lundberg at Culture Change and Derrick Jensen, plus our hard earned experiences from the road, we knew that the western industrialised system as it is currently configured could not and should not be saved.
So here we are; a small band of people coming together to defend a piece of the earth, and to help each other through both the good and the bad times. A flashback to the past – or just one small blueprint for the future maybe?
Whatever your passion, we hope that you find your Camp Bling equivalent.
squersh on behalf of the Camp Bling road protest: