In Leicester we joined the ‘Now We Rise‘ Day of Action. As world leaders gathered in the UAE for COP28, the Climate Justice Coalition called for mobilisations across Britain on 9 December.
Thursday 7th December at 6pm, Nick Dearden will be giving the annual lecture of the Nottingham University based Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice. The talk is entitled ‘Pharmaeconomics: How Big Pharma Destroys Global Health’. You are invited to join this Zoom-only event.
Here is the link to register for the talk. Please join us.
Saturday 9th December at Noon – Now We Rise (organised by Leicester Friends of the Earth)
Meet at Leicester Clock Tower for a short march to the Town Hall Square where we’ll form a human oil slick for a mass photo, calling on the UK government to stop extracting fossil fuels and support the people most affected by chimate change. Dress in black if you can.
This is the Global Day of Action for the COP28 UN Climate Summit. People across the world will be calling for climate justice and human rights.
More information can be found here.
Global Justice Leicester and Leicestershire joined other members of the WarmHomesLeics Coalition.
It was brilliant to meet so many local groups and individuals who shared our determination to call on the government to take Climate Change seriously.
Members of the WarmHomesLeices are given below (with new groups joining us all the time):
Our WarmHomesLeics Coalition is part of a national United for Warm Homes campaign with local and national groups across the country.
Together, over the next 6-12 months, we aim to build enough pressure on our MPs and their political parties to get the current (or failing that, the next) government to do the following:
Find out more on the Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire website
Have you asked your MP to sign the Warm Home Pledge? – if not, send a message to your MP on the Warm Homes website.
The aim of the Leicester and Leicestershire Warm Homes coalition is to get the government to tackle fuel poverty and the climate
crisis by building public pressure and making Warm Homes an election issue.
We are asking government to:
– Provide more (and properly targeted) financial support for people in fuel poverty now
– Put in place a nationwide street by street home insulation programme
– Provide real support for renewable energy generation
– End support for the fossil fuel industry.
Global Justice Leicester and Leicestershire joined local climate campaigners to give out leaflets in Leicester City centre – outside Barclays bank. We had good conversations with passers by. People were concerned about climate change and were keen for action to be taken to stop banks making profits at the expense of our planet’s future.
From 2016-2022, the UK’s ‘Big Four’ banks (Barclays, HSBC, Natwest and Lloyds) provided over £300 billion in funding to the fossil fuel industry. Barclays made £7 billion in profit in 2022.
In the same year around 25% of Pakistan was covered in water due to flash floods and the UK saw record heat of over 40 degrees.
Find out more by reading the leaflet: Make Polluters Pay for Climate Chaos
Have you signed the petition: Make pollutes pay for their climate damage?
We are a small group, but through membership of Global Justice Now, are encouraged to make a difference – by joining with campaigners throughout the UK.
In April members of Global Justice Leicester and Leicestershire joined ‘The Big One‘ in London. This was organised by Extinction Rebellion. It was a four day action, where people from over 200 groups and movements, gathered throughout Westminster and at the Houses of Parliament. We are in the middle of a Climate Emergency and were asking politicians to take the situation seriously… not make decisions based on the number of votes that will be gained.
On April 24th 2013 the Rana Plaza building collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 1134 garment workers and leaving 2,500 workers injured. Some of the injured are unable to work 10 years after the tragedy. Many people were working for manufacturers that are well known in this country – we may have bought clothes from the people who suffered during this disaster.
The Rana Plaza event in Highfields, Leicester on April 24th 2023 was to remember the people who needlessly lost their lives working in an unsafe building – and to renew the call for clothes manufacturers to provide decent pay and working conditions for all of their workers.
Duing the meeting we also heard about the working conditions of garment workers in Leicester. Our clothes are often produced by people working long hours with low pay. As a Global Justice Now local group we hope to support this important campaign. When we buy cheap clothes, it is likely that the garment workers were not paid much for their work.
The conference theme this year was ‘Sustainability ? Survival or Shutdown’.
Global Justice Now resources were greatly appreciated and it was brilliant that so many of the resources had been produced in the last few months.
Have you read the booklet ‘Monopoly Capitalism – what is it and how do you fight it‘. It is well worth downloading.
The FIVE biggest corporations earned more than the poorest 2 BILLION PEOPLE in the last year – a quarter of the world’s population.
