Local & International

It was a bitter afternoon as a few members from the local Brixton Global Climate action group met at the recently re-landscaped Brixton Oval between the library and the Town Hall at the major road junction in the centre of the town. Where previously there had been a small oval area with grass and flowerbeds around a central tree, there is now a large, flat and rather bare expanse bordered by the busy A23, and a cold wind was making the most of sweeping across it.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

It was difficult to make much of the event photographically, but although it was small and local, it was one with a global significance. The Brixton group was one of 70 around the world, but apparently the only one in the UK, to respond to a call by one of the largest organisations in the world, La Via Campesina, representing 150 million people around the world, small farmers, agricultural workers, rural women and indigenous communities around the world for ‘Thousands of Cancuns for Climate Justice‘ to mobilise grass roots solutions and actions.

I’m not sure I made a great job of it, but I did my best, and put the story on Demotix, where it also got a mention on their blog, but not a great number of readers. Putting it on My London Diary and here on >Re:PHOTO will actually attract many more views.

There on My London Diary you can also read more about the event, and the call which arose from the ‘Cochabamba People’s Agreement’ produced by the 40,000 who attended the Cochambamba People’s summit for climate justice earlier this year and was brought to Cancun by the Bolivian Government but its concrete proposals for a sustainable future rejected.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

And there are a few more pictures, but I think by the time it came to break open the pink pig ‘World Bank’ piñata I was too cold to think straight and couldn’t quite get the timing right.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

The Nikon autofocus system is fine for things like photographing predictably moving objects – like racing cars – but with people taking rather random hits I would have been better switching to manual focus and avoiding any time lag as the camera tried to focus.  Almost every frame the actual exposure came too long after I pressed the release.

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