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Copenhagen blog: Staging a sit-in

Submitted by Alex Doukas

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Yesterday, 10 Canadian youth joined with 20 other youth from around the world to participate in a sit-in at the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen. Our message was that we wanted a fair, ambitious and binding deal from our world leaders at the climate talks, and we would accept nothing less.

We would stay until they delivered, reading aloud names from the more than 11-million strong petition supporting such a deal. We were there for nine hours before a backhanded tactic from UN officials forced us to leave.
The ultimatum they gave the 30 peaceful, non-disruptive protesters? Leave, or all non-government participation in the negotiations — all of the advocates for strong climate action, all of the grassroots organizers, all of the non-governmental groups who actually move the negotiations forward —would be cut out for the high-level talks Thursday and Friday. Participation from these groups had already been severely restricted, from thousands down to hundreds.

There are always incredible personal stories behind actions like this that are rarely, if ever, told. Most of the people involved in the sit-in did not even know each other. The core group organizing the action met a day before it took place, starting our planning at 9 p.m.

In that meeting, more than 30 youth from over a dozen countries started with one plan, but ended with a completely different one.

For many, it was their first act of peaceful civil disobedience. It showed me that anyone can take this kind of action if they believe in something strongly. People put themselves on the line, risking arrest or injury — they were dragged by UN security (who were generally quite reasonable) from the middle of a walkway to the sidelines.
Getting dragged across the floor of the UN negotiations building was a pretty surreal experience for me. None of us resisted — we just went limp, forcing them to drag us.

We received tons of support from people inside the centre for taking a stand. U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate John Kerry came by and shook all of our hands, thanking us for our efforts. NDP Leader Jack Layton came by and did the same. I can't say the same for our own government officials, but I was told that they were busy negotiating. Maryam, one of the Canadian youth who participated in the sit-in, said "we went in there with 11 million supporters, but left with many more both inside and outside the conference centre."

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