CIVILLY DISOBEDIENT
I have set out to document a group that has been outcast by the establishment for having incompatible values. Through meeting and photographing the members, I found a community that was strong, kind and connected, supporting each other through incredibly brave actions. I chose to show the members individually, in their environments using a rectangle of orange material to graphically link them to the wider campaign and collective action they are involved in. For the series, I ask each sitter to write a few words about what the Just Stop Oil community means to them to and their reason for taking action which will accompany their portrait.
With 2026 now being recorded as the hottest summer since records began and fossil fuel companies making record levels of profit that this groups collective act of Civil Disobedience will be on the right side of history.
PHOEBE PLUMMER
Being a part of JSO means having hope again. As a young person, it’s hard not feel scared about the future we’re facing. On our current trajectory, the only future I see for myself is one of mass famine, severe droughts, wildfires, floods, and societal collapse. I am often furious that this is the future our government are signing me up for by refusing to listen to the advice and warnings of their own scientists. But JSO has given me hope that I won’t have to live through this catastrophic future. Not just by showing me how I can be a part of the solution, but through the radical love in the community. The people in JSO have become my best friends, and friends from all walks of life. These people are the most brave, beautiful and brilliant people I know.
I spent 28 days on remand at HMP Bronzefield, and although it was a hard and often unpleasant place to be, I was shared a cell and a wing with other amazing people who took action on the M25. Without them I would have struggled to keep my spirits up. On the hardest days they were there to give me hugs and make me laugh. Although the quality of prison instant coffee is abysmal, I was able to have my morning coffee with 4 of my best friends. They bought light into one of the darkest places I’ve ever been. When I came out of prison, with none of my own clothes, my friend gave me the coat off his back. I am constantly overwhelmed by the love and joy in the movement.
Being 21, and a climate activist can sometimes feel alienating. Not many uni students want to go to the pub with someone who talks about the catastrophes of the climate crisis. Now I’m on a curfew tag, pub trips are completely out of the question. But my JSO friends call me after 7pm to make sure I don’t get lonely in the evenings. The people in JSO are more than my friends, we are a family. An ever growing, ever evolving, ever loving family.
MICHELLE CHARLESWORTH
I never imagined that I would be in this place, an activist, civil resister for the protection of all of our futures. A fifty six year old grandmother, stopping traffic on the M25, being sworn at and pulled off the road by angry drivers, climbing onto oil tankers and gluing myself to things leading to many and finally to sent to prison for 105 days in 2022.
I would not have been able to do all these brave and courageous acts without the community of beautiful people who have welcomed me as one of them. We are one, like water. That's how it feels, as we engage in the campaigns of civil resistance. The community changes as we prepare, wave after wave. The ebb and flow of beautiful people. When we are together, the love, camaraderie and kindness that I feel is so tangible that it brings me to tears. I do cry. And I am held. It is precious, this feeling, this belonging.
All the times when we have engaged in civil resistance fear was to be expected, I have felt only commitment, determination, support and vindication. I have never felt alone - not even when I have decided not to do something in the moment, because it wasn't for me. No judgement. Only love and understanding. Even when I was in a cell and feeling low - I knew I wasn't alone. I have been held in the light, loved and nurtured. Confident in the knowledge that we are on the right side of history. Pushing ourselves to step up and be counted as moral citizens acting with love and peace showing another world is possible, we are fighting for it.
ANNA HOLLAND
I moved from a tiny village and forest to Newcastle for university during lockdown in 2022, which meant that I was entering into a brand-new world with no connections or community. After a very difficult few years, I feel as though I’ve finally found my own little corner of the world, and that came to me through Just Stop Oil. There is no way that I could have blocked roads or thrown soup at a priceless work of art if I wasn’t surrounded by the bravest and most caring people I have ever met. The past few months have been some of the emotional of my life, and I don’t regret a single moment of them because I have been privileged enough to draw my strength from the incredible community that surrounds me. The realisation that this government has failed us, and that we are closer to climate breakdown than ever before can be entirely isolating, so having a strong and reliable support system is truly invaluable to weathering this storm and fighting for our right to a future.
ISABEL ROCK
I started engaging in civil disobedience because my brother Olly joined XR and I began to go with him to protests to see this movement that he had fallen in love with. Fast forward a few years and I find myself up a gantry on the M25 shouting at police that I won't come down till the government halts all new fossil fuel licences.
Apart from trying to avert our impending doom and the collapse of society the thing that keeps me coming back to civil disobedience is the connections you make with people. After you've crouched in a bush with someone at 6am, or sat in the back of a police van for four hours, you make an incredibly strong bond of trust and you get to know people pretty quickly in a way that you don't in every day life. It's very easy to feel isolated and disempowered by our society, I know this well from working alone as an artist and struggling in a world that doesn't seem to value the same things as me. By joining Just Stop Oil I found the community and empowerment that has been lacking in so many areas of my every day life. Even if we don't halt the destruction of our planet and everything that we love, at least we had a blast trying.
EMMA BROWN
It was really hard at first, like living between two worlds. Accepting the physical reality of a rapidly heating world and the sickening injustice of it, challenges everything I thought about what life would be like - what makes a good and meaningful life, what’s needed of us, what’s important.
I lost someone I loved because they couldn’t go to that place with me.
People are really complex and fragile and it’s not just about what you think you should do - it’s about where you feel you belong. I think I only joined, and I definitely only stayed, because of the relationships I made with the (mainly) young women who welcomed and loved me in Scotland.
We’ve supported each other through very traumatic and stressful events. It’s the case that when you start bashing your head on the wall of a corrupt system you are likely to get hurt. But there’s freedom and possibility in our lives too - because we refuse to obey the polite rules of an outdated society, just as campaigners before us did.
Choosing activism is not about choosing a side of history, it’s choosing who to stand by, and what you stand for. Sometimes it’s really boring donkey work, slogging away, and sometimes it gives you remarkable experiences.
AMY ROSE FREIL ODONNALL
I remember the first time hearing about the climate crisis, i was about 14, sat in geography, we were given a project to see what our home towns would look like in 20, 30 years time, and to my disgust i found out that where i come from, Donegal, Ireland would be completely underwater by 2040 if we didn't stop or slow down the effects of climate change immediately. And not only that, this information was open to the public, completely accessible from the internet and I had no knowledge of it. I had no knowledge that where I had grown up, where my mum and grandparents now live, where almost 3 thousand people live was going to be uninhabitable in my lifetime. I couldn't help but think about my younger cousin Rosin who is now 10 years old and still lives there. How could i look her in the eye and tell her she could be whoever she wanted or do whatever she wanted when there was already a predetermined fate put in place? A fate that political leaders and oil executives have been gambling with for the past few decades. Nothing has made me more scared than I have been for her future. Before this I had only connected with the environmental crisis on an intellectual level and I feel selfish to say it wasn't until I found out my cousin's fate that I connected with it emotionally.
But when I did everything changed. This decision to take action and get involved in the climate fight not only helped me deal with the crippling guilt I had felt since I was a young teenager but it also gave me a new meaning to life I never thought existed. As someone who has struggled with mental health issues for years, finding out that fighting for my life personally wasn’t the battle I was facing was a crazy thought to grapple with. Young people over the past few decades have been killed and burnt out at the hands of modern day capitalism and “business as usual”. This idea of constant growth and capitalising of the loss of others despite the cost has been pushed by our government and we can't blame ourselves for feeling like we're “crazy” or “mental” because the system built for the 1% doesn’t suit us. My coping mechanisms that stemmed from these mental health issues were things that not only distracted me from my own life but from the life I was told I was forced to live. A life that is going to cause the death of many and already has. The fight for the climate movement isn’t just about the bees and trees anymore, its about people finally fighting back for a future that is fit and suitable for everyone.
Eilidh McFadden
Doing this is not easy. Putting your body on the line, risking your liberties, accepting the horrific mess we are in as the reality can all be exhausting. However, there is something that can not been seen on the surface, something that doesn’t just keep me afloat but helps me sail through the hard days, and that is the empowering feeling of connecting and working with the other beautiful humans in the movement.
What keeps me going is seeing just how amazing people can be, from ones alive today fighting for a better world, to our ancestors who have fought for every single thing we take for granted today. I am inspired by our rich history of resistance, especially in Scotland where I am from. From the suffragettes to the woman that resisted the highland clearances, there has always been resistance, on all levels, everywhere. We are merely another step in the fight, a powerful force that is the people and our weapons of non-violence. Over and over again I am overcome with shock at just how powerful collaboration can be and feel very honoured to be a part of such a group. There are many bigger examples I could give that explain this sort of mutual aid - like people helping to cover unaffordable court fees, picking me up from the police station in the middle of the night or talking with me when things get hard but it is always the smaller, unexpected moments that make you realise just how strong that support is. I remember on my 7th arrest, I felt very defeated and tired and panicked. I sat in the corner of the cell feeling very close to breaking point. In an attempt to distract myself from how I was feeling I started knocking on the wall, formulating a tune. Then, a few seconds later, the knocking repeated itself from the other side of the wall- and no I wasn’t going crazy. Someone on the other side of the wall was repeating the knocking patterns I was making. I was sure it was someone else from Just Stop Oil because of the conversations they were having with the police yet, was unsure of who it was- that day I had been arrested with a group, of which on the majority, I did not know. This went on for hours, taking it in turns to repeat tunes to each other and helped me to come back to a place for clarity. This may seem like such a trivial moment but it is one that will stick with me for ever. To this day I still don’t know who was on the other side of the wall but what I do know is that I owe them my sanity. What we have that makes us so powerful is the resilience that can only form in the occurrence of true, meaningful solidarity. This is vital for a successful movement.
The important thing to remember is that real change never has, and never will, come from anybody but the people. We are a strong community of people that will continue to fight until we reach justice- all bonded together by our deep love for the good in the world. We are the people and we are becoming the change and we are winning.
Molly Berry
Just Stop Oil is a community of people who understand what scientists are telling us about the climate crisis, and how little time there is left to prevent the total destruction of our world. Just stop oil is saying that there must be no NEW fossil fuel extraction. I have read a lot recently about adapting to a warmer world, which shows a complete lack of understanding. You can give an alcoholic a new liver, but if he continues drinking, he will die. No one is asking the world to go “cold turkey”, just no more. It is a joy to be part of Just Stop Oil, it gives me a voice which I would not otherwise have.
I'm Molly Berry, a 70 year old, deaf, retired Lipreading tutor, a mother and grandmother.
Hannah Terrence Bright
Cat Scorthorne
I’m 20 years old, a student studying history, and I like wild swimming, reading and seeing my friends. Every week or so the police come to my door in the middle of the night- between 1 and 7am. This is because I’m on a legal curfew to my flat after doing activism- the sheriff decided that there was a risk I would continue to commit ‘crime’ (by crime he meant trying to peacefully stop mass murder) and so I’ve been under these conditions for almost a year now. If I don’t hear the buzzer when the police come, they put out a warrant for my arrest, which means the next night they come and arrest me from my home, hands cuffed behind my back, strip search me in a very invasive way, and then keep me in the cell over night and for the next day until court.
This has happened twice now. They have also started tapping my phone and have come to the door about actions I am trying to help organise to let me know I’ll be implicated even if I don’t do them. They want to suppress us in this way because what we’re doing as working; we are disrupting to the point where humans and institutions are forced to reckon with the climate crisis and the injustice it presents, even if that is just because we are refusing to get out the road or climb off the oil depo.
I was 16 when I started to realise that so much of my life and the society we are in was built upon the extreme exploitation of others; societies in the global South, workers, women, the earth itself, and that our future looks so incredibly bleak unless we turn this around. Direct action and forming communities with other activists has filled my heart with hope again, despite what the state throw at us. Our lives are meant to be lived fully and beautifully, with our basic needs met, and until that right is accorded to everyone I will not stop fighting and neither will others.