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.
EMMABROWN
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.