A NEW MYTHOLOGY
An open platform, celebrating stories of action, resistance and revolution.
Statement from ISSUE 1 - Lives on the Line.
"This is not about a Railway."
Statement from Pigeon.
Given while occupying the last remaining tree house ‘The bean can’, during the Jones Hill Wood eviction. 7/10/20
"I’m here because the feeling of powerlessness was too overbearing to sit with comfortably any longer. Knowing that the HS2 project was being pushed through without democratic process and that any opposition was being silenced through the use of non-disclosure agreements.
All we have left now is to stand literally on the line and put our bodies, ourselves and our opposition in full view.
We want to make one thing very clear, this is not about a railway, this is not even about keeping the trees here standing, this is about so much more. This is about resisting the brutality of the state, the eviction of people from their homes uncompensated on behalf of corporate interest, centuries of ‘legal’ land grabs, the turning of public land into private profit. Be it here in the UK, or globally through the violence of colonialism. These trees and this tree house, the bean can, are symbols of that resistance.
Brutality is too readily accepted in our society as an answer to questions of oppression and questions of resistance. The past 10 years of grueling austerity inflicted upon the already struggling of this country is the clearest example of that brutality.
HS2, this destruction that you’re seeing here is costing an excess of 200 billion pounds, in a time of recession and pandemic. This is a kick in the teeth to all those whose disability benefits are being slashed (again), their community centers being demolished, their mental health funding slashed to the bone. This is about class conflict, inequality, and the privatization of what is public - as much, if not more, than it is about a train.
The use of non-disclosure agreements and the silencing of those who have had their homes taken and their lives destroyed is greater evidence of our need to be here, in this tree house, protesting, putting ourselves on the line. The UK wide consensus is very clearly against HS2, no-one wants it. We’re here to voice this lack of consent and in response to the pain of all those whose homes have been decimated in the name of corporate profit and environmental destruction. "
