COAL miner Grant Howard had just put on the purple vest that designated his job as a camp security volunteer at Rising Tide's Foreshore Park protest. Login or signup to continue reading The group called themselves the security meerkats, and a few pinned or fixed a stuffed meerkat to their uniform. It had been a tough couple of years, he said.
Coal miners feel they are being blamed for a climate crisis they didn't feel they started. They were doing their jobs. It was important that he showed up, given his profession.
"We're all in this together," he said. Mr Howard had travelled from Mackay for the seven-day climate protest that set up camp in Foreshore Park. Activists and supporters of the cause have gradually streamed in from around the state, the country and the world.
Organisers dubbed it a week-long 'protestival', combining the demands of their cause (no new fossil fuel projects, a just transition to renewable energy, and heavier taxes on for-profit fossil fuel exporters to pay for it) with a music festival that has been billed to host Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett, John Butler and Angie McMahon. "It is a community-minded atmosphere," Mr Howard said as a highway patrol vehicle lapped Wharf Road around the encampment , stopping vehicles regularly. In the camp kitchens, where volunteers were cooking an estimated 1000 vegetarian patties and boilers full of potatoes, one protester said the police had been sounding the siren every so often as they passed.
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