Finding Blake creator and filmmaker James Murray-White takes us to the ongoing International Rebellion of people in London and other cities around the world, organising against ecological and climate emergency — and finds Blake there.
Most readers will be aware there is an International Rebellion in progress, headed by climate change activists Extinction Rebellion. Here in London, five key sites are being successfully held and blockaded to stop traffic and to show society that we need to change our habits, we need to act as a community, and we need to do it now!
Stephen Micalef and the William Blake Congregation have been part of the action in Oxford Circus.
In the midst of a lively continuous party at the Oxford Circus the other evening, and just yards from the house in South Molton Street where William and Catherine lived for many years — Blake was in the middle of the crowd! Of course he was; he would be: Blake advocated for a complete revolution of the mind, the human soul and consciousness, and of the capitalist destructive system that has befallen us. Blake’s visionary spirit came out of the unrest of his age, when the Industrial Revolution was really hotting up and emissions of carbon were starting the damage to our ecosystem that we are living with now, and which threatens all of our species and the entire planet.
So, of course, Blake is right there in the midst of this partying Rebellion: he is stirring us all on for change!
Notes
There is more information about the International Rebellion at the Extinction Rebellion site; the action started on Monday 15th April — taking place on the streets of cities all over the world, from Auckland to Accra, Mexico City to Vancouver — to demand that governments take necessary action on the global Climate and Ecological Emergency.
In her poem and post for Finding Blake, Modest Things, poet Salli Hipkiss brings her own life-long love of William Blake to her growing concern with the problems of climate change and other environmental threats to human and other life