An international organization of environmental protestors dug up the lawn of Trinity College, Cambridge, as part of a week-long series of demonstrations for fossil fuel divestment.
Extinction Rebellion protestors dug channels into the turf of Trinity College’s 16th-century great gate with shovels and pitchforks and planted their flags. “Trinity College must cut ties with fossil fuel companies and stop trying to hawk off nature for profit,” the organization’s Facebook page says. “Oh, and it should take the opportunity to replace the lawn with flowers. Spring is just around the corner after all.”
I have been hugely sympathetic to Extinction Rebellion. But how is vandalising green spaces like a college lawn, valid protest? https://t.co/JNdW7vATUI
— Janice Turner (@VictoriaPeckham) February 17, 2020
Trinity had stepped up its campus security, closing the college, library, and chapel to tourists for the week to prevent the protestors from accessing the central court, the Guardian reports. St. Catharine’s, another Cambridge college, also closed off its main gate over concerns that protestors would set up a campsite on the grass. (RELATED: More Than 750 Arrested At Climate Change Protests In London)
“One of Extinction Rebellion’s oppositions is to green space being kept behind walls and only accessible to those in power and privilege,” an email sent to students by the college’s head porter said, the Guardian reports.
According to Extinction Rebellion’s website, “disobeying the system” is crucial to change. “We have a duty to disobey this system which destroys life on earth and is deeply unjust. Some of us will undertake open (“above ground*”) actions that risk arrest and charges.”