25 December 2015
by Cllr Lesley Grahame
Picture: Cllr Lesley Grahame and Caroline Lucas MP at the Paris climate demonstration this month
The run-up to Christmas brings panic selling and mass consumerism; many people find themselves working ever more hours to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like. Others are increasingly marginalised and excluded, or fear becoming so. Here’s my alternative Christmas wishlist.’ Like any realistic optimist, I like to think most people have ‘world peace’ somewhere on their Christmas wishlist. Growing numbers of people will also aspire to a liveable climate that allows us to grow food and stay in our homes, wherever we live, along with wanting homes for those who currently don’t have one. Public pressure has brought hard won gains in human rights, and can claim a proud role in the acheivements of the Paris Climate talks.Twenty thousand people felt strongly enough to march in Paris when banned, and the ban was lifted. Hundreds of thousands of people lobbied their representatives to press for a strong, binding and sufficient committment to stop climate chaos.
The prime purpose in choosing a gift is to make the receiver feel good. A positive impact on them is in itself a gift to the giver. Oxfam goats were an early example of enabling people who had enough to give something valuable to a stranger who needed it, and I’m happy to see this trend multiplied to benefit many people in many places. My favourite presents received have included the training of a nurse in rural India, a civil rights class in Latin America, schoolbooks, toilets and wells. These are drops in the ocean, but the ocean is made of drops. Everyone has a need to contribute as well as to receive. However, it would be supremely smug not to recognise that this kind of gift, though valuable, responds to symptoms rather than causes of the social and environmental crisis we face. As Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, said, ‘When I give a person bread, they call me a saint; when I ask why they have no bread, they call me a communist.’ Activists need not be either of these things to want, try and work for a fairer world. Charity is vital to treat the casualties of injustice, working for change is essential to treat the causes. That is the activists’ gift, from small change to years of their lives, and I thank them for it.
