Climate choirs?  Yes, they exist all around the country and campaign against climate change. On Monday, around 150 singers from London, Bristol, and other places congregated in the City of London to sing outside the offices of corporations that are still financing fossil fuels. One of their demands is to get a law against ecocide on the statute book so that companies can be prosecuted if they are responsible for ‘crimes’ against our environment.

Singers dressed smart to fit in with the city ambience and targeted well-known city companies and institutions like Lloyds of London, which continues to insure the big corporate polluters. Choirs had been rehearsing specially composed songs for this action.

Here is an extract of some of the lyrics:

Eradicate Ecocide

We won’t stand by (intro and repeat by various voices)
When boundless corporate greed threatens life on earth
we vow to eradciate ecocide
And save us all from the great unravelling
With fierceness of a mother defending a child
We vow toe eradicate ecocide
Defend the Earth, the only home we know
chorus:
It’s time now, it’s time now, it’s time
It’s time to fight for the trees
It’s time now, it’s time now, it’s time
Stand up for refugees
It’s time now, it’s time now, it’s time
For now we know that..
What we do to the planet, we do to ourselves
Stop Ecocide

The Choirs for Climate website, https://choirsforclimate.com/ provides lyrics, music,contacts, and lots of ideas about using choirs to campaign. Go to the website if you want to get involved with a local group.

There has been a resurgence of people singing together, partly inspired by television personalities like Gareth Malone and the various choirs he has worked with on TV. Linking singing with the campaigns on the ecological emergency is a great way of broadening and deepening the movement.

Organised choirs can provide a different, creative way of protesting, perhaps involving people who do not go on demonstrations. These songs can also be picked up and integrated into ongoing campaigns or political demonstrations, making them more fun and inspiring. One of the activists at last week’s EcoSocialism conference made exactly this point: we need to be colourful and creative in how we run our campaigning.

You get a much better flavour of how the Climate choirs work if you click on these links below to get short video clips of Monday’s actions:

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=climate%20%20choir

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0eidCYMZym/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

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