Heathrow Flash Mob Picnic Occupies Terminal (Video)

Heathrow Protesters Picnic in the Terminal
The battle over airport expansion in the UK continued this week, but compared to occupying runways or protesters storming the Parliament building, yesterday evening was a picnic, literally. At 7pm somewhere between 250 and 600 “travellers” (the video above says 250, The Guardian says 4-600) peeled off their disguises to reveal costumes, musical instruments, and some elaborate dining arrangements – this being England, cucumber sandwiches featured heavily. The Guardian has more on the Heathrow flash mob:

“Heathrow's Climate Rush has been organised by the Climate Rush, a group of mainly female anti-aviation campaigners who like to organise in memory of the suffragettes (that's why the period costume that adds such charm to this whole affair. You can't have too many men in top hats on a protest). The idea came into being last December, the realisation took just a couple of weeks. The people here (I'd guess, very roughly, about somewhere between 400 - 600) come from Sipson village, through Facebook, from the Climate Rush mailing list, from the Youth Climate Coalition. There are older people (often with the best picnics) but there are also a lot of teenagers, a lot of 20-year-olds, even a handful of children. Sue Morgan is here because "we're digging ourselves into a deeper and deeper hole"; Casper ter Huile is here because "we're nearly past the tipping point, we need hundreds of thousands of people on the street if we're going to take action now"; and Hannah is here because "I really like trains and I think we should be concentrating on that now". None of them want to see a third runway. None of them are optimistic that the government is going to say no.

We're pretty sure there'll be some updated pictures over at the Climate Rush website soon.