Cathy Eastburn
I am a London-based musician and mum. I’m a co-founder of Defend Our Juries, a campaign to uphold democracy and the rule of law at a time when both are being corrupted by fossil fuel and arms vested interests. I also founded and for 10 years was Director of Good Vibrations (www.good-vibrations.org.uk), a charity which runs gamelan (Indonesian bronze percussion) projects in prisons and secure hospitals across the UK as a way of helping people develop team-working, listening and other vital life skills.
An environmentalist all my life, I became aware of the true gravity and urgency of the climate & ecological emergency in 2018 following the publication of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Special Report on Global warming of 1.5℃ and Professor Jem Bendell’s groundbreaking Deep Adaptation paper.
Understanding the need for ordinary people to step up into nonviolent direct action, since then I have taken part in numerous actions with Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil. As a result of these actions, I have been arrested over 20 times, faced fines and civil injunction costs of thousands of pounds, and have been sent to prison twice, all for simply taking the dynamic nonviolent direct action that is proportionate, appropriate, reasonable and above all necessary at this time.