sh.itjust.works

https://web.archive.org/web/20240927183326/https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/27/just-stop-oil-activist-phoebe-plummer-jailed-throwing-soup-van-gogh-sunflowers

Three individuals targeted National Gallery paintings an hour after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed for similar attack in 2022

Climate activists have thrown tomato soup over two Sunflowers paintings by Vincent van Gogh, just an hour after two others were jailed for a similar protest action in 2022.

Three supporters of Just Stop Oil walked into the National Gallery in London, where an exhibition of Van Gogh’s collected works is on display, at 2.30pm on Friday afternoon, and threw Heinz soup over Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888.

The latter was the same work targeted by Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland in 2022. That pair are now among 25 supporters of Just Stop Oil in jail for climate protests.

The jail sentences handed out today seem completely insane to me, not least considering the overcrowding of jails that's been reported. Even if they had tons of space it seems like madness.

I can well understand people's reservations about JSO's general tactics but at the same time, what alternative is offered by their detractors?

Personally I don't feel as though Labour or the Democrats stateside are doing, or planning on doing, anything close to enough to tackle our impact on the climate.

What do you think?

This was the one soup-throwing which did any damage at all; in this case to the frame.

The penalty is appreciably worse than for minor violent attacks.