EQUAL TIMES (21/6/2021)
Standing on a wooden tripod on a major road leading to Lisbon Airport, a young activist holds a pink flag that depicts an airplane in flames, and raises her clenched fist.
“Climate Justice Now!” reads a large banner hanging from a footbridge above the blocked road. Drums and chants echo across roads emptied of cars, as a few hundred people gather on a May afternoon waving flags and holding signs saying: “Fewer planes”, “More trains” and “Just transition”.
They are protesting the Portuguese government’s plans to build a second airport in Lisbon. This civil disobedience action was organised by the climate justice group Climáximo with support from other environmental organisations. Protesters called for a reduction in air travel, more railways and a just transition for workers in the aviation sector.
“We have very little time to avoid climate chaos and the system’s institutions are failing miserably,” said the organisers in a statement.
A new airport in Lisbon has been under discussion for decades. In 2018, the government announced plans to build a new airport in Montijo, in the southern bank of the Tagus River, about 30 kilometres from the city centre.
Sitting crossed-legged in the middle of the road with his hands locked to other activists and a pipe placed over their arms to make removal more difficult, 19-year-old João Sousa was part of a human chain that blocked a roundabout and two roads near Lisbon’s airport for about an hour.
“Less aviation, more imagination!” he chanted as the police dragged away the chained activists. Driven away in a windowless police van, he was among the 26 protesters detained that day for “disobeying orders of dispersion” and “endangering road safety” (…)
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