Running a kitchen in the middle of a protest camp presents some unusual operational challenges. “We’re cooking most of the hot food offsite at the moment,” says George Coiley, as he leads me past boiling stove-top kettles, catering-sized saucepans and two volunteers preparing a fruit salad of epic proportions. “The police keep taking our stuff...”
This is Coiley’s fourth Extinction Rebellion kitchen...
“This in itself is a political action,” says Coiley, a bright young man who, when not involved in cooking at demonstrations, is working on a PhD on sustainable food and the state... How you feed an activist...
He argues that Extinction Rebellion is right not to “shame” people about what they eat. “We’re trying to help people see that a different world is possible,” he says, “where we can all have nutritious, sustainable food, that is not harmful and can be enjoyable too.” Coiley thinks good cooking can show “we don’t need steaks to be having an amazing time.”
The Rebel Kitchen is housed in four gazebos customised with various pieces of tarpaulin and lots of gaffa tape... At the service end of the tent, lentil and vegetable curry is doled out of a 20-litre thermos vat, along with lots of bread and catering-sized saucepans of salad...
As we step out of the kitchen into Trafalgar Square, the scene is one of celebration. Colourful clothes, flags and flyers light up the space between grey pavements and grey skies. A mixture of righteous anger and communitarian warmth emanates from the crowd... There is a bookshop, an art tent where you can stencil the Extinction Rebellion logo onto your clothes, a drum circle, a hula circle, groups of people singing and two platforms where amplified voices speak in sombre and stirring tones to the crowds about what is at stake. There is also, naturally, a ten-foot-high pink octopus.
