Wednesday, April 6, 2016

practicing journalism

Last night at my fave café I met an American couple and a Scottish woman here for this big oil company trade event hosted by French company Total which has headquarters here in Pau. They mentioned a protest that would be happening today at their event very near my home. So I went to check it out and learn a little about the other side of the story.

By the time I arrived, the biggest excitement was apparently over, as I learned that the protesters had blocked the entrance to the conference that morning. But I still made like a reporter and infiltrated the climate justice protest. (It wasn't hard. No girl scout badge for sneaky infiltration was earned.) Apparently the international energy industry conference was focused on strategies and practices for extracting oil from ever harder to reach places, and the protesters think they're damaging the earth in the extreme measures they're taking.


I'm not positioned right now to have easy outlets for reporting on real-time breaking news, but for practice, I still interviewed the president of Les Amis de la Terre France (Friends of the Earth) who had handcuffed himself to the handrail in front of the main entrance to the venue. I added the interview and photos to the Twitter-verse, and this time that had to be enough.















No comments: