Our Plan for The Beacon

Tracee Williams and Marcus Blackett are opening a business/shop called The Beacon in Stroud, England.

As individuals we are both politically active, and the business/shops main focus is to be a hub to share information, support activism, broker community and encourage collaboration.

The idea to have a shop in the centre of town happened in the act of walking to London on what was known as the Earth March. Thousands of people from towns and cities throughout the UK decided to march to London to demand governments begin doing something about Climate Emergency. We reached Hyde Park the day before the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations in April 2019. It took us eight days to walk from Stroud. We stayed in London, closed roads, chanted, sang songs, danced, created a festival atmosphere and celebrated in a culture of well-being, until we finally got the government to tell the truth and declare a climate emergency. It changed the conversation in the country and, as a result of our action, many town and district councils have taken the climate threat seriously.

The Beacon has a welcoming atmosphere with a comfortable sofa where people can begin conversations with relevant people and make connections and find support so they can feel empowered to take action too. The volunteers on the front desk are not experts in any way. The job of the volunteers is to download and listen to people’s worries, to understand their pain and to share their loss and to encourage the question: how can we make things better together? We will create a crucible of ideas, kindred spirits joined together to make our voices and actions more impactful. Slowly a future will emerge that we can work towards; this way we will create a more resilient community from the ground up.

We are activists, but not ones who purport to have all the answers; this would give us a future society moulded from comfortable familiar models. Instead, our ethos at the Beacon is to live as long as possible in those questions that concern us all, that concerns a wider society in general, that concern our children, both young and old; those not yet born: – we have questions now. Everywhere you go in the Beacon there are examples of some of the issues, like climate change, or like the rejected UN law of Ecocide; of electromagnetic frequency radiation and a nearby particle-polluting incinerator that 98% of local residents don’t want.

What we do know is that we want to leave the Earth in a better condition than when we found it, to leave the air, the water and the soil in good condition for future generations, to make the rapid advances in technology safe, to make sure that cellular life, plants and animals are not harmed; to protect people’s physical, mental and spiritual health. We borrow the Earth for the short time we are here. Hell on earth or Heaven on earth are in the same place; just a different emphasis of the same mind. Activism is not just protest, it is also about creating a new culture by allowing expression through our collective imagination; our minds are a part of Nature too.

The cooperative model business is made up of members who are motivated by the aims, agreed by committee. Anyone can come forward to help steer the ship. When we have made the Beacon in Stroud as good as it can be, we shall encourage other Beacons to open all over the country, just like in the days before telegraph, when beacons were lit in times of emergency.