Power Shift Flash Mob In Support Of Greenpeace Protesters On London's Houses Of Parliament

Shake your booty in Big Ben's shadow – teenagers dance to save the planet

Bibi van der Zee
Monday October 12 2009
17.09 BST guardian.co.uk

The opening piano chords of I Believe suddenly blare out in Parliament Square. A young girl steps forward on the green and stretches gracefully to the sky before being joined in her dance by another and then another, until 150 dancers are enthusiastically shaking their booty in the shadow of Big Ben.

The Greenpeace protesters, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/12/greenpeace-westminster-roof-protest">still up on the roof of the houses of Parliament, are nudging each other and pointing, with the same baffled-but-intrigued expression as everyone else. Tourists, police officers, bus drivers are all craning their necks and the phone cameras are up in the air everywhere you look. This dance-off was the finale of the http://powershift.ukycc.org/">UK Youth Climate Coalition's Powershift weekend.

Four hundred members of the http://ukycc.org/">UKYCC (an umbrella organisation for youth climate groups) had spent the last two days bonding and learning how to deliver their message from http://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-directory/marshall-ganz">Marshall Ganz, the man who shaped Barack Obama's successful campaign for US president. They had planned small demonstrations and actions all round the country and sent messages to the other branches of the YCC around the world in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhOhQ5G71tw">Australia, Thailand, Cambodia. And now they were ready to unleash themselves on the rest of us.

And, happily, that's just how it worked out. Their original, planned, performance underneath the London Eye went perfectly. After that nothing seemed more natural than hopping across the Thames to show the http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/oct/12/climate-activists-campaigns-greenpeace">Greenpeace protesters a bit of solidarity. A bit of rearrangement and off they go for a spontaneous reprise, to be received with cheers and waves from the guys up on the roof, and everyone else around. Even the doughtiest environmental campaigners, used to D-locks rather than breakdancing, admitted that it is all very cheering.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/oct/12/climate-change-dancers-parliament