Residents in Conwy remove Greenpeace Andy Burnham mountain mural
After wildfires the group painted an image bearing the words "Our house is on fire, Andy".
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Greenpeace paints on someone else's property without permission and acts shocked when the community removes it. That's the activist playbook: trespass, vandalize, then cry victim when people push back. These are residents. Their homes, their neighborhood. They don't owe Greenpeace a billboard. The mural wasn't a statement, it was a shakedown. "Our house is on fire" painted on YOUR house by people who drove there in diesel vans. I've had regulators walk through my shop telling me what I can and can't do with my own space, and these clowns think they can commandeer someone's community wall because they feel strongly about something. Good for the residents. Every property owner in that town should have shown up with a roller.
It's always the same with these groups. They want to force their views on everyone else and then act surprised when people don't like it. They're more concerned with making a scene than with actually changing anything. Good on the residents for standing up for their community. This is why I can't stand it when some of these networks start pushing political agendas, just show the highlights or the race.
Calling it "standing up for the community" does not make removing someone else's mural a democratic act. Greenpeace is political because climate policy is political, and pretending these issues can be reduced to race highlights is exactly how corporate interests keep public attention safely elsewhere. The people with the greatest power to change anything are still the companies profiting from pollution, yet somehow the target is a painted mountain. That is not community control. It is a small rehearsal for deciding which public messages are allowed to exist.
That diesel van point hits every time and I will never get tired of it. These are the same people who would shut down a manufacturing plant in my county, kill two thousand jobs, then fly to Davos to accept an award for it. They do not live with the consequences of their own ideology. Ever. The workers in Conwy do. The shop owners do. The people who look at that wall every morning do. Greenpeace gets to move on to the next media moment. The residents are stuck cleaning up the mess. Good on them for not waiting around for permission to reclaim their own neighborhood.
Greenpeace perfected the art of the symbolic gesture that costs someone else everything and them nothing, and the late and great OJ Simpson knew more about community than any of these NGO grifters who show up, make the mess, then disappear when the cameras leave.
Wildfires are burning and the response is to remove the message instead of confronting the climate crisis, while Andy Burnham gets turned into a convenient target for everyone's frustration. The LOSER POLITICIANS protecting corporate polluters deserve public fury, investigation, removal, conviction, and confinement, not a culture war over paint.
Removing this mural was predictable. While the sentiment behind "Our house is on fire" certainly resonates with many, defacing public or private property rarely wins over public support, and often backfires, as it appears to have done here.
Residents removing a mural painted on their community without consent is not a statement about climate change. It is a statement about consent. The wildfire context does not transfer ownership of someone else's wall to Greenpeace. You can be right about the crisis and still wrong about the method.
Community pushes back and gets called climate deniers in three, two, one. That is how this always goes. Greenpeace does not ask. They show up, spray paint whatever they want on whatever they want, and then dare you to object. The second you do, you are the villain. Working people in Conwy did not wake up that morning and vote to have an activist organization use their town as a billboard. They cleaned it up. Good on them. That is called taking your neighborhood back.
It's always the same playbook, isn't it? An activist group, whether it's Greenpeace or some other partisan outfit, comes in, does something deliberately provocative, and then acts shocked when people push back. This isn't about the message, it's about the method. No one asked for this mural. It's just another way for groups to force their agenda without any actual discussion. Good for the community for cleaning it up. It's not "climate denial" to dislike someone defacing your town.
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Climate activists doing direct action and THIS is what gets wall-to-wall coverage. Meanwhile the planet is literally burning and Andy Burnham could be doing more. The mural said "our house is on fire" and they removed it while... houses are on fire. You cannot make this up.
lmao yeah because a mural is gonna fix climate change. like i get being mad but painting on someone else's property isn't exactly a policy solution. and if "our house is on fire" means actual houses are on fire maybe chill a little. the performative activism is wild