Michelle Slater
TWO Gippsland women, who were part of a contingency of environmental protesters from across the region, were arrested for gluing themselves to the road outside Flinders St Station.
A group of about 12 members of the Gippsland Extinction Rebellion had joined a week-long series of Extinction Rebellion protests in Melbourne last week calling for urgent action on climate change.
Nicholson woman Ro Gooch was arrested on Saturday, along with another woman from Foster, after gluing themselves to the corner of Flinders and Swanston Sts with a group of other women, blocking traffic for about an hour.
Onlookers chanted “you are a climate hero” as Ms Gooch was taken away by police, after a police officer used a solvent to remove the glue and take her off the road.
Ms Gooch – who had been arrested in the Tasmanian Franklin Dam protests in the 1980s – said she believed governments were “ignoring the urgency of the climate emergency”.
“For me, I’m grieving the damage that’s being done to the environment,” she said.
“The fact we are having a gas-led recovery is ridiculous.
“Zero emissions by 2050 is not fast enough,” Ms Gooch said.
“These actions are the only way we can get people listening.
“We can keep writing letters and going to rallies, but politicians are not listening.”
The special education teacher was charged with creating a public nuisance, and is due to face court at a later date, but said she “found the courage to get arrested in solidarity with other women”.
“The police treated us very professionally,” she said.
“They worked carefully to dissolve the glue.
“I felt solidarity and support; we were doing this for everybody,” Ms Gooch said.
The state government had deployed about 2000 police for the week-long ‘autumn rebellion’ actions, in which activists disrupted central business district traffic in a series of rolling protests.
Some actions included staging sit-downs on major thoroughfares, dancing in the streets, and stopping traffic on the West Gate Freeway.
Acting Premier James Merlino said the protesters risked getting the public offside with their actions that involved non-violent civil disobedience.
“If you disrupt people’s lives, that’s not a great way to win an argument,” he told the media last week.
