Finally, Saving Iceland comes clean on which shady eco-terrorist organizations fund us!
19 July 2007 – Some media, particularly Blaðið, insist on calling us ‘professional protestors’, suggesting we have jobs and get payed to do actions, to create a bias that we are foreigners who have come to tell Icelanders what and what not to do. To dispel the myth we will give insight into our individual and collective funding.
“We are not professional protestors. Unlike the well-paid corporate lobbyists and spindoctors that try to sell you heavy industry, none of us gets payed to be here. We are ordinary people, we are teachers, nurses, youth workers, students, shopworkers, fathers, mothers. We are here because we care. The Icelandic wilderness is unique. It is the largest in Europe and one of the few wild places left on this continent. It’s beauty and uniqueness and fire and ice are a heritage we must preserve and must defend. It is the heritage and responsibility and privilege of all Icelanders, and all Europeans, and all humans.
(From our conference declaration)
Individuals come here at their own cost, paying their own ferry or plane ticket. So instead of being payed, Saving Iceland protestors put in sizeable amounts of their own savings to come here. They do this because they feel that protecting the wilderness is a fundamental necessity in creating a livable future on earth.
For the Saving Iceland conference, we did not have any paid speakers attend the conference. We have only payed the flights of guests that we invited to speak.
Now we will summarize how we pay for such things as our camp kitchen, materials, our newspaper ‘Voice of the Wilderness’, speaker’s flights and the conference hotel.
The main bulk of our income comes from a Swiss foundation called Terre Humaine. They fund actions for conservation of nature.
Our kitchen is sponsored by the Dutch mobile kitchen Rampenplan. They have helped setup kitchens in England and Belgium before as well, who are now self sustaining (from donations).
We receive large amounts of donations from Icelandic visitors to the camp, both in money, food and materials.
The remainder is made up of private individual donations from people involved in or sympathetic with the campaign. These are often people who work and can not attend the protests but want to support them anyway.
See also: ‘Bréf til Blaðsins frá Saving Iceland aktífista