CAN I HAVE FIVE OF THOSE CARDS PLEASE … “Can I have five of those cards to post to my family? They’re from Sheffield but have moved away.” – A woman this morning outside Moor Market. “My son is a tree surgeon; he can’t believe what the Council are doing to the trees.” – A man at Castle Square tram stop. “I’ve been reading in the paper about what been happening to the trees here. Good luck to you mate.” – A man from Chester waiting to board the 52 bus. “Amazing! Those guards [working for Amey] think they can show up under a tree without displaying proper SIA [Security Industry Authority] identification.” – A professional bouncer up on Barker’s Pool. Of course, not all of the responses were this positive when 15 Sheffield tree campaigners fanned out across the city centre this morning (2 Dec.) wearing naff antlers and Santa hats to pass out professionally-designed Christmas cards/ decorations. (A perforated Xmas tree, labelled ‘Trees aren’t just for Christmas!’, pushes out from page one of the four-page card to become a decoration you can hang on your own tree at home.) But the line pushed by the ‘big thinkers’ running SCC --- ONLY a handful of tree huggers care that +5,500 street trees have been chain sawed in Sheffield ---- was exposed as a Bryan Lodge pipe dream. A total of 1900 cards were passed out to people from all parts of Sheffield. A woman from Rotherham stood on the tram line stop near the new Ikea superstore with her three children, all of whom were under the age of eight, and all were kitted out with Santa hats, antlers and sparkly garland necklaces. (They needed to make a total of four bus journeys to be part of the event.) As well, there were hundreds of invaluable one on one conversations -- some only a few seconds in duration, others lasting up to ten minutes -- between tree campaigners and a diverse swath of Sheffield. Today’s party was all pretty good humoured. For example, a man at Cathedral asked what he thought was the “got yuh” question: “so how many trees were cut down to make this card?” To which I replied (and thought: ‘whew! glad we had chosen to use re-cycled paper): “See what it says here in small print: ‘No trees were felled in the making of this decoration.’ “ We both smiled. At a ‘ de-brief’ session afterwards at the Blue Moon café, the feeling among campaigners was that we had worked together well as a team at a “ very positive event”, in the words of a veteran Nether Edge tree campaigner who had today swapped her ‘normal’ bunny suit for antlers and twinkly earrings that lit up ( or were supposed to.) Page 2 of the card gives details of a decoration colouring-in contest. Page 3 reads: ‘To All Sheffielders: SEASONS GREETINGS. From the Street Trees of Sheffield xx.’ Page 4 is a brief bullet- point campaign message headed ‘MASS TREE FELLING IS BAD FOR EVERYBODY.’ Today’s NO STUMP CITY-organised event was a specifically planned ‘reach out’ and fun event. To win any campaign, you need to do three things: a) consolidate and motivate your strongest supporters; b) win over the middle and the waverers; c) isolate the enemy and its supporters. Today was another step forward toward achieving objective b)...