After climate activist sentenced for vandalizing painting, more activists attack same painting

Immediately after Just Stop Oil crusader Phoebe Plummer was sentenced to two years in prison for throwing soup on a Vincent van Gogh painting, three activists with Just Stop Oil threw soup on the same painting.

In 2022, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland threw paint over van Gogh’s “Sunflowers 1888,” causing an estimated $13,400 in damages, according to the Guardian. One hour after Plummer was sentenced — Holland previously received 20 months — three activists from Just Stop Oil entered the National Gallery in London and attacked “Sunflowers 1888” and another van Gogh painting, “Sunflowers 1889.”

One of the activists, Phil Green, referred to Plummer’s and Holland’s sentencing, calling them “prisoners of conscience.”

“When will the fossil fuel executives and the politicians they’ve bought be held accountable for the criminal damage that they are imposing on every living thing?” another protestor, Ludi Simpson, 71, said after the attack.

In the past century — a time when the human race has exponentially increased fossil fuel use — global average life expectancy has more than doubled. 

This summer, Just Stop Oil co-founder Roger Hallam was sentenced to five years on prison for his role in a protest that disrupted traffic along a major artery in London. Among other impacts, the protest caused people to miss doctor's appointments and a police officer was injured when he was knocked off his motorbike. Hallam and his four accomplices have appealed the sentence.