ESCALATING DEFLATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST 4x4s IN SWEDEN

- One thou­sand 4x4s dis­armed by The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle

In recent months, a cli­mate action group call­ing itself The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle has struck against SUVs across Swe­den. Tyres on one thou­sand cars have been deflat­ed. The cam­paign is spread­ing like wild­fire, prompt­ing nation­al debate and furi­ous aggres­sion among SUV-own­ers.

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19th Octo­ber 2007
It has hap­pened again. Once more, we have drawn the atten­tion of Malmö to what’s hap­pen­ing to our cli­mate. Bus, bicy­cle and train are always bet­ter then dri­ving SUVs. That’s why we deflat­ed 32 fuel-guz­zling SUVs on the night of Octo­ber 18. As dur­ing ear­li­er actions, SUVs were tar­get­ed in (the afflu­ent areas of) Väs­tra Ham­nen and Väs­tra Inner­stan. The let­ter below was left on the widescreen on all the cars, to explain why they were deflat­ed.
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26th Octo­ber
In the worst wild­fires in the his­to­ry of Cal­i­for­nia, even the stars of Hol­ly­wood have been threat­ened by the burn­ing flames of glob­al warm­ing. The lev­el of causal­i­ty between glob­al warm­ing and fires in Cal­i­for­nia may not be 100 per­cent, but sure­ly large enough to make it iron­ic that the upper class of Öster­malm in Stock­holm forces the upper class of Hol­ly­wood to evac­u­ate their homes. There­fore, yesterday’s defla­tion of 50 SUVs on Öster­malm is ded­i­cat­ed to the hun­dreds of thou­sands who had to fled the fire — includ­ing the stars of Hol­ly­wood.
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The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle have received a mes­sage from a new tribe in Umeå, Sweden’s fifth or sixth biggest city, and now the eleventh to be endowed with direct action against the insane cli­mate destruc­tion of SUVs. The mes­sage reads:

On the night of Fri­day, Octo­ber 19, tyres were deflat­ed on some 90 SUVs in Umeå.

Keep well!
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In the night between Octo­ber 6 and 7, the Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle of Falun deflat­ed 45 suv:s in the neigh­bour­hoods of Vil­las­taden, Lustig Knopp, Brit­sarvet, Bojsen­burg, Östan­fors, Gam­la Her­rgår­den, Sten­näset, Els­borg and Cen­trum. The night end­ed with a com­plete dis­ar­ma­ment of one of the infa­mous Hum­mer-vehi­cles. We took a pic­ture of it with a sign read­ing: “Have you got a Hum­mer, stu­pid?” (a rhyme in Swedish). Of couse, we took down the sign after­wards, since it might be inter­pret­ed as humil­i­at­ing.

Peace!

The tribe of Falun

(Falun is Sweden’s 26th biggest town, with some 40 000 res­i­dents.)
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Many more reports in Swedish at http://asfaltsdjungelnsindianer.wordpress.com
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(This is a mes­sage from The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle to the world.)

Every­one knows it: action on cli­mate change is a mat­ter of utter urgency. Nonethe­less, car­bon emis­sions con­tin­ue to accel­er­ate, pow­ered by the uncon­trol­lable machines of the world econ­o­my. One emi­nent sign of this rush to dis­as­ter is the trend of SUVs, clog­ging the streets in our West­ern cities, emit­ting up to three times more car­bon than cars of aver­age size on the mar­ket. SUVs have become a sym­bol of the irra­tional destruc­tion of the most basic con­di­tions of life. Attached to no human need what­so­ev­er — only to the con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of an afflu­ent class, feel­ing the ”need” to flaunt mon­ster vehi­cles — they con­sti­tute per­haps the most insane source of unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions. Every­one should know it: if we can’t deal with SUVs swift­ly, we can’t deal with any oth­er emis­sions either. And noth­ing less than our sur­vival is at stake.

Armed with this analy­sis, and with mung beans or grains of grav­el, a group called The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle has struck against hun­dreds of SUV:s in Swe­den in recent months. The first action occured in the posh­est part of innerci­ty Stock­holm in June. Tyres on 60 SUV:s in Öster­malm were
deflat­ed. A weblog was post­ed on the inter­net, and since then, the cam­paign for dis­ar­ma­ment of SUV:s in Swe­den has spread like wild­fire. To this date, approx­i­mate­ly 1000 SUVs have been tem­porar­i­ly dis­armed in at least nine Swedish cities, includ­ing the three largest (Stock­holm, Gothen­burg and Malmö) as well as sev­er­al small­er cities; new tribes are pop­ping up by the week. The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle have appeared in vir­tu­al­ly every major media out­let in the coun­try — from a prime time debate on nation­al tele­vi­sion, to a very sym­pa­thet­ic report in the com­pa­ny of Indi­ans in action pub­lished in the biggest morn­ing news­pa­per, to an op-ed piece in the biggest evening paper and count­less news reports in
local media. Thus, in a mat­ter of months, the issue of unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions in gen­er­al and SUV:s in par­tic­u­lar have risen to the top of the agen­da in Swe­den – some­thing that nev­er hap­pened before – and own­er­ship of the vehi­cle has become all the less con­ve­nient.

Swe­den is unique in Europe in its addic­tion to SUVs. Car­bon emis­sions from new cars on Swedish roads are some 20 per­cent above the Euro­pean aver­age; no males in the EU emit as much by dri­ving cars as Swedish males do. This is large­ly due to the suc­cess of Volvo’s SUV mod­el XC90, as well as oth­er cars from the con­sis­tent­ly cli­mate destruc­tive com­pa­ny. The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle have decid­ed to change this sit­u­a­tion.

The action per­formed by the Indi­ans is sim­ple. The cap of the tyre’s valve is unscrewed, a bean or a grain of grav­el is insert­ed, and the valve is screwed back on the tyre. The lit­tle thing will push down the peg in the mid­dle of the valve, mak­ing sure the air is gen­tly released. The whole manoeu­vre takes about 10 sec­onds, after which fol­lows the long sound of the air peter­ing out. A let­ter to the own­er is left on the widescreen, where­in the action is explained (see trans­la­tion attached below). Instruc­tions and the let­ter are avail­able on the weblog, for all like-mind­ed activists to use and spread lav­ish­ly. The Indi­ans refrain from tar­get­ing SUVs used by hand­i­capped dri­vers, health care insti­tu­tions and
com­pa­ny work­ers.

Though the response has, in gen­er­al, been pos­i­tive among the pub­lic, con­sid­er­able fury and aggres­sion have arisen among SUV-own­ers. A coun­ter­force call­ing itself ”The Cow­boys of the Con­crete Jun­gle” has
appeared, threat­en­ing to deflate the lungs of the Indi­ans, pre­sum­ably with knifes. On var­i­ous inter­net com­mu­ni­ties run by motorists and sol­diers, plans are made to guard SUVs and beat or even kill Indi­ans; pub­lic sup­port­ers of the cause have been sub­ject to threats of attacks on their homes. Undaunt­ed, the Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle have con­tin­ued and esca­lat­ed the cam­paign, and so far, no one has been hurt. Only one Indi­an has been nabbed by Swedish police, though it has not even decid­ed what kind of crim­i­nal offence deflat­ing tyres actu­al­ly con­sti­tutes – if indeed it is a crime at all.

The con­flict sur­round­ing the actions is con­sid­ered a suc­cess in itself. There are real, social con­tra­dic­tions in the field of cli­mate change between those who emit car­bon relent­less­ly and those who suf­fer the heav­i­est loss­es, and bring­ing these to light is cru­cial for any progress. Not every­one will fight cli­mate change. Not every­one will give up their lethal priv­i­leges vol­un­tar­i­ly.

The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle are deter­mined to con­tin­ue their cam­paign of dis­ar­ma­ment. If it is done repeat­ed­ly and on a mas­sive scale, deflat­ing tyres will devel­op from a slight annoy­ance in the eyes of the own­ers into a real obsta­cle for dri­ving SUV:s. Imag­ine wak­ing up to a car with­out air in the tyres every morn­ing, or even once a week! The cam­paign is poised to spread fur­ther in Swe­den, and now the Indi­ans are look­ing for­ward to tribes tak­ing up the cause in oth­er coun­tries as well. In the pur­suit of spread­ing the word, all dec­la­ra­tions of recent actions will here­after be post­ed in Eng­lish as well as Swedish.

The weblog is: http://asfaltsdjungelnsindianer.wordpress.com/

The Indi­ans are hap­py to answer any ques­tions. Just write to this email adress.

Let­ter to SUV own­ers:

Your SUV kills!

We have deflat­ed one or sev­er­al tyres of your SUV. Don’t take it per­son­al. It’s your car we don’t like. You are cer­tain­ly aware of the large amount of fuel it con­sumes, so we don’t have to enlight­en you about that. But either you are igno­rant of, or you don’t care about the fact that all the gas you con­sume by dri­ving around in your SUV in the streets of the city has dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for oth­ers. Sci­en­tists are entire­ly sure that we are very close to push­ing cli­mate change across a thresh­old, into a
phase where it will be total­ly out of con­trol.

When the glac­i­ers melt, people’s source of water dis­ap­pear. When the deserts spread, agri­cul­tur­al fields become uncul­tivable. When the sea lev­el ris­es, homes are inun­dat­ed. Result: bil­lions of refugees, count­less deaths. It’s already esti­mat­ed that 160 000 humans die every year due to the effects of cli­mate change, accord­ing to the WHO. As an afflu­ent Swede you will sur­vive longer then most. Those most vul­ner­a­ble, and already worst afflict­ed by the glob­al warm­ing caused by North­ern afflu­ence, are the peo­ple of poor coun­tries. In the end, how­ev­er, cli­mate chaos will affect us all, poor peo­ple as well as rich.

This does not have to hap­pen if we impose a rad­i­cal cut on car­bon emis­sions. Now. Not tomor­row. That’s why we have dis­armed your SUV by deflat­ing the tyres. Since you live in a city with a func­tion­ing and acces­si­ble pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem you will have no prob­lem get­ting where you want with­out your SUV.

/ The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle