Earth First! Winter Moot — last update

Brighton, Feb­ru­ary 6–7‑8th 2009

The Earth First! Win­ter moot is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple who feel affil­i­a­tion with the ideas behind Earth First! to net­work, dis­cuss and reflect on the eco­log­i­cal direct action move­ment and to plan for the future. In con­trast with the year­ly EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, which is held out­side for around five days, the win­ter moot is a short­er week­end meet­ing, inside, less aimed at skill shar­ing and more at look­ing where we are at as move­ment and where we want to be going.

EF! Winter Moot poster 2009Brighton, Feb­ru­ary 6–7‑8th 2009

The Earth First! Win­ter moot is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple who feel affil­i­a­tion with the ideas behind Earth First! to net­work, dis­cuss and reflect on the eco­log­i­cal direct action move­ment and to plan for the future. In con­trast with the year­ly EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, which is held out­side for around five days, the win­ter moot is a short­er week­end meet­ing, inside, less aimed at skill shar­ing and more at look­ing where we are at as move­ment and where we want to be going.

Earth First! is not an organ­i­sa­tion, but a ban­ner for non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing and the use of direct action to con­front, stop and even­tu­al­ly reverse the forces that are respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the Earth and its inhab­i­tants.

Top­ics that have been raised include (Updat­ed):
— the Copen­hagen cli­mate sum­mit with a num­ber of peo­ple from Den­mark com­ing over to talk about logis­tics, tac­tics and mobil­i­sa­tion
— the G20 sum­mit in Lon­don
— Leave it in the ground / coal
— GM
— Ross­port
— Strength­en­ing the EF net­work: com­mu­ni­ca­tion and secu­ri­ty, actionup­date and gath­er­ings
— Impli­ca­tions of the cri­sis
— Cli­mate and migra­tion / eco-activism and Nobor­der net­works
— Heathrow expan­sion
— UK Bio­fu­els
— Nan­otech­nol­o­gy
— Water-based actions

There will not be work­shops on any of these top­ics — please inform your­self on top­ics of your inter­est before the moot. We will be focus­ing on dis­cussing strat­e­gy and action plan­ning.

There will be a Sav­ing Ice­land meet­ing on the Fri­day after­noon before the gath­er­ing.

Please con­tact the orga­niz­ing col­lec­tive (moot2009@earthfirst.org.uk) know if you want to add any­thing, want to help with facil­i­ta­tion or have any oth­er queries. You are wel­come to use our PGP key below.
Sug­ges­tion: read the activist secu­ri­ty guide on http://www.activistsecurity.org/

There will be sleep­ing places arranged and food avail­able at cost price from Fri­day evening. The pro­gram will start on Sat­ur­day at 10 AM. Please be on time.

Venue: Cow­ley Club, 12 Lon­don Road.
http://www.cowleyclub.org.uk/
(Please do not con­tact the Cow­ley Club phone nr. with infor­ma­tion requests).
Click for direc­tions

Please note:
— No dogs please
— The week­end is not open to jour­nal­ists

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So, here’s the low­down on what the Dan­ish peo­ple com­ing over for the EF! Win­ter Moot will be talk­ing about.

*Copen­hagen Cli­mate Sum­mit*
Do we cheer them on, block them in, or close them down?

*When?*
*Where?*
*What?* Dan­ish Kli­max activists will kick off a dis­cus­sion about the move­ment to stop cli­mate change.
*Why?* The UN talks in Copen­hagen this Decem­ber are sup­posed to be the place where world lead­ers agree a new inter­na­tion­al deal to stop cli­mate change.
But progress so far has been under­mined by cor­po­rate lob­by­ing and false, mar­ket-based solu­tions. When activists from across Europe hit the streets of Copen­hagen, should we be call­ing on gov­ern­ments to do bet­ter, blockad­ing them in until they come up with a good deal, or be say­ing they are so flawed we should try to close them down?

Most peo­ple now agree that we need to do some­thing about cli­mate change. But there isn’t agree­ment on what. For cor­po­ra­tions and most gov­ern­ments its a form of green (or maybe green­washed) cap­i­tal­ism and before we even get there it will prob­a­bly be too late. In oppo­si­tion to this cor­po­rate agen­da, social move­ments in the South have pro­posed ‘cli­mate jus­tice’, a tran­si­tion to a sus­tain­able world which sees the rich minor­i­ty who caused cli­mate change pay to put it right, not try and push the costs onto the poor major­i­ty.

With­in this more pro­gres­sive agen­da pro­pos­als range from a ‘green new deal’ of state-led invest­ment for social and envi­ron­men­tal goals, to those who argue that only a grass­roots anti-cap­i­tal­ism can get us out of this mess. This is the polit­i­cal back­ground to the mobil­i­sa­tion around the Copen­hagen cli­mate talks and the strate­gic and tac­ti­cal deci­sions activists are try­ing to make about it.

This is a chance for activists who are less and more involved in cli­mate cam­paign­ing to come togeth­er and dis­cuss all these issues. We can also talk about how we mobilise for what may be one of the most impor­tant events since the ‘bat­tle’ of Seat­tle exact­ly 10 years pre­vi­ous­ly.