Author: earthfirst

Germany: Hambach Forest Defenders Occupy Four Bucket Wheel Excavators for July 4th Climate Games

July 14th, 2015

At the Cli­mate Games in Ams­ter­dam today count­less play­groups make their moves. Team Blue (the police) and the team of indus­tri­al com­pa­nies play their usu­al strat­e­gy: In Ams­ter­dam they want to expand the West port for coal trans­ship­ment and in the res­i­dent com­pa­nies they strong­ly con­tribute to the fact that the world’s cli­mate pass­es sev­er­al points of no return. There­after, the fur­ther warm­ing would get unpre­dictable and irre­versible. Our teams ham­per them, as far as pos­si­ble with­out being beat­en by Team Blue. Their game objec­tive is to enable a smooth flow of the work of destruc­tion.

This year, a team in the Rhineland has stum­bled over the fact that the play­ing field is not lim­it­ed to the Ams­ter­dam West Port. While it is fold­ed by all sorts of bound­aries togeth­er, but we can unfold and make our move at any time, any­where – after all, the oth­er side also works as good as any­where in the world.

Our “new” expan­sion pack is the Rhen­ish lig­nite min­ing area between Aachen and Cologne. This indus­tri­al-scale clock­work (con­sist­ing of five pow­er sta­tions, three mines, a net­work of coal rail­ways, tens of kilo­me­ters of con­vey­or belts and pipelines for pumped off ground­wa­ter) is the largest sin­gle source of green­house gas emis­sions in Europe – and in many places it is damn easy to attack for sab­o­tage! A good man on this game board is the occu­pa­tion of exca­va­tors: In the largest machines in the world, that [destroy] land­scape around the clock here and pro­duce coal, a lot of cap­i­tal is at work – until we stop them! On the occa­sion of the last occu­pa­tion, a spokesper­son of the group pub­licly con­firmed, that RWE can not stop actions of this kind in the future just because of the huge dimen­sions of the open pits.

The mot­to of this year’s Cli­mate Games is “BIGGER, BOLDER, STRONGER”, and so we want to do things in style. There­fore, this time since 2:55 h we are occu­py­ing four exca­va­tors : The first as usu­al at the rim of the open pit, where now it can not swal­low any more land­scape for a while. The three oth­er occu­pied exca­va­tors are at the bot­tom of the open pit: This means that in the Ham­bach mine, for the first time in the Rhen­ish min­ing area, among oth­er things, the two coal dig­gers them­selves are occu­pied! At least one per­son did not reach her/his des­ti­na­tion and now sup­ports oth­ers by bug­ging her/his warders of Team Blue. He/she will cer­tain­ly not be alone a very long time …

The game goes on – also in the Rhen­ish lig­nite min­ing area. From august 14 to 16, our friends of the Cam­paign “Ende Gelände“ (“end of the area”) mobi­lize to a mass block­ade action in the Rhineland, and we are very keen to see what is about to hap­pen around there. In octo­ber, a Skills Shar­ing Camp will be held again on the occu­pat­ed mead­ow at the rim of the Ham­bach­er Forst, which is acute­ly threat­ened by defor­esta­tion. And in Decem­ber del­e­ga­tions of the Unit­ed Nations gath­er in Paris on the ques­tion of how to talk cli­mate change away, with­out chang­ing any­thing in their exploita­tive eco­nom­ic sys­tems – and, of course, many oth­er teams are also there to play to unmask the lies. Make Your Move!

If you have got time and desire, we would be glad if you look in on the mead­ow to sup­port the occu­pa­tions and retain the tick­er track of when sol­i­dar­i­ty is need­ed out­side the police sta­tion!
Here you will find pic­tures of the most recent sim­i­lar occu­pa­tion of a sin­gle exca­va­tor. (Click in thumb­nails to enlarge.) Pic­tures of the cur­rent action will fol­low here.

Please spread out the Action State­ment (above) and also the press release and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Press Release

Dear Sir or Madam!

We here­by send you a press release enti­tled “Four buck­et wheel exca­va­tors occu­pied in open-cast mine Ham­bach”.
You can reach us at the fol­low­ing phone num­ber:

+49 1573 7181446

You are also invit­ed to vis­it us for more infor­ma­tion or sound bites at the mead­ow occu­pa­tion in Morschenich. On our blog

www.hambacherforst.blogsport.de

incom­ing news are switched in a live tick­er.

Best Regards,

Kathrin Schnei­der
Tino Sturm

Press Release

Four buck­et wheel exca­va­tors occu­pied in open-cast mine Ham­bach

Düren – Last night 2:55h cli­mate activists start­ed again to occu­pie buck­et wheel exca­va­tors of RWE. This time it were four exca­va­tors in the open pit mine near Ham­bach. Two of them are locat­ed on the bot­tom of the mine in depth 450 m, where the coal lay­er is. For the first time, the declared aim is to stop coal pro­duc­tion. With the action they are protest­ing against the min­ing and burn­ing (elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion) of lig­nite and this way they offer direct resis­tance.

As with pre­vi­ous exca­va­tors occu­pa­tions, the activists climbed up the stairs, lad­ders and walk­ways on the machines to the top.
At 70 meters high they installed them­selves, with tar­pau­lins for sun pro­tec­tion, and they rolled out ban­ners on which they demand­ed once more an imme­di­ate with­draw­al from coal min­ing and a clear­ing stop in the Ham­bach for­est. “It has long been known that the hab­it­abil­i­ty of the plan­et is at stake. Is just as clear that there are alter­na­tives to inef­fi­cient elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion out of coal,” said an activist who wants to remain anony­mous, and added: “An eco­nom­ic sys­tem that is depen­dent on con­stant growth, can­not do any­thing else than exploit the envi­ron­ment at the expense of us all.”
The action state­ment puts these occu­pa­tions in the con­text of the “Cli­mate Games” in Ams­ter­dam. There, the West Port will be expand­ed, which is an impor­tant coal trad­ing cen­ter. Via Ams­ter­dam among oth­ers coal from South Amer­i­ca is trans­port­ed to the Rhineland to be incin­er­at­ed togeth­er with lig­nite.

The action end­ed at 9 pm, July 4th, when the last arrest­ed activists left the police sta­tion.

Meuse, France: Nuclear Waste Landfill Project Sabotaged

July 14th, 2015

anony­mous report / Con­tra Info

Not far from Bure, an analy­sis site of ANDRA was attacked by a few deter­mined night owls.

At Bure, in Meuse, pow­er is try­ing by all its means to have accept­ed a nuclear waste land­fill project 500 meters under­ground.

Despite that the project has not yet offi­cial­ly start­ed, that of the nuclear waste not arriv­ing before 2025, the ANDRA instal­la­tions (the Nation­al Agency for Radioac­tive Waste Man­age­ment, in charge of the land­fill project) are already swarm­ing in the area.

One night around the 25th June, a con­struc­tion site con­tain­ing mul­ti­ple elec­tri­cal instal­la­tions and a well, to analyse the con­di­tion of the rock and water table, was dev­as­tat­ed.

The well was then forcibly blocked up with con­crete, and all the cab­i­nets were frac­tured and destroyed by the rage of those who don’t want to wait for the exhaus­tion of legal resorts to attack this project.

Attack the infra­struc­ture of pow­er wher­ev­er they are, in Meuse like else­where.

Against Cigéo and its world, resis­tance and sab­o­tage!

Plane Stupid activists on Heathrow runway in climate protest

13th July 2015

12 cli­mate change activists from anti air­port expan­sion direct action group, Plane Stu­pid, got onto the north run­way at 03:30am this morn­ing at Heathrow Air­port by cut­ting through a fence, in a peace­ful protest against pro­pos­als to build a new run­way.

The pro­test­ers say that going ahead with the recent Air­ports Com­mis­sion rec­om­men­da­tion that a third run­way should be built at Heathrow will make it impos­si­ble for the UK to meet its cli­mate change tar­gets.

The skies above Heathrow are already the busiest in the world, and demand for flights is dri­ven by air fares that are kept arti­fi­cial­ly low by gen­er­ous tax exemp­tions. The activists say that if the avi­a­tion indus­try paid more of its envi­ron­men­tal costs then there would be no press­ing need for a new run­way. Nine of the top ten most pop­u­lar routes out of Heathrow are short haul, includ­ing des­ti­na­tions such as Paris, Man­ches­ter and Edin­burgh which all have exist­ing rail alter­na­tives.

Ella Gilbert, an activist from Plane Stu­pid who is on the run­way, said:

“Build­ing more run­ways goes against every­thing we’re being told by sci­en­tists and experts on cli­mate change. This would mas­sive­ly increase car­bon emis­sions exact­ly when we need to mas­sive­ly reduce them, that’s why we’re here.We want to say sor­ry to any­one whose day we’ve ruined, and we’re not say­ing that every­body who wants to fly is a bad per­son. It’s those who fly fre­quent­ly and unnec­es­sar­i­ly who are dri­ving the need for expan­sion, and we can­not keep ignor­ing the ter­ri­fy­ing con­se­quences of fly­ing like there’s no tomor­row.

No ifs, no buts, no third run­way. And we mean it.”

Updates — https://twitter.com/planestupid

BUILD GARDENS, NOT PRISONS: International Reclaim the Fields Action Camp 2015

Inter­na­tion­al Reclaim the Fields Action Camp 2015

Inter­na­tion­al Reclaim the Fields Action Camp 2015

When: Fri­day 28th August (From 6pm) – Wednes­day 2nd Sep­tem­ber 2015

Where: Dudle­ston Com­mu­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Camp, Shrop­shire (near the Wales/England Bor­der).

About:

Reclaim the Fields UK (RTF) was born in 2011, as a star in a wider con­stel­la­tion of food and land strug­gles that reach­es around the globe. Since 2011, camps and oth­er RTF gath­er­ings have helped sup­port local com­mu­ni­ties in strug­gle, share skills, devel­op net­works, and strength­en the resis­tance to exploita­tion, in Bris­tol, west Lon­don, Glouces­ter­shire, Not­ting­ham and Fife, among oth­er loca­tions.

Every two years there is also an inter­na­tion­al camp, where peo­ple from around Europe and beyond meet togeth­er to sup­port a local strug­gle (stand­ing against exploita­tive gold min­ing in Roma­nia, and open cast coal min­ing in Ger­many, are some exam­ples). Peo­ple at these camps have shared their local sto­ries and grown their ideas about resis­tance and reclaim­ing our food sys­tem, beyond nation­al bor­ders. This year, an inter­na­tion­al gath­er­ing will be held in the UK, in Dudle­ston, Shrop­shire, on the Welsh/English bor­der.

The aims of the camp are:
• To sup­port local com­mu­ni­ties in the west and north west of Eng­land, and the north of Wales with their strug­gles against frack­ing
• To increase par­tic­i­pa­tion in Reclaim the Fields
• To demon­strate vis­i­ble, active oppo­si­tion to prison con­struc­tion
• To sup­port Dudle­ston Com­mu­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Camp build a gar­den and infra­struc­ture to become more self-reliant
• To demon­strate the inter­con­nec­tion between these strug­gles
• To inspire and rad­i­calise every­one involved

What is hap­pen­ing:

• Two days of Action – Tues­day 1st & Wednes­day 2nd Sep­tem­ber – demon­stra­tions & actions against com­pa­nies involved in the con­struc­tion of the North Wales prison, as well as local frack­ing-relat­ed tar­gets.
• Work­shops & Skill­shares – Over the bank hol­i­day week­end there will be abun­dant oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn, share, dis­cuss and con­nect with oth­er peo­ple.
• Build­ing & Grow­ing on the site – Be part of installing gar­dens & low impact infra­struc­ture at the com­mu­ni­ty pro­tec­tion camp. Learn about per­ma­cul­ture, agroe­col­o­gy, for­est gar­den­ing, mush­room grow­ing, pal­let con­struc­tion, com­post toi­let mak­ing, off-grid electrics and more.

Why:

• This camp has been organ­ised to sup­port the local com­mu­ni­ty in Dudle­ston to resist frack­ing in their area (as well as work­ing with oth­er local anti-frack­ing groups & pro­tec­tion camps in the North West who have been resist­ing extreme ener­gy devel­op­ments for a num­ber of years). To find out more about their strug­gle vis­it: http://frack-off.org.uk/blockade/dudleston-community-protection-camp/
• It has also been organ­ised to give atten­tion to the North Wales Prison Project that is being con­struct­ed. This will be Europe’s sec­ond largest prison hold­ing 2100 pris­on­ers and the first of a num­ber of ‘mega pris­ons’ that the UK Gov­ern­ment wish to build. Click here for more infor­ma­tion about the prison, why we are against it & links to arti­cles about the prison indus­tri­al com­plex in the UK

How to get involved:

Click on the links below to find more prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion about the camp and how to get involved:

This is a DIY/DIT(ogether)* camp and every­one is need­ed to get stuck in to make it hap­pen. Peo­ple are need­ed to:
• Sup­port with pub­lic­i­ty before the event – shar­ing the gath­er­ing online, putting posters up, encour­ag­ing your local group to get involved. Peo­ple are also need­ed to help design the pro­gramme, respond to emails & plan facil­i­ta­tion.
• Help­ing with site set up & build­ing infra­struc­ture (plan­ning this in advance & being on site a few days before the gath­er­ing)
• Sign­ing up to a shift over the week­end to help with cook­ing, site set up & safe­ty, being on the wel­come tent & so forth
• Sup­port­ing local groups to organ­ise actions

If you can help with any of these tasks please email info@reclaimthefields.noflag.org.uk

Spread the word:

• Poster design here: reclaimthefields.noflag.org.uk/wp-conte…

• Face­book event: https://www.facebook.com/events/560637597407933/

Reclaim the Fields International Gathering 2015

Reclaim the Fields

About the camp

Reclaim the Fields (or RTF) UK was born in 2011, as a star in a wider con­stel­la­tion of food and land strug­gles that reach­es around the globe. Since 2011, camps and oth­er RTF gath­er­ings have helped sup­port local com­mu­ni­ties in strug­gle, share skills, devel­oped net­works, and strength­ened the resis­tance to exploita­tion, in Bris­tol, west Lon­don, Glouces­ter­shire, Not­ting­ham and Fife among oth­er loca­tions.

Every two years there is also an inter­na­tion­al camp, where peo­ple from around Europe and beyond meet togeth­er to sup­port a local strug­gle (from gold min­ing in Roma­nia to open cast coal min­ing in Ger­many, for exam­ple). Peo­ple share share sto­ries and ideas about resis­tance and reclaim­ing our food sys­tem beyond nation­al bor­ders. This year, an inter­na­tion­al gath­er­ing will be held in the UK, in Dudle­ston, Shrop­shire, on the Welsh/English bor­der.

The aims of the camp are:

  • To sup­port local com­mu­ni­ties in the west and north west of Eng­land, and the north of Wales with their strug­gles against frack­ing
  • To increase par­tic­i­pa­tion in Reclaim the Fields
  • To demon­strate vis­i­ble, active oppo­si­tion to prison con­struc­tion
  • To sup­port Dudle­ston Com­mu­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Camp build a gar­den and infra­struc­ture to become more self-reliant
  • To demon­strate the inter­con­nec­tion between these strug­gles
  • To inspire and rad­i­calise every­one involved

What’s taking place?

  • Two days of Action – Tues­day 1st & Wednes­day 2nd Sep­tem­ber – demon­stra­tions & actions against com­pa­nies involved in the con­struc­tion of the North Wales prison, as well as local frack­ing-relat­ed tar­gets.
  • Work­shops & Skill­shares – Over the bank hol­i­day week­end there will be abun­dant oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn, share, dis­cuss and con­nect with oth­er peo­ple.
  • Build­ing & Grow­ing on the site – Be part of installing gar­dens & low impact infra­struc­ture at the com­mu­ni­ty pro­tec­tion camp. Learn about per­ma­cul­ture, agroe­col­o­gy, for­est gar­den­ing, mush­room grow­ing, pal­let con­struc­tion, com­post toi­let mak­ing, off-grid electrics and more.

Why this camp? Why now?

  • This camp has been organ­ised to sup­port the local com­mu­ni­ty in Dudle­ston to resist frack­ing in their area (as well as work­ing with oth­er local anti-frack­ing groups & pro­tec­tion camps in the North West who have been resist­ing extreme ener­gy devel­op­ments for a num­ber of years). To find out more about their strug­gle vis­it: http://frack-off.org.uk/blockade/dudleston-community-protection-camp/

Practical Information about the Camp

Click on the links below to find more prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion about the camp and how to get involved:

Getting involved

This is a DIY camp and every­one is need­ed to get stuck in to make it hap­pen. Peo­ple are need­ed to:

  • Sup­port with pub­lic­i­ty before the event – shar­ing the gath­er­ing online, putting posters up, encour­ag­ing your local group to get involved. Peo­ple are also need­ed to help design the pro­gramme, respond to emails & plan facil­i­ta­tion.
  • Help­ing with site set up & build­ing infra­struc­ture (plan­ning this in advance & being on site a few days before the gath­er­ing)
  • Sign­ing up to a shift over the week­end to help with cook­ing, site set up & safe­ty, being on the wel­come tent & so forth
  • Sup­port­ing local groups to organ­ise actions

If you can help with any of these tasks please email info@reclaimthefields.noflag.org.uk

Who are Reclaim the Fields?

We are a group of peas­ants, land­less and prospec­tive peas­ants, as well as peo­ple who are tak­ing back con­trol over food pro­duc­tion.

We under­stand “peas­ants” as peo­ple who pro­duce food on a small scale, for them­selves or for the com­mu­ni­ty, pos­si­bly sell­ing a part of it. This also includes agri­cul­tur­al work­ers.

We sup­port and encour­age peo­ple to stay on the land and go back to the coun­try­side. We pro­mote food sov­er­eign­ty (as defined in the Nyéléni dec­la­ra­tion) and peas­ant agri­cul­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly among young peo­ple and urban dwellers, as well as alter­na­tive ways of life. In Europe, the con­cept ‘food sov­er­eign­ty’ is not very com­mon and could be clar­i­fied with ideas such as ‘food auton­o­my’ and con­trol over food sys­tems by inclu­sive com­mu­ni­ties, not only nations or states. We are deter­mined to cre­ate alter­na­tives to cap­i­tal­ism through coop­er­a­tive, col­lec­tive, autonomous, real-needs-ori­ent­ed, small-scale pro­duc­tion and ini­tia­tives. We are putting the­o­ry into prac­tice and link­ing local prac­ti­cal action with glob­al polit­i­cal strug­gles.

In order to achieve this, we par­tic­i­pate in local actions through activist groups and coop­er­ate with exist­ing ini­tia­tives. This is why we choose not to be a homo­ge­neous group, but to open up to the diver­si­ty of actors fight­ing the cap­i­tal­ist food pro­duc­tion mod­el. We address the issues of access to land, col­lec­tive farm­ing, seed rights and seed exchange. We strength­en the impact of our work through coop­er­a­tion with activists who focus on dif­fer­ent tasks but who share the same vision.

Nev­er­the­less, our open­ness has some lim­its. We are deter­mined to take back con­trol over our lives and refuse any form of author­i­tar­i­an­ism and hier­ar­chy. We respect nature and liv­ing beings, but will nei­ther accept nor tol­er­ate any form of dis­crim­i­na­tion, be it based on race, reli­gion, gen­der, nation­al­i­ty, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or social sta­tus. We refuse and will active­ly oppose every form of exploita­tion of oth­er peo­ple. With the same force and ener­gy, we act with kind­ness and con­vivi­al­i­ty, mak­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty a con­crete prac­tice of our dai­ly life.

We sup­port the strug­gles and visions of la Via Campesina, and work to strength­en them. We wish to share the knowl­edge and the expe­ri­ence from years of strug­gle and peas­ant life and enrich it with the per­spec­tives and strength of those of us who are not peas­ants, or not yet peas­ants. We all suf­fer the con­se­quences of the same poli­cies, and are all part of the same fight.

Read this in: French, Ger­man, Span­ish

 

Grow Heathrow — bailiffs resisted

At 10:00 this morn­ing the land own­er plus 5/6 bailiffs arrived to evict the res­i­dents of Grow Heathrow, threat­en­ing to break entry. Res­i­dents locked-on and climbed to high­er ground. The police arrived, explain­ing to the bailiffs they were woe­ful­ly unequipped to enforce an evic­tion. Indeed they were.

At 10:00 this morn­ing the land own­er plus 5/6 bailiffs arrived to evict the res­i­dents of Grow Heathrow, threat­en­ing to break entry. Res­i­dents locked-on and climbed to high­er ground. The police arrived, explain­ing to the bailiffs they were woe­ful­ly unequipped to enforce an evic­tion. Indeed they were.

This suc­cess has proved to be use­ful prac­tise for our call-out response, with many locals and indi­vid­u­als in the Grow Heathrow fam­i­ly arriv­ing this morn­ing.

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO CAME DOWN!

If you’d like to be added to the evic­tion call-out phone tree, email us at info@transitionheathrow.com with your phone num­ber, or text us on 07706602284.

HAYES CARNIVAL HERE WE COME!

Roundup of Actions Against Fossil Fuel Infrastructure in Vermont and NY (PHOTOS)

11540845_880395355368837_8597014069334356308_n

July 7th, 2015

from Ris­ing Tide Ver­mont

* 150+ w/dozens occu­py­ing the tracks in Ticon­dero­ga to ‪#‎StopOil­Trains‬.
* Four arrest­ed blockad­ing VT fracked gas pipeline con­struc­tion.
* TWAC still locked down to CNG truck on way to IP mill.

Disrupting Vermont Gas Systems

from Burling­ton Free Press

About 30 pro­test­ers dis­rupt­ed work at a Ver­mont Gas Sys­tems con­struc­tion site in Willis­ton on Tues­day morn­ing.

Four pro­test­ers were arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion that they unlaw­ful­ly tres­passed to stop work at the con­struc­tion site, said Willis­ton police Chief Todd Shep­ard. Willis­ton police had giv­en pro­test­ers until 7 a.m. to move.

Ver­mont State Police, Essex police and South Burling­ton police were also on scene. Shep­ard said about 14 law enforce­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives had arrived by the end of the protest.

Thomas Buck­ley, 34, of West­ford and Martha Water­man, 25, of Char­lotte chained them­selves togeth­er across a ditch dig­ging machine. Avery Pittman, 25, of Burling­ton was lat­er also chained to Water­man.

Buck­ley, Water­man and Pittman were tak­en into cus­tody before 9 a.m. Grayson Flo­ry, 28, of Los Ange­les was also arrest­ed after refus­ing to leave the site at 310 Hur­ri­cane Lane.

All pro­test­ers arrest­ed were car­ried from the site by law enforce­ment, but they did not active­ly resist arrest oth­er­wise, Shep­ard said.

Each pro­test­er has been released from police cus­tody and issued a cita­tion to appear on Thurs­day in Ver­mont Supe­ri­or Court in Burling­ton, Shep­ard said.

Occupation of the Tracks


 

Flotilla

from Ris­ing Tide Ver­mont: More than a hun­dred peo­ple con­verged in Ticon­dero­ga, NY today for a flotil­la and sym­bol­ic block­ade to ‪#StopOil­Trains.

Yes­ter­day marked the sec­ond anniver­sary of the Lac-Megan­tic oil train dis­as­ter, in which a train car­ry­ing fracked oil explod­ed and lev­eled the small Que­bec town, killing 47 peo­ple.

In the so-called Cham­plain val­ley, tens of mil­lions of gal­lons of fracked oil are trans­port­ed annu­al­ly along the lake, and indus­try is mak­ing plans to start bring­ing tar sands through.

TWAC Throws Down

from Ris­ing Tide Ver­mont: “Our friends at the Trans and/or Women’s Action Camp (TWAC) also stopped a truck on its way to deliv­er com­pressed fracked nat­ur­al gas to Inter­na­tion­al Paper. One per­son has locked their body to the back of the truck pre­vent­ing it from mak­ing a deliv­ery. Fracked gas by truck is just as dirty and dan­ger­ous as fracked gas in a pipeline!”


 

(TWAC is a group of activists who iden­ti­fy as Trans*, Trans­gen­der, Gen­derqueer, and Gen­der non-con­form­ing as well as any­one who iden­ti­fies as a woman regard­less of whether they were assigned female at birth)

Released from Jail!!!

The four peo­ple who were arrest­ed this morn­ing block­ing the con­struc­tion of the fracked gas pipeline have all been released. Please share and donate to our legal fund to sup­port this fierce esca­la­tion of resis­tance against extreme ener­gy! Donate to our legal fund at: http://bit.ly/J7legal

Earth First! Summer Gathering, August 2015 — programme & practicalities announced

Five days of skill-shar­ing for grass­roots eco­log­i­cal direct action — make links, share ideas, and get involved in the run up to the Paris cli­mate sum­mit, and strug­gles against frack­ing, new roads and more.

19th-24th August 2015, the Peak District

Over 130 work­shops and oth­er excit­ing spaces and things to do in our packed pro­gramme — come the whole time if you can! Inspir­ing work­shops giv­en by peo­ple from eco­log­i­cal strug­gles across Europe, plus almost every eco-cam­paign in the UK you could shake a stick at. 

Full details includ­ing prac­ti­cal­i­ties at

http://earthfirstgathering.org/

Turkey: Environmentalists Block Road to Mining Company

A group of locals and envi­ron­men­tal­ist activists blocked the road to an untouched forest­ed area in the Black Sea province of Artvin to pre­vent the activ­i­ties of a min­ing firm.

Activists and locals guard the moun­tain­ous forests of Artvin in sep­a­rate loca­tions to pre­vent Forestry Min­istry offi­cials from enter­ing the area.

Artvin Forestry Min­istry offi­cials, how­ev­er, aim to enter the area in order to make cal­cu­la­tions to com­plete the pro­ce­dures for the firm to start its work in the area. Min­istry offi­cials attempt­ed to enter the area from a dif­fer­ent path, after their pre­vi­ous attempt was stopped by the activists’ road block.

Local activists, who orga­nized them­selves via social media in a short time, gath­ered in the Cer­at­te­pe neigh­bor­hood, which is locat­ed at an alti­tude of 1,800 meters. They moved trees cut by the forestry offi­cials to the road and blocked traf­fic, stop­ping the entry of the offi­cials. They have tak­en pic­tures with the tree bar­ri­cades they have made and shared them via social media. The group called itself “300 Cer­at­te­peli” in ref­er­ence to the leg­end of 300 Spar­tans who stood their ground against the Per­sians, immor­tal­ized in the movie “300.” They are deter­mined at all costs to block any pos­si­ble con­struc­tion and min­ing work in the area. 

Green Artvin Association’s head Nur Neşe Kara­han said they had to walk the whole way to the forest­ed area, as it was blocked in sev­er­al loca­tions. “The road was blocked due to a col­lapse in the tun­nel. We had to walk 3 kilo­me­ters around it. We came across with the firm’s vehi­cle, as they are not using the well-known road any­more. They said offi­cials from the firm will come here and we are deter­mined to wait here to talk to them,” said Kara­han.

Hakan Akın, a shop keep­er in Artvin, said it is a promis­ing devel­op­ment for him to see many peo­ple could gath­er in the area min­utes after they heard rumors the firm would start work there.

“The experts said this area is not suit­able for min­ing. We are locals here. We already told them that it is not pos­si­ble for them to oper­ate here. This place is our green, this is where we live. We have giv­en enough to the dams; we will no longer allow any more con­struc­tion,” said Akın, among the group.

Hasan Yük­sel, a mem­ber of Green Arvin Asso­ci­a­tion, said they will con­tin­ue to hold their posts on mul­ti­ple roads in the Cer­at­te­pe neigh­bor­hood to pre­vent the entry of min­ing firms.

“They are wrong if they think we will give up.  They will come across an Artvin local on every cor­ner of these trees when­ev­er they come here,” said Yük­sel.

Main oppo­si­tion Repub­li­can People’s Par­ty (CHP) provin­cial branch head Ali Yücel Kurt also held a meet­ing in the area. He claimed that some peo­ple are also burn­ing the vehi­cles in order to pro­voke locals by blam­ing the locals for the arson. “We com­plete­ly deny such claims,” said Kurt.

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The Earth First! Direct Action Man­u­al and Ecode­fense: a Field Guide to Mon­key­wrench­ing, are both avail­able to read online.

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