Category: Action Reports

TopShop SwapShop (London), Buy Nothing Day action (+ Steal Something Day) + Leeds + Liverpool + Bristol

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!

TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!
Top Shop Swap Shop buy nothing day flier
TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

In the light of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis and the out­rage over the sweat­shop con­di­tions that most high street brands make their clothes in, the swap­shop is your chance to re-vamp your wardrobe with a free con­science! Leap­ing away from the drudgery of big cor­po­rate fash­ion with it’s dodgy busi­ness prac­tices and spend spend spend atti­tude, the Top­shop swap­shop takes fash­ion back to it’s roots.

Sim­ply turn up at TOPSHOP on Oxford Street wear­ing an out­fit you wish to upgrade, then on the stroke of 2, mar­vel as hun­dreds of fash­ion moguls offer to trade your clothes with you.

Fan­cy that girls jumper? Why not offer to swap your belt for it?
That boy’s hat is to die for, how about a trade for your jeans?
Nice skirt, fan­cy trad­ing my t‑shirt for it?

After a hec­tic re-work­ing of your look you can then walk proud­ly back onto the streets of Lon­don town with a new wardrobe and not hav­ing spent a sin­gle pen­ny.

You can buy lots of clothes but you can’t buy style.

Please spread far and wide…

DISCLAIMER:

The above event is in no way sup­port­ed or con­doned by Top­Shop. Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to any brand liv­ing or dead is mere­ly coin­ci­den­tal.

http://www.spacehijackers.org

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Steal Something Day
Steal Some­thing Day, a shame­less 24-hour steal­ing spree! a cri­tique of BND and call to action, recy­cled from pre­vi­ous years for your enter­tain­ment

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Buy Noth­ing Day Leeds

In Brig­gate this Sat­ur­day (29th of Nov) there will be a Buy Noth­ing extrav­a­gan­za. We will have Christ­mas car­ols telling peo­ple of the woes of shop­ping, there will be hot tea and cof­fee to help ex-shop­pers read­just to there new found hap­pi­ness, and ideas of presents that do not involve con­sumerism. From
11am — till dark we will be ask­ing peo­ple to ques­tion con­sumerism and join us in buy­ing noth­ing!

Last year was a major suc­cess and BND strikes again. Please bake cakes, bring food and any­thing you would like to give away. There will be a free shop, music and tables. Bring any­thing down to join in the par­ty!
Leeds BND

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Liv­er­pool
Buy Nothing Day (Liverpool) flier
next to nowhere is proud to present an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all the liv­er­pool activists to join togeth­er in a spir­it of togeth­er­ness, open­ness & com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

i guess we can all agree that over-con­sump­tion is a very bad thing & i reck­on that most of us see cap­i­tal­ism as the root of the sick­ness that is infest­ing our soci­ety. yes?
any­one a racist? no? oh my, we seem to have some­thing in com­mon after all!

well, on sat­ur­day 29th novem­ber it’s time to put your mutu­al aid where your mouth is.

at 11am maybe meet & greet nick grif­fin (bnp) who could be plea­sur­ing our city with his pres­ence in his bid to become mep for the north west of eng­land. he’s called for the par­ty faith­ful to gath­er in protest at thear­rest of sev­er­al mem­bers last week. are we real­ly going to let this hap­pen?
meet at the top of church street at 10am.

after­wards, from 12pm, the social cen­tre shall be trans­formed into an oasis of anti-cap­i­tal­ism.

we’ll have:
a fab­u­lous free-shop full of qual­i­ty free good­ies,
free tea n’ cof­fee,
veg­an cafe (dona­tions only),
open mic, film, per­for­mance, spo­ken word…

now, i know that some peo­ple are a bit scared of actu­al­ly get­ting involved in next to nowhere, prefer­ing to dis­cuss the short­com­ings of the book­ing pol­i­cy from a safe dis­tance. just to be clear, and restate the bot­tom line of next to nowhere from its con­sti­tu­tion — every­one is wel­come to get involved at the social cen­tre pro­vid­ed that they are will­ing to work in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way through con­sen­sus.

‘actions speak loud­er than words’ — please can peo­ple work togeth­er in mutu­al sup­port to help make this world a bet­ter place and take on the evils which are fuck­ing up our world or say noth­ing and stop this on-going crit­i­cism from the side­lines, whilst doing noth­ing at nowhere.

who knows, the open-mic forum could even pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to express their feel­ings about the social cen­tre, in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way of course!
or, we could just have a good old-fash­ioned knees up…

togeth­er, let’s start to dance on the graves of mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions!

feistyfingers[at]yahoo.co.uk
http://www.liverpoolsocialcentre.org

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Buy Noth­ing Day 2008 — Freeshop in Broad­mead, Bris­tol

Free shop, live music, cir­cus skills and face paint­ing? UWE stu­dents from the Peo­ple and Plan­et soci­ety are going to be tak­ing part in a ‘buy noth­ing day’ and will be run­ning a free shop on Sat­ur­day, bright­en­ing up the cold, grey, win­try streets of Bris­tol city cen­tre.

To recap­ture some of that lost Christ­mas Spir­it (the giv­ing that is, not the spend­ing!) we’ll be giv­ing away clothes, bric-a-brac and plen­ty more lit­tle gems for you to get your mitts on as well as bring­ing a lit­tle sun­shine to the often not-so-hap­py shop­pers of Bris­tol. If you have any­thing you want to get rid of, bring it along!

We’re look­ing for vol­un­teers to help inform and enter­tain (musi­cians, cir­cus enter­tain­ers, etc) so if your game bring your uni­cy­cle down and get involved! It kicks off at 11am and will be run­ning till 4pm, so Pop down to our mar­quee in-between the Gal­leries and Cabot Cir­cus (Just down from Ann Sum­mers!).

For more info e‑mail Lisa at lisatozer@hotmail.com

I’ll see you there!

Chester Forest Rescue Camp Steps Up (Australia)

2008-11-23
Local and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers cam­paign­ing to save over 800 hectares of rare, pris­tine for­est in WA’s south­west have set up a tree plat­form and sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty camp in the Chester for­est block after camp­ing on near­by pri­vate prop­er­ty for the last few months. The move comes as the For­est Prod­ucts Com­mis­sion (FPC) starts to mark out Dieback infect­ed areas and log­ging roads into the coupe. A call­out has been made to all to get down and sup­port the cam­paign.

Chester platform2008-11-23
Local and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers cam­paign­ing to save over 800 hectares of rare, pris­tine for­est in WA’s south­west have set up a tree plat­form and sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty camp in the Chester for­est block after camp­ing on near­by pri­vate prop­er­ty for the last few months. The move comes as the For­est Prod­ucts Com­mis­sion (FPC) starts to mark out Dieback infect­ed areas and log­ging roads into the coupe. A call­out has been made to all to get down and sup­port the cam­paign.

After sev­er­al months on pri­vate prop­er­ty near Mar­garet Riv­er, the Chester For­est Res­cue Camp has moved into the for­est as the log­ging date draws clos­er and the FPC begins to mark out log­ging areas and roads with­in the coup. A tree plat­form has been erect­ed and a com­mu­ni­ty camp set up on the edge of the coupe for what is expect­ed to be an ongo­ing cam­paign to save over 800 hectares of a world reco­ginsed bio­di­ver­si­ty hotspot.

Chester For­est Block is sit­u­at­ed South of the Black­wood Riv­er in WA’s south­west, approx­i­mate­ly 40km’s south-east from the town of Mar­garet Riv­er. It is com­prised pre­dom­i­nate­ly of Jar­rah and Marri(Redgum) wood­land with sea­son­al­ly wet low­land and a patch of Kar­ri towards the mid­dle of the coupe. There is a high num­ber of threat­ened and pri­or­i­ty endem­ic plant species (species that only occur with­in the local plant com­mu­ni­ty) with Chester For­est hav­ing a very high degree of species rich­ness. A large patch of for­est with­in the coupe and sur­round­ing Nature Reserve remains unin­fect­ed from Phy­topthera dieback ( see http://www.dwg.org.au/index.cfm?objectid=2C607FE0-C09F-1F3C-C87C8B2114B042F3) which threat­ens to destroy and degrade much of the For­est. The FPC plans to log right in the mid­dle of the unin­fect­ed, healthy for­est. Log­ging the for­est and all the dis­tur­bance that comes with it (Machin­ery, altered water flow, roads etc.) will only accel­er­ate the spread of Dieback with­in Chester and sur­round­ing pris­tine for­est and wood­land. Log­ging is expect­ed to com­mence in ear­ly Jan­u­ary.

With the effects of log­ging on Cli­mate Change, increase salin­i­ty, and ecosys­tem col­lapse now well doc­u­ment­ed, and 85 per­cent of WA’s native forests already gone, it is unac­cept­able that native forests con­tin­ue to be logged for tiny (some­time neg­a­tive) prof­its for indus­try and gov­ern­ment depart­ments. It is now well known that our forests pro­vide much more than just wood. They pro­vide us with clean air, water, healthy soil and sta­ble ecosys­tems to sup­port life as we know it.

Come and join the cam­paign to save Chester For­est and build the com­mu­ni­ty voice that is need­ed to stop the log­ging of our pre­cious nat­ur­al resources.

Get in touch with the Mar­garet Riv­er Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre (Ph/fax. 9758 8078)
Or call 0422535328 for more info and direc­tions to camp.
(a map will be post­ed soon for direc­tions to camp)

West­ern Aus­tralian For­est Alliance
Glob­al Warm­ing For­est Group

A report from the No Borders network gathering

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

Sat­ur­day began with report backs from local groups, giv­ing us an impres­sion of the activ­i­ty of the No Bor­ders net­work. Oppo­si­tion against ID cards and the IOM, and actions against depor­ta­tion air­lines and immi­gra­tion snatch squads, are as much part of the No Bor­ders agen­da as is sol­i­dar­i­ty with detainees, depor­tees and migrant work­ers. It was obvi­ous that the vol­ume and vari­ety of actions is one of the strengths of the net­work which has helped it to con­tin­ue to devel­op and grow with­out los­ing momen­tum.

The inter­na­tion­al dimen­sion of the net­work was stressed when peo­ple told of large-scale block­ades of a deten­tion cen­tre in Bel­gium, of Ham­burg air­port to stop depor­ta­tions, and of the attempt to dis­man­tle a deten­tion cen­tre in Den­mark. Peo­ple felt it is increas­ing­ly impor­tant to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing info and action-shar­ing net­works with peo­ple across Europe and else­where. UK No Bor­ders activists are mak­ing con­nec­tions with cam­paign­ers in North­ern France to high­light the sit­u­a­tion of hun­dreds of refugees trapped in Calais.

Dis­cus­sions also devel­oped around the idea of orga­niz­ing a big­ger No Bor­ders event in the future that would include actions and info-shar­ing.

On Sun­day, the need to devel­op No Bor­ders pol­i­tics was stressed in a dis­cus­sion on ‘who are our allies’. At a local lev­el, whilst work­ing on some issues in coali­tion with groups and organ­i­sa­tions that dif­fer in char­ac­ter, No Bor­ders has a firm­ly anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an stance. Over all, the net­work reit­er­at­ed its explic­it anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an posi­tion, and a group formed to work on pub­lic­i­ty that offers an eas­i­ly acces­si­ble guide to No Bor­ders pol­i­tics. This could take the form of writ­ten pub­li­ca­tions and media projects such as the devel­op­ment of a film.

All in all, shar­ing infor­ma­tion and sto­ries was an inspir­ing expe­ri­ence and by strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and net­work-wide tac­tics, peo­ple across the UK will con­tin­ue to devel­op their ideas and inspire each oth­er to take action against bor­ders and to pro­mote free­dom of move­ment for all.

The next gath­er­ing is pro­posed for February/March 2009 in Bris­tol
www.noborders.org.uk

Indigenous Resistance To Silly Dam Project In Brazil

18/11/2008
Peo­ple Pow­er Fucks Up Con­struc­tion

Juruena Dam construction site trashed 1Juruena Dam construction site trashed 218/11/2008
Peo­ple Pow­er Fucks Up Con­struc­tion

One hun­dred and twen­ty mem­bers of the Enawene Nawe tribe trashed a con­struc­tion site of a hydro elec­tric dam on the Juru­e­na riv­er in west­ern Brazil on 11th of last month. Trucks, offices, hous­ing for work­ers were all destroyed and or torched in a $1 mil­lion sur­vival spree.

“They came armed with axes and pieces of wood, ban­ished the employ­ees and lat­er set fire to every­thing” said Fred­eri­co Muller, a coor­di­na­tor work­ing at the site. At least 12 trucks were destroyed, along with a num­ber of offices and hous­ing units.

Sur­vival because the tribes all over the Ama­zon basin rely on the rivers for fish­ing, one of the eas­i­est, most reli­able ways to get food. There are 77 such dams planned for the area but the destruc­tion is very wide­ly spread: one Brazil­ian super dam project – the Belo Monte – will dis­place 16,000 peo­ple.

Some back­ground to this cri­sis: Brazil’s spi­ralling ener­gy needs are the result of the den­tal­ly inim­itable pro indus­try fuck­wit Lula de Sil­va’s (or should that be the IMF etc’s) poli­cies of growth at any cost. Demand has out­stripped sup­ply in recent years and a long drought in 2001 brought mat­ters to a head. With no water even the best dams can pro­duce no pow­er so rationing was com­menced – down to one fifth of nor­mal sup­ply. The deci­sion was made at this time to increase Brazil’s hydro capac­i­ty by 75% and thus we have the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of mass forced dis­place­ment of indige­nous peo­ples.

But the dams are not even a sure thing either eco­nom­i­cal­ly or prac­ti­cal­ly (except­ing the con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, financiers, bribees etc.). Pre­dic­tions of low water for 3 – 5 months of the year make the projects look ridicu­lous. How­ev­er if you include geno­cide as a wel­come part of your busi­ness mod­el then the fig­ures are any­thing but. As one fucked up white ele­phant dam is com­plet­ed it requires more upstream stor­age capac­i­ty to be built and hence more dis­place­ment. This is the real­i­ty of ‘eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment’ in Brazil.

Mass Tribal Uprising in West Bengal

Novem­ber 18, 2008

What we are wit­ness­ing in the trib­al belt of West Ben­gal is [an] his­tor­i­cal moment. A long oppressed peo­ple have risen up and are dar­ing to con­front their oppres­sors and ques­tion the log­ic of “devel­op­ment” that destroys their lives and liveli­hoods.”

Novem­ber 18, 2008

What we are wit­ness­ing in the trib­al belt of West Ben­gal is [an] his­tor­i­cal moment. A long oppressed peo­ple have risen up and are dar­ing to con­front their oppres­sors and ques­tion the log­ic of “devel­op­ment” that destroys their lives and liveli­hoods.”

In what start­ed out as a protest against police bru­tal­i­ty, on Novem­ber 7 more than ten thou­sand San­thal men and women con­verged in the Indi­an state of West Ben­gal to demand the end to state oppres­sion and the con­stant dis­pos­ses­sion of their lands.

It is an his­toric moment for the trib­al peo­ples in the region — and one so unprece­dent­ed that author­i­ties are not even sure what to do about it.

“Even the polit­i­cal par­ties and civ­il soci­ety are at a loss try­ing to come to terms with what is hap­pen­ing,” says Partho Sarathi Ray, in Sanhati.com. “Noth­ing like this has been wit­nessed in West Ben­gal in liv­ing mem­o­ry.”

The upris­ing report­ed­ly began fol­low­ing a land mine explo­sion on Novem­ber 2, which tar­get­ed the state’s chief min­is­ter as well as the union steel and mines min­is­ter.

The two men were return­ing from the inau­gu­ra­tion of the Jin­dal Steel Works (JSW) spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone (SEZ) in West Mid­na­pore dis­trict. Approx­i­mate­ly 5000 acres of land had been acquired for JSW, the vast major­i­ty of which was sup­posed to be dis­trib­uted amongst the land­less Adi­va­sis (indige­nous peo­ple) in the region. The gov­ern­ment hand­ed it over to the com­pa­ny instead.

The explo­sion was prompt­ly blamed on the Maoist guer­ril­las — how­ev­er, in what has become a com­mon prac­tice in West Ben­gal, the police turned all of their atten­tion to the local indige­nous pop­u­la­tion for being “com­plic­it” in the attack.

Over the next few days, the police set out on a cam­paign to assault, harass and ran­dom­ly arrest any trib­al per­son they want­ed.

But it just wasn’t enough for the police, who hadn’t the slight­est clue who was behind the explo­sion. So, on Novem­ber 6 the police “… led by the offi­cer in charge of Lal­garh police sta­tion… unleashed a reign of ter­ror in 35 vil­lages encom­pass­ing the entire trib­al belt of Lal­garh,” explains Ray. “In raids through­out the night of Novem­ber 6th, women were bru­tal­ly kicked and beat­en up with lath­is and butts of guns. Among the injured, Chi­ta­mani Mur­mu, one of whose eyes was hit by a gun butt, and Pana­mani Hans­da, who was kicked on her chest and suf­fered mul­ti­ple frac­tures, had to [be] hos­pi­tal­ized. Chitamani’s lost her eye because of the injury. Eight oth­er women were bad­ly wound­ed. These police bru­tal­i­ties soon reached a point where the adi­va­sis had no oth­er option but to rise up in revolt,” Ray con­tin­ues.

The next day, “what began as rum­blings of protest took the shape of a spon­ta­neous mass upris­ing [of] ten thou­sand San­thal men and women, armed with tra­di­tion­al weapons, [who] came out and obstruct­ed the roads lead­ing to Lal­garh, dis­con­nect­ing it from Mid­na­pur and Banku­ra. Roads were dug up and tree trunks were placed on the road to obstruct the entry of police vehi­cles, in the same way as it had been done in Nandi­gram.”

Dur­ing the night, “peo­ple also dis­con­nect­ed tele­phone and elec­tric­i­ty lines, vir­tu­al­ly con­vert­ing a vast area into a lib­er­at­ed zone. The apex social orga­ni­za­tion of the San­thals, the Bharat Jakat Majhi Mad­wa Juan Gaon­ta took up the lead­er­ship of the strug­gle, although the leader of the orga­ni­za­tion, the “Disham Majhi” Nityanan­da Hem­bram has him­self admit­ted that the orga­ni­za­tion has no con­trol over the move­ment; rather the move­ment is con­trol­ling the orga­ni­za­tion.”

As for the gov­ern­ment, which has “not dared to respond with overt vio­lence yet”, is help­less in the face of this upsurge. They’ve been try­ing to nego­ti­ate, but the effort has so far been fruit­less due to the demo­c­ra­t­ic and decen­tral­ized nature of the upris­ing. They sim­ply can’t exert any influ­ence over the indige­nous peo­ple.

They way things look right now, the gov­ern­ment may have no choice but to con­cede.

Reports on Sanhati

Mainstream Reports

2 weeks of Rooftop Occupation. Public Meeting Called with P4P

ROOFTOP OCCUPIERS CALL FOR PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS THE FUTURE OF 87 ASHLEY ROAD, ST PAUL’S, BRISTOL

10.00am today (Wednes­day) marked 2 weeks of the rooftop occu­pa­tion — WE’RE STILL HERE!

Ashley Road bannerROOFTOP OCCUPIERS CALL FOR PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS THE FUTURE OF 87 ASHLEY ROAD, ST PAUL’S, BRISTOL

10.00am today (Wednes­day) marked 2 weeks of the rooftop occu­pa­tion — WE’RE STILL HERE!

On Thurs­day 27th of Novem­ber an open pub­lic meet­ing is being held in The St Pauls Learn­ing Cen­tre at 6.30pm to dis­cuss this sit­u­a­tion. Sup­port­ers of the rooftop pro­test­ers will be in atten­dance to answer ques­tions, respond to local con­cerns and open a dia­logue with PfP.

Places for Peo­ple are pub­licly invit­ed to state and open­ly dis­cuss what their inten­tions for 87 Ash­ley Road are. This will help assure every­one that they are in fact going to rehouse peo­ple on the hous­ing wait­ing list.

We hope you can attend.
For fur­ther infor­ma­tion con­tact:
Email: 87AshleyRoad@gmail.com
Phone:07722 786 379

Back­ground:

On Novem­ber 12th 2008 Places for Peo­ple (PfP) exe­cut­ed an evic­tion order on 87 Ash­ley Road, a squat­ted build­ing occu­pied by 20 peo­ple who have been made home­less by this action. This build­ing was unused by PfP for four years and left emp­ty until May 2008 when squat­ters work­ing to house as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble moved in.
PfP have refused all attempts to nego­ti­ate a mutu­al­ly benif­i­cal agree­ment, repeat­ed­ly sub­mit­ted incor­rect pos­ses­sion claims to Bris­tol Mag­is­trates courts and threat­ened ille­gal evic­tion. At one stage the sit­ting mag­is­trate called PfPs rep­re­sen­ta­tion “a right dog’s break­fast.”

As bailif­f’s and builders work­ing on behalf of Places for Peo­ple entered the prop­er­ty sev­er­al squat­ters moved onto the roof to resist evic­tion and have been there ever since.
As far as the courts are con­cerned the evic­tion has been served despite pro­test­ers being on the roof.

This press release is being writ­ten on the 14th day of con­tin­u­al rooftop occu­pa­tion and is being sent to com­mu­ni­ty groups and indi­vid­u­als in the St. Pauls area, and Places for Peo­ple.

Builders have board­ed up all nor­mal exit points from the roof, leav­ing the roof pro­test­ers no safe, imme­di­ate access. PfP have instruct­ed builders to ren­der the prop­er­ty unin­hab­it­able by remov­ing ALL fix­tures and fit­tings.

There are no plan­ning appli­ca­tions cur­rent­ly under con­sid­er­a­tion by Bris­tol City Coun­cil for 87 Ash­ley Road. PfP have been vague about their inten­tions for the prop­er­ty, how­ev­er they have men­tioned plans that would not ben­e­fit any­one on the hous­ing list.

The protest is part of a con­tin­u­ing con­cern over Places for Peo­ple’s treat­ment of emp­ty prop­er­ties and it’s sell­ing off of rental stock on the open mar­ket. PfP are sell­ing prop­er­ties via the “shared own­er­ship” scheme while not replac­ing rental prop­er­ties for those most in need. This will lead to an even­tu­al return to the unaf­ford­able rental mar­ket and a worse deal for low-income fam­i­lies seek­ing decent acco­mo­da­tion.

—

1 week: rooftop Occu­pa­tion of Ash­ley Road update

Update: Dai­ly sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tions will take place from 4–6pm out­side the house. All are wel­come —-
Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 15, 2008
The rooftop occu­pa­tion has now been going for 81 hours. Morale is high, sup­port has been con­stant and much appre­ci­at­ed. Thank you. There are health and safe­ty ques­tions about Places for Peo­ple bar­ri­cad­ing them up there. Any sup­port, noise or pro­vi­sions is very wel­come! Come and say hel­lo to the 87 crew, still going!

Res­i­dents and squat­ters togeth­er against cor­rupt land­lords!

Vedanta chased away by threatened Villagers in Orissa

14th Novem­ber 2008

Last week, a group of more than 500 vil­lagers set up road­blocks in Orissa’s Puri dis­trict to protest the con­struc­tion of “Dev San­skrati Vish­wavidyalaya” (Divine Cul­ture Uni­ver­si­ty) a project fund­ed by the rather-unen­light­ened com­pa­ny we know as Vedan­ta Resources.

14th Novem­ber 2008
Orissa villagers

Last week, a group of more than 500 vil­lagers set up road­blocks in Orissa’s Puri dis­trict to protest the con­struc­tion of “Dev San­skrati Vish­wavidyalaya” (Divine Cul­ture Uni­ver­si­ty) a project fund­ed by the rather-unen­light­ened com­pa­ny we know as Vedan­ta Resources.

The vil­lagers are angry that the insti­tu­tion, which will apparently”>http://intercontinentalcry.org/vedanta-chased-away-by-threatened-villagers/’);”>apparently estab­lish “a Cul­tur­al Renais­sance” in India, is sit­u­at­ed on agri­cul­tur­al land that the Oris­sa gov­ern­ment ‘acquired’ with­out the peo­ples con­sent. The gov­ern­ment then donat­ed the land to Vedan­ta for free (Wikipedia).

The com­pa­ny defends the gov­ern­ments actions by claim­ing the land isn’t fer­tile and of no real use to the vil­lagers. It’s a thor­ough­ly absurd claim, see­ing as how the vil­lagers are active in grow­ing rice, man­go, cashew, papaya, betel, pump­kin, and coconut, etc. through­out the region.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Vedan­ta claims that the land is only sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed and that only a hun­dred or so peo­ple will be dis­placed for the project. Activists say it’s more like 1,000 — on top of anoth­er 20,000 to 50,000 who will be indi­rect­ly effect­ed.

What­ev­er the actu­al num­ber is, no vil­lager has giv­en their con­sent to be dis­placed. That was made clear dur­ing last week’s protest, which took place at the ground-break­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the insti­tu­tion. The pro­test­ers rushed it, some of them car­ry­ing lath­is, and forced the offi­cials to with­draw by police escort. There were no injuries report­ed.

Fol­low­ing the protest a com­pa­ny offi­cial stat­ed that, “in view of the vio­lent sit­u­a­tion… we have stopped the work of the uni­ver­si­ty and intend to resume the con­struc­tion work soon.”

It would seem the offi­cial also tried to demean the vil­lagers’ strug­gle, by claim­ing it’s lit­tle more than a few peo­ple “cre­at­ing dis­tur­bances.”

An insult to say the least, the official’s state­ment is also a far stretch from what the pro­test­ers were told. Accord­ing to Uma­ballav Rath, leader of the Vedan­ta Vish­wavidyalaya Virod­hi Sami­ti, the orga­ni­za­tion head­ing the move­ment against the project, “offi­cials of the Vedan­ta Group have assured us in the pres­ence of the dis­trict admin­is­tra­tion that they are not going to start work on the project with­out our con­sent.”

In light of recent his­to­ry — name­ly, the strug­gle of the Don­gria Kondh, who are fac­ing sim­i­lar dis­place­ment (as well as the destruc­tion of their cul­ture) at the hands of Vedan­ta — the for­mer state­ment is prob­a­bly the most accu­rate.

The com­pa­ny doesn’t seem to care one way anoth­er how must destruc­tion it caus­es. Just as long as it main­tains the good face of enlight­en­ment for its share­hold­ers.

For­tu­nate­ly, the villagers—and of course the Don­gria Kondh—are not so will­ing to play make believe.

pho­to: http://nazaronline.net

KELSTERBACH FOREST OCCUPATION CAMP AGAINST AIRPORT EXPANSION CALLS FOR SOLIDARITY & UNRÄUMBAR FESTIVAL 28–30TH NOVEMBER

Waldbe­set­zung Kel­ster­bach (Kel­ster­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion Camp)

Big parts of the beau­ti­ful for­est of Kel­ster­bach near the air­port of Frankfurt/Main (Ger­many) are in dan­ger of being destroyed.

Kelsterbach tripodsWaldbe­set­zung Kel­ster­bach (Kel­ster­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion Camp)

Big parts of the beau­ti­ful for­est of Kel­ster­bach near the air­port of Frankfurt/Main (Ger­many) are in dan­ger of being destroyed.

It has been well known for about 10 years that Fra­port (the cor­po­ra­tion run­ning Frank­furt Air­port) plan to build a new run­way on this place by the end of 2011, cut­ting down every tree on 300 hectares of land (about 100,000 trees), dou­bling the air­ports flight move­ments per year to a lev­el of at least one every 45 sec­onds. About 50 ini­tia­tives and near­ly all com­mu­ni­ties around the air­port are against the expan­sion because of the expect­ed rise of fly-over noise.

Fra­port plan to fin­ish the run­way by the end of 2011 and is already tak­ing so-called “prepar­ing mea­sures” in the for­est, cut­ting brush­woods to make way for their machines to cut the trees and cap­tur­ing sev­er­al ani­mal species includ­ing frogs and bats to relo­cate.

Almost all forms of protest have not suc­ceed­ed to stop the prepa­ra­tions of the build­ing of a new run­way. Activists have occu­pied a small area of the for­est since May 2008 to stop the exten­sion plans and a tent and hut vil­lage has emerged. About 30–50 peo­ple now reg­u­lar­ly live in the for­est vil­lage and wel­come every help, may it be dona­tions, new inhab­i­tants or just peo­ple pass­ing by and show­ing their sol­i­dar­i­ty.

The may­or of Kel­ster­bach has threat­ened to evict the camp as of 30th Novem­ber 2008, claim­ing he can­not accept the huts in the for­est for legal rea­sons, although it seems unlike­ly the evic­tion will actu­al­ly be attempt­ed then or any time soon.

Unräum­bar Fes­ti­val

The Waldbe­set­zung Kel­ster­bach (Kel­ster­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion Camp) invite you to the Unräum­bar Fes­ti­val, a week­end of live music, art, danc­ing, cin­e­ma, work­shops, playshops, info meet­ings, cre­ative actions, good food, and much more, on 28–30th Novem­ber. The whole fes­ti­val will be non com­mer­cial, every­thing runs on dona­tion basis. Bring a tent, sleep­ing bag and mat. Bring musi­cal instru­ments, toys, good ener­gy and food to share.

Oth­er Ways to Sup­port the Kel­ster­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion

Spread the news about what is hap­pen­ing in Kel­ster­bach For­est. Tell peo­ple, jour­nal­ists and politi­cians.

Dona­tions are very wel­come. Use­ful things include veg­an and veg­e­tar­i­an food, build­ing mate­ri­als (a lot of con­struc­tion wood, nails), old bed­sheets (for ban­ners), writ­ing mate­ri­als, polypropy­lene rope (10 or 14 mm), bicy­cles, tools (saws and ham­mers), wood stoves and oth­er stuff for the win­ter, a cheap way to make fly­ers.
Vis­it or join Kel­ster­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion. Bring a tent, sleep­ing bag and mat, warm clothes, a flash­light. Musi­cal instru­ments and toys are nice! Dish­es, fork, knives and spoons are already here.

Direc­tions

from Kel­ster­bach cen­tre:

By train (S‑Bahn) from Frank­furt or Wies­baden to sta­tion Kel­ster­bach.
Out­side the sta­tion to the left (in the direc­tion of Wies­baden (south-west) at the right side from the track). Then with the track left from you, you fol­low Rüs­selsheimer Straße for about 1,5 km. After you’ve seen an exit-way, you’ll see a traf­fic light. There you turn in the Okriftel­er Strasse (not indi­cat­ed) in the direc­tion of Wall­dorf. You under­pass a train track, ignore the first street (right) and take the sec­ond pos­si­bil­i­ty, a park­ing bay. Walk into the for­est.

by car:
From Köln to Frank­furt A3/E35, exit Raun­heim #48, then to the north, direc­tion of Kel­ster­bach (Rüs­sel­heimer Straße / 43). Right at the traf­fic lights (not indi­cat­ed: Okriftel­er Straße, K152), under by a viaduct. Ignore the first street at the right and take the sec­ond pos­si­bil­i­ty (150 meters fur­ther), a park­ing bay (see pic­ture) and park your car there.
Behind the bar­ri­er you walk straight on, fol­low­ing the way and peace-signs. You’ll come by a lake (on your right) and find the camp a lit­tle fur­ther (after a cross­road) on your left.

Hitch­hik­ing direc­tions:
A3, from Köln direc­tion Frank­furt, exit 48 — Raun­heim, ask the dri­ver to go north direc­tion Kel­ster­bach to let you out after sev­er­al 100 meters ‑where its pos­si­ble to turn… go on till you find the first hard way (ignore the 1. earthy path) to the right… fol­low the signs of lib­er­a­tion.
or go under the train, turn left, go right under the tube, over the street and straight… along a lake after it turn right.

Con­tact

Address:
Baumbe­set­zung neben dem Pflanz­garten
Gelbe Grund­schneise
65451 Kel­ster­bach
GERMANY
Phone: (+49)0175 833 59 58 (German/English)
e‑mail: waldbesetzung@riseup.net
Web­site: http://www.waldbesetzung.blogsport.de
Coor­di­nates: 50.038999, 8.504019

Heathrow Decision Day Flashmob

12 noon (on the dot), Heathrow Ter­mi­nal 5 Depar­tures (‘Secu­ri­ty North’ sec­tion)
on the first Sat­ur­day after the Gov­ern­ment makes its deci­sion on Heathrow expan­sion
(unless all forms of expan­sion are ruled out – see below).

Reveal your t‑shirt and then pelt Trans­port Sec­re­tary Geoff Hoon with red sponges.

THE STORY SO FAR …

12 noon (on the dot), Heathrow Ter­mi­nal 5 Depar­tures (‘Secu­ri­ty North’ sec­tion)
on the first Sat­ur­day after the Gov­ern­ment makes its deci­sion on Heathrow expan­sion
(unless all forms of expan­sion are ruled out – see below).

Reveal your t‑shirt and then pelt Trans­port Sec­re­tary Geoff Hoon with red sponges.

THE STORY SO FAR …

Before the end of 2008, the Gov­ern­ment will announce whether or not to give the green light to expand Heathrow, by allow­ing a third run­way and / or a big increase in planes on the exist­ing run­ways. The deci­sion is expect­ed in Decem­ber.

Either option will cause mis­ery for tens of thou­sands of local res­i­dents, and help make dev­as­tat­ing cli­mate change inevitable.

The Gov­ern­ment is under real pres­sure on the third run­way and may decide to drop it. Their way out may be to allow flight num­bers on the exist­ing run­ways to rise by near­ly 50%, to 650,000 a year!

Unless ALL the pro­pos­als are dropped the Deci­sion Day Flash Mob will go ahead. Togeth­er we can win!

www.stopairportexpansion.org
stopairportexpansion@gmail.com

Climate suffragettes storm municipal city council! Stop the motorway!

On Novem­ber 12th, 2008 at 5.15 pm. six cli­mate activists dressed in peri­od cos­tumes as suf­fragettes com­plete with big hats, marched into a munic­i­pal city coun­cil meet­ing in Gothen­burg, the sec­ond largest city of Swe­den.

Swedish suffragettes 1Swedish suffragettes 2On Novem­ber 12th, 2008 at 5.15 pm. six cli­mate activists dressed in peri­od cos­tumes as suf­fragettes com­plete with big hats, marched into a munic­i­pal city coun­cil meet­ing in Gothen­burg, the sec­ond largest city of Swe­den.

The politi­cians were debat­ing a new six-lane motor­way, called the Marieholm tun­nel, planned to be built under the riv­er that runs through the city. The six women, activists from the cli­mate net­work Kli­max, stormed in to the meet­ing blow­ing whis­tles. A ban­ner was unfold­ed with the text: “No more tun­nel vision – cli­mate smart pol­i­tics now!” The activists voiced two demands:

Stop Marieholm tun­nel, no more motor­ways.
Local pol­i­tics in accor­dance with the lat­est cli­mate sci­ence.

From the stand oth­er activists and mem­bers of the pub­lic cheered. Leaflets explain­ing the action were hand­ed out. The action com­mem­o­rat­ed the 100 years anniver­sary of the Suf­fragettes burst­ing into the British Par­lia­ment to demand women’s suf­frage.
The offi­cial cli­mate goal of Gothen­burg is to sta­bi­lize the emis­sions caused by the city to a glob­al­ly sus­tain­able and fair lev­el by 2050. Still the politi­cians (con­ser­v­a­tives, lib­er­als and social democ­rats) are cook­ing up plans for a new six-lane motor­way under the riv­er, even though they know that new roads lead to more traf­fic. To build a new motor­way is insan­i­ty. Its the abso­lut last thing we need in these times of cli­mate change!
As did the Suf­fragettes 100 years ago, we are fac­ing an urgent prob­lem of huge injus­tice. It is women all over the world who will suf­fer the worst con­se­quences of cli­mate change, even though it isn’t women who are respon­si­ble for the largest sources of emis­sions. With this action we cel­e­brate the strong women before us who fought for a bet­ter world. We have picked up the torch the suf­fragettes car­ried and we will pass it on!

green­gote­borg at yahoo.se
http://www.klimatet.org