Category: Action Reports

Police evicts social centre ‘Ungdomshuset’ in Copenhagen (& solidarity demo in London)

1.03.2007

After a long polit­i­cal and legal bat­tle the basis-demo­c­ra­t­ic, alter­na­tive polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al cen­tre ‘Ung­domshuset’ was force­ful­ly evict­ed by riot police and air­borne anti-ter­ror squads this morn­ing. Ensu­ing demon­stra­tions have seen large-scale con­fronta­tions between pro­tes­tors and heavy-hand­ed police, here is the full sto­ry from Copen­hagen.

Ungdomshuset eviction 1
Ungdomshuset eviction 21.03.2007

After a long polit­i­cal and legal bat­tle the basis-demo­c­ra­t­ic, alter­na­tive polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al cen­tre ‘Ung­domshuset’ was force­ful­ly evict­ed by riot police and air­borne anti-ter­ror squads this morn­ing. Ensu­ing demon­stra­tions have seen large-scale con­fronta­tions between pro­tes­tors and heavy-hand­ed police, here is the full sto­ry from Copen­hagen.

After seri­ous social con­flicts and upris­ings by the auton­o­mist and squat­ting move­ments in the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s, the sub­se­quent ‘Ung­domshuset’ was offered as part of a polit­i­cal com­pro­mise to the activists. The main­ly young activists dubbed it ‘Ung­domshuset’ (‘The Youth House’), and start­ed run­ning var­i­ous cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal activ­i­ties out of there. It has for many years served as one of the only mul­ti­cul­tur­al, basis-demo­c­ra­t­ic collectives/community cen­tres in Copen­hagen, with the excep­tion of the Free­town Chris­tia­nia. Prop­er­ty rights remained in the hands of the local coun­cil, which in 1999 decid­ed to dis­re­gard the pre­vi­ous polit­i­cal com­pro­mise and sell the house to the high­est bid­der.

In 2003 the fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian sect ‘Fader­huset’, which had bought the prop­er­ty in 2001 prompt­ed the author­i­ties to evict the ‘Ung­domshuset’ and its users. Despite many demon­stra­tions in sup­port of ‘Ung­domshuset’ Fader­huset won the ensu­ing court­case and the politi­cians avoid­ed seri­ous involve­ment in the con­flict, despite the polit­i­cal nature of the case. Many domes­tic demon­stra­tions saw alleged police bru­tal­i­ty and in Decem­ber an ‘Ung­domshuset’ demon­stra­tion turned into a major con­fronta­tion between activists from all over Europe and the police. Sub­se­quent­ly the ‘Ung­domshuset’ was for­ti­fied in order to avoid an evic­tion and return the issue to the polit­i­cal are­na.

This morn­ing at 7:00 AM the anti-ter­ror squad land­ed on the roof of the ‘Ung­domshuset’ via heli­copters, while riot-police sealed off the street and attacked using tear­gas from below. As the whole area is closed off no doc­u­men­ta­tion of the action and police-behav­iour can take place. Some wit­ness­es say that tear­gas and police vio­lence was plen­ti­ful, although the evic­tion hap­pened swift­ly and accord­ing to police in a ‘rel­a­tive­ly calm man­ner’.

Lat­er in the day activists from all over Copen­hagen rushed to protest the evic­tion of ‘Ung­domshuset’, they were met by aggres­sive police­men in riot gear block­ing the street arrest­ing sus­pect­ed trou­ble­mak­ers with many result­ing injuries. The demon­stra­tors fought back and tried to reclaim the ‘Ung­domshuset’, but were repelled and activists took to the near­by streets and start­ed build­ing bar­ri­cades, while engag­ing police in skir­mish­es.

The neigh­bour­hoods has been entire­ly shut down by local res­i­dents and activists: actions and demon­stra­tions have tak­en place all over Copen­hagen with more planned for the fol­low­ing days and weeks. While sym­pa­this­ers from all over Europe have been rush­ing in, although police are attempt­ing to detain sus­pect­ed activists at the bor­ders. Fur­ther­more sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tions are under way in Ger­many, Nor­way and Swe­den.

The house has func­tioned as a polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al cen­tre, home to polit­i­cal demon­stra­tions, polit­i­cal debates, con­certs and many more cul­tur­al events since 1982. It has served as a basis-demo­c­ra­t­ic remain­der that ‘anoth­er world is pos­si­ble’ until this morn­ing… The actions of sol­i­dar­i­ty tak­ing place all over Europe, as well as Rus­sia and Aus­tralia are great­ly appre­ci­at­ed. Please join in and sup­port the strug­gle for autonomous com­mons and the resis­tance against the neolib­er­al repres­sion. The home­page of ‘Ung­domshuset’ has been shot down but a mir­ror has been set up (in Eng­lish) at: http://www.ungeren.dk/en.php3?id_rubrique=4
Fur­ther­more updates can be found on http://indymedia.dk/article/885 and http://indymedia.dk/article/878
Also here is a short video-intro­duc­tion pro­duced before the evic­tion http://www.ungeren.dk/spip.php?article79

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Fri­day DEMO Dan­ish Embassy LONDON

01.03.2007 19:36
Meet 2pm HYDE PARK CORNER, inside on park FRIDAY 2nd MARCH
Bring ban­ners, flags…

Please cir­cu­late on www and email lists

See you there
Sup­port the squatters…show sol­i­dar­i­ty!!!

Roy­al Dan­ish Embassy in Lon­don, Great Britain
55 Sloane Street
Lon­don SW1X 9SR
Great Britain

Phone: 00 44 (0)20 7333 0200
Fax: 00 44 (0)20 7333 0270
Email: lonamb@um.dk

Save Rospuda Valley Demonstration, London, 9 March 2007

A ‘Save the Rospu­da Val­ley’ demon­stra­tion will take place on Fri­day, 9th March 2007 at 16.30, out­side the Pol­ish Embassy, 47 Port­land Place, Lon­don.

Rospuda valleyA ‘Save the Rospu­da Val­ley’ demon­stra­tion will take place on Fri­day, 9th March 2007 at 16.30, out­side the Pol­ish Embassy, 47 Port­land Place, Lon­don.

Res­i­dents in 16 Pol­ish towns are protest­ing in oppo­si­tion to the build­ing of the ‘Via Baltic Express­way’ through the Rospu­da Riv­er Val­ley — the last such nat­ur­al trea­sure of its kind in Europe.

The protest camp set up on 13 Feb­ru­ary aims to delay the work. Pro­tes­tors are sleep­ing in and amongst the trees, in tem­per­a­tures as low as ‑20 degrees Centi­grade (use the links below to view recent footage of the con­di­tions at the camp):

The camp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaZiKfyRLdM&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ_fWfQ2mjo&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44IySFbtmGc&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW41XY4eofQ&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZS41nBvZcM&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSVlnNVb6jM&mode=related&search=

Olecko town feeds the pro­test­ers — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mQJeoAdtJo&mode=related&search=

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the sit­u­a­tion, along with updates from the camp are also avail­able at (these sites fea­ture arti­cles in Eng­lish lan­guage):

www.viabalticainfo.org
www.dolina-rospudy.pl
http://www.zieloni.org.pl/

Dona­tions can be made to:
Descrip­tion: “Rospu­da”
Account Num­ber (IBAN): 44 16801206 0000 3000 1447 1454
Fun­dac­ja Insty­tut Spraw Oby­wa­tel­s­kich
ul. Wieck­owiskiego 33/127 90–734 Lódz
Nazwa banku / odd­zi­ał: Invest Bank
Swift­code (BIC): * *IVSEPL PP

Invite to Tara

1.3.2007
The last in a series of legal chal­lenges against the road through the Tara ‑Skyrne val­ley has failed today. There are 72 hours left before the road works which will not alone bisect the his­toric val­ley, but place a

1.3.2007
The last in a series of legal chal­lenges against the road through the Tara ‑Skyrne val­ley has failed today. There are 72 hours left before the road works which will not alone bisect the his­toric val­ley, but place a
land grab and ugly plan­ning in and around the whole area will com­mence.
And Yes the process was cor­rupt.

What you can do:

The vig­il keep­ers are peace­ful NVDA pro­tes­tors.
Some are quite young.
They are very iso­lat­ed.

They have asked for sup­port, so if you are vis­it­ing Ire­land in the next weeks you could come with cam­eras and food and even help in block­ades.

The Irish Gar­dai are not known for their patience.
[as we have seen and indeed expe­ri­enced in both Ross­port and The Glen Of the Downs]

The vig­il is peace­ful and non hier­ar­chi­cal and they are very wel­com­ing of peo­ple who come to sup­port them espe­cial­ly if ye bring bis­cuits to have with the cup of tea at the vig­il fire.

*There are 72 hours left to legal­ly stop the road.
the PPP has been signed.
Works are due to com­mence on Mon­day.
Mes­sages of sol­i­dar­i­ty are wel­come.

The group though it best to ask for help and to warn every­one that if you want to help- now is the time.

Gur a Mhaith agat!

The Campaign Against Prison Slavery

The Cam­paign Against Prison Slav­ery is a group set up to try to expose the real­i­ty of prison labour, how lit­tle of it teach­es skills that can be used after release and which could help reduce the chances of re-offend­ing.

The Cam­paign Against Prison Slav­ery is a group set up to try to expose the real­i­ty of prison labour, how lit­tle of it teach­es skills that can be used after release and which could help reduce the chances of re-offend­ing.

We also seek to expose the pri­vate com­pa­nies that have con­tracts with pris­ons that are mak­ing huge prof­its using pris­on­er labour while the pris­on­ers are paid pen­nies an hour, any los­es incurred by the prison indus­tries con­tracts are cov­ered by the tax pay­er.

CAPS now has a new web­site www.againstprisonslavery.org and the con­tact details are:

Cam­paign Against Prison Slav­ery
P.O. Box 74
Brighton
BN1 4ZQ
E‑mail: againstprisonslavery@riseup.net

SAVE PRIOY PARK : Mass Rally (photos)

26.02.2007

As promised by local cam­paign­ers, and expect­ed by the wider pub­lic, hun­dreds of local peo­ple con­verged upon Southend Civic Cen­tre last Thurs­day for the ‘Parkral­ly’, to oppose con­tro­ver­sial plans to widen the A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent, or ‘scheme F5’ as it has come to be known.

Cops read Bling leaflet
Save Priory Park banner
26.02.2007

As promised by local cam­paign­ers, and expect­ed by the wider pub­lic, hun­dreds of local peo­ple con­verged upon Southend Civic Cen­tre last Thurs­day for the ‘Parkral­ly’, to oppose con­tro­ver­sial plans to widen the A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent, or ‘scheme F5’ as it has come to be known.

The event fol­lows the recent ‘storm­ing’ of the British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards cel­e­bra­tion at Prit­tlewell Pri­o­ry in Jan­u­ary, when dozens of local res­i­dents dis­rupt­ed an invite only ‘wine and cheese’ event held for local dig­ni­taries, in cel­e­bra­tion of the dis­cov­ery of the East Sax­on king’s bur­ial, which would be destroyed, should the £25m road scheme get the go ahead.

Feel­ings con­tin­ue to run high, with major­i­ty pub­lic oppo­si­tion to the scheme repeat­ed­ly being shown by local groups, and press, six years into the cam­paign to stop the road.

Speak­ing from the steps of the Civic Cen­tre, where a meet­ing of the full Coun­cil was tak­ing place inside, cam­paign­er and local res­i­dent Shaun Qureshi said, ‘Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil are either some­how still igno­rant of the fact that so many peo­ple con­tin­ue to demon­strate, or they are arro­gant enough to feel that they can sim­ply push us aside.

‘They have only time and silence on their side, and the com­mon­ly held mis­con­cep­tion that the scheme has already been canned by the Depart­ment for Trans­port, who would be required to pro­vide the fund­ing. The feel­ing that the scheme will not now go ahead is due to the delay in any­one in author­i­ty either tak­ing any respon­si­bil­i­ty, or com­ing to a deci­sion on the issue.

‘How­ev­er, recent events have proven that despite this, sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of the local pub­lic can still be mobilised to take action, that we do have major­i­ty sup­port, and should the go-ahead be giv­en, that there will be out­rage across the town if attempts are made to evict Camp Bling, con­crete over the bur­ial or to destroy yet anoth­er green space.’

A deci­sion to fund the road widen­ing has been await­ed from the DfT since a local Pub­lic Inquiry took place in March 2004. Infor­ma­tion from the East of Eng­land Region­al Part­ner­ship Group shows that costs have now risen to an esti­mat­ed £25m for the 870 metre length of car­riage­way , mak­ing it poten­tial­ly, ‘The most expen­sive stretch of road in the world.’

http://www.savepriorypark.org

GP ship impounded during anti-Trident action

23 Feb­ru­ary: Green­peace ship the Arc­tic Sun­rise impound­ed dur­ing float­ing block­ade of Faslane naval base. Snip­pets below from GP press releas­es.

This morn­ing the Green­peace ship Arc­tic Sun­rise out-manoeu­vred MoD ships and is now anchored across the entrance to the base. Mean­while six small­er block­ing boats have dropped off Green­peace vol­un­teers in canoes who are attempt­ing to scale HMS Vig­i­lant, one of the UK’s four Van­guard nuclear weapons subs berthed at Faslane.

23 Feb­ru­ary: Green­peace ship the Arc­tic Sun­rise impound­ed dur­ing float­ing block­ade of Faslane naval base. Snip­pets below from GP press releas­es.

This morn­ing the Green­peace ship Arc­tic Sun­rise out-manoeu­vred MoD ships and is now anchored across the entrance to the base. Mean­while six small­er block­ing boats have dropped off Green­peace vol­un­teers in canoes who are attempt­ing to scale HMS Vig­i­lant, one of the UK’s four Van­guard nuclear weapons subs berthed at Faslane.
…

Lat­er that day:
UPDATE: Twen­ty mil­i­tary police stormed the ship and smashed their way onto the bridge of the Arc­tic Sun­rise short­ly after 5pm fol­low­ing the day-long stand-off. The mil­i­tary police cut the anchor chain and towed the ship into the nuclear base. All onboard have been arrest­ed for being in a restrict­ed area.

See http://www.greenpeace.org.uk for more (pix, etc)
and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6388967.stm

The Arc­tic Sun­rise is due to berth on the Thames in ear­ly March, ahead of the par­lia­men­tary debate and vote on Tri­dent replace­ment.

Dozens of Swampys desperately needed to save Rospuda Valley, Poland

Peo­ple who will defend the val­ley are need­ed. Do not leave Pol­ish eco-war­riors alone. Pol­ish ultra­catholic gov­ern­ment is build­ing a road through primeval for­est. An inquiry into the prepa­ra­tion of this invest­ment shows that the deci­son process was unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, a vari­ant called Chodor­ki vari­ant of the pro­posed bypass that was avoid­ing the val­ley alto­geth­er was exclud­ed from the appraisal pro­ce­dure, as well as the East­ern vari­ant, which was the cheap­est.

Rospuda 1Rospuda 2Rospuda 3Peo­ple who will defend the val­ley are need­ed. Do not leave Pol­ish eco-war­riors alone. Pol­ish ultra­catholic gov­ern­ment is build­ing a road through primeval for­est. An inquiry into the prepa­ra­tion of this invest­ment shows that the deci­son process was unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, a vari­ant called Chodor­ki vari­ant of the pro­posed bypass that was avoid­ing the val­ley alto­geth­er was exclud­ed from the appraisal pro­ce­dure, as well as the East­ern vari­ant, which was the cheap­est.

Swampys in all qual­i­ties and quan­ti­ties are need­ed in Poland to stop, or slow down the inwest­ment, and to cre­ate the much need­ed media cov­er­age of this prob­lem. As by now, no one of the nation­al media report­ing on the prob­lem have not arrived to the core of the prob­lem, that is the manip­u­la­tions of the author­i­ties with the choice of the vari­ants and manip­u­lat­ed trans­port invest­ment appraisal process. The gov­ern­ment-owned TVP (kind of Pol­ish BBC, alas ultra­catholic and neona­tion­al­is­tic) is so biased when report­ing on the issue, that it des­pereat­ed­ly tries to show ecol­o­gists as men­tal­ly ill peo­ple that pos­sess even no capa­bil­i­ty to speak in their own name.

Here are the direc­tions to Rospu­da Val­ley.

The Val­ley is here:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&z=12&ll=53.896045,22.934303&spn=0.146468,0.3162&om=1

The camp is over the riv­er. Easy to find if arrived to Augustów no lat­er than in the mid-day as it might be 4 hours walk from the town.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rospuda

From Kau­nas to Augustów you might take a bus or a train. There is one train con­nec­tion dai­ly from Kau­nas to Augustów, the train departs at 13:01 with change in Ses­tokai and arrives at 15:56. The sched­ules (also con­nec­tions from oth­er Euro­pean cities to Augustów) are here:

http://rozklad.pkp.pl/bin/query.exe/en?

Nights are cold. Please check the weath­er fore­cast before depart­ing. Get ready for more than minus 10 degree in the night.

plea for inter­na­tion­al sup­port and pub­lic­i­ty, let every­one you know, know. peo­ple need­ed to sup­port camp with peo­ple pow­er. if you plan to go to rospu­da from u.k in mid march, con­tact piotr-dziedzice@gmail.com.

Rospu­da Protest Camp — Films for view­ing

Use the links below to watch the most recent films from the Rospu­da Protest Camp. This will give you an idea of the con­di­tions and tem­per­a­tures being endured by the activists. Dia­logue is in Pol­ish lan­guage, but the images speak for them­selves:

The camp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaZiKfyRLdM&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ_fWfQ2mjo&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44IySFbtmGc&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW41XY4eofQ&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZS41nBvZcM&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSVlnNVb6jM&mode=related&search=

Olecko town feeds the pro­test­ers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mQJeoAdtJo&mode=related&search=

Police Critical of Mass (edinburgh)

23 Feb 2007
A crit­i­cal mass of over 40 cyclists con­verged this Fri­day on Edin­burgh city cen­tre. After meet­ing between the art gal­leries near the mound they under­took a live­ly cycle ride, last­ing near­ly two hours through the town.

23 Feb 2007
A crit­i­cal mass of over 40 cyclists con­verged this Fri­day on Edin­burgh city cen­tre. After meet­ing between the art gal­leries near the mound they under­took a live­ly cycle ride, last­ing near­ly two hours through the town.
Click on image for a larg­er ver­sion

The mass had a gen­er­al­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing atti­tude to traf­fic, cork­ing lanes at red lights to keep the mass togeth­er, ensur­ing the event was safe and fun for all involved.

Pound­ing tech­no music from the sound sys­tem set a real­ly good mood for the cycle. There was a 25Watt mega­phone-soundsys­tem with some uplift­ing tunes from Aphex twin, Square­push­er, a bit apoc­olyp­tic orches­tral. One of the par­tic­i­pants said “The music was quite amaz­ing, it brought a whole dif­fer­ent atmos­phere to the ride. By chang­ing the dai­ly real­i­ty of peo­ple, with cars blocked and silent bikes rid­ing to the music that fill­ing the whole street, there is a vision of what is pos­si­ble. I think crit­i­cal mass is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary moment.”

Four police motor­cy­cles arrived halfway through the ride, inter­cept­ing the pro­ces­sion out­side the mosque near Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty. Sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als were pulled to one side and warned that their lights were not legal. Despite forty cyclists being quite con­spic­u­ous and eas­i­ly observ­able by motorists, they com­plained that sev­er­al par­tic­i­pants in the crit­i­cal mass were break­ing the law. Appar­ent­ly flash­ing red lights are not ade­quate­ly safe and vis­i­ble, despite forty peo­ple with flash­ing red lights look­ing much like an xmas par­ty. The name and address of one Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent was tak­en, but no-one was arrest­ed or for­mal­ly cau­tioned, although they were warned that they may face an on the spot fine if caught again with­out legal lights. Despite this, the four police motor­cy­clists left the mass and no police were seen again after this unnec­es­sary con­fronta­tion.

An Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty anthro­pol­o­gy stu­dent who was accost­ed by the a police motor­cy­clists com­ment­ed: “the prob­lems they had with me were rea­son­able, i was cycling with­out any lights, they were just enforc­ing the law, I did­nt go home when warned and was going slow on the inside lane and par­tial­ly obstruct­ing the police motor­cy­cles”

One of the par­tic­i­pants, an unem­ployed man liv­ing in Lei­th said: “the police were being antag­o­nis­tic. So what if some of us had flash­ing red lights, and did not have the legal­ly nec­es­sary white lights on the front of our bikes, haven’t they got bet­ter things to do? I think they just hate it when a bunch of peo­ple get togeth­er in a group to do some­thing fun or rad­i­cal and they cant con­trol or dom­i­nate the sit­u­a­tion. Despite the police, it was the best crit­i­cal mass i have been on, good peo­ple and good atmos­phere.”

A com­put­er pro­gram­mer from near the mead­ows said “I thought it went just dandi­ly, it was good that we went slow­ly and blocked the whole road and there was noth­ing they [the police] could do about it because we were well with­in the law.”

“I’m going to dress up like a fuck­ing christ­mas tree for the next crit­i­cal mass, then they cant com­plain!” exclaimed one cyclist.

The vast major­i­ty of those in the mass were not intim­i­dat­ed by the police and con­tin­ued with the crit­i­cal mass demon­stra­tion, con­tin­u­ing along George St., and enjoyed cycling around the round­abouts and along the pic­turesque cob­bled streets.

Edin­burgh’s crit­i­cal mass meets at 5.30pm on the last Fri­day of every month, out­side the art gallery at the foot of the mound, It appears to be grow­ing in num­bers and enthu­si­asm as the warmer and lighter sea­sons approach.

Southend: Hundreds gather to oppose controversial F5 road widening

As promised by local cam­paign­ers, and expect­ed by the wider pub­lic, hun­dreds of local peo­ple con­verged upon Southend Civic Cen­tre this evening for the ‘Parkral­ly’, to oppose con­tro­ver­sial plans to widen the A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent, or ‘scheme F5’ as it has come to be known.
The event fol­lows the recent ‘storm­ing’ of the British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards cel­e­bra­tion at Prit­tlewell Pri­o­ry in January(1), when dozens of local res­i­dents dis­rupt­ed an invite only ‘wine and cheese’ event held for local dig­ni­taries, in cel­e­bra­tion of the dis­cov­ery of the East Sax­on king’s bur­ial, which would be destroyed, should the £25m road scheme get the go ahead.

As promised by local cam­paign­ers, and expect­ed by the wider pub­lic, hun­dreds of local peo­ple con­verged upon Southend Civic Cen­tre this evening for the ‘Parkral­ly’, to oppose con­tro­ver­sial plans to widen the A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent, or ‘scheme F5’ as it has come to be known.
The event fol­lows the recent ‘storm­ing’ of the British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards cel­e­bra­tion at Prit­tlewell Pri­o­ry in January(1), when dozens of local res­i­dents dis­rupt­ed an invite only ‘wine and cheese’ event held for local dig­ni­taries, in cel­e­bra­tion of the dis­cov­ery of the East Sax­on king’s bur­ial, which would be destroyed, should the £25m road scheme get the go ahead.

Feel­ings con­tin­ue to run high, with major­i­ty pub­lic oppo­si­tion to the scheme repeat­ed­ly being shown by local groups, and press, six years into the cam­paign to stop the road.
Speak­ing from the steps of the Civic Cen­tre, where a meet­ing of the full Coun­cil was tak­ing place inside, cam­paign­er and local res­i­dent Shaun Qureshi said, ‘Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil are either some­how still igno­rant of the fact that so many peo­ple con­tin­ue to demon­strate, or they are arro­gant enough to feel that they can sim­ply push us aside.
‘They have only time and silence on their side, and the com­mon­ly held mis­con­cep­tion that the scheme has already been canned by the Depart­ment for Trans­port, who would be required to pro­vide the fund­ing. The feel­ing that the scheme will not now go ahead is due to the delay in any­one in author­i­ty either tak­ing any respon­si­bil­i­ty, or com­ing to a deci­sion on the issue.
‘How­ev­er, recent events have proven that despite this, sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of the local pub­lic can still be mobilised to take action, that we do have major­i­ty sup­port, and should the go-ahead be giv­en, that there will be out­rage across the town if attempts are made to evict Camp Bling, con­crete over the bur­ial or to destroy yet anoth­er green space.’(2)
A deci­sion to fund the road widen­ing has been await­ed from the DfT since a local Pub­lic Inquiry took place in March 2004. Infor­ma­tion from the East of Eng­land Region­al Part­ner­ship Group shows that costs have now risen to an esti­mat­ed £25m for the 870 metre length of car­riage­way (3), mak­ing it poten­tial­ly, ‘The most expen­sive stretch of road in the world.’(4)
—————————————————————-
ENDS.

NOTES TO EDITORS:
1 British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards 2006:
www.britarch.ac.uk/awards/winners2006.html
2 Camp Bling web­site: www.savepriorypark.org
3 East of Eng­land Region­al Part­ner­ship Group region­al fund­ing allo­ca­tions advice to Gov­ern­ment report Jan­u­ary 2006, page 25:
http://www.eera.gov.uk/Documents/About%20EERA/Policy/Regional%20Governance/Regional%20Funding%20Allocations/Final%20EoE%20RFA%20300106.pdf
4 Southend Evening Echo Mon­day 13th Feb­ru­ary 2006

Bradford Climate Criminals flyposted

22.1.07
On Wednes­day evening, a num­ber of con­cerned Leeds and Brad­ford res­i­dents decid­ed to draw atten­tion to the activ­i­ties of a num­ber of cli­mate crim­i­nals in Brad­ford city cen­tre. Adver­tise­ments for dam­ag­ing air flights were mod­i­fied to tell the truth; that fly­ing is the fastest grow­ing cause of cli­mate change, the “sin­gle great­est threat to human-kind” accord­ing to the government’s chief sci­en­tist.

Bradford climate camp aviation flyposters22.1.07
On Wednes­day evening, a num­ber of con­cerned Leeds and Brad­ford res­i­dents decid­ed to draw atten­tion to the activ­i­ties of a num­ber of cli­mate crim­i­nals in Brad­ford city cen­tre. Adver­tise­ments for dam­ag­ing air flights were mod­i­fied to tell the truth; that fly­ing is the fastest grow­ing cause of cli­mate change, the “sin­gle great­est threat to human-kind” accord­ing to the government’s chief sci­en­tist.

Despite assur­ances that cli­mate change is being tak­en seri­ous­ly by any num­ber of politi­cians or busi­ness peo­ple, the fact is that new run­ways are planned, motor­ways are being expand­ed, and pipelines being built to increase our depen­dence on fos­sil fuels. In the face of this hypocrisy, it was clear that the time had come to make a direct state­ment that irre­spon­si­ble crim­i­nal­i­ty of this kind will not be tol­er­at­ed by sane and mod­er­ate peo­ple.

Sev­er­al trav­el agents, shame­less­ly plug­ging mas­sive­ly destruc­tive air flights for prof­it, had their mis­lead­ing win­dow dis­plays obscured by handy stick­ers which made plain the true cost of fly­ing. Those peo­ple tak­ing part in this vital ser­vice did so as a way of encour­ag­ing oth­ers to stand up against the cli­mate crim­i­nals and car­ry out sim­i­lar pub­lic-spir­it­ed actions in their areas. The stick­ers used are avail­able at a cost of 50p each to any­one who wants them – just email trees@riseup.net with your order. The stick­ers are just £10 for 20, post free!

There is still time to pre­vent run­away cli­mate change but we must act now.

Part of that action must be to expose the ongo­ing activites of those who wish to destroy the plan­et for prof­it. Clear­ly, we can’t leave it to busi­ness and gov­ern­ment to sort out the mess – they are the ones mak­ing it because of their bizarre obses­sion with an eco­nom­ic sys­tem based on con­tin­u­al growth and unsus­tain­able con­sump­tion.

The rich are plun­der­ing the Earth, and as always the poor will suf­fer the worst. We can all act in our lives, and join togeth­er to cre­ate a rad­i­cal, and ulti­mate­ly rea­son­able and mod­er­ate, move­ment for social change and cli­mate jus­tice.

This action was inspired by the Camp For Cli­mate Action, which seems to have been a new begin­ning for the fight-back by rea­son­able and mod­er­ate peo­ple against the cli­mate crim­i­nals and prof­it-ter­ror­ists who seek to kill us all.