Category: Action Reports

30 shut down Manchester petrol station

10.02.2007

Yes­ter­day, 30 cli­mate activists shut down an ESSO petrol sta­tion on Upper Brook Street in Man­ches­ter for 2 hours. The action aimed to high­light the link between the oil indus­try and glob­al warm­ing.

Esso flyer (Mcr)
Mcr Esso blockade banner
10.02.2007

Yes­ter­day, 30 cli­mate activists shut down an ESSO petrol sta­tion on Upper Brook Street in Man­ches­ter for 2 hours. The action aimed to high­light the link between the oil indus­try and glob­al warm­ing.

ESSO is a direct con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change by burn­ing fos­sil fuels. It still active­ly looks for more oil. At the same time, ESSO is the last oil com­pa­ny to deny the link between burn­ing fos­sil fuels and cli­mate change. It has con­sis­tent­ly sab­o­taged inter­na­tion­al agree­ments on the issue. Although it announced a £20bn annu­al prof­it last week (the largest one in US cor­po­rate his­to­ry), ESSO does not spend a pen­ny on renew­able ener­gy.
Mcr Esso blockade 1
Mcr Esso blockade 2
30 peo­ple block­ad­ed the two entrances to the petrol sta­tion, using bits of fenc­ing and traf­fic cones. As a sym­bol against car cul­ture, three peo­ple locked them­selves with D‑locks to bicy­cles. Two oth­ers were locked to con­crete based signs. Two large ban­ners were dis­played read­ing “no.1 sup­pli­er, no.1 denier, no.1 prof­i­teer” and “closed for deny­ing cli­mate change”.
Police attend­ed the scene, but were gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive. Passers-by and car dri­vers gave an over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive response, many honk­ing in sup­port.

Media atten­tion was high. Cam­era teams from both Chan­nel M and ITV Grana­da inter­viewed activists. A pho­to jour­nal­ist from Man­ches­ter Evening News was present. The BBC asked for footage to be sent in.

After two hours, hun­dreds of leaflets had been giv­en out and the block­aders vol­un­tar­i­ly re-opened the sta­tion. No arrests were made.

manchester@climatecamp.org.uk

Npower uses Thugs to Evict Radley Lakes Environmental Activists

At approx 5am Tues­day 6th Feb­ru­ary 12 bailiffs dressed from head to foot in black and wear­ing bal­a­clavas with­out warn­ing smashed through the win­dow of the occu­pied npow­er prop­er­ty show­er­ing sleep­ing activist in glass. They then pro­ceed­ed to cut the air sup­ply to a for­ti­fied bunker with­out check­ing if it was occu­pied, smash there way into a for­ti­fied loft with­out check­ing that the occu­pant Dave was safe. Not long after this they climbed onto the scaf­fold tow­er posi­tioned on the garage roof and topped with a wood­en box con­tain­ing a 45 gal­lon con­crete lock. Chris who was in the box at the time said they climbed on top of the box and start­ed to rock the tow­er before break­ing in with sledge ham­mers. Vet­er­an road pro­test­er Mup­pet Dave said ‘it was one of the most dan­ger­ous evic­tion he had expe­ri­enced and that it was only luck that nobody was seri­ous­ly hurt’.

Radley baliffs tip lock-on barrelAt approx 5am Tues­day 6th Feb­ru­ary 12 bailiffs dressed from head to foot in black and wear­ing bal­a­clavas with­out warn­ing smashed through the win­dow of the occu­pied npow­er prop­er­ty show­er­ing sleep­ing activist in glass. They then pro­ceed­ed to cut the air sup­ply to a for­ti­fied bunker with­out check­ing if it was occu­pied, smash there way into a for­ti­fied loft with­out check­ing that the occu­pant Dave was safe. Not long after this they climbed onto the scaf­fold tow­er posi­tioned on the garage roof and topped with a wood­en box con­tain­ing a 45 gal­lon con­crete lock. Chris who was in the box at the time said they climbed on top of the box and start­ed to rock the tow­er before break­ing in with sledge ham­mers. Vet­er­an road pro­test­er Mup­pet Dave said ‘it was one of the most dan­ger­ous evic­tion he had expe­ri­enced and that it was only luck that nobody was seri­ous­ly hurt’.

Two activists were arrest­ed and one sub­se­quent­ly de-arrest­ed and Chris is due in Did­cot Mag­is­trates Court on Thurs­day 15th charged with obstruc­tion of the Bailiffs. Short­ly after­wards npow­er swift­ly cor­doned of the lakes despite a ongo­ing legal chal­lenge by the local “Save Radley Lakes” group for it to be recog­nised as com­mon land.

The prop­er­ty was occu­pied with the inten­tion of cre­at­ing a field cen­tre to raise aware­ness and pre­vent these beau­ti­ful lakes being in filled with tox­ic ash from the burn­ing of coal at the Ger­man owned RWE npow­er Did­cot pow­er sta­tion. How­ev­er, despite mas­sive sup­port from the local com­mu­ni­ty, where there is over­whelm­ing oppo­si­tion to npower’s plans, and near­by envi­ron­men­tal groups it soon became clear that npow­er were hav­ing non of it, so we decide to oppose the repos­ses­sion and dig in. This deci­sion instant­ly cre­at­ed more media inter­est embar­rass­ing npow­er and under­min­ing their green­wash and it was prob­a­bly for this rea­son that they decide to dis­re­gard the safe­ty of indi­vid­u­als and send in the heav­ies. We are no seek­ing to take legal action against Sher­cu­ri­ty Ltd for the lack of health and safe­ty pro­ce­dure and endan­ger­ment of life. How­ev­er, we ful­ly intend to con­tin­ue our cam­paign to save the lakes and against RWE npow­er for both local and glob­al pol­lu­tion of the plan­et.

Sher­cu­ri­ty Ltd — have dealt with protest evic­tions (& squat­ters) before:
Main Tele­phone num­ber: +44 (0)845 890 9220
Fax: +44 (0)0845 890 9221

Com­pa­ny Offices
Sher­group House, Brain­tree Freeport, No 3 Freeport Office Vil­lage, Cen­tu­ry Dri­ve, Brain­tree, Essex CM77 8YG

Lon­don: 20–21 Tooks Court, Lon­don EC4A 1LB

http://www.shercurity.net/

Climate Action Gathering 17 March Edinburgh

Our plan­et is in cri­sis. The time to act is now…

The Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing will see peo­ple from across scot­land that are at the fore­front of action against cli­mate change share their knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence with con­cerned peo­ple from all walks of life.

Scottish climate action gathering posterOur plan­et is in cri­sis. The time to act is now…

The Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing will see peo­ple from across scot­land that are at the fore­front of action against cli­mate change share their knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence with con­cerned peo­ple from all walks of life.

There will be opper­tu­ni­ties to dis­cuss the poli­cies of gov­ern­ment, issues of social jus­tice and how the mod­ern world has cre­at­ed this prob­lem. A ded­i­cat­ed cin­e­ma will show doc­u­men­taries and short films relat­ing to cli­mate change and the fos­sil fuel indus­try. This will be a great opper­tu­ni­ty to meet oth­ers who are active in Scot­land, explore alter­na­tives togeth­er and build the move­ment to tack­le the root caus­es of cli­mate change.

Work­shops
Cli­mate change- the facts
Discussion;Causes & Respons­es
Future ener­gy paths
The oil indus­try
Transport/ Avi­a­tion
Permaculture/ Sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties
Direct Action
What next for our move­ment?

March 17th 9am-6pm
@
3 Bris­to Place
Edin­burgh

Sea Shepherd Engages Japanese Whalers

Feb­ru­ary 9th, 2007 0830 Hours. (Auck­land N.Z. time)

The Sea Shep­herd ships Far­ley Mowat and the Robert Hunter have been engaged in a con­fronta­tion with the Japan­ese Whal­ing fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru since 0530 Hours this morn­ing.

Feb­ru­ary 9th, 2007 0830 Hours. (Auck­land N.Z. time)

The Sea Shep­herd ships Far­ley Mowat and the Robert Hunter have been engaged in a con­fronta­tion with the Japan­ese Whal­ing fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru since 0530 Hours this morn­ing.

When the Robert Hunter first approached the Nis­shin Maru there were three hunter killer ves­sels with the moth­er ship. These ves­sels quick­ly fled north­ward. The Nis­shin Maru fled East straight towards the Far­ley Mowat. At two miles from the Far­ley Mowat, the Nis­shin Maru turned and fled back west again.

There was a pod of whales in the area near the whalers. The Sea Shep­herd crew are hap­py to report that these whales fled and are now safe from the Japan­ese har­poons.

The Sea Shep­herd crew have suc­cess­ful­ly deliv­ered six litres of Butyric Acid onto the flens­ing deck of the Nis­shin Maru. This “but­ter acid” is a non­tox­ic obnox­ious smelling sub­stance. The foul smell has cleared the flens­ing deck and stopped all work of cut­ting up whales.

Sea Shep­herd crew in Zodi­acs have nailed plates to the drain out­lets on the Nis­shin Maru that spill the blood of the whales from the flens­ing deck into the sea. This is back­ing up the blood onto the flens­ing decks. The plates are secured by Hilt nail guns that dri­ve steel nails through sol­id steel.

Sea Shep­herd has relayed the coor­di­nates to the Green­peace ves­sel Esper­an­za. Despite Green­peace’s refusal to coop­er­ate with the Sea Shep­herd ships, the whales need every anti-whal­ing ship in the area. Green­peace refus­es to give Sea Shep­herd their posi­tion so it is unknown how long it will take them to reach the area where the whal­ing fleet is oper­at­ing.

Sea Shep­herd was able to out­ma­neu­ver the Japan­ese Satel­lite track­ing sys­tem by tak­ing the ships south of the Bal­leny Islands through heavy ice. Thir­ty years of ice nav­i­ga­tion oppos­ing the Cana­di­an seal slaugh­ter has proven quite help­ful. The Satel­lite sur­veil­lance pro­gram can­not track a ship’s wake through the ice. “We came in the back door out of the freez­er so to speak,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son.

The Sea Shep­herd ships have been search­ing for the Japan­ese fleet for five weeks and have cov­ered thou­sands of square miles of ocean.

The crew of both Sea Shep­herd ships are relieved that the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet has been found and is now under pur­suit and engaged in con­fronta­tion with the Robert Hunter and the Far­ley Mowat.

You can sup­port Sea Shep­herd’s Oper­a­tion Leviathan by vis­it­ing their web­page and mak­ing an on-line dona­tion here:  http://www.seashepherd.org/donate.html

12th February Aldermaston Blockade: Join us

THURSDAY 8 FEBRUARY — for imme­di­ate release
—————————————————–
With the par­lia­men­tary vote on replac­ing the Tri­dent nuclear sub­ma­rine fleet expect­ed in mid-March, and a nation­al demon­stra­tion of mass oppo­si­tion called for 24 Feb­ru­ary in Lon­don, anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers will return to AWE Alder­mas­ton on 12 Feb­ru­ary.

THURSDAY 8 FEBRUARY — for imme­di­ate release
—————————————————–
With the par­lia­men­tary vote on replac­ing the Tri­dent nuclear sub­ma­rine fleet expect­ed in mid-March, and a nation­al demon­stra­tion of mass oppo­si­tion called for 24 Feb­ru­ary in Lon­don, anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers will return to AWE Alder­mas­ton on 12 Feb­ru­ary.

Non­vi­o­lent direct action cam­paign­ers Block the Builders have called for a block­ade of Britain’s nuclear bomb fac­to­ry on the Mon­day morn­ing in an attempt to obstruct con­struc­tion work on new nuclear war­head facil­i­ties. For the past four years a mas­sive invest­ment pro­gramme has been in place at Alder­mas­ton, in advance of any par­lia­men­tary deci­sion on the future of Britain’s WMD.

In pre­vi­ous block­ades, Block the Builders and their friends have closed roads around the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry for between two and four hours. The group, which is opposed to the replace­ment of the UK’s nuclear weapons sys­tem, aims to stop vehi­cles enter­ing the site to work on the Ori­on laser facil­i­ty — which is being built in advance of any par­lia­men­tary deci­sion on Tri­den­t’s future.

A spokesper­son for Block the Builders said “In a week in which the defence sec­re­tary con­firmed that the nuclear ‘deter­rent’ is a polit­i­cal rather than mil­i­tary weapon, has he both­ered to ask the British pub­lic how many peo­ple real­ly want a new nuclear weapon? Peo­ple have to let the gov­ern­ment know what they think. This is a crit­i­cal time to engage in prac­ti­cal and effec­tive action, which is why we’ve called this block­ade. We’d also urge any­one who can’t come to AWE, to express their oppo­si­tion to their local MPs in advance of March’s par­lia­men­tary debate”.

ENDS

———————-
PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS
———————-
Media rep­re­sen­ta­tives are invit­ed to attend from 7am on 12/02
Sug­gest­ed loca­tion for park­ing and locat­ing spokesper­son
http://tinyurl.com/qpm9f
Media con­tact tel no for the day is 07969 739 812

———————-
NUMBERS AND PURPOSE
———————-
With the build-up to the nation­al demon­stra­tion on 24 Feb­ru­ary and the forth­com­ing par­lia­men­tary debate, organ­is­ers are obvi­ous­ly expect­ing good par­tic­i­pa­tion in the this event.

The pur­pose of the block­ade is

- to obstruct con­struc­tion traf­fic enter­ing the site
— to hin­der oper­a­tions at the site
— to sig­nal out­rage at the gov­ern­men­t’s posi­tion

———————-
ABOUT BLOCK THE BUILDERS
———————-
Formed in 2004, Block the Builders is a non­vi­o­lent direct action group which has
been tak­ing prac­ti­cal action to slow con­struc­tion work AWE Alder­mas­ton and at
the sites of com­pa­nies with con­struc­tion con­tracts with AWE.
This has tak­en the form of a month­ly, pub­licly-announced block­ade of AWE
Alder­mas­ton, com­bined with unan­nounced actions at AWE and con­trac­tor sites, and
events in con­junc­tion with oth­er groups such as the recent Greenpeace/BtB mass
weapons inspec­tion (27/11/06).

For reports of pre­vi­ous block­ades, see http://www.aldermaston.net/news

–
*****************************************
BLOCK THE BUILDERS!
non­vi­o­lent direct action against new nuclear weapons
*****************************************
Pledge *your* sup­port at http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk/pledge
*****************************************

photos of Manchester carbon footprint stencils

7.02.2007

Last Thurs­day, to coin­cide with the IPCC report, a group of Man­ches­ter cli­mate activists dec­o­rat­ed the pave­ments out­side flight cen­tres, petrol sta­tions, super­mar­kets and a humvee garage with car­bon foot­prints.


7.02.2007

Last Thurs­day, to coin­cide with the IPCC report, a group of Man­ches­ter cli­mate activists dec­o­rat­ed the pave­ments out­side flight cen­tres, petrol sta­tions, super­mar­kets and a humvee garage with car­bon foot­prints.

Rough­ly a dozen sten­cils appeared Fri­day morn­ing in var­i­ous city cen­tre loca­tions. The stunt fol­lowed a num­ber of oth­er aware­ness rais­ing actions in Man­ches­ter, such as the block­ade of the humvee garage a few weeks ear­li­er.

Brecon Resistance Camp — Wish List

6th Feb

The tree camp in the Bre­con Bea­cons is still going strong. The mood is good and every­one is hap­py ( well all except Nation­al Grid that is !!! ).

Even with the promise of six inch­es of snow Wednes­day night spir­its are rid­ing high in Bre­con. The camp have request­ed that I send out a wish list and hope­ful­ly we can all arrange to do a lit­tle some­thing to help out.

6th Feb

The tree camp in the Bre­con Bea­cons is still going strong. The mood is good and every­one is hap­py ( well all except Nation­al Grid that is !!! ).

Even with the promise of six inch­es of snow Wednes­day night spir­its are rid­ing high in Bre­con. The camp have request­ed that I send out a wish list and hope­ful­ly we can all arrange to do a lit­tle some­thing to help out.

CLIMBING ROPES
CARGO NETS
BUILDING TIMBER
SCRAP METAL
CANDLES
AA & AAA BATTERIES
TARPS
POLYPROP
FIREWOOD / KINDLING / OLD NEWSPAPERS
FOOD ( VEGGIE / VEGAN MAINLY )
BEDDING
GINGER WINE!

Notts Critical Mass Relaunch for 23rd February 2007 with NEW Meeting Point

Let’s get this ride on the road!!!
Fri­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary is Not­ting­ham’s next Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride with a NEW Meet­ing Point in Mar­ket Square. This change is for every­one who rides a bike in Not­ting­ham and wants to take part.

Nottingham Critical Mass Feb 07 flierLet’s get this ride on the road!!!
Fri­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary is Not­ting­ham’s next Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride with a NEW Meet­ing Point in Mar­ket Square. This change is for every­one who rides a bike in Not­ting­ham and wants to take part.

Crit­i­cal Mass is a month­ly bike ride to cel­e­brate cycling and to assert cyclists’ right to the road. With no set routes and no lead­ers, it’s sim­ply a bunch of peo­ple enjoy­ing clean healthy trans­port.

Check out the web­site at  http://www.criticalmassrides.info/nottingham
Join the dis­cus­sion group at http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/nottcriticalmass

In addi­tion to all of the worth­while issues that Crit­i­cal Mass high­lights, it’s a great way to meet peo­ple and per­haps do a bit of net­work­ing to pro­mote oth­er cam­paigns.

So why start from the Mar­ket Square? Well Crit­i­cal Mass should appeal to any­one that rides a bike so it should start from the most cen­tral loca­tion for every­one’s ben­e­fit. Plus, prac­ti­cal­ly every oth­er Crit­i­cal Mass around the globe starts from a cen­tral, well-known loca­tion which makes it easy to remem­ber and easy to find.

It’s nev­er more than a cou­ple of hours. Bring bright cloth­ing, lights, horns, bells, NOISE and FRIENDS.
The next one is Fri­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary from Mar­ket Square, Not­ting­ham (Last Fri­day of every month). Gath­er at 5.30pm to depart at 5.45pm. Let’s get on our bikes and make this, the sim­plest of actions, hap­pen.

Spring Into Action — A week of events on Climate Change, happening in Nottingham

A week of work­shops, events, music and action on cli­mate change hap­pen­ing at dif­fer­ent venues across Not­ting­ham, from Thurs­day 5th – Wednes­day 11th April 2007.

A week of work­shops, events, music and action on cli­mate change hap­pen­ing at dif­fer­ent venues across Not­ting­ham, from Thurs­day 5th – Wednes­day 11th April 2007.

Cli­mate change is real and it’s hap­pen­ing now. Gov­ern­ments and cor­po­ra­tions dream of con­tin­ued eco­nom­ic growth — eco­nom­ic growth can’t solve this cri­sis, but we can. A mas­sive and con­cert­ed effort is need­ed on the scale of ‘Dig for Vic­to­ry’ or the ‘Home Front’: A war on cli­mate change.

We can’t con­tin­ue our cur­rent way of life — the oil on which it all depends is run­ning out too fast. A shift to a local­ly based econ­o­my will have to hap­pen, with food and ener­gy being pro­duced by the peo­ple that use it. The only ques­tion is when? We could start now, or we could wait for a future of war, famine, hur­ri­canes, droughts and floods. We need to gain the courage and change fast enough to cul­ti­vate a new world, before it’s too late.
‘Spring into Action’  http://www.eastsideclimateaction.org.uk/ is part of an emerg­ing grass­roots move­ment against cli­mate change. Born out of the Camp for Cli­mate Action  http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/ ‘Spring into Action’ unites peo­ple across the east of Eng­land into mak­ing changes in our own lives, cre­at­ing small scale solu­tions in our com­mu­ni­ties and resist­ing those who still seek their own short term gain over a safe future for us all.

So get involved, come join a work­shop or run one your­self, come and help organ­ise the change that you want to expe­ri­ence in our world.

Tel: 07765 217118
Email: info [at] east­side­cli­mate­ac­tion [dot] org [dot] uk

Pub­lic Meet­ings:
Mon­day 5th Feb­ru­ary 2007, 7:30pm, Leices­ter, Friends Meet­ing House, Queens Road.
Thurs­day 8th Feb­ru­ary 2007, 7:30pm, Not­ting­ham, Inter­na­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Mans­field Road.
Next Plan­ning Meet­ing:
Thurs­day 15th Feb­ru­ary 2007, 7pm, Not­ting­ham, Sumac Cen­tre, Glad­stone Street.

East­side Col­lec­tive
info@eastsideclimateaction.org.uk
http://www.eastsideclimateaction.org.uk/

Manc protest against ESSO this Friday, 9th Feb

A protest against ESSO and its role in the envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis will take place this fri­day (9th feb), meet­ing out­side Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Stu­dents Union at 5pm. All wel­come, lets increase the noise on cli­mate change around man­ches­ter!

A protest against ESSO and its role in the envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis will take place this fri­day (9th feb), meet­ing out­side Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Stu­dents Union at 5pm. All wel­come, lets increase the noise on cli­mate change around man­ches­ter!

ESSO (Exxon mobil) is the world’s sin­gle largest emit­ter of CO2, as well as the world’s most prof­itable com­pa­ny. It has been fund­ing numer­ous groups attempt­ing to mis­in­form the pub­lic over the caus­es of cli­mate change (see www.exxonsecrets.org), and recent­ly offered sci­en­tists $10,000 to write arti­cles dis­cred­it­ing the lat­est IPCC report. Come and protest against ESSO’s reck­less behav­iour, and raise the noise lev­els on cli­mate change around Man­ches­ter!

All wel­come, start­ing at 5pm, Fri­day 9th of feb out­side Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Stu­dents Union, on the Oxford Road…seeyou there!