Category: Action Reports

(Mexico) Community defeats giant cement company in Mexico

CEMEX oppo­nents from Hidal­go

CEMEX oppo­nents from Hidal­go

CEMEX can­not burn more waste in the state of Hidal­go

In a state­ment released yes­ter­day by GAIA, the Huicha­pan com­mu­ni­ty, in the cen­tral México’s state of Hidal­go, has achieved a his­toric vic­to­ry, after 6 months of protests and legal actions that drove to the clo­sure of the plant of Proam­bi­ente com­pa­ny, a sub­sidiary of Cemen­tos Mex­i­canos, CEMEX, by the Sec­re­tary of Envi­ron­ment and Nat­ur­al Resources.

This plant was respon­si­ble for receiv­ing and pro­cess­ing a large part of the 12,000 tons of sol­id waste gen­er­at­ed dai­ly in Mex­i­co City, to be burned as an alter­na­tive fuel in the kilns of CEMEX plant in Huicha­pan.

Ship­ping to cement kilns was a major “solu­tion” dri­ven by the Mex­i­co City gov­ern­ment (GDF), through an agree­ment with CEMEX, for the treat­ment of Mex­i­can capital’s waste, after the clo­sure of  Bor­do Poniente land­fill (the largest in Latin Amer­i­ca), in Decem­ber 2011, and has been strong­ly crit­i­cized for its neg­a­tive impacts on human health and the envi­ron­ment derived from its poten­tial emis­sions of heavy met­als, diox­ins and furans, and oth­er con­t­a­m­i­nants.

The inhab­i­tants of the town of Huicha­pan, main­ly in the com­mu­ni­ties of Maney, Don­goteay and Zothe, locat­ed around the CEMEX plant, start­ed to feel the neg­a­tive effects on health and ecosys­tems when it began to receive and indis­crim­i­nate­ly burn waste from DF and orga­nized their­self in the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed for the Envi­ron­ment (CUMA) move­ment, to resist this false solu­tion to a prob­lem gen­er­at­ed else­where in the coun­try and raise their own alter­na­tives for waste man­age­ment.

The local com­mu­ni­ty has been con­stant­ly sup­port­ed by biol­o­gist Jorge Tadeo Var­gas, from the Glob­al Alliance for Incin­er­a­tor Alter­na­tives (GAIA), and State Rep. San­dra Ordaz Oliv­er, Pres­i­dent of the Health Com­mis­sion of the State Con­gress, who are com­mit­ted to enforce statewide in Hidal­go the ban of com­bus­tion of munic­i­pal sol­id waste and haz­ardous waste, and pro­mote a Zero Waste law for the state and its munic­i­pal­i­ties, includ­ing more sus­tain­able options such as waste reduc­tion and sep­a­ra­tion at source, reuse, recy­cling and com­post­ing.

 

(USA) People Lock Themselves to Keystone XL Machinery to Defend Tree Village

Defend­ing the block­ades from “the machine”

Defend­ing the block­ades from “the machine”

DATELINE WINNSBORO, TX — This morn­ing two Texas-born Tar Sands Block­aders have locked them­selves to a crit­i­cal piece of equip­ment for TransCanada’s Key­stone XL con­struc­tion in order to pro­tect a mas­sive tree vil­lage in the direct path of the tox­ic tar sands pipeline.

The vil­lage, where eight tree sit­ters remain in vig­il, is on prop­er­ty that Tran­sCana­da now claims own­er­ship of through court action. Key­stone XL con­struc­tion crews have advanced just over 300 yards away from the north­ern bound­ary of Tar Sands Blockade’s tree vig­il.

Stay updat­ed at the Tar Sands Block­ade web­site

 

OVER 50 PARTRIDGES FREED

“Over 50 par­tridges were boxed up from a breed­ing facil­i­ty and tak­en to a pub­lic wildlife reserve where shoot­ing is banned. Their release was quick and they all flew off into the night.

Until all are free! — Ani­mal-Lib­er­a­tion-Front”

“Over 50 par­tridges were boxed up from a breed­ing facil­i­ty and tak­en to a pub­lic wildlife reserve where shoot­ing is banned. Their release was quick and they all flew off into the night.

Until all are free! — Ani­mal-Lib­er­a­tion-Front”

Local residents camp & rally against Bexhill-Hastings link road

Local res­i­dents have released fur­ther details of the two-day pro­gramme of events- includ­ing a camp and ral­ly — in Combe Haven Val­ley this week­end, 29/30 Sep­tem­ber, to protest against con­tro­ver­sial plans to build a £100m link road between Hast­ings and Bex­hill. The group Combe Haven Defend­ers have gath­ered experts and enter­tain­ers from across Sus­sex and beyond to join their ‘Stop the Road’ event.

 

Fol­low­ing a lunch and ral­ly around 1pm, renowned trans­port cam­paign­er John Stew­art will lead a work­shop on ‘How to stop a road’, draw­ing lessons from the suc­cess­ful ’90s anti-roads move­ment [1]. Local peo­ple will also be able to attend an’In­tro­duc­tion to Direct Action with nation­al group Seeds for Change, as they plan the next steps of the cam­paign.

Fam­i­lies will also be catered for with a work­shop and play from envi­ron­men­tal youth group The Ote­sha Project UK, shad­ow pup­petry and sto­ry-telling. Local botany expert Judy Clark will be on hand and in the evening par­tic­i­pants will be able to stargaze with a pro­fes­sion­al astronomer.

Local musi­cians have also ral­lied to sup­port the cam­paign, with evening per­for­mances promised from Tim Hoyte, Eleanor Lynn, Ani­ta Jar­dine, Las Pasion­aras, Will Davis and Krysia Mans­field. The group have stat­ed that there will be no ampli­fied music and the event will be alco­hol-free.

Guid­ed walks to the Camp site will depart on Sat­ur­day 29 Sep­tem­ber from Bex­hill Sta­tion and Bul­ver­hythe (Sheep Wash bridge) at 11am, and from Crowhurst Sta­tion at 12 noon. Details of the Cam­p’s loca­tion will also be avail­able on the Combe Haven Defend­ers’ web-site on Sat­ur­day morn­ing: www.combehavendefenders.org.uk.

Spokesper­son Abby Nicol said: ‘We urge peo­ple to join us this week­end to see the amaz­ing area that will be destroyed unless we take action to stop it, and to learn about prac­ti­cal ways in which we can all peace­ful­ly and effec­tive­ly resist the con­struc­tion of this road. The appalling traf­fic prob­lems along the Bex­hill Road need to be alle­vi­at­ed, but the build­ing of a new road — which accord­ing to the Coun­ty Council’s own fig­ures will increase over­all traf­fic by 14 per cent — is not a sus­tain­able or finan­cial­ly viable solu­tion. We have to look to more cre­ative and sus­tain­able solu­tions to traf­fic prob­lems: the link road is not the answer. ’

NOTES
[1] John Stew­art was named “Britain’s most effec­tive rad­i­cal green activist” in the first com­pre­hen­sive list of the country’s most effec­tive greens, com­piled by The Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day – in part for his role in “co-ordinat[ing] protests that brought Tory plans for ‘the great­est road-build­ing pro­gramme since the Romans’ to a screech­ing halt in the 1990s.” For more info see www.airportwatch.org.uk/?p=2244 Combe Haven Defend­ers

(USA) Sunrise Intervention at Gas Industry Convention

It was 7:00 am, the last day of the Mar­cel­lus Shale Coalition’s annu­al con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia, when a group of 40 or so peo­ple gath­ered to meet the gas indus­try face to face. “We just want­ed to see what they had to say for them­selves” said one of the pro­test­ers.

It was 7:00 am, the last day of the Mar­cel­lus Shale Coalition’s annu­al con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia, when a group of 40 or so peo­ple gath­ered to meet the gas indus­try face to face. “We just want­ed to see what they had to say for them­selves” said one of the pro­test­ers. It turned out the indus­try del­e­gates weren’t so shy for talk­ing after-all.

(scroll down for full gallery)

The con­ven­tion was called “Shale Gas Insight” and took place in the for­ti­fied Philadel­phia Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in down­town Philly. The con­ven­tion  host­ed hun­dreds of ven­dors and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from just about every com­pa­ny involved in hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or “Frack­ing” as some call it. You can read about the work­shop titles here; http://shalegasinsight.com/conference-schedule/

The action, called “Sun­rise Inter­ven­tion” by local orga­niz­ers, suc­ceed­ed in bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er to face the indus­try on their own terms. For hours, indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives were forced to pass through an aggres­sive pick­et at the front entrance with ban­ners, flags, drums, and chants. This was pre­ced­ed by a “walk of shame” in which the del­e­gates were ver­bal­ly con­front­ed for an entire city block in pub­lic view. As they approached the con­ven­tion cen­ter, peo­ple phys­i­cal­ly blocked them from enter­ing. To say the least, it became a venue for inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion.

“I real­ly val­ued the hon­esty on behalf of the del­e­gates” said a bystander. At one point a group of uni­formed char­ter school kids joined in the fun, tak­ing pictures–laughing and point­ing.

“We were hop­ing the del­e­gates would get arrest­ed for col­lab­o­rat­ing in envi­ron­men­tal crimes” said one of the pick­eters when the police arrived. But they didn’t.

“I’m too scared to do the right thing” whis­pered an offi­cer from his car. The police then sep­a­rat­ing the pick­et onto either side of the main entrance, ush­er­ing del­e­gates off the side­walk into the road.

Although the police estab­lished a rit­u­al­is­tic pres­ence, they didn’t do much to pro­tect the del­e­gates from the angry crowd. Per­haps they weren’t too impressed with the gas industry’s pol­i­cy on pub­lic health.

The protest last­ed a cou­ple more hours, police & all, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for del­e­gates to reach the door. Once most of the del­e­gates were inside, the protest end­ed in an un-per­mit­ted march through down­town Philadel­phia to meet up with an ACT UP ral­ly and street the­ater per­for­mance.


(USA) Tar Sands Blockade Launces 8‑Person Treesit

Gan­dalf hates tar sands.

The ongo­ing Tar Sands Block­ade cam­paign has launched an 8‑person treesit in the planned path of the under-con­struc­tion Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline. “Con­struc­tion can­not pro­ceed until tree-sit­ters descend and Tran­sCana­da clear-cuts through hun­dreds of trees to make way for the tox­ic tar sands pipeline,” Tar Sands Block­ade announced.

The treesit­ters have announced their inten­tion to remain in the trees until the Key­stone XL pipeline is stopped for good.

Tar Sands Block­ade is an ongo­ing cam­paign to stop the con­struc­tion of TransCanada’s Key­stone pipeline through Texas and Okla­homa. The pipeline is meant to car­ry oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the US.

There are still plen­ty of ways to get involved in this cam­paign. Fol­low news of the treesit here. For some ways to get involved, read this call to action or vis­it Tar Sands Block­ade.

 

 

(Brazil) Fishermen Paralyze Construction of the Belo Monte Dam

Fish­er­men form a line to block

Fish­er­men form a line to block access to the con­struc­tion site of a cof­fer dam on the Xin­gu Riv­er, Sep. 2012

From Inter­na­tion­al Rivers:

On Wednes­day [Sep. 19], a group of about 50 fish­er­men pre­vent­ed a fer­ry from trans­port­ing machines and work­ers to a cof­fer dam being built for the Belo Monte Dam Com­plex, set­ting up a protest camp on one of the main islands of the Xin­gu Riv­er near the con­struc­tion site.

After assem­bling, the pro­test­ers decid­ed to remain indef­i­nite­ly in place, and called on Norte Ener­gia and IBAMA to imme­di­ate­ly nego­ti­ate com­pen­sa­tion for the loss of eco­log­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive fish species that the fish­er­men have suf­fered as a result of the cof­fer dam’s con­struc­tion.

“The fish­er­men have seen a 50% reduc­tion in fish­eries pro­duc­tion. The riv­er is dry­ing up. Sev­er­al species failed to spawn over the last year due to Norte Ener­gia’s inter­ven­tion in the riv­er.  A lot of fish are dying, and in some loca­tions the com­pa­ny wants to impede the fish­er­men from access­ing the riv­er,” explained Ana Bar­bosa Laide of the Movi­men­to Xin­gu Vivo, who has accom­pa­nied the mobi­liza­tion.

On Wednes­day night, a group of fish­er­men who depend on orna­men­tal fish from the riv­er joined the group, demand­ing that envi­ron­men­tal agency IBAMA guar­an­tee the sur­vival of species that are endem­ic to the area where the dam is being built, say­ing that oth­er­wise, the species will go extinct. “They argue that if these species die off, IBAMA should release its pop­u­la­tion of col­lect­ed orna­men­tal fish in order to save the eco­nom­ic liveli­hoods of the fish­er­men,” explained Laide.

Accord­ing to the move­ment lead­ers, the occu­pa­tion protests the deci­sion of IBAMA to allow Norte Ener­gia to per­ma­nent­ly close the riv­er. Dur­ing this process, the fish­er­men were not con­sult­ed nor informed about how they could con­tin­ue their eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties, or how they could con­tin­ue to trans­port their boats on the riv­er past the dam. “The riv­er is ours and we came to fish. You can’t just pro­hib­it fish­ing, we have to work, “says Lucio Vale, Pres­i­dent of the Fish­er­men’s Colony of Altami­ra.

On the evening of the 19th, civ­il police offi­cers, accom­pa­nied by mem­bers of Norte Ener­gia, were at the demon­stra­tion site. Accord­ing to agents, they were assured that the protest was non-vio­lent.

(Peru) Despite Promised Reforms, Another Mine Resister Killed in Peru

Peru­vian pol

Peru­vian police are becom­ing noto­ri­ous for using lethal force against pro­test­ers. In this pic­ture, police respond with force to protests which rocked the Ama­zon region in 2009.

Despite gov­ern­ment promis­es of reforms in the way nat­ur­al resource con­ces­sions are han­dled, anoth­er anti-mines pro­test­er has been killed in Peru. This marks the 19th per­son killed in a nat­ur­al resource-relat­ed con­flict since Pres­i­dent Ollan­ta Humala took office in July 2011.

Clash­es between police and pro­test­ers broke out in the Ancash region on Wednes­day Sep. 19, when police tried to break up a block­ade of a road lead­ing to Bar­rick Gold’s Pier­na mine.  Locals blame the mine for con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing their drink­ing water and using up their water sup­ply.

The com­pa­ny tem­porar­i­ly shut down the mine fol­low­ing the killing.

The vio­lence came even as Peru’s Con­gress debates reforms to the way min­ing con­ces­sions are han­dled, includ­ing the cre­ation of a new over­sight body to eval­u­ate min­ing con­ces­sions, sep­a­rate from the agency respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing them.

The gov­ern­ment has also been tout­ing its new pol­i­cy of con­sult­ing with affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties regard­ing oil and gas con­ces­sions in the Ama­zon, but com­mu­ni­ties in resis­tance to such projects have expressed skep­ti­cism about what such con­sul­ta­tion will actu­al­ly mean.

“Which com­mu­ni­ties will be con­sult­ed? What are the terms and con­di­tions? Indige­nous peo­ples need answers to these ques­tions, because there is a great deal of mis­trust,” said con­gress­mem­ber Veróni­ka Men­doz.

“We think it is good that they will hold a con­sul­ta­tion. But how can they rem­e­dy all of the dam­age they have done to us in the last 40 years in just a short time? They need to explain that to us first,” said Achuar indige­nous leader Andrés San­ti, pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of Native Com­mu­ni­ties of Cor­ri­entes.

Mining Company and Government Thugs Attack Guatemalan Mine Resisters

On Sep­tem­ber 17 and 18, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Mataque­s­cuint­la, Jala­pa and San Rafael Las Flo­res, San­ta Rosa, Guatemala protest­ed against the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of a min­ing project in their com­mu­ni­ties. In response to the first of these protests, provo­ca­teurs attacked both police and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers with stones. In response to a peace­ful block­ade out­side the min­ing site, pro­test­ers were “attacked with­out warn­ing by mem­bers of the mine’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty agency, the Nation­al Civ­il Police and the army, using tear gas can­nons, firearms and rub­ber bul­let guns. Secu­ri­ty agents attacked from inside the mine, with trained attack dogs. The Police cor­nered the unarmed pro­tes­tors, and the army sur­round­ed them, crouched and at the ready. The dis­play of repres­sive force had all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of mil­i­tary counter-insur­gency tac­tics that we had thought belonged to the past, includ­ing the bad inten­tions, bru­tal­i­ty and cow­ardice that so char­ac­ter­ize the tac­tics of the Nation­al Army.”

Fol­low­ing the attack, mil­i­tary heli­copters began fly­ing over the resist­ing com­mu­ni­ties, “like in the old days of the armed con­flict.”

 

Energy Industry Crackdown, Global Protest Frackdown

Yes­ter­day, while Shell announced suing Green­peace Inter­na­tion­al in an attempt to have the orga­ni­za­tion banned from protest with­in 500 meters of any Shell prop­er­ty in the Nether­lands,  New York activist Susan Walk­er was sen­tenced to 15 days in jail after she refused to pay a fine for block­ing the entrance to Iner­gy gas facil­i­ty in New York ear­li­er this month. 

But judges and jails aren’t enough to stop a world-wide move­ment against the ener­gy empire, and today marks the “Glob­al Frack­down” with more than 100 protests against gas frack­ing sched­uled to take place around the world. So get out there in the streets and raise some hell…

Shell sues Greenpeace to block environmental protests in the Arctic

The suit against Green­peace Int’l argued at Amsterdam’s Dis­trict Court Fri­day showed Shell aggres­sive­ly tak­ing the offen­sive to pro­tect its $4.5 bil­lion invest­ment in drilling for oil in the icy Arc­tic waters off the coast of Alas­ka. A ver­dict is not expect­ed for two weeks.

A protest at a Shell gas sta­tion in the Nether­lands — with stuffed polar bear. (AFP/ANP, Mar­cel Antonisse)

Green­peace has protest­ed Arc­tic drilling with oth­er stunts around the world, but the trig­ger for Friday’s law­suit was a Dutch demon­stra­tion on Sept. 14, in which Green­peace pro­test­ers blocked more than 70 Shell gas sta­tions in the Nether­lands for sev­er­al hours, drap­ing ban­ners and clamp­ing gas pump han­dles togeth­er with bike locks.

Fif­teen peo­ple were arrest­ed. Shell has not put for­ward any esti­mate of how much dam­age it suf­fered.

“Because Green­peace Inter­na­tion­al doesn’t oper­ate alone, but is the spi­der in the web of nation­al and local orga­ni­za­tions, our request includes that Green­peace inform its satel­lite orga­ni­za­tions that it no longer sup­ports protests that are sole­ly direct­ed at caus­ing Shell eco­nom­ic dam­age or that bring human lives and the envi­ron­ment in dan­ger,” Shell’s com­plaint said.

Protest backs jailed environmental activist in Inergy Blockade

Joseph Camp­bell, pres­i­dent of Gas Free Seneca, speaks Fri­day out­side the Chemu­ng Coun­ty Jail. He said local res­i­dents turned to civ­il dis­obe­di­ence because their peti­tions, let­ters and attend­ing hear­ings failed to get their voic­es heard on Iner­gy Midstream’s pro­posed stor­age facil­i­ty.

Near­ly 30 peo­ple slammed the ener­gy indus­try out­side the Chemu­ng Coun­ty Jail on Fri­day but praised the Dundee woman held inside for refus­ing to pay a fine for tres­pass­ing at a pro­posed gas stor­age facil­i­ty.

They demon­strat­ed in sup­port of Susan Walk­er, 53, who plead­ed guilty to tres­pass­ing Wednes­day night before Read­ing Town Jus­tice Ray­mond H. Berry and got 15 days in jail after she refused to pay the $275 fine.

“We’re in agree­ment with Susan’s words when she spoke in the cour­t­house, ‘If I were a cor­po­ra­tion, I would not be going to jail,’” said one of four speak­ers, San­dra Ste­in­graber, an Itha­ca Col­lege schol­ar in res­i­dence who co-found­ed the coali­tion New York­ers Against Frack­ing.

Fracking Protests Planned Around The World By GlobalFrackdown Campaign

More than 100 protests against the nat­ur­al gas drilling process known as frack­ing are sched­uled to take place around the world on Sat­ur­day, build­ing on pub­lic con­cerns but also using an over­ly sim­pli­fied mes­sage to spur out­rage.

The Glob­al­Frack­down web­site and cam­paign was devel­oped by Food & Water Watch, a Wash­ing­ton, D.C. non­prof­it that was once part of Ralph Nader’s Pub­lic Cit­i­zen group. The cam­paign claims that frack­ing “has already dam­aged com­mu­ni­ties and ruined lives. It pol­lutes water and makes peo­ple sick.”