Category: Action Reports

Carry On Craneing: Nuclear Disarmament Banner Drop!

9.6.2012

9.6.2012

In a pub­lic dis­play to com­mence our 30 Days of Direct Action Cam­paign, three Faslane Peace Campers are cur­rent­ly drop­ping ban­ners from the Clyde­bank land­mark gantry crane in Glas­gow. “Nuclear Dis­ar­ma­ment. If Not Now, When?”!
Plan­ning to make a day of it, they have tak­en a love­ly packed lunch and some lit­er­a­ture. How­ev­er, quite a few police vans were on scene almost imme­di­ate­ly and are mak­ing efforts to remove them.

This is the first of many anti-nuclear actions planned to mark the 30th anniver­sary of the Camp. In this run up to a Scot­tish Inde­pen­dence Ref­er­en­dum cou­pled with the West­min­ster vote on Tri­dent replace­ment in wait­ing, we have a very real chance to affect the shape of the future UK nuclear defence poli­cies. Scot­land could hold the key to UK nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment.

Now is the time for a renewed anti-nuclear insur­gency. Come to the camp and join in our 30 Days of Direct Action.

faslane30@riseup.net

Tree protest called off after Network Rail concessions

28 May 2012

Cam­paign­ers — includ­ing three pro­test­ers who chained them­selves to a tree — claim vic­to­ry after Net­work Rail post­pones planned tree clear­ance on a rail­way embank­ment near Whit­stable in Kent.

28 May 2012

Cam­paign­ers — includ­ing three pro­test­ers who chained them­selves to a tree — claim vic­to­ry after Net­work Rail post­pones planned tree clear­ance on a rail­way embank­ment near Whit­stable in Kent.

 

More than 100 pro­test­ers held a demon­stra­tion on the Cromwell Road rail­way embank­ment in an attempt to halt the start of work to remove trees, which Net­work Rail claims could cause insta­bil­i­ty on the track.

The pro­test­ers, many of whom were local res­i­dents, are con­cerned that the works would take place dur­ing the bird-breed­ing sea­son when many are nest­ing in the trees.

A five-hour long protest, dur­ing which three female pro­test­ers in their 50s and 60s chained them­selves to a tree on the embank­ment, start­ed at 7.30am with cam­paign­ers bran­dish­ing plac­ards bear­ing slo­gans includ­ing “stop the slaugh­ter of wildlife”.

The demon­stra­tion was called off after Net­work Rail informed cam­paign­ers in writ­ing that it was halt­ing the works until Sep­tem­ber, after the bird breed­ing sea­son has fin­ished.

‘Claim­ing vic­to­ry’

The state­ment by Net­work Rail ful­fils two of the pro­test­ers’ three demands. One cam­paign­er said that they would now con­cen­trate on per­suad­ing Net­work Rail to agree to their remain­ing demand, for bet­ter con­sul­ta­tion with res­i­dents and the use of tru­ly inde­pen­dent con­ser­va­tion experts.

“Whit­stable peo­ple are now claim­ing this as a vic­to­ry,” said Julie Wass­mer, who was among the three who had chained them­selves to the tree. “Today, Net­work Rail are now aware that the peo­ple of Whit­stable are not back­ing off.”

The rail infra­struc­ture oper­a­tor planned to start remov­ing the trees because of con­cerns about sub­si­dence caused by their roots.

An inde­pen­dent ecol­o­gist car­ried out an assess­ment this morn­ing on behalf of Net­work Rail to deter­mine how many birds’ nests were in the affect­ed trees.

Fiona Tay­lor, Net­work Rail’s route man­ag­ing direc­tor for Kent, said: “After a thor­ough inspec­tion with an inde­pen­dent ecol­o­gist, the work to remove select­ed trees along this stretch of rail­way has been post­poned owing to the sus­pect­ed num­ber of nest­ing birds.

“Because this work is essen­tial for the future safe­ty of the rail­way, we will return at a lat­er date to com­plete it once the nests have been vacat­ed. Res­i­dents will receive a min­i­mum of 10 days’ notice before the start date and we will car­ry out a full inspec­tion before the work begins.”

‘Use­ful reminder’

The trees had already been giv­en a tem­po­rary stay of exe­cu­tion after plans to remove them in April were put on hold.

Mark Thomas, an RSPB inves­ti­ga­tions offi­cer, said: “The attempts by Net­work Rail to clear track­side veg­e­ta­tion from a line in Kent is a use­ful reminder to every­one that the nests of all wild birds are pro­tect­ed by law dur­ing the nest­ing sea­son.

“Thanks to protests the RSPB, Kent and British Trans­port Police, and not least local cam­paign­ers, Net­work Rail are aware of this.

We now trust they will plan their track clear­ance work out­side the bird-nest­ing sea­son where they will be able to car­ry out essen­tial work with­out caus­ing envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and spark­ing the out­rage of com­mu­ni­ties who care about their local wildlife.”

—-

Ear­li­er sto­ry, 3rd May:

CAMPAIGNERS have promised “direct action” in a bat­tle with Net­work Rail boss­es over trees.

Pro­test­ers call­ing them­selves Whit­stable Tree Savers will meet the com­pa­ny tonight (Thurs­day) to try to per­suade it to stop felling trees along the rail­way line – and have vowed to con­tin­ue their fight if the meet­ing does­n’t work.

Cam­paign spokes­woman Julie Wass­mer, who lives in Cromwell Road, said: “There will be a mas­sive protest – and I don’t mean peti­tions. They will phys­i­cal­ly be obstruct­ed from get­ting into the car park.

“Feel­ings are run­ning so high about this it is unbe­liev­able.”  More

http://saveourwoods.co.uk/get-involved/local-campaigns/tree-savers-save-rail-side-trees/

http://twitter.com/#!/TreeSavers

http://saverailsidetrees.webs.com/

Take the Flour Back

More than 400 grow­ers, bak­ers and fam­i­lies from across Eng­land, Ire­land, Scot­land, Wales, France and Bel­gium marched against the return of open air GM field test­ing today. Take the Flour Back linked arms with their Euro­pean coun­ter­parts, notably France’s Vol­un­teer Reapers and walked calm­ly towards the site, before being stopped by police lines.

Kate Bell from Take the Flour Back stat­ed that “In the past, kids, grannies, and every­one in between has decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed GM tri­al sites togeth­er. Here at the begin­ning of a new resis­tance to this obso­lete tech­nol­o­gy, we see GM hid­den behind a fortress. We want­ed to do the respon­si­ble thing and remove the threat of GM con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, sad­ly it wasn’t pos­si­ble to do that effec­tive­ly today. How­ev­er, we stand arm in arm with farm­ers and grow­ers from around the world, who are pre­pared to risk their free­dom to stop the impo­si­tion of GM crops.”

Peo­ple enjoyed a GM free pic­nic whilst lis­ten­ing to a range of speak­ers oppos­ing the tri­al, includ­ing Gra­ciela Romero, Inter­na­tion­al Pro­grammes Direc­tor of UK devel­op­ment char­i­ty War on Want. Lawrence Wood­ward, pre­vi­ous­ly Direc­tor of Elm Farm Organ­ic Research Cen­tre, for­mer head of stan­dards at the Soil Asso­ci­a­tion, and now involved in Cit­i­zens con­cerned about GM. Plus sev­er­al British farm­ers includ­ing Peter Lund­gren, a con­ven­tion­al wheat farmer from Lin­colnshire.

Gath­u­ru Mbu­ru, co-ordi­na­tor of the African Bio­di­ver­si­ty Net­work, spoke on the glob­al fight for con­trol of our food sup­ply.

Mbu­ru explained that:

“Exper­i­ment­ing with sta­ple crops is a seri­ous threat to food secu­ri­ty. Our resilience comes from diver­si­ty, not the mono­cul­tures of GM. Beneath the rhetoric that GM is the key to feed­ing a hun­gry world, there is a very dif­fer­ent sto­ry – a sto­ry of con­trol and prof­it. The fact is that we need a diver­si­ty of genet­ic traits in food crops in order to sur­vive wors­en­ing cli­mates. Above all, peo­ple need to have con­trol over their seeds”

This state­ment is released amongst grow­ing calls for the sci­en­tists to demon­strate sen­si­tiv­i­ty to pub­lic con­cern by har­vest­ing the crop before pol­li­na­tion, remov­ing any risk of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion with non-GM plants.

Two peo­ple were arrest­ed for tres­pas­so­ry assem­bly and oth­ers were searched and escort­ed on their way to the park, or searched on their way out.  Foot­paths had been closed by order, huge num­bers of cops and secu­ri­ty were in place, a cam­era on a cher­ry-pick­er close to the open-air exper­i­ment, and a spe­cial Sec­tion 14a Tres­pas­so­ry Assem­bly applied to a large area.  The peo­ple arrest­ed were in a small group, though this is only an offence for groups of 20 or more peo­ple and they may well not have known 14a was in force.

Eco village occupation in Windsor this June


On Sat­ur­day 09th June, we will be walk­ing from Syon Lane Com­mu­ni­ty Allot­ment in West Lon­don to Wind­sor.  We will be camp­ing for one night on the route. Our aim is to start a com­mu­ni­ty on a piece of dis­used land on the Crown Estate.
We plan to grow our own food, make shel­ters and live sus­tain­ably: to show an alter­na­tive to our sys­tem of cri­sis. We call for the right for every­one to be able to use the dis­used land to live on, free the yoke of debt and rent.
If you share our vision, and you are will­ing to work to achieve it, we wel­come you to join us.
Meet­up Details
Meet at Syon Lane Com­mu­ni­ty Allot­ment on Sat 09th
June from 11 a.m. We will be depart­ing at 1 p.m sharp.
 
Bring camp­ing equip­ment, warm  cloth­ing, mug, bowl, spoon and a torch. Also please bring seeds and any use­ful equip­ment if you can.
Should you wish to meet us in Wind­sor, or at some oth­er point along the jour­ney, please call the num­bers below on the day.
If  you would like to know more about this  project, please vis­it: www.diggers2012.wordpress.com or email  diggers2012@yahoo.co.uk
Alter­na­tive­ly you can call or text the fol­low­ing num­bers: 07963 475 195 / 07905 283 114 to find  out more.
Syon Lane Com­mu­ni­ty Allot­ment Direc­tions and map.
Street Address: The lane adja­cent to Plat­form 1, Syon Lane Sta­tion, Roth­bury Gar­dens, Isle­worth, Mid­dle­sex, TW7 5JG
Get­ting to the site: We are sit­u­at­ed on the long strip of land adja­cent to Plat­form 1 of Syon Lane Sta­tion, which is on the south­ern rail­way line com­ing from Lon­don Water­loo via Kew Bridge and Houn­slow.
Near­est Tube: Oster­ley – Turn left out of the sta­tion, fol­low the Great West Road until you reach Syon Lane, then turn right. Then turn right down a foot­path before you cross the rail­way bridge, it will lead you through to Roth­bury Gar­dens, and you will see our site entrance oppo­site.
Near­est bus stop:Lon­don Road – Busch Cor­ner (237/267/235) – Come up either Spur Road or Syon Lane until you reach the rail­way bridge. Then go onto Plat­form 1 and fol­low the foot­path between two met­al fences, you will see our entrance on your left.
Map link: http://g.co/maps/ga6mn

http://diggers2012.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/events/388997621152693/
http://london.indymedia.org/events/12282
https://twitter.com/#!/freetheland

FASLANE 30 DAYS OF ACTION: UPDATE AND FINAL CALL OUT

As of June 12th this year, the Peace Camp will have been in exis­tence for 30  years. Whilst it is great that there has been such ded­i­ca­tion from thou­sands over the years, the radioac­tive beast still has­n’t been chased from it’s lair! A 30 Day cam­paign of anti-nuclear insub­or­di­na­tion, from June 9th to July 9th, has thus been planned.

As of June 12th this year, the Peace Camp will have been in exis­tence for 30  years. Whilst it is great that there has been such ded­i­ca­tion from thou­sands over the years, the radioac­tive beast still has­n’t been chased from it’s lair! A 30 Day cam­paign of anti-nuclear insub­or­di­na­tion, from June 9th to July 9th, has thus been planned.

You can find details of some of the pub­lic events list­ed chrono­log­i­cal­ly below, but for the most part, there will be art­ful insur­gency through­out of a nature we would pre­fer not to dis­close to “the pow­ers that be”… Ener­gies and cus­to­di­al time will­ing, we hope to take non-vio­lent direct action at least once a day! And not just at Faslane, oh no!

So do come along when­ev­er you can and you will find actions wait­ing to hap­pen via autonomous, inclu­sive, con­sen­sus based plan­ning and par­tic­i­pa­tion. Every­one is wel­come (except for under­cov­er police offi­cers… We have trained a dog to sniff you out. You have been warned.) Fun, frol­ics, veg­an feasts and brush­es with the law are all guar­an­teed!

With a vote on Scot­tish Inde­pen­dence and Tri­dent replace­ment in wait­ing this is the time for a renewed cam­paign of resis­tance!

There are scenic camp­ing spots and veg­an food will be pro­vid­ed for all meals (dona­tions for which will be grate­ful­ly received from those who can afford it). Car­a­vans will be allo­cat­ed on a needs basis first so do let us know in advance. We can answer ques­tions and queries by email or phone us on 01436 820901 or 07511793227.

Please pro­lif­er­ate this in any way that you can.
We love you and need your help to be very naughty through­out our 30 Day cam­paign,
Faslane Peace Camp

P.S. THIS IS NOT A PARTY. The sole inten­tion of this cam­paign is to res­ur­rect an anti nuclear cam­paign at Faslane that has long been wan­ing at a time when it is most essen­tial in con­nec­tion to the Scot­tish Inde­pen­dence debate, Tri­dent replace­ment and a poten­tial for actu­al nuclear decom­mis­sion­ing in the UK. Repeat, THIS IS NOT A PARTY. Do come if you wish to be part of a big team of love­li­ness, direct action and action sup­port. Do not come if you just want a par­ty.

EVENTS THAT WE CAN ANNOUNCE:

PEACE PICNIC JUNE 17TH: Helens­burgh CND would like to invite all local groups to a peace pic­nic at Faslane North Gate on Sun­day June 17th from noon to 4pm. Jeely Peace cafe from Stir­ling CND will pro­vide cater­ing. Please bring ban­ners, musi­cal instru­ments and your friends. The Peace Camp will be pleased to wel­come you before or after the pic­nic, or any time, ever.

PEACE MARCH FROM GLASGOW TO FASLANE 21ST-23RD JUNE: A group of enthu­si­as­tic walk­ers and con­cerned cit­i­zens will meet at George Square, Glas­gow at mid­day on Thurs 21 June to walk to Faslane in the name of peace and no nukes! They will be stop­ping to camp en route overnight. The pace will be relaxed. Every­one is wel­come, bring ban­ners and prac­ti­cal shoes!

RISE UP SINGING 1ST AND 2ND JULY: *Come and sing Tri­dent out of Faslane and out of Scot­land! *To re-invig­o­rate the diverse cre­ativ­i­ty of Faslane 365 and to keep the issue of nuclear weapons firm­ly in the pub­lic eye and on the polit­i­cal agen­da, Rise Up Singing (a Tri­dent Ploughshares affin­i­ty group) has organ­ised a two-day gath­er­ing to cel­e­brate the 30th birth­day of Faslane Peace Camp. Every­one wel­come! No singing expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary. Bring a song to share, a ban­ner and some cake, and we’ll pro­vide the tea.

ACADEMIC SEMINAR ROADBLOCK 6TH JULY:
On Fri­day July 6th aca­d­e­mics and activists from all over the world will par­tic­i­pate in a sem­i­nar block­ade as part of Faslane 30. The trans-dis­ci­pli­nary sem­i­nar block­ade fol­lows sim­i­lar actions at Faslane in 2005 and at COP15 in Copen­hagen in 2009 and is part of an emerg­ing tra­di­tion of putting social the­o­ry into per­son­al prac­tice. The theme of  the sem­i­nar is ‘secu­ri­ty’ and par­tic­i­pants are invit­ed to reflect on the com­plex issue of nuclear weapons from a range of per­spec­tives ‑gov­er­nance, secu­ri­ti­sa­tion and dis­cours­es of ‘ter­ror’, ethics, as well envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice. Leav­ing moral­i­ty aside for just one moment, we ask how is spend­ing on nuclear weapons jus­ti­fied strate­gi­cal­ly, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and social­ly in an era when the nature of con­flict is so changed, when much of the world is in eco­nom­ic melt­down and so many peo­ple are suf­fer­ing from poli­cies of aus­ter­i­ty? The sem­i­nar block­ade will be peace­ful but will insist on claim­ing the pub­lic space for demo­c­ra­t­ic debate on what secu­ri­ty means both geopo­lit­i­cal­ly and in people’s every­day lives. Con­tri­bu­tions will engage with broad­er themes of pol­i­tics, democ­ra­cy, gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty, con­flict res­o­lu­tion, cit­i­zen­ship, glob­al
rela­tions and anti-war. The sem­i­nar will involve cre­ative pub­lic and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry schol­ar­ship, using a vari­ety of media and forms: paper pre­sen­ta­tions are envis­aged — though Pow­er­Point is logis­ti­cal­ly unfea­si­ble! — along­side work­shops for small group debate, expe­ri­ence shar­ing and oth­er kinds of learn­ing. In par­tic­u­lar, we hope that peace  cam­paign­ers at the camp will be cen­tral­ly involved in the sem­i­nar. The tim­ing and exact loca­tions of sem­i­nar events will nec­es­sar­i­ly be deter­mined on the day, but par­tic­i­pants are invit­ed to gath­er at the Peace Camp between 8 and 9.30 am.

CIRCA 7TH JULY:
The Clan­des­tine Insur­gent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) will NOT be march­ing on Faslane nuclear sub­ma­rine lair on Sat­ur­day 7th of July, oh no. Even though the Tri­dent mis­siles at Faslane Naval Base could kill all the Clowns on the plan­et –and all the clowns too! – we won’t be there. Even though the Tri­dent mis­siles at Faslane are going to be replaced at an astro­nom­ic cost when all Clowns are feel­ing the pinch, we will not be roused to action. Even though none of our Clown com­rades and friends in Scot­land want Tri­dent or its replace­ment, CIRCA aren’t for turn­ing (up). Most of all, even though Rebel Clowns would defend every­one for just the price of a rub­ber dingy and load of cus­tard pies, even though Tri­dent replace­ment will take our Army jobs away, we will NOT be part of Faslane 30. Aca­d­e­mics say that CIRCA has died a death in Britain, and they are right. They must be right because they are aca­d­e­mics and aca­d­e­mics know every­thing about elites, exploita­tion, mil­i­tari­sa­tion… (Fun­ny how noth­ing changes, then, eh?) How­ev­er. A new Army of Rebel Clowns from all over Britain is trained and ready to join our inter­na­tion­al com­rades and peace camp friends to PARTY on the 30th anniver­sary of resist­ing nuclear non­sense at Faslane. If Tri­dent makes us redun­dant and aca­d­e­mics pro­nounce us dead, we will come to the par­ty as the unem­ploy­able undead, as gum­my vam­pires, veg­an zom­bies and mangy were­wolves. CIRCA will NOT be march­ing on Faslane, but a ghost army of Rebels Clowns – sea­soned corpses and the fresh­ly (sic) deceased (dis­eased?) might, just might, be there! Come on, do the  Res­ur­rec­tion-Insur­rec­tion Shuf­fle!

… And the rest is top secret! 

Occupy Oil the Sequel and #RIPShell

“These peo­ple have more rights than us” was the response of the police to an irate dri­ver.  He was attempt­ing to refu­el at the Shell Garage in Old Street, Lon­don.  Pro­test­ers had man­aged to block­ade the sta­tion in the last action of a very suc­cess­ful day against Shell Oil.

Activists from Occu­py Oil in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Anony­mous UK closed the sta­tion for almost an hour. The pro­test­ers were car­ry­ing Anti Shell ban­ners, plac­ards and a cof­fin to rep­re­sent the destruc­tive nature of this 1% com­pa­ny.

On the 22nd of May activists from Occu­py Oil held demon­stra­tions in Lon­don and Las Vegas (See Video of action here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td8NNinikyc) against Dutch Shell Oil, who were hold­ing their Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing at The Hague and Lon­don via video link.

The morn­ing began with six activists leav­ing St Paul’s Cathe­dral with a cof­fin and ban­ner to make a sym­bol­ic funer­al pro­ces­sion through the streets of the City of Lon­don.

We were greet­ed with a small police pres­ence; this scaled back polic­ing response was pos­si­bly as a result of their behav­ior on the 12th of May, When peace­ful demon­stra­tors from Occu­py May were assault­ed and ket­tled out­side of the Bank of Eng­land.
In a very dig­ni­fied cer­e­mo­ny, the 6 activists and cof­fin took around 40 min­utes to get to the loca­tion of the AGM, which was being held at the Bar­bi­can Cen­tre

Lit­tle did we know at the time that we were being fol­lowed and pho­tographed not by the police but by a pri­vate secu­ri­ty firm. This lat­est intim­i­da­tion fits in well with their behav­iour else­where as point­ed out by Marc Vallee at the recent #netpol2012 con­fer­ence.

‏@marc_vallee At #netpol2012 today I men­tioned that a pri­vate intel­li­gence com­pa­ny had con­tact­ed me for infor­ma­tion on direct action protest groups.
@marc_vallee The groups are: @climatecamp @RisingTide_UK @NoTarSands &@UKuncut « I will be pro­vid­ing the groups with the rel­e­vant evi­dence. #netpol2012

Despite the intim­i­da­tion the whole day was very suc­cess­ful with garages closed and Shel­l’s Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing dis­rupt­ed with zero arrests,
Our mes­sage is clear, “TO HELL WITH SHELL“
www.occupyoil.co.uk
@OccupyOil

Spectre of Shell Reapers hangs over AGM

22nd May 2012

 

22nd May 2012

 

At today’s Shell AGM link at the Bar­bi­can the suits on the Shell board were giv­en a 3 hour grilling, with ques­tion­ers focus­ing atten­tion on its envi­ron­men­tal and human rights crimes around the world. Spread through­out the audi­to­ri­um hood­ed Lon­don Ris­ing Tide & friends’ grim Shell reapers, stood silent­ly await­ing direc­tion from the board toward their next appoint­ment with Shell induced death and envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.  They stood motion­less for almost an hour while Messrs Ollila and Voss­er, Chair­man & CEO, attempt­ed to defend Shel­l’s rav­en­ous pur­suit of prof­it above all else at the expense of : the pris­tine Arc­tic- where drilling and prob­a­bly spilling will begin in the sum­mer; the Cana­di­an bore­al for­est-where Tar Sands “extrac­tion” has increased by 100k bar­rels per day;  the once beau­ti­ful fish spawn­ing grounds of the Niger Delta- now clogged with a “Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon’s” worth of oil every year; and lis­tened intent­ly to Voss­er spout­ing that so-called “eth­i­cal com­pa­ny sta­tus” was “very close to my heart and we are dri­ving sus­tain­abil­i­ty”. 

We all know where its being dri­ven.  Remem­ber cli­mate change?

Cli­mate change may not be a fash­ion­able sub­ject these days, but it’s already claim­ing 300,000 lives a year. Glac­i­ers are dis­ap­pear­ing, sea lev­els are ris­ing and extreme weath­er is becom­ing more extreme. As tem­per­a­tures rise, we’ll see more flood­ing, drought, dis­ease, famine and war, cre­at­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of refugees  and destroy­ing entire ecosys­tems and species.  We can’t  afford to for­get about cli­mate change – or the fact that com­pa­nies like Shell are at the heart of the prob­lem and a shift to Fos­sil Fuel Gas and land grab­bing bio­fu­els isn’t help­ing!

Mean­while out­side, many more Shell Grim Reapers man­aged to gain entry into the lob­by before being eject­ed by what one share­hold­er inside referred to as “over the top secu­ri­ty”. There they met with Occu­py Shell Oil cof­fin bear­ers who had processed the cor­po­rate body of Shell from St.Pauls Cathe­dral to be laid to rest at the feet of a 6 degree Cel­sius glob­al tem­per­a­ture rise this cen­tu­ry. There among the share­hold­ers, City cops and many pri­vate secu­ri­ty and cor­po­rate spies, the Shell Reapers hand­ed out leaflets to inform of impend­ing Shell dev­as­ta­tion.

A del­e­ga­tion from Indige­nous peo­ples attend­ed Shell’s main Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in The Hague, Nether­lands, they detailed the mas­sive human and eco­log­i­cal rights vio­la­tions and eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion that Shel­l’s oper­a­tions have brought to local com­mu­ni­ties. The tar sands devel­op­ment in  Alber­ta, Cana­da cov­ers an area the size of Eng­land, with tox­ic lakes so huge they are vis­i­ble from space, leak­ing poi­sons into the local water sup­ply.  The effects that tar sands  are hav­ing on local First  Nations com­mu­ni­ties  are dev­as­tat­ing. Not  only are indige­nous  liveli­hoods and  futures being  destroyed, but  com­mu­ni­ties on land  where tar sands extrac­tion has been imposed  are expe­ri­enc­ing dis­turbing­ly  high rates of rare forms of can­cer and auto-immune dis­eases.

Eriel Deranger, com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber and spokesper­son for the Athabas­ca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), Alber­ta – an Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty resid­ing down­stream from tar sands oper­a­tions and who are cur­rent­ly suing Shell for vio­lat­ing past agree­ments, stat­ed:

“Tar sands extrac­tion projects on our tra­di­tion­al lands are being approved at a pace that is both irre­spon­si­ble and irrepara­bly destruc­tive. Peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty of Fort Chipewyan
are gen­uine­ly afraid. Our food and water sources are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, result­ing in a fear of eat­ing tra­di­tion­al foods and erod­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of our cul­tur­al and sub­sis­tence lifestyles. Yet Shell plans to aggres­sive­ly expand its activ­i­ties, dou­bling pro­duc­tion. The Athabas­ca Chipewyan First Nation is call­ing on Shell to meet its past agree­ments and halt expan­sion until our broad­er con­cerns about the cumu­la­tive impacts of tar sands oper­a­tions are addressed.”

Ron Plain, from Aamji­w­naang First Nation, Ontario – which has been called ‘the most pol­lut­ed place in North Amer­i­ca’ by the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety, and the ‘the most con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed air­shed in Cana­da’ by the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion due to its prox­im­i­ty to ‘Chem­i­cal Val­ley’ where Shell’s and oth­er tar sands oper­a­tors’ refiner­ies are caus­ing seri­ous health and repro­duc­tive impacts – said:

“Aamji­w­naang is the first com­mu­ni­ty in the world to expe­ri­ence birth ratios of 2 girls to 1 boy due to endocrine dis­rup­tion from the pol­lu­tion. This is the first step towards extinc­tion. Shell have admit­ted that their cur­rent facil­i­ty, which is locat­ed at the fence­line of Aamji­w­naang, ‘could not meet today’s envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions or stan­dards.’ But Shell’s pro­pos­al for a new facil­i­ty with­in Aamji­w­naang ter­ri­to­ry was recent­ly denied by Cana­da for a whole host of envi­ron­men­tal, social and oth­er rea­sons. The cor­po­rate response to that set-back was to build onto the anti­quat­ed facil­i­ty the equip­ment need­ed to process more tar sands bitu­men.”

Robert Thomp­son, Chair­man of REDOIL and an Inu­pi­at from Kak­tovik, a vil­lage on the edge of the Arc­tic Ocean in Alas­ka, where Shell plans to drill off­shore in Arc­tic waters this sum­mer, said:

“Shell plans to drill in the Arc­tic this sum­mer with­out the proven tech­nol­o­gy or infra­struc­ture to deal with inevitable spills. They have not demon­strat­ed the abil­i­ty to clean up spills with­in or from under the ice or dur­ing storms. Our cul­ture depends on a clean ocean, and we have sub­sist­ed in this region for 12,000 years. We oppose Shell’s plans that have the poten­tial to destroy the cul­ture of our peo­ple and will fur­ther push the plan­et into irre­versible cli­mate change.”

Ben Pow­less, a Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario, rep­re­sent­ing the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work, said:

“Not only have Shell rev­eled in being a cli­mate crim­i­nal, they have also been exposed as fight­ing the Euro­pean Union’s pro­posed Fuel Qual­i­ty Direc­tive, in col­lu­sion with the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment. Their con­tin­ued envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and vio­la­tion of Indige­nous rights across Cana­da, Alas­ka and Nige­ria show that Shell needs to change their oper­a­tions or face increas­ing protest and oppo­si­tion across the world. Our orga­ni­za­tion is sup­port­ing an Indige­nous-led cam­paign against Shell’s extreme ener­gy projects to bring togeth­er front­line impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties.”

To find out more about the Cana­di­an Indige­nous Tar Sands Cam­paign, see:http://ienearth.org/tarsands.html

 So, what else can we do about Shell in Lon­don?

Apart from street cor­ner Petrol Garage block­ades we can wage war on cor­po­rate brand­ing. Join us to help kick Shell-out Spon­sor­ship = buy­ing us off .

 Shel­l’s spon­sor­ship acts as a green­washed blind­fold to pre­vent us see­ing the  rav­ages of fron­tier oil extrac­tion bound­aries being pushed. When we chal­lenge this, we strike a blow at Shell’s brand, chip away at its pow­er and move towards the day when Big Oil – like Big Tobac­co – is no longer seen as social­ly accept­able. As we once kicked the tobac­co com­pa­nies out of our cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions we must now do the same to the oil indus­try.

Lon­don Ris­ing Tide, c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, Lon­don E1 1ES;

tel: 07708 794665

 

GM wheat trial vandalised

Sun­day 20 May 2012

Sci­en­tists are assess­ing the dam­age after a GM wheat tri­al was van­dalised at the Rotham­st­ed Research cen­tre in Hert­ford­shire.

The GM tri­al, con­duct­ed by sci­en­tists from Rotham­st­ed Research in Hert­ford­shire, aims to see whether trans­genic wheat can repel aphids in the field.

Sun­day 20 May 2012

Sci­en­tists are assess­ing the dam­age after a GM wheat tri­al was van­dalised at the Rotham­st­ed Research cen­tre in Hert­ford­shire.

The GM tri­al, con­duct­ed by sci­en­tists from Rotham­st­ed Research in Hert­ford­shire, aims to see whether trans­genic wheat can repel aphids in the field.

It is under­stood that part of the exper­i­men­tal crop has been van­dalised and at least one per­son has been arrest­ed.

Details of the attack start­ed to emerge in a series of tweets by Rotham­st­ed sci­en­tist Toby Bruce on  Sun­day (20 May).

“Just heard there’s been an attack on our field tri­al, don’t know if crops were van­dalised,” he wrote. “Very sad.”

Dr Bruce is lead­ing the trans­genic wheat research project at Rotham­st­ed.

A spokesman for Rotham­st­ed said a state­ment was like­ly to be issued lat­er.

The non-com­mer­cial tri­al is being spon­sored by Biotech­nol­o­gy and Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences Research Coun­cil.

“There was one intrud­er who has spread wheat seed on to three of the plots, but no appar­ent  dam­age,” Dr Bruce revealed. “He has been arrest­ed.”

Dr Bruce lat­er added: “Oh dear, there’s more: Dam­age to plot 7 where he has cut off the tops of quite a few of the plants and col­lect­ed the mate­r­i­al.”

It is not known at this stage who was respon­si­ble for the attack. But anti-GM activists have been plan­ning a “mass action” against the GM tri­al.

The “Take the Flour Back!” web­site urges oppo­nents to GM crops to meet one week lat­er at Rotham­st­ed, on Sun­day (27 May).

It adds: “Or take your own action in your own way, at your own time. Togeth­er we can stop this tri­al.”

The web­site includes a map show­ing the loca­tion of the GM wheat tri­al.

Ear­li­er, Rotham­st­ed sicen­tists plead­ed with anti-GM cam­paign­ers not to destroy the exper­i­men­tal plots.

An online peti­tion to muster sup­port for the sci­en­tists was signed by more than 5,000 peo­ple, includ­ing the actor and broad­cast­er Stephen Fry.

But the protest group Take The Flour Back refused to back down, vow­ing to “decon­t­a­m­i­nate” the site unless the research was halt­ed.

Wicked Work Weekend in Mayo

Stop­ping Shell, mov­ing camp & drag­ging pal­lets!

Fri­day 4th May Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty suc­cess­ful­ly stopped all Shell haulage for the day. Once folks were sat­is­fied that Shell was­n’t going to try and do any haulage, they went to the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp to start tak­ing down struc­tures and move the camp.

Stop­ping Shell, mov­ing camp & drag­ging pal­lets!

Fri­day 4th May Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty suc­cess­ful­ly stopped all Shell haulage for the day. Once folks were sat­is­fied that Shell was­n’t going to try and do any haulage, they went to the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp to start tak­ing down struc­tures and move the camp.

Over the week­end all but the kitchen struc­ture was tak­en down, hun­dreds of pal­lets were moved to the new field, and the kitchen mar­quee was put up in the new field. The sum­mer camp is locat­ed two fields away from the win­ter field, next to the Augh­oose church. There is one large com­mu­nal sleep­ing space, but most peo­ple will be sleep­ing in tents for the sum­mer. If you are vis­it­ing the camp bring a tent if you have one, but don’t let it stop you com­ing if you don’t!

There were about 20 peo­ple on camp for the week­end, and aside from a bit of wind on fri­day we lucked out with the weath­er. The tunes were pumpin’, and peo­ple real­ly stepped up to get the work done! On Sat­ur­day we had a vis­it from a group of stu­dents who, with the help of a local farmer and his trac­tor, moved hun­dreds of pal­lets to the new field. Night­time was relax­ing with camp­fires and music, and every­one seemed in high spir­its. Many hands, light work! The bank hol­i­day Mon­day some pix­ies went down to Shel­l’s forestry com­pound and undid a bit of Shel­l’s work.

Now the camp is build­ing up for the annu­al June gath­er­ing, 1–4th of June. See more details here: http://shelltosea.com/content/rossport-solidarity-camp-gathering‑1–4‑june

The week fol­low­ing the gath­er­ing will be a Week of Action against Shell, so come up for work­shops and dis­cus­sions at the week­end and if you can stick around to help with the actions after­wards. There are lots of roles involved in mak­ing an action as safe and effec­tive as pos­si­ble, for exam­ple tak­ing pho­tos, legal observ­er, sup­port, as well as being in an arrestable role. You can read more here: http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org/?page_id=282

Forests instead of Coal: Interviews with the occupiers of Hambach Forest.

Last week I went to North-West Ger­many to vis­it a new for­est occu­pa­tion cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in the Ham­bach for­est – the pur­pose of it? To stand direct­ly in the way of the expan­sion of Europe’s largest open-cast coal mine. Through the con­struc­tion of tree-hous­es and defences, by engag­ing with the local com­mu­ni­ty and by bring­ing peo­ple and ener­gy to the area, this new camp in the woods is the lat­est stand against the ener­gy giant RWE (Rheinisch-West­fälis­ches Elek­triz­itätswerk), a com­pa­ny which plans to clear cut the area and gouge out the con­tents of the earth with some of the biggest death machines on the plan­et.

It is beau­ti­ful here. The for­est is very old and peace­ful and, at the moment, the leaf-car­pet­ed floor is dot­ted with blue and green tents. The only nois­es fil­ter­ing through the trees are the chat­ter­ing of birds and the dis­tant thud of an axe cut­ting wood by the fire pit. Up in the trees, plat­forms sway in a breeze car­ry­ing the tell-tale smell of wood smoke. Peo­ple busy them­selves with the day-to-day tasks of life here; chop­ping wood, coax­ing the fire into life, find­ing a clean(ish) pot, boil­ing water, mak­ing tea, toast­ing bread, eat­ing. Peo­ple talk and make plans, some­body jug­gles, and the sun shines warm­ly on.

It’s inter­est­ing to me how sim­i­lar these places are all over the world, how the com­mu­ni­ties of peo­ple you meet are so much like the friends you left at home. So, while I was stay­ing at the camp, I decid­ed to “inter­view” a few peo­ple and explore the par­al­lels between this anti-coal for­est occu­pa­tion in Ger­many, and the anti-coal action camps that I have been involved in in Scot­land [1]. I want­ed to explore what it is that moves peo­ple to live in places like this and invest them­selves so com­plete­ly in this kind of action.

- J -

 

I spoke to J one evening around the camp fire when I could bare­ly see my note­book by the light of my head­torch, let alone keep up with all the inter­est­ing things he had to say! J is involved in the WAA (Work­shops for Action and Alter­na­tives) [3] and has been part of the occu­pa­tion from the begin­ning..

Why do you think this kind of occu­pa­tion is impor­tant?

What makes this type of occu­pa­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant and rel­e­vant to me is how the action to occu­py this area was organ­ised and how we con­tin­ue to organ­ise while we live here – that is, in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal and hor­i­zon­tal way. To not have to ask the politi­cians or RWE to change their pol­i­tics or to change to green cap­i­tal­ism but to take mat­ters into our own hands, is empow­er­ing. The way we organ­ise here is an open struc­ture so new peo­ple can join in with this way of liv­ing and organ­is­ing and expe­ri­ence it for them­selves.

I think it is already inspir­ing local peo­ple and lots of oth­er forms of resis­tance. The local peo­ple here have in the past always been told to rely on the legal sys­tem for change. Big envi­ron­men­tal NGO’s in this area have encour­aged them to pur­sue this strat­e­gy, and because peo­ple place their trust in these organ­i­sa­tions this is what they have done. How­ev­er when the legal route fails local peo­ple (as it so often does) these NGO’s leave behind cyn­i­cism and res­ig­na­tion. So we want to show them an alter­na­tive strat­e­gy to this dead end. Peo­ple come here and get inspired when they see that you can take mat­ters into your own hands and do some­thing to change the sit­u­a­tion for your­self.

What brought you here?

I was inspired by the Frank­furt occu­pa­tion [4] which was a for­est occu­pa­tion against air­port expan­sion. At the time I was involved in the young greens which I had been involved with for two years. How­ev­er, after we vis­it­ed the Frank­furt occu­pa­tion 14 of the 17 peo­ple in the young greens left to join the for­est occu­pa­tion and I’ve nev­er looked back. To me, the green par­ty is a great exam­ple of good active peo­ple giv­ing their time and ener­gy to some­thing that ends up co-opt­ing their orig­i­nal aims for change.

When you wake up in the morn­ing what do you hope to find?

That there would be no peo­ple in this for­est! We need forests just for them­selves. I love liv­ing in the for­est, but it’s a tac­tic. Actu­al­ly just by being here at the moment we have stopped hunt­ing because there is a law that you can’t hunt ani­mals in a for­est occu­pied by humans. Also, a lot of hunt­ing plat­forms in this for­est have mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared…

What would a suc­cess look like to you?

A vis­i­tor from Buir (the clos­est town to the mine) said she had the impres­sion that we don’t have the atti­tude that this is a win or loose sit­u­a­tion. Even if they cut down the trees here, destroy the for­est, dig coal here – we have already won some­thing. We are part of a big envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice move­ment and this action achieves a big change in and of itself. It’s a meet­ing point, an ideas shar­ing hub, new things are tried out here, dif­fer­ent ways to inter­act are exper­i­ment­ed with, and so peo­ple can learn a lot just by being here.

How do you think we could encour­age more peo­ple to come and do this kind of thing?

If I observe why peo­ple come here I think it’s often because they have per­son­al con­tacts. Or because they feel well here because it’s a nice atmos­phere. They come here because it makes them feel good not just because they want to “save the world.” I real­ly don’t like the per­cep­tion that I’m here because I am an extreme­ly moral per­son above oth­ers, who wants only to be self­less and “save the world.” I love it here and enjoy myself, that’s why I’m here! I would real­ly like that good feel­ing to be passed on to oth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly locals and peo­ple who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have dread­locks or who are already in our “sub­cul­ture.”

Involv­ing oth­er kinds of peo­ple in this kind of action also chal­lenges us to chal­lenge out own prej­u­dice about so-called “nor­mal peo­ple” and to get rid of our activist arro­gance. We need all kinds of inputs, to see things from oth­er per­spec­tives. Often, peo­ple who are already active in the way that you and I are, are all young 20-some­things. A lot of peo­ple here clear­ly went through a process of ques­tion­ing their last 20 years of social con­di­tion­ing and arrived at con­clu­sions that made them want to take direct action. But it’s hard­er to do this for the first time if you are old­er I think. It’s much much hard­er to analyse your assump­tions about soci­ety at a lat­er stage, because you’ve already com­mit­ted to a cer­tain life path for a long time. It’s eas­i­er to ques­tion the last 20 years of your life than the last 50 if you’ve only got a few left!

What’s your favourite thing about the for­est?

I think the best thing about it is that I’m not so much in front of my com­put­er, which is pas­sive, here I am very active. Here the rhythm of the day with the chang­ing light is amaz­ing. It’s hard to say the fresh air (because there is so much dust here from the near­by coal mine) but it’s still fresh­er than some of the rooms where I live (in the WAA) I like the birds! A lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple vis­it, often real­ly inter­est­ing peo­ple with lots of inter­est­ing ideas and ways of doing things and expe­ri­ence. The best is how much ener­gy there is if there is space for peo­ple to be cre­ative and to realise their ideas and if they don’t have to ask per­mis­sion, but can just do it. Like here, so much has been organ­ised in such a short space of time already (the camp has only been going since the 14th of April 2012) and lots has been built. I think peo­ple are more moti­vat­ed when they don’t have a boss.

- Tina -

 

I spoke to Tina dur­ing a week­end gath­er­ing at the camp when a lot of peo­ple were vis­it­ing the occu­pa­tion to par­tic­i­pate in a com­mu­ni­ty walk around the for­est and eat cake that locals from Buir had brought to share with the occu­piers. She had trav­elled from Cologne to vis­it the camp for a cou­ple of days. We sat togeth­er under the kitchen tar­pau­lin to escape the rain and dis­cuss some of her ideas..

What brought you here?

I am involved in a group called “AusgeCo2hlt” [5] which has been organ­is­ing against brown coal for two years now. We organ­ised a cli­mate camp last year and got to know peo­ple from the WAA. Some peo­ple from the WAA came to one of our meet­ings and told us that they were plan­ning to get a house and hadn’t decid­ed where to get it yet and we sug­gest­ed this area (Buir/Duren.) So we were involved in the for­est fes­ti­val here on the 14th of April and some of us keep com­ing back to stay involved.

Do you plan to live here per­ma­nent­ly?

It depends on the sit­u­a­tion. I haven’t decid­ed in my mind yet. I’m not so good at climb­ing, so I’m com­ing and going at the moment.

Do you think it is impor­tant for more peo­ple to live here?

I think it can work if dif­fer­ent groups of peo­ple come and go, like we are doing. For exam­ple a group can come and stay here one week and then go, and then anoth­er group can come and stay for a week etc. To take the deci­sion to quit school or a job to live here is quite a big one. And if you do have these respon­si­bil­i­ties you have to split your time. But there is a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple liv­ing here (in the Ham­bach for­est) and oth­ers else­where in Europe who are spe­cialised in climb­ing and site occu­pa­tion – I hope more of these peo­ple come here! Sol­i­dar­i­ty is impor­tant though and works quite well. Hope­ful­ly between June and Sep­tem­ber this year the core group liv­ing here at the moment will grow because then there are uni­ver­si­ty hol­i­days in Ger­many.

I’m not pes­simistic, but the envi­ron­men­tal scene in Ger­many is not that big. Peo­ple are involved in a lot of oth­er strug­gles. Many of which you need to be in a city or have com­put­ers to do, so if you choose to live here you have to make it your main focus. One of my main focus­es is to work on press releas­es and try to make links between this and oth­er cam­paigns.

What would a suc­cess here look like for you?

That RWE stops killing the for­est for coal min­ing! But we have to mea­sure suc­cess in oth­er ways as well because we might not achieve that. This occu­pa­tion is rais­ing aware­ness of oth­er issues to peo­ple, espe­cial­ly peo­ple in the local area, such as a cri­tique of cap­i­tal­ism and the sys­tem. A suc­cess would also be if an evic­tion threat would get a lot of peo­ple to come here and act in sol­i­dar­i­ty. It would be cool if the region­al media would start to talk about the issues here. And not just here but also in Cologne (near­est large city.) The mes­sage not just of the for­est but about RWE, coal min­ing, and fos­sil fuel ener­gy.

When we held the last cli­mate camp in Man­heim in 2011 200 peo­ple came. Last week we mobilised against RWE’s Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, but for this demo there were only 150 peo­ple. Forty peo­ple attempt­ed to block­ade the entrance but unfor­tu­nate­ly 300 police, pri­vate secu­ri­ty and dogs pre­vent­ed us and sev­er­al peo­ple were arrest­ed. Next week we will dis­cuss in a meet­ing why there were not very many (in our opin­ion) peo­ple com­ing to this demon­stra­tion – as we had expect­ed more because there are not so many days like this organ­ised around envi­ron­men­tal issues in Ger­many. In the end we thought, ok it would have been cool if there had been lots more peo­ple, but actu­al­ly it was also a suc­cess to raise aware­ness through this action.

We have to accept that we (the anti-coal move­ment) can only grow slow­ly. We try to learn from the anti-nuclear move­ment which took 20 – 30 years to become so estab­lished. So we need to be patient. But it’s hard because cli­mate change is so urgent! Dur­ing cas­tor (anti-nuclear protests) they had 2000 peo­ple sit­ting on the rail­way line so the police couldn’t do much about it. We did the same action on a coal rail­way line and there were only 60 of us so in the end we had to leave. We need the peo­ple with us. We are afraid of repres­sion in small num­bers. But at the same time the repres­sion here is noth­ing com­pared to (the strug­gle against coal min­ing) in Colom­bia so we need to remem­ber this. And although we are a small group we have strong bonds between us, we real­ly like each oth­er. We make mis­takes and are crit­i­cal of our actions but we go for­ward!

- Clum­sy -

 

I inter­viewed Clum­sy on the stump of a tree in the area of clear cut, just a stones throw from the mine on one side and the camp site on the oth­er. From our van­tage point we could see the mine and the colos­sal bag­gers (coal dig­gers) churn­ing coal from the earth in the dis­tance. He has been liv­ing here from the begin­ning of the occu­pa­tion..

Why are you here?

Because Jesus told me, only kid­ding, the rea­son is that this region is Europe’s cli­mate killer num­ber 1. I came here last year for the cli­mate camp and saw all the destruc­tion. I was just trav­el­ling around look­ing for some­where where peo­ple are active and I always want­ed to live on a tree protest site. At the cli­mate camp peo­ple were talk­ing about it but at the time there weren’t enough peo­ple, so I moved into the WAA and did research and made prepa­ra­tions to help make it hap­pen.

Why did you always want to live on a tree protest site?

I like liv­ing out­side, the sim­ple life, the for­est, climb­ing. Life free from the con­straints of soci­ety – rent, work, school, pay­ing for food. I think protest sites are real­ly good exam­ples of oth­er ways of liv­ing.

So do you think that this kind of action is always about more than just one kind of oppres­sion or issue?

Yeah def­i­nite­ly. Of course you always have the main focus – in this case open cast coal min­ing. But with stuff like safer spaces we also try to chal­lenge oth­er forms of oppres­sion like racism and sex­ism. Every activ­i­ty is open to peo­ple of all gen­ders – any­one can climb or any­one can cook. Every­one par­tic­i­pates in the dai­ly chores. And it’s an exam­ple for oth­er peo­ple. When I told my gran about places like this she couldn’t believe that men actu­al­ly do the wash­ing up and that women do con­struc­tion work, or that we decide things by con­sen­sus. Where­as in soci­ety we get taught that there are typ­i­cal ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles and men hold a very priv­i­leged posi­tion – it’s con­di­tion­ing. Often peo­ple that come here are sur­prised that we don’t have lead­ers.

How do you think we could encour­age more peo­ple to come and do this kind of thing?

It’s hard because liv­ing this kind of life – you can’t get a lot of stuff that we’re always told it’s nice to have – T.V, lux­u­ry items. As soon as peo­ple realise that mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions don’t make them hap­py they might want to live like this. I guess by hav­ing this space and show­ing that this life can be sat­is­fy­ing and empow­er­ing peo­ple might want to do the same.

What brings hap­pi­ness?

It’s dif­fer­ent for every­body, but for me it’s hav­ing friends around and hav­ing a lot of time to do what I want. Doing stuff against the destruc­tive RWE makes me hap­py. I always had the feel­ing I want­ed to do some­thing to change soci­ety. This works for me.

What’s your favourite thing about the for­est?

A lot of stuff. It’s qui­et, not the annoy­ing sounds of the city. The air is nice, it’s green, the for­est is full of cute ani­mals – deer, fox­es, mice.. I just like it because it is a big liv­ing thing, where­as cities are just big dead blocks of con­crete and smelly stuff.

When you wake up in the morn­ing what do you hope to find?

The open­cast flood­ed and only the tops of the dig­gers vis­i­ble! No air planes in the sky. My tree-house built! Do you mean what I real­ly want? That’s a big ques­tion! Er.. I’d like to see all the oppres­sive stuff gone. It’s a hard ques­tion.. I’d like to see indus­tri­al civil­i­sa­tion col­lapse.

Any­thing you’d like to add?

To send an open invi­ta­tion to any­one who would like to come and vis­it us and stay as long as pos­si­ble!

- Erde -

Towards the end of speak­ing with clum­sy, Erde emerged from the for­est and came to sit with us in the clear cut. Erde was vis­it­ing the WAA just before the occu­pa­tion took place and then liked the for­est so much he end­ed up stay­ing. A the moment he either lives in his lor­ry or up on his plat­form defence in the trees..

Why are you here?

Because doing noth­ing is giv­ing up. For me per­son­al­ly, it wasn’t enough to do noth­ing. I heard of this occu­pa­tion when I was vis­it­ing the WAA and I thought I will bring my skills and stay the week­end. But then I real­ly liked the peo­ple and the place and the action and I’ve end­ed up stay­ing.

Why do you think this occu­pa­tion is impor­tant?

The first rea­son is because this for­est is to be chopped next win­ter and I want to stop that. Sec­ond is that it is a very old for­est and there is much more life in an old for­est than a new one.

What were you doing before this?

Liv­ing with­out oppres­sion is the way I have lived for the last 15 years. But the dif­fer­ence now, in a project, is that I’m not on my own. Before this I was a free­lancer in a busi­ness and I was treat­ed in anoth­er way and this is a total­ly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. When I became unem­ployed I got re-inter­est­ed in social and polit­i­cal issues. The wish to be with nature was first awak­ened in me in Ham­burg squats after which I moved into my lor­ry.

How is it dif­fer­ent to how you lived in the past?

Here I’m com­plete­ly in nature and not in an office. I’m here with peo­ple who have an enhanced con­scious­ness and sense of self-aware­ness and that is very inter­est­ing and chal­leng­ing. I think we are try­ing to make anoth­er world here, in com­bi­na­tion with the polit­i­cal aspect – and that’s a com­bi­na­tion for opti­mum life qual­i­ty!

What are the ingre­di­ents for opti­mum life qual­i­ty?!

I tried work­ing ‘slave jobs’ after uni­ver­si­ty, I worked two and didn’t try a third. In the end I saw that mon­ey and mate­r­i­al things don’t give me the good life that I am dream­ing of. What are the essen­tial ingre­di­ents of a good life? Peace, love, free­dom, good food, music, colours, flavours, nature..

How do you think we could encour­age more peo­ple to come and do this kind of thing?

I think if we want to build up a bet­ter world we have to reach any­one. We need to get peo­ple here to show them the good life, to expe­ri­ence this way of liv­ing. So they can see and feel it. They get an idea by com­ing here and expe­ri­enc­ing a free, autonomous life. To be the own­er of your time. To get away from wastes of time, like T.V.

When you wake up in the morn­ing what do you hope to find?

Refer to my recipe for the good life! My desire is that peo­ple respect each oth­er and look after each oth­er, because if they do this then they wouldn’t destroy our basic life sup­port sys­tem. What is cre­at­ing the prob­lems of the world and what needs to be destroyed? I’ve thought for a long time that I would like to make two plac­ards, each with the words “cap­i­tal­ism” and “oppres­sion” on them, so that when peo­ple ask me ques­tions like yours I just have to hold one or the oth­er up in answer!

What I would love to see is this coal mine total­ly sur­round­ed by peo­ple, which since it is so big, would prob­a­bly need at least 3,000 – 4,000 peo­ple! So please come and join us.

- Vis­it, Join In, Take Action -

If you want to vis­it the Ham­bach for­est in Ger­many, it is easy to get to and you will always be wel­come. Go for a day, a week, a month – any time you can give to it will be appre­ci­at­ed and there is lots to do and to get involved in. For direc­tions to the for­est vis­it their blog here: http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

For myself, it was time (reluc­tant­ly) to leave Ham­bach and return to Scot­land to re-join the anti-coal organ­is­ing col­lec­tive (Coal Action Scot­land) I am involved with here. At the moment we are busy plan­ning for an action camp against coal min­ing which is going to take place from the 12th – 18th of July 2012. So, once you have been to vis­it Ham­bach For­est it would be fan­tas­tic to see you here in Scot­land to take action in the sum­mer. For more infor­ma­tion vis­it our web­site here: http://takebacktheland.org.uk/

Links and Sources of Infor­ma­tion

[1] Coal Action Scot­land

http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/

“News, views, and action from com­mu­ni­ties and cam­paigns against new coal in Scot­land”

[2] Ham­bach For­est

http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

News, info and direc­tions to The Ham­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion.

[3] The WAA

http://waa.blogsport.de/

WAA stands for “Work­shops for Action and Alter­na­tives” and is an open activist project in Duren.

[4] For­est Occu­pa­tion Kel­ster­bach

http://waldbesetzung.blogsport.de/english-information/

Direct Action against the Frank­furt Air­port Expan­sion, the camp was evict­ed in 2009.

[5] Ausgeco2hlt

http://www.ausgeco2hlt.de/

An anti-coal cam­paign­ing group organ­is­ing cli­mate camps in Ger­many.