Police, military and private security attack peaceful anti-mining protesters at the San Rafael mine in Guatemala, Sep.
Police, military and private security attack peaceful anti-mining protesters at the San Rafael mine in Guatemala, Sep. 2008
From Rights Action:
Six civilians were shot and wounded (2 seriously) on April 27, 2013 by Tahoe / Goldcorp security forces at Tahoe’s “San Rafael” mine site (municipality of San Rafael Las Flores, department of Santa Rosa, Guatemala). The wounded are: Adolfo García, 57; his son Luis García, 18; Wilmer Pérez, 17; Antonio Humberto Castillo, 48; Noé Aguilar Castillo, 27; Érick Fernando Castillo, 27. Local residents, who are maintaining a permanent peaceful occupation by the mine entrance in protest against it, saw company armed guards open fire on the group of men who were walking by. (Prensa Libre, April 29, 2013, http://www.prensalibre.com/santa_rosa/personas-resultan-incidente-San-Rafael_0_909509181.html)
Read more here about Goldcorp’s (and subsidiary Tahoe Resources’) recent history of violence and repression against indigenous and campesino communities in Guatemala.
RECLAIM THE POWER
Join No Dash for Gas for a 4 day camp and
Join No Dash for Gas for a 4 day camp and
protest at West Burton power station
17th — 20th August 2013
Big decisions are being made now about how we're going to power the UK. The government's policy of increasing our reliance on gas is pushing millions into fuel poverty. This – coupled with ruthless cuts to essential services – leaves many with an impossible choice between heating and eating. And the same policy guarantees that we'll miss even our modest carbon reduction targets. Both the financial and the climate crises are related to the pursuit of profit above all else, in the interests of the few and at the expense of the many.
We need a win. And one win we need is a secure future for generations to come, where profits don't trump the public interest and where we have safe, clean energy to meet our needs.
Be part of creating something BIG this summer, get involved now and Reclaim The Power.
We can fight back, as the student, trade union, women's, disabled rights and anti-cuts movements have shown us. There has never been a more critical time to take action. The solutions are there to be grasped.
21 people went up two chimneys but 64,000 came down
Last October, 21 environmental activists shut down EDF's West Burton power station for a week in protest at the government's Dash for Gas. West Burton is the first of up to 40 new gas fired power stations being planned. With your help, including a solidarity petition signed by 64,000 people – they fought off EDF's attempt to sue them for £5 million.
This summer, inspired by their action, we are building a wide coalition of groups and individuals who will be coming together to Reclaim the Power. We'll plan together. We'll put forward solutions. We'll cross the border from anger to action. It was people power that stopped new coal and stalled plans for a third runway at Heathrow, that made bankers' greed and tax avoidance toxic and that is now fighting austerity attacks on workers, women, pensioners and the disabled. Together, we will stop the dash for gas.
Want to be part of creating Reclaim The Power? Wondering where we'll be, how you can get there or what you need to bring? More info to come soon, keep up to date at:
www.nodashforgas.org.uk
info@nodashforgas.org.uk
@nodashforgas
Three squatters on trial next week
On September 3 2012, some people were arrested for being in a derelict building under section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act.
On September 3 2012, some people were arrested for being in a derelict building under section 144 of the Legal”>http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/10/contents/enacted”>Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act.
The three defendants are booked in for a two and a half day trial at Brighton Magistrates Court (map) which starts at 10am Monday April 22 2013.
At this stage we think the trial will go ahead on this date. Come on down!! It’s gonna be a lot of fun. We are asking people to be outside court at 9.30am Monday.
The charges originally were squatting (under s144), obstruction (of the police in their lawful duty) and abstraction (ie stealing electricity). The abstraction charge has already been dropped.
Here's the contact details:
You can contact the support group on housingwar@squat.net
Fone – 07599377058
Twitter – housingwar (will be updated during trial)
Web – rooftopresistance.squat.net
Odd Alliance of Anarchists & Farmers Takes on French Gov’t in Airport Battle 16th April
They hurl sticks, stones and gasoline bombs. They have spent brutal winter months fortifying muddy encampments. And now they’re ready to ramp up their fight against the prime minister and his pet project — a massive new airport in western France.
An unlikely alliance of anarchists and beret-wearing farmers is creating a headache for President Francois Hollande’s beleaguered government by mounting an escalating Occupy Wall Street-style battle that has delayed construction on the ambitious airport near the city of Nantes for months. The conflict has flared anew at a particularly tricky time for the Socialist government, amid a growing scandal over tax-dodging revelations that forced the budget minister to resign, and ever-worsening news about the French economy.
A protest held over the weekend is likely to trigger a new round of demonstrations like those that drew thousands of protesters to the remote woodlands of Brittany in the fall. In those earlier protests, heavily armored riot police battled young anarchists and farmers, causing injuries on both sides. On Monday, similar clashes erupted, with three demonstrators injured, according to the radicals’ website.
The fight has brought together odd bedfellows: Local farmers who represent traditional French conservative values are collaborating with anarchists, radical eco-feminists and drifters from around Europe — who see the anti-airport movement as a flashpoint against globalization and capitalism. Environmentalists and the far-left Green Party also oppose the airport, arguing that it will bring pollution.
The clash has been particularly damaging for Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, Nantes’ longtime mayor and the airport’s highest-profile champion. He and the project’s supporters say the airport will attract business at a time when France sorely needs an economic boost and job creation. The Aeroport du Grand Ouest is intended to replace the existing Nantes Atlantique airport, with runways able to handle larger aircraft such as the A380 superjumbo and room to expand from 4.5 million passengers a year at the open to 9 million in the longer term.
With an approval rating at historic lows, Ayrault’s leverage to push through the project is shrinking. Meanwhile the opponents’ threat to remobilize is leading to new fears of violent clashes.
Protesters have spent months illegally occupying the site of the planned Notre-Dame-Des-Landes airport, which is set to start operating in 2017. In November, more than 500 riot police tried to remove thousands of squatters in the wooded area near this village 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of Nantes. Protesters responded by hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails. Police fired back with tear gas in clashes that dominated the national news.
For the farmers, it’s all about protecting the land.
“This will be a runway,” says Sylvain Fresneau, gesturing toward the two-story house built by his grandfather and the dairy farm that has been in his family for five generations.
Fresneau and his cousin Dominique are among the local farmers who are holding out, refusing to sell up and clear off the land where they have lived and worked their entire lives. Sylvain’s 88 cows produce 550,000 liters (580,000 quarts) of milk a year. “Since January,” Fresneau says, “we are squatters and so are the cows.”
While some local farmers have accepted buyouts from Vinci, the giant construction firm that was selected to build and run the airport, the Fresneaus and many of their neighbors have fought the project for years.
“It’s not a question of money,” Sylvain Fresneau says. “You can’t put a price on five generations of peasants. It’s my duty not to accept that money from any builder.”
He says his 80-year-old father was one of the first to resist the airport project when the idea surfaced 40 years ago. Long-mothballed, the airport plan gained fresh impetus when Ayrault’s Socialist Party came to power nationally in the late 1990s. The plan then wound its way through a slow and torturously complex process of studies, commissions and advisory committees.
Although Sylvain Fresneau claims the farmers “could make one call and block Nantes with our tractors in half a day,” the reality is that the farmers alone could not have delayed the project as long as they have without help from a surprising quarter: the mainly 20-something radicals who call themselves “ZADists.”
Their name derives from the French acronym for “development zone,” the generic name given to the area where the airport is to be built. The ZADists have delighted in appropriating the acronym for their own use, but with various new takes: Zone To Defend, or Zone of Definitive Autonomy, among others.
Since 2009, the activists have been occupying the fields where the airport is to be built. Some squat in abandoned farmhouses or homes opened up to them by locals who refuse to sell. Others spent the winter in ingeniously constructed cabins set up deep in the wooded and muddy scrubland outside the village.
“Without the ZADists we wouldn’t have kept the land,” admits Sylvain Fresneau.
Up to several hundred ZADists live on the site at any given time. Police control access to the zone with checkpoints at road crossings, but the ZADists avoid them by simply cutting across fields to their campsites.
ZADists have also built their own fortifications, ramshackle assemblages of wood, wire, mattresses and hay bales. The entrance is controlled by ZADists who cover their faces with scarves and hoods, not only to ward off the cold but also to hide their identities from the police posted at the road crossing barely 100 yards (meters) away.
Clashes between the two sides are common. On a recent visit, ZADists who all identified themselves by the pseudonym “Camille” described an expedition the night before in which they succeeded in splashing some police with paint, traces of which were still visible on the road.
For the farmers, the fight is mostly a matter of keeping their land. The ZADists, on the other hand, say they have wider, loftier goals. “Against the Airport … and its World” is one of the slogans spray-painted on signs around the zone.
Some of the ZADists have taken part in anti-globalization and Occupy movements across Europe. They see the movement to support the farmers of Notre-Dame-des-Landes as an extension of their goal of “learning to live together, cultivate the land, and increase our autonomy from the capitalist system,” as their website explains.
“It’s a bit utopian, but sometimes you need some utopia,” said Dominique Fresneau. The farmers’ appreciation for the ZADists’ energy and the attention they’ve brought to their fight against the airport is mixed with bemusement at some of their radical positions.
At meetings between the two groups of allies, Fresneau admitted that “we clash” sometimes. But more often they find ways to work together. Some farmers have used their tractors to set up a protective barricade around one of the encampments. A ZADist who was also a graduate student in agricultural studies helped a farmer complete a geological survey of his land. Farmers bring in food and building supplies for the ZADists.
In early April, a commission set up by Ayrault to try to calm the debate over the airport delivered its report. It recommended further evaluation of the cost of expanding the Nantes Atlantique airport instead of building a new one at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, and suggested that additional noise, traffic and environmental studies be carried out.
The government welcomed the commission’s report, saying it underscored the need for the new airport. Opponents, meanwhile, said that on the contrary it bolstered their case that the new airport should be scrapped. In any event, the activists said, all the new studies will delay the start of work on the airport, likely pushing back its opening from the originally planned 2017 date.
Ecologists went as far as to cry victory.
“As it stands, carrying out all the recommendations called for in these reports amounts to a ‘mission impossible’ and postpone the project indefinitely,” the Green Party said in a statement.
Meanwhile in the fields around Notre-Dame-des-Landes, farmers and activists are not going away.
Their next action is Saturday, when they plan a day of planting, clearing and repair work at their camp across the site of the future airport.
Open letter on the future of the Faslane peace camp
CORRECTION: The open meeting on the future of the peace camp will now be held at 4pm in the Kinning Park Complex on Saturday 13th April.
CORRECTION: The open meeting on the future of the peace camp will now be held at 4pm in the Kinning Park Complex on Saturday 13th April.
For the last two years, there has been a small group of us rebuilding Faslane Peace Camp as a community of anti-nuclear action. We came together with a shared vision that if we maintain the camp as a safe and alcohol and drug free space with regular actions and campaigning, we could create a strong, autonomous community active in the fight against Trident and the militarisation of the West coast of Scotland.
Part of our vision has been achieved in making the camp a safe and welcoming space with facilities to support anti-nuclear action, low impact living and skill sharing. We have worked to sustain resistance to nuclear weapons as central to this space and our collective reason for being here through our own direct action campaigns and active involvement in wider Scottish anti-nuclear and anti-military movements. However, our main hope that we would grow, in terms of strength through numbers, has not been achieved. Maintaining this space whilst having an active campaign with so few of us has put us under such pressure, personally and as a collective, that we can’t continue.
This letter is our issuing a notice of this, identifying potential outcomes for the camp, our own limits in achieving these and, hopefully initiating an inclusive discussion on the future of Faslane Peace Camp that does not see the four current residents assuming this responsibility.
Our proposal:
We feel, as a group, our limit on being here is 12th June 2013, the 31st anniversary of the Camp. If the responsibility on deciding and enacting the future of the camp is to be ours,(i.e. if this notice does not provoke wider constructive discussion on the future of the camp or encourage a new wave of residents) then we will enact the following proposal:
we will start taking the camp down on 12th May to create a garden space (to be finished by 12th June) that will both celebrate the 31years of resistance here and act as a site facility to support future action camps.
We feel that leaving the camp empty and open to chance is not an option because we have seen it having “fallen into the wrong hands” and feel that this is much more detrimental to the peace movement and activism in general than the camp not being here.
The camp’s potential, capacity and support and the potential for continuing:
We feel that the camp’s capacity to support a self-sufficient community of resistance should not go understated. Despite ups and downs, for the last thirty years the camp has been an active challenge to the stationing of nuclear weapons on the Clyde. Many of the people who have passed through here have learned and continued to practise so many skills in active resistance and low impact living. Those of us here have grown and learned so much, from a personal level to an understanding of the nature of the state sponsored terrorism of nuclear weapons and the banality of the everyday running of this evil. This is a space to learn, grow and challenge a very fundamental human willingness to tolerate societal corruption (in this case, that of nuclear weapons) as well as maintaining a degree of living “outside the system” whilst we make attempts to challenge it.
The facilities here are indicative of the ingenuity of thirty years of creative and resourceful individuals who have simply found ways to create alternative ways of organising that challenge so many of the negative learned behaviour in society.
Ideally, we would love to see this continue, not least because so many have worked so hard to continue it but also because the symbolism of dismantling the camp at this potentially crucial time in the struggle for nuclear disarmament (in the context of the ongoing Scottish independence and Trident replacement debates) would be the worst possible timing.
We believe that maintaining supportive community living here, as well as active campaigning, can only be sustainably achieved with a significant increase in numbers, possibly eight residents. The potential and capacity of the camp is also severely limited by the lack of wider input and practical support for it’s inhabitants. We have felt like caretakers of a souvenir. We have felt a strong and increasing sense of moral support for what we are doing but with this has come inadequate and dwindling practical support.
In short, we feel that the camp can only have a future if a larger group of people decide they wish to be based here and the wider peace movement assumes a degree of collective responsibility to support these people, emotionally and practically and take active measures to ensure their welfare. The current residents would be committed to providing long term support to any group or individuals that wish to continue the Camp.
What happens next:
So many people have given so much of their lives and energy to the Peace Camp and anti-nuclear movement so we expect our proposal and thoughts contained here to have mixed responses. We have therefore decided to call an open meeting on Saturday 14th April at 4pm in the Kinning Park Complex, Glasgow as part of the Scrap Trident weekend and welcome any constructive input on this day or via email from this point onward (faslane30@gmail.com).
Whatever the decision on the future of the camp, we will continue with campaigning and an active presence at Faslane, but perhaps not in the form of continuous occupation. Nevertheless, we want to avoid the symbolism of taking the camp away at this crucial and hopeful time for disarmament and will actively support any viable alternative to this.
On 13-15th of April, there will be an unprecedented demonstration in Glasgow and mass blockade of Faslane with Scrap Trident and we expect this to be the beginning of a new wave of anti-nuclear and anti-militarist action. The future is disarmament!
Earth First! Summer Gathering: 7th-11th August 2013
This year's the Summer Gathering will be in the Hastings area near the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road campaign. It will run from the evening of Wednesday 7th August and finish on Sunday 11th August.
This year's the Summer Gathering will be in the Hastings area near the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road campaign. It will run from the evening of Wednesday 7th August and finish on Sunday 11th August.
The Earth First! Summer Gathering takes place each year to provide a space in which the radical ecology movement can share skills and plan for future campaigns and actions. Anyone who is interested in ecological direct action will have a valuable part to play and is welcome to come to this family friendly gathering. If you've not been to an Earth First! Gathering before and are thinking about it, please do come, we are a very friendly, welcoming bunch and would love to have you get involved
Programme: Workshops, skill sharing and planning action, plus low-impact living without leaders. Meet people, learn skills.
Transport/location: exact location will be announced 2 weeks before gathering on website.
Cost: £20-£30 from each person to cover all costs except food. (If you really can't afford this, please come anyway and give what you can).
Food: Delicious vegan food will be available, and meal tickets will be on sale at the gathering.
What to bring: Everyone will be camping so bring a tent, sleeping bag etc.
If you have any particular accommodation, access or dietary needs please tell us asap but at least two weeks in advance so we can plan suitable facilities. There will be a small amount of living vehicular space if booked in advance, on a first come first served basis.
Contact: summergathering-at-earthfirst.org.uk
Summer action camp against Shell
Come to Mayo on the 21st of June
This year it is planned to have a shorter camp, but to attract a large number of people.
Come to Mayo on the 21st of June
This year it is planned to have a shorter camp, but to attract a large number of people.
Basically we’ll be building the camp from the start of June to be ready for Mid-June.
- Build camp 1st – 15thJune
- Solidarity camp from Friday the 21st to Sunday the 30th June
The G8 is to take place 17th-19th June in Co. Fermanagh. The camp in Mayo takes place after the G8, for those who would like to have an active month in June!
We are also encouraging groups to come and engage in actions at this time, but if you can only come once this summer, then the last week of June (21st-30th) is the time to be here – get organising.
New posters, leaflets, youtube videos and speaking tours are being organised/made to promote the campaign and summer camp. Contact us if you can help organising or promoting the events this summer.
Hasta la victoria siempre,
RSC
Please print out the full update and help spread the word! http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org/?p=1651
rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com
www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org / www.shelltosea.com
Mexico: 22 Injured in Oaxaca Wind Farm Protest
Some 1,200 agents from the police forces of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca tried unsuccessfully on March 26 to remove local residents who were blocking a road leading to the Bii Yoxho wind farm, which is under construction in Juchitán de Zaragoza municipality near the Pacific coast. The operation was also intended to recover construction equipment protesters had seized on Feb. 25 in an ongoing effort to stop the completion of the wind project, which is owned by the Mexican subsidiary of the Spanish company Gas Natural Fenosa. Local prosecutor Manuel de Jesús López told the French wire service AFP that 22 people were injured in the March 26 operation, including 11 police agents, and one police agent was taken prisoner. Protesters reported eight local people with serious injuries, including Carlos Sánchez, the coordinator of Radio Totopo, a community radio station.
Several companies have been building wind farms in southeastern Oaxaca on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Residents in the Juchitán area, mostly from the Zapotec and Ikoots (Huave) indigenous groups, say the Bii Yoxho project is being built in an area they use for fishing and farming that also includes ceremonial sites, along with mangrove forests that are critical to the local environment. The barricade blocking access to the Bii Yoxho project on the Juchitán-Playa Vicente road is one of four main points of resistance to the wind turbines. Activists have also occupied the town hall in San Dionisio del Mar since January 2012; have refused to recognize the mayor in San Mateo del Mar, Francisco Valle, because he favors the projects; and have set up a barricade in Juchitán’s Alvaro Obregón neighborhood to block access to another wind park, owned by the Mareña Renovables company.
The resistance has been subjected to police harassment, such as the 24-hour detention by federal police of Lucila Bettina Cruz Velázquez, a leader in the Assembly of the Indigenous Peoples of the Tehuantepec Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory, in February 2012. Protesters also report the presence of armed paramilitary groups, some with connections to unions and other groups affiliated with the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) or close to the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). On March 21 a group of men linked to Juchitán’s PRI mayor, Francisco Valle Piamonte, briefly detained reporter Rosa Rojas and photographer Francisco Olvera, both from the left-leaning national daily La Jornada, along with three reporters from alternative media and a San Mateo resident. On the morning of March 29 a paramilitary group dismantled Radio Totopa, seizing a laptop and the transmitter and cutting the power cables, according to the Popular Assembly of the Juchiteco People (APPJ). APPJ spokespeople called this “another attack by the state government and the transnational companies which are trying to use violence to silence the voices of those who oppose the construction of wind parks.”
After negotiations with representatives of the Oaxaca state government on March 28, the APPJ returned 12 vehicles, including a backhoe, to Gas Natural Fenosa; in exchange the state agreed not to press charges against the protesters. However, the APPJ rejected the state’s proposal for them to lift the road blockades on April 1 and attend an April 2 meeting in the city of Oaxaca. The protesters said they would maintain their barricades, and they called on Oaxaca governor Gabino Cué Monteagudo to come meet with them in Juchitán. (Desinformémonos, March 24; Bloomberg News, March 27, from AFP; statement by assemblies of the peoples of the Isthmus, March 29, via Kaos en la Red; La Jornada, March 29)
Breaking News: Cops Move in on Willits Treesit; Cutting and Construction to Follow
Caltrans Bypass Battle in Willits Heats Up As Activists Sit Down to Block Equipment
Willits, CA-Local residents say Caltrans tried to bulldoze their way through Federal and State regulations again in what has become a running battle over the planned Bypass highway around Willits in Mendocino County. Activists sat down in front of moving equipment and called Cal-tip to report violations of the International Migratory Bird Act after bird nests were found. This was the third time activists have blocked equipment since Jan. 28, when a tree sitter named Warbler 
went aloft in a tall ponderosa pine at the southern end of the proposed construction site on Hwy. 101 just outside Willits to protest Caltrans’ Bypass.
