Category: Squatting / Free Spaces / Protest Sites

Eco-village occupation London June 6th

Hel­lo friends,

you may be aware of the eco-vil­lage occu­pa­tion which is being planned for Sat­ur­day June 6th. The idea is to occu­py a dis­used urban site in SW Lon­don near Ham­mer­smith and to start an eco-vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty based on sus­tain­able meth­ods of liv­ing such as veg­etable grow­ing, com­post toi­lets the works. There is a press release below- please can you dis­trib­ute it to all and sundry and tell every­one you know who would want to know that this thing is going down or up? (depend­ing on which way you look at it 😎

Hel­lo friends,

you may be aware of the eco-vil­lage occu­pa­tion which is being planned for Sat­ur­day June 6th. The idea is to occu­py a dis­used urban site in SW Lon­don near Ham­mer­smith and to start an eco-vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty based on sus­tain­able meth­ods of liv­ing such as veg­etable grow­ing, com­post toi­lets the works. There is a press release below- please can you dis­trib­ute it to all and sundry and tell every­one you know who would want to know that this thing is going down or up? (depend­ing on which way you look at it 😎

The land is every­bodys.

For imme­di­ate release…

Back­ground:

In May 1996, 500 The Land is Ours activists occu­pied 13 acres of derelict land on the banks of the Riv­er Thames in Wandsworth, high­light­ing the mis­use of urban land, the lack of pro­vi­sion of afford­able hous­ing and the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the urban envi­ron­ment. That action grew into far more than just a sim­ple land rights action.

A com­mu­ni­ty grew up on the site called Pure Genius!! over the 5½ months that the occu­pa­tion last­ed for.….

Then and now:

“Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars” Mar­tin Luther King.

In the first three months of 2009, near­ly 13,000 Britons lost their home to repos­ses­sions. Now, per­haps more than ever, the ideas of peace­ful land recla­ma­tion and eco-vil­lages are becom­ing rec­og­nized as the solu­tion to prob­lems such as over­crowd­ing in cities and the destruc­tion of the land due to harm­ful agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices.

Action:

In the spir­it of Pure Genius, On June 6th 2009, hun­dreds of activists will con­verge on a piece of derelict land close by to Ham­mer­smith in south west Lon­don to cre­ate an eco-vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty based entire­ly on sus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy and con­struc­tion tech­niques.

Come and be a part of this eco-vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty.

Inspired:

This eco-vil­lage occu­pa­tion is inspired by cam­paigns like The Land is Ours which cam­paigns peace­ful­ly for access to the land, its resources, and the deci­sion-mak­ing process­es affect­ing them, for every­one, irre­spec­tive of race, gen­der or age. for more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it:

www.tlio.org.uk

Meet-up:

The exact loca­tion of the site will be revealed on the day. The meet up point is at Water­loo Sta­tion (under the clock in the mid­dle of the sta­tion) at 10AM on Sat­ur­day 6th June. Please try to be on time as we don’t want to be hang­ing around all morn­ing.

If you would like to speak to some­one regard­ing the cam­paign or the occu­pa­tion, please con­tact Car­olyn on: 01727 812369 or Gareth on: 07515 166011 or email: diggers360@yahoo.co.uk

Galwegian’s are Reclaiming it’s Streets (Eire)

May 17, 2009

Galway RTSMay 17, 2009
Yes­ter­day after­noon, Gal­we­gians and their friends from around the coun­try and world came togeth­er on new­ly renamed (by us), Anti-Shop Street, to take back our space from the cap­i­tal­ist, con­sumerist cul­ture which has tak­en over, with it’s bizarre ideas of a life ded­i­cat­ed to shop­ping, spend­ing, buy­ing and prof­it, so that we could share an expe­ri­ence of anoth­er world, where every­thing is free, peo­ple share and give food, fun, stuff and life, sim­ply because they can and it just feels good!

“Free Food, Free Stuff, Free Fun, Free Social Inter­ac­tion, Free World for Every­one”, was the chant of the day, encour­ag­ing every­one to join in the fun. ‘Feck Mon­ey’ could also be heard every now and again, amongst the joy­ful shout­ing and whoop­ing! The event start­ed at 1.30pm, when a ‘Real­ly Real­ly Free Mar­ket’, mag­i­cal­ly appeared out of nowhere; clothes, videos, toys, ted­dies, cards, match­es, mark­ers, crayons, zines and more were all decked out on a table and offered to bemused passers-by for free. Con­fused by the idea of free stuff, those who were afraid to ask were left won­der­ing ‘what’s the catch?’ Need­less to say, there was none. Just a group of peo­ple who believe in a bet­ter world where gifts can be giv­en freely, and the only prof­it sought is the joy of mak­ing oth­ers hap­py. They were prompt­ly joined by Gal­way Food-Not-Bombs, (who share veg­e­tar­i­an food, mes­sages of peace and a bet­ter soci­ety, with the pub­lic), to feed the par­tic­i­pants and onlook­ers with love­ly veg­e­tar­i­an soup, bread and amaz­ing cook­ies at the REAL reces­sion bust­ing price of no euros and no sense! Par­tic­i­pants dec­o­rat­ed Anti-Shop street with colour­full ban­ners let­ting peo­ple know “Anoth­er World is Pos­si­ble”, encour­ag­ing them to “Spend Less, Give More”, invit­ing them to “Cel­e­brate Our Streets” and one sug­gest­ing that we should just “Feck Mon­ey!” Oth­ers dec­o­rat­ed the ground, chalk­ing mes­sages such as “Cap­i­tal­ism Kills”, until the Gar­dai informed them it was ille­gal!

Gal­way Shell to Sea, who know all about the urgent need to reclaim con­trol over our own lives, envi­ron­ment and resources, came out to par­tic­i­pate and spread the word about the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­p’s June Bank Hol­i­day Gath­er­ing, com­ing up on May 29th.
Enter­tain­ment was abun­dant with ran­dom indi­vid­u­als show­ing off and teach­ing their jug­gling and poi skills, tra­di­tion­al Irish music, Capoeira danc­ing with accom­pa­ny­ing music, peo­ple play­ing chess, oth­ers blow­ing bub­bles, DIY art with home-made nat­ur­al paints. And, how bet­ter to inter­act and have fun on our streets then to play Twister! Plus lots of oth­er fun and ran­dom stuff…

It was about two hours before traf­fic war­dens arrived to try and kill the fun. Unable to give out park­ing tick­ets, due to our incon­sid­er­ate lack of licence plate num­bers, they made a poor attempt at tak­ing our Twister. Then the Gar­dai were called in to deal with our men­ac­ing antics. The first Gar­da on the scene told us we had to move the Twister because we were block­ing the street. We polite­ly refused and argued that these were our streets and peo­ple seemed to be get­ting by just fine. Short­ly there­after, five to six guards hud­dled on the oppo­site cor­ner, obvi­ous­ly a bit unsure of what they should or could do. They no doubt were grate­ful when the free water arrived in abun­dance from the sky. Not ready to give up just yet we con­tin­ued on play­ing wet Twister for twen­ty min­utes, tak­ing full advan­tage of all the free water before wrap­ping it all up with a lot of cheer­ing, clap­ping and a great sense of achieve­ment. We had Reclaimed the Street if only for a few hours and we’ll do it again and again and again.…

To find out more about Gal­way Reclaim the Streets or get involved in the next one con­tact thestreetgig@gmail.com

New protest camp at Rolls Royce Rayensway, Derby

9.05.2009
Pro­test­ers opposed to Tri­dent nuclear sub­marines have set up a camp across the road from Rolls Royce on the Rayensway in Der­by

Anti-nuke gas mask graffiti at Derby protest camp9.05.2009
Pro­test­ers opposed to Tri­dent nuclear sub­marines have set up a camp across the road from Rolls Royce on the Rayensway in Der­by

They have been there for a week and have only just been spot­ted by the police, which shows how poor the secu­ri­ty is tak­en at Rolls Royce Rayensway, a site that has a Nep­tune (nuclear) test reac­tor used to test the fuel reac­tiv­i­ty for the sub­marines engines which pow­ers the hunter fleet, which are equipped with tri­dent mis­siles. Ele­ments are also made at the man­u­fac­tur­ing site with enriched ura­ni­um and zircaloy RR has recent­ly gained con­tracts to build nuclear reac­tors for pow­er sta­tions

Pro­test­ers are want­i­ng Rolls Royce to phase out all nuclear activ­i­ties at the Rayensway plant with­in the next 5 years and move into work which is sus­tain­able and pro­vide and make pub­licly avail­able a com­pre­hen­sive evac­u­a­tion plan for peo­ple liv­ing and work­ing with­in a two mile radius of the fac­to­ry. This plan should be thor­ough­ly test­ed and eval­u­at­ed by the local coun­cil and emer­gency ser­vices.

What you can do

Get down to the camp and show your sup­port tree hous­es are already in place and we are work­ing on a com­mu­ni­ty space, there is plen­ty of room as the site is locat­ed on the old Ram Are­na, the old train­ing ground for Der­by’s foot­ball team so there is an over­grown foot­ball size patch for tents, as well as an old gym which has nice graf­fi­ti all of which are under a sec­tion 6 notice (right to squat) the site backs on to a fork off the riv­er Der­went and is full of wildlife and trees.

Although we have no spe­cif­ic requests for tat at the moment but climb­ing gear and the usu­al stuff is always need­ed

The police are aware of the site and so far have been polite and min­i­mal num­bers (solo cop) and seem to be vis­it­ing once a day

The site is easy to get to by fol­low­ing the riv­er foot­paths for Alvas­ton form the city cen­tre, look out for the peace signs

The loca­tion of the site is between point A and the sign A5111 on the right hand side of the road on the Google map
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Raynesway,+Derby,+Derby,+United+Kingdom&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=9.040008,27.070313&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=FSNNJwMd_irq_w&split=0&ll=52.903415,-1.431656&spn=0.018016,0.052872&z=14

Google street view of the entrance http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?utm_campaign=en_GB&utm_medium=ha&utm_source=en_GB-ha-emea-gb-bk-gm&utm_term=road

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it Tri­dent Ploughshares
http://www.tridentploughshares.org/index.php3

More pho­tos

Shell compound in glengad is currently being removed and Remove Shell’s Illegal Fences — National Day of Action 9 May — CALL OUT

May 3, 2009
Direct action against Shell in Mayo

Glengad fence pulling down 2Glengad fence pulling down 1May 3, 2009
Direct action against Shell in Mayo
Around 100 mem­bers of the Erris com­mu­ni­ty are cur­rent­ly remov­ing shel­l’s ille­gal fenc­ing in Glen­gadd. Whilst some peo­ple have locked onto the fence more have thrown ropes over oth­er sec­tions of the fence and are attempt­ing to pull the pal­lisade fenc­ing down. The pri­vate secu­ri­ty firm IRMS (with links to euro­pean fas­cists) have a heavy pres­ence and are attempt­ing to cut the ropes.
A gar­da pres­ence is start­ing to assem­ble. The mood is pos­i­tive.

This is the third time in ten days Shel­l’s com­pound has faced direct action from the com­mu­ni­ty

—-

Sat­ur­day 9th May, 2009 at 6pm — Day of Action — Sup­port Need­ed to Remove Shell Fences from Glen­gad.

Tear­ing Down the Bar­ri­cades
This is a Call Out from the unit­ed com­mu­ni­ty of Erris Co Mayo to all our nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sup­port­ers, ask­ing you to come to Glen­gad this com­ing Sat­ur­day 9th May at 6pm in the evening, on a Day of Action to help us remove Shel­l’s ille­gal fences from the area.

As you know, Shell returned to Glen­gad with fences and machin­ery on Wednes­day 22nd April, with force and vio­lence. Since then there have been a num­ber of attempts at remov­ing the fences and stop­ping the work, with a mix­ture of fail­ure and suc­cess.

As you can see from the pho­tos and footage below, the will is clear­ly there to fight Shell, in spite of the fact that large num­bers of Shell secu­ri­ty and Gar­dai have been draft­ed into the area. But what is also clear is that num­bers are need­ed to achieve suc­cess. Num­bers, Peo­ple, Bod­ies. That means you. Please come.

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp Con­tact Details: Phone 085 1141170 or email ross­port­sol­i­dar­i­ty­camp (at) gmail (dot) com
By way of back­ground to the cur­rent mood in Erris, let’s remind our­selves of 2 key recent events.

In the ear­ly hours of Thurs­day 13rd April, Shell mer­ce­nar­ies vicious­ly attacked Willie Cor­duff with­in the con­fines of the Shell com­pound.

On Thurs­day 30th April at a com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing with Min­is­ters Eamon Ryan and Eamon O’Cuiv, peo­ple realised that try­ing to ‘talk’ to these guys was a fruit­less exer­cise. There were calls from all cor­ners of the com­mu­ni­ty for civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, the phys­i­cal stop­ping of the project and the tak­ing of the ‘law into our own hands’, when the min­is­ters refused to invite Shell to pull back to allow breath­ing space to resolve the con­flict.

This is seri­ous stuff. The mood in Erris now is that peo­ple are will­ing to pay any price to Stop Shell, and to take action accord­ing­ly.

But we need sup­port, in num­bers, to achieve the crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple required to be effec­tive. To be effec­tive in pulling down Shell fences in order to remove them.

This protest is about tak­ing direct action against the Shell machine and remov­ing it from Glen­gad.

The pic­tures and footage includ­ed in this arti­cle, which show local peo­ple attempt­ing to remove fences today, demon­strate that Action has begun in earnest this Spring and will con­tin­ue in the com­ing weeks and months. But it’s going to be a bat­tle, when faced, like today, with strong fences and large num­bers of Shell secu­ri­ty and Gar­dai. A sim­i­lar attempt was made last Fri­day by mem­bers of the local com­mu­ni­ty which includ­ed Pobal Le Cheile, Pobal Cill Chomain, the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp and Shell to Sea, but num­bers were lim­it­ed. All groups agreed, at a meet­ing on the ground, that a Nation­al Day of Action next Sat­ur­day 9th May was required to build momen­tum. That is why local peo­ple are call­ing for sup­port, in num­bers, to build strength against the show of force against us.

The weath­er is improv­ing steadi­ly and The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is being rebuilt near the shore. Peo­ple are wel­come to come and stay at the camp or the camp house. Phone 085 1141170 or email ross­port­sol­i­dar­i­ty­camp (at) gmail (dot) com

Join us in tak­ing action against Shell. Don’t come emp­ty-hand­ed. Please spread the word amongst your friends, groups and net­works.

See you in Glen­gad.

http://www.shelltosea.com

Camp Bling announces ‘the end’ as road scheme stopped.

Press release:

Camp Bling ‘Save Pri­o­ry Park!’ road cam­paign

Thurs­day 30th April 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

—————————————————————————————

Camp Bling announces ‘the end’ as road scheme stopped.

Press release:

Camp Bling ‘Save Pri­o­ry Park!’ road cam­paign

Thurs­day 30th April 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

—————————————————————————————

Camp Bling announces ‘the end’ as road scheme stopped.

Long run­ning road protest and counter-cul­tur­al cam­paign site Camp Bling, based in the mid­dle of Southend-on-Sea, Essex, is set to be decom­mis­sioned by the sum­mer, after the long await­ed announce­ment that the con­tro­ver­sial Pri­o­ry Cres­cent road widen­ing has now offi­cial­ly been can­celled. (1)

Mem­bers of the camp met with Coun­cil lead­ers last night with a view to resolv­ing the sit­u­a­tion, after the pub­li­ca­tion of an open let­ter from Trans­port Coun­cil­lor Anna Waite, stat­ing that £5m in cen­tral gov­ern­ment fund­ing would be spent sole­ly on the Cuck­oo Cor­ner round­about, with pos­si­ble junc­tion improve­ments — but no widen­ing — to fol­low at the Prit­tle Brook indus­tri­al site at a lat­er date. (2)

As a result, cam­paign­ers intend to hon­our their pub­lic pledge to clear and vacate the camp, now that their objec­tive to stop the road has been met com­plete­ly. It is expect­ed that it will take a num­ber of weeks to ful­ly return the East Sax­on king’s bur­ial to its for­mer con­di­tion, with all struc­tures and mate­ri­als on the site to be removed by the group, with the objec­tive of incur­ring no cost to the local tax­pay­er.

Speak­ing from the camp Gin­ger said, ‘We would like to thank each and every one of the peo­ple who have been involved, not just with Camp Bling, but also with the ongo­ing cam­paign which ran from 2001 in oppo­si­tion to the scheme. It’s not every day that you get to be part of an effort to stop a £25m road widen­ing, with the added oppor­tu­ni­ty to warn peo­ple of the cul­mi­na­tion of envi­ron­men­tal and social crises that we now all face.’

‘For many of us this has been our first taste of an alter­na­tive, low­er impact, and more com­pas­sion­ate lifestyle. We have shared our expe­ri­ences — both good and bad — along the way, and often got peo­ple to acknowl­edge the real choic­es that we all have. It is time for every­one to con­front real­i­ty, as west­ern indus­tri­al soci­ety con­tin­ues to over­shoot the eco­log­i­cal lim­its of the Earth.’ (3)

Peo­ple are still wel­come to vis­it the camp whilst decom­mis­sion­ing is under­way, and are also encour­aged to check out some of the alter­na­tives at: www.campbling.org

—————————————————————————————

ENDS.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

(1) Camp Bling was first set up by local activists on 23rd Sep­tem­ber 2005. For more info about both the camp, and the long run­ning cam­paign, go to: www.campbling.org

(2) See full con­tents of let­ter at: http://www.southend.gov.uk/news/default.asp?id=2835

(3) Cli­mate, Peak Oil, Over­pop­u­la­tion, Mass Extinc­tion, Over­con­sump­tion, etc.

Camp Bling ‘Save Pri­o­ry Park!’ road cam­paign
www.campbling.org

Con­tact Camp Bling direct­ly on 07866 967601

Or e‑mail camp.bling@yahoo.co.uk

Ravens Ait evicted!

1st May 2009
around 4.15am this morn­ing around 100 com­man­dos stormed Ravens Ait island

they arrived in 27 black zodi­ac inflat­a­bles

they were wear­ing hel­mets, bal­a­clavas, and flack­jack­ets, and car­ried sidearms

1st May 2009
around 4.15am this morn­ing around 100 com­man­dos stormed Ravens Ait island

they arrived in 27 black zodi­ac inflat­a­bles

they were wear­ing hel­mets, bal­a­clavas, and flack­jack­ets, and car­ried sidearms

over­head a low fly­ing heli­copter used ther­mal imag­ing to locate the approx­i­mate­ly 20 res­i­dents who were sleep­ing at the time

the com­man­dos kicked down doors and took peo­ple out­side and off the island

the entrance to the tun­nel and tree­house were guard­ed and nobody was in them at the time

most peo­ple left peace­ful­ly, but a few resist­ed evic­tion and were arrest­ed

the last resister climbed on top of the out­door mar­quee and the police pulled it down to arrest him

by 7.30am all res­i­dents were off the island, but lots of their poses­sions are still on the island

at least 50 more reg­u­lar Kingston police have since arrived and are cur­rent­ly on the island

the for­mer res­i­dents and their sup­port­ers are cur­rent­ly on the Sur­biton river­bank in good spir­its enjoy­ing the sun­shine, and request more sup­port­ers to join them to show local and nation­al news crews how much sup­port they have for their eco com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre plans

www.ravensait.org.uk

—

Local press cov­er­age, pho­tos & alter­na­tive ver­sion of num­bers of police involved.

Police Raid on Newly Opened Squat, Bristol. Occupants evicted within 40 minutes.

27.04.2009
Thank you to every­one who came down in sol­i­dar­i­ty. Big thanks to all.

27.04.2009
Thank you to every­one who came down in sol­i­dar­i­ty. Big thanks to all.

This is what occurred: Reliance secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny respond­ed to an alarm that went off inside the build­ing. The police were then called. The first cop­per on scene was pre­pared to depart say­ing that ‘they have squat­ters rights and it is a civ­il mat­ter’, and then Reliance called the police again and 3 riot vans and 5 police cars turned up.

Whilst some of the Reliance per­son­nel tried to take sitex met­al sheets off, in order to gain access, the police suit­ed up and arrived at the main door with bat­ter­ing ram in hand.

The occu­pants were giv­en the option of leav­ing now with no charge (‘leave now and you can walk’), or stay and get nicked. After a group meet­ing, the occu­pants decid­ed to remain. The police (with riot shields and shouts of ‘stand down, stand down’) then bashed down the door, detained the occu­pants and bailed them to the street, to return to Trin­i­ty police sta­tion in May, on sus­pi­cion of crim­i­nal dam­age.

They were allowed leave with cheers for each per­son res­onat­ing from the crowd.

There were a cou­ple of com­e­dy moments: name­ly a con­ver­sa­tion between Reliance secu­ri­ty and squat­ters:
Squat­ter: Can I tell you a joke?
Reliance: Go on then
Squat­ter: What do call a man with no shins?
Reliance: What?
Squat­ter: Tony!

—and an old clas­sic from the sar­gent in charge: ‘Can I speak to the organ­is­er, or your spokesper­son?’ Amaz­ing, they nev­er learn do they?!

— A bat­ter­ing ram police offi­cer was hilar­i­ous­ly referred to by their col­leagues as ‘Cap­tain Chaos’, which caused the occu­pants much con­stant mirth. ‘Whose Cap­tain Chaos then, when’s he com­ing!’

141 Ash­ley Road has been emp­ty for near­ly a year now since the pre­vi­ous occu­pants (who were squat­ters) were evict­ed and emp­ty for longer before that. It is on the cor­ner before the shops on Ash­ley Road and Grosvern­er Road, and the gar­den is reg­u­lar­ly used for drug deals. Locals com­plain about this, yet Places for Peo­ple have done noth­ing about this prop­er­ty for years.

87 Ash­ley Road whose roof was occu­pied for 3 weeks dur­ing evic­tion resis­tance, remains emp­ty to this day, (despite Places for Peo­ple’s assur­ances that it would be turned into afford­able hous­ing.)

The direc­tor of places for peo­ple receives a salary of £250,000 a year.

Squat­ters, self-hous­ing them­selves, are tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands, and the onus off social hous­ing cor­po­ra­tions to house them. The argu­ment that squat­ters delay social hous­ing is rub­bished by the fact that 87 and 141 Ash­ley Roiad have remained emp­ty for months and years after the evic­tion of squat­ters, and not turned into afford­able social hous­ing. It seems P4P are more con­cerned with sell­ing off social hous­ing stock on the pri­vate mar­ket as can be seen with the new flats up at the top of Ash­ley Road.

This is a com­pa­ny that claims to be work­ing to house peo­ple, yet it appears prof­it is the only moti­va­tion they have.

and anoth­er joke from the day:
One of the riot vans had a stick­er say­ing Oper­a­tion Relent­less which after inves­ti­ga­tion is a cam­paign of fear against ‘those who com­mit crime’: laugh­able.

Happy Valley update, New Zealand

SE dis­man­tle Hap­py Camp — so we’re relo­cat­ing to SE front lawn
The Hap­py Val­ley Occu­pa­tion camp has been dis­man­tled by Sol­id Ener­gy and heli­coptered out of the Val­ley. So we’re re-locat­ing — to Sol­id Ener­gy’s Front lawn!

Media Advi­so­ry
Save Hap­py Val­ley Coali­tion
7.00am Fri­day 24 April

Pro­test­ers sleep on coal com­pa­ny lawn

SE dis­man­tle Hap­py Camp — so we’re relo­cat­ing to SE front lawn
The Hap­py Val­ley Occu­pa­tion camp has been dis­man­tled by Sol­id Ener­gy and heli­coptered out of the Val­ley. So we’re re-locat­ing — to Sol­id Ener­gy’s Front lawn!

Media Advi­so­ry
Save Hap­py Val­ley Coali­tion
7.00am Fri­day 24 April

Pro­test­ers sleep on coal com­pa­ny lawn

Five Save Hap­py Val­ley Coali­tion mem­bers camped on the front lawn of state-owned coal min­er Sol­id Ener­gy’s Christchurch head­quar­ters last night. Around 30 pro­test­ers helped set up a pup tent on the lawn at 2.00pm yes­ter­day, as a response to the removal of a long-term occu­pa­tion camp on the site of a pro­posed West Coast coal mine.

“It cer­tain­ly was­n’t as peace­ful as a night in Hap­py Val­ley,” says Front Lawn Pro­test­er Anna-Clair Hunter. “We heard cars and trucks instead of weka and kiwi.”

Media are invit­ed to a com­mu­ni­ty break­fast at the Front Lawn site from 7.30–8.30am on Fri­day morn­ing.

The group has spent the past five years protest­ing the plans of the state-owned com­pa­ny to destroy a pris­tine area north of West­port, home to 13 endan­gered species includ­ing /roroa/, great spot­ted kiwi.

ENDS

—-

7.5.09
Sol­i­dar­i­ty for Hap­py Val­ley in Tau­ran­ga
Ban­ner Hung to High­light Cli­mate Crimes

Sol­id Ener­gy and Gen­e­sis con­tin­ue to prof­it from coal min­ing in New Zealand despite their “mil­lion dol­lar” green­wash mar­ket­ing cam­paigns.

Hap­py Val­ley is a pris­tene native wet­land near West­port, on the west coast of the South Island. Sol­id Ener­gy plan to extend their already mas­sive open-cast coal mine at Stock­ton into Hap­py Val­ley.

Two years ago a group of peo­ple con­cerned about cli­mate change and the native ecosys­tems set up an occu­pa­tion camp to pro­tect Hap­py Val­ley. On the 21st April this year the camp was forcibly removed by Sol­id Ener­gy.

Tau­ran­ga port is a key loca­tion for the traf­fick­ing of coal in and out of New Zealand by Sol­id Ener­gy and Gen­e­sis. This ban­ner was hung on a mega bill­board (bear­ing a poignant mes­sage!) along a major road and rail­way used for trans­port­ing coal, in order to high­light the con­tin­ued cli­mate crimes com­mit­ted by Sol­id Ener­gy and Gen­e­sis in this time of glob­al and eco­log­i­cal emer­gency.

http://www.savehappyvalley.org.nz

Shell security attack Willie Corduff after illegal Glengad compound dismantled

23.04.2009
Shel­l’s ille­gal Glen­gad com­pound was dis­man­tled last night and Gold­man win­ner, Willie Cor­duff was assault­ed by masked Shell secu­ri­ty dur­ing truck protest.

Glengad compound fence torn down23.04.2009
Shel­l’s ille­gal Glen­gad com­pound was dis­man­tled last night and Gold­man win­ner, Willie Cor­duff was assault­ed by masked Shell secu­ri­ty dur­ing truck protest.
Yes­ter­day Shell’s attempts to restart their works on the Cor­rib Gas project were ground to a halt after only eight hours. At 6–30 a work­force of about 20, backed up by around 50 pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards erect­ed fences to re-estab­lish a com­pound. This com­pound is the would-be on-shore pipe instal­la­tion base. Works were seri­ous­ly ham­pered when local peo­ple and sol­i­dar­i­ty camp activists occu­pied machin­ery.

By 4 o clock Ross­port Five mem­ber Willie Cor­duff was still refus­ing to leave the from under the truck, which he had occu­pied in the com­pound and all work had ground to a halt. Shell were unable to con­tin­ue as Willie was pre­vent­ing nec­es­sary equip­ment being used.

As the evening drew to a close Willie was res­olute that he would stay and the com­mu­ni­ty ral­lied around in sup­port. Through­out the evening sup­port­ers gath­ered at the com­pound to show sup­port for the cam­paign and Willie Corduff’s stand bring­ing blan­kets and hot water bot­tles.

As the crowd gath­ered ten­sions rose as Erris peo­ple saw first hand Shell’s attempt to dev­as­tate their com­mu­ni­ty for a tenth year in a row. The fence beside the truck where Willie was posi­tioned was removed and the activists made their way to Willie to ensure he was ok. Soon the entire south­ern exte­ri­or perime­ter was dis­man­tled. Shell’s ini­tial works were almost undone.

At this point peo­ple returned to see Willie who was cold and still but all things con­sid­ered was in good spir­its. Erris activists had checked Shell’s attempts to restart work. Peo­ple sat around talk­ing and were in high spir­its.

Pro­test­ers Attacked

Around 3am the vig­il of sup­port­ers were gath­ered on the road and Willie was accom­pa­nied at the truck only by his broth­er- in-law. Willie had briefly got­ten out from under the truck to stretch his legs. The two men were stand­ing beside the truck when up to ten Shell secu­ri­ty per­son­nel in black and wear­ing bal­a­clavas “appeared out of nowhere”. The men pushed Willie to the ground and start­ed kick­ing him and hit­ting him with a heavy object that appeared to be a baton or torch. They knelt on his head and twist­ed his arms behind his back as they beat him. His broth­er-in-law attempt­ed to aid Willie but was pushed back repeat­ed­ly and forcibly removed by the masked Shell secu­ri­ty into an adja­cent field where he was then knocked to the ground, kicked and beat­en.

A Shell medic stayed with Willie for a peri­od. Local peo­ple, who arrived on the scene short­ly after the two men were assault­ed, were so fright­ened of the Shell secu­ri­ty per­son­nel that they called the Gar­daí who were patrolling the area. Willie was removed by an ambu­lance to Castle­bar Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he is being treat­ed for nau­sea and severe bruis­ing to the head and body. A Gar­da state­ment con­firmed the iden­ti­ty of Willie and his brother-in-law’s attack­ers stat­ing that “A pro­test­er [Willie] who was present on the site since yes­ter­day was this morn­ing removed from the com­pound by secu­ri­ty staff.”

Works as we write appears to be sus­pend­ed. Willie Cor­duff is in hos­pi­tal, the area is on a knife-edge as a mix­ture of fear and anger brews.

Peo­ple are urged to trav­el to Erris now to stand with Erris peo­ple to make a stand against Shell.

Lappersfort- Police out of control

Fol­low­ing the ambush & arrest of 3 lap­pers­fort occu­piers on the night of 21st April, the Brugge police yes­ter­day con­duct­ed a raid on the house of a local sym­pa­this­er.

Fol­low­ing the ambush & arrest of 3 lap­pers­fort occu­piers on the night of 21st April, the Brugge police yes­ter­day con­duct­ed a raid on the house of a local sym­pa­this­er. Atleast 6 pigs entered the home after show­ing a war­rant, and took with them many per­son­al items from the occu­piers, includ­ing pass­ports, oth­er forms of ID and even per­son­al let­ters and jour­nals. The police are tak­ing every oppor­tu­ni­ty to weak­en local sup­port through the media cir­cus and also to gath­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the occu­piers. The belief is that they are gath­er­ing the id’s in order to be able to charge peo­ple with the costs of the evic­tion (after evic­tion in 2002, 13 occu­pi­er who had giv­en their names were threat­ened with hav­ing to pay the evic­tion costs of 50,000euros if they are caught again in the for­est) . We aren’t sure if this means the evic­tion is com­ing any soon­er now, but the camp is under con­stant evic­tion threat. There is some spec­u­la­tion as to whether or not the police raid yes­ter­day was done legal­ly or not, and also whether or not they will take the next step of raid­ing the camp….

Mean­while 3 of our friends are still sit­ting in prison in brugge and will face the judge tomor­row. They are accused of scrap­ing some words in wet con­crete, which the pigs have decid­ed deserves the offi­cial charge of “destroy­ing the road”. We are obvi­ous­ly hop­ing they will all be released tomor­row, but the cour­t­house here in Brugge has a rep­u­ta­tion for lock­ing up lap­pers­forters for any­thing they pos­si­bly can. One local paper also report­ed that the secu­ri­ty and dogs who ambushed and arrest­ed the 3 on Tues­day night were request­ed by the may­or him­self.

Life in the for­est is get­ting some­times dif­fi­cult, and the pigs are obvi­ous­ly using their tac­tics of intim­i­da­tion, fear and repres­sion to demor­alise the camp and cause divi­sion between the occu­piers and the local com­mu­ni­ty. But the camp and the cam­paign goes on, spring is hap­pen­ing, and more humans are always wished for and welcome….we wont let the pig­gies stop us, or even slow us down…