Category: Squatting / Free Spaces / Protest Sites

Common Ground Community Garden Celebrates Success with Party on 6 September!

After a year and half of green-fin­gered, com­mu­ni­ty-spir­it­ed direct-action, we — the organ­is­ers of Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den — are cel­e­brat­ing suc­cess … and we invite all our friends,

Common Ground fete flier frontCommon Ground fete flier backAfter a year and half of green-fin­gered, com­mu­ni­ty-spir­it­ed direct-action, we — the organ­is­ers of Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den — are cel­e­brat­ing suc­cess … and we invite all our friends, neigh­bours and sup­port­ers to join in the fun!

Since open­ing the gar­den in May 2007, we have resist­ed being crim­i­nalised while fight­ing for green, com­mu­ni­ty-man­aged space in our neigh­bour­hood. Since turn­ing a coun­cil owned derelict plot into a beau­ti­ful com­mu­ni­ty gar­den, we and our neigh­bours have ignored injunc­tions, protest­ed evic­tion attempts and even faced arrest. But final­ly, we have not only def­i­nite­ly won new sites for at least one com­mu­ni­ty gar­den, but Com­mon Ground itself has been grant­ed a legal license! Suc­cess*!

Read­ing Grass­roots Action (RGA)** who run the gar­den, have been work­ing with Kates­grove Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion (KRA) and have man­aged to agree the license for Com­mon Ground with Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil (RBC), which sees the gar­den being insured by KRA and re-opened to the pub­lic until the coun­cil demol­ish the exist­ing build­ings***. We have also vis­it­ed three sites in Kates­grove which could be used for one or more long-term gar­dens. We have cho­sen our pre­ferred sites and hope to agree terms as soon as pos­si­ble****.

To cel­e­brate this suc­cess, we will be hold­ing one more com­mu­ni­ty event at Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den on Sat­ur­day 6th Sep­tem­ber — and this time we have the full con­sent of the coun­cil! The event, run­ning from 2–9pm, will fea­ture fun for all the fam­i­ly such as games includ­ing a raf­fle, face-paint­ing, fresh food and drink and a live graf­fi­ti exhi­bi­tion pro­duced by local artists. In addi­tion, we will have diverse acoustic music from acts includ­ing Lon­dons ‘Babar Luck’ and ‘The King Blues’ as well as oth­er local acts. And of course, vis­i­tors will be able to find out more about what else we are up to and get involved in the new com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove.

We would real­ly love to wel­come every­body to the gar­den one last time and thank every­one who has sup­port­ed the project, so we hope to see you there!

But thats not all… Sup­port­ers of Com­mon Ground are organ­is­ing an all-night after par­ty at a near­by venue! There will be a room for band (punk, ska etc) and a room for DJ’s (hiphop, drum n bass, dub­step, tech­no etc) and con­firmed acts include Bro­ken Note and the Bath Dub Soundsys­tem. See you there!

Thanks,
‘Com­mon Ground’, part of ’Read­ing Grass­roots Action’.

NOTES FOR THE EDITOR:

* Whilst we are cel­e­brat­ing, we want to thank every­one who has sup­port­ed us for mak­ing this project a seri­ous of suc­cess­es from day one. Com­mon Ground has always been about bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er, mobil­is­ing peo­ple into tak­ing action to improve our com­mu­ni­ty with­out wait­ing for those in pow­er to do it for us (we reck­on you might wait for ever oth­er­wise!). It has been about a small piece of land tak­en back under com­mu­ni­ty con­trol and used to ben­e­fit the neigh­bour­hood, in con­trast to the usu­al sit­u­a­tion where resources are used sole­ly to make prof­its and ben­e­fit boss­es and share­hold­ers. In this way, Com­mon Ground was a suc­cess every time peo­ple joined us to ignore injunc­tions, each time we saw off evic­tion days, each time peo­ple took the ini­tia­tive to work in their gar­den. It has been a suc­cess as it was respect­ed by young peo­ple, as it was enjoyed by local work­ers and fam­i­lies and as diverse peo­ples — from squat­ters and anar­chists to res­i­dents of all back­grounds — had con­ver­sa­tions we wouldn’t oth­er­wise have had. So, thank you!

** Read­ing Grass­roots Action (RGA) aims to help increase the col­lec­tive pow­er of ordi­nary peo­ple like our­selves, improv­ing our liv­ing and work­ing con­di­tions and cre­at­ing new demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions which act as exam­ples of the world we want to see. We are guid­ed by our hope of one day liv­ing in a soci­ety of gen­uine free­dom and equal­i­ty, with all resources com­mon­ly owned and demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly organ­ised by every­one for every­one. Sev­er­al peo­ple involved in Com­mon Ground were already RGA mem­bers and in April 2008 the groups became one and the same, with RGA look­ing for­wards to help­ing cre­ate a long-term com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove and mov­ing on to tack­le oth­er cam­paigns in Read­ing. If inter­est­ed in join­ing or sup­port­ing RGA, peo­ple are encour­aged to email us at rgacollective(AT)hotmail.co.uk.

*** The build­ings from Crown Street round to the begin­ning of Sil­ver Street have unfor­tu­nate­ly been left by RBC to fall into a state of dis­re­pair over the last few years. We would pre­fer them to be ren­o­vat­ed, as we believe they could be brought back to life as good-look­ing and use­ful build­ings. How­ev­er, RBC wish to demol­ish them as soon as pos­si­ble, as they hope to sell yet more pub­licly owned land to a pri­vate prop­er­ty devel­op­er.

**** RBC have offered three poten­tial sites which could be used for green, com­mu­ni­ty space in Kates­grove. Of these, the site on the cor­ner of Southamp­ton Street and the one on the cor­ner of Elgar Road are our favourites. Over the next few months, RGA and KRA will work to agree terms with RBC in order to gain access one or both of these sites. We appeal to the local com­mu­ni­ty, and to any­body who sup­ports this project to get in touch, and any help with work or dona­tions would be very wel­come!

rgacollective@hotmail.co.uk
http://www.rgacollective.org.uk

Today’s news from Glengad, Erris, Co. Mayo

August 31, 2008
A lunchtime Gar­da vis­it to Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp & evening block­ade of Shell com­pound

Shell to Sea camp incursionAugust 31, 2008
A lunchtime Gar­da vis­it to Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp & evening block­ade of Shell com­pound

Today’s main news events from the epi­cen­tre of resis­tance against Shell — a vis­it about lunchtime from the Gar­da brass (plus lack­eys inc. rov­ing video oper­a­tor), lat­er a prac­tice run for the Shell to Sea flotil­la, fol­lowed by a block­ade of Shel­l’s Glen­gad com­pound in the evening.

Today at about 1pm a del­e­ga­tion of Gar­dai called to the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, osten­si­bly about inform­ing campers of sec­tion 8.1 of the Pub­lic Order Act. While annoyed by their pres­ence on the camp, the Gar­dai were pre­vent­ed from snoop­ing around the mar­quees, though the use of a video cam­era by Gda. Burke (old foe) to fol­low young chil­dren around roused right­eous ire in their par­ents. Once they deliv­ered their utter­ly point­less mes­sage they were escort­ed off the site to the road and their wait­ing squad car and van.

In the late after­noon, S2S Flotil­la exer­cis­es were held off the Glen­gad com­pound and the marine protest/action squadron used the fine weath­er today to sharp­en their nau­ti­cal skills. Exer­cis­es last­ed an hour, fol­lowed by a quick show­er and off to the next S2S activ­i­ty.
Shell picket
At 6:45 pm local res­i­dents and Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Campers mount­ed a block­ade of the gates of the Shell Glen­gad com­pound. This caught the Gar­dai off bal­ance, and they deployed only in sparse num­bers, very slow­ly, and remained firm­ly ensconced in their vehi­cles. After an hour of blockad­ing, locals and campers returned to the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp for tonight’s par­ty on the fore­shore (a cel­e­bra­tion of our mutu­al capac­i­ty for resis­tance to the cor­po­rate jug­ger­naut and a bit of R&R too!).

Still no sign of the Soli­taire. The clock is well-burnt now — she remains in Killy­begs har­bour but she’s still a loom­ing threat that must be met.

The need for peo­ple to come here and help in the strug­gle to save Erris and stop the Great Gas Rob­bery remains urgent. Come to Glen­gad if you can!

http://www.corribsos.com

Repression of Ecotopia camp & 30 arrested at die-in in Turkey

Urgent call for sol­i­dar­i­ty, please for­ward wýde­ly

Shock­ing repres­sion in Turkey!

Don't nuke the climate bannerUrgent call for sol­i­dar­i­ty, please for­ward wýde­ly

Shock­ing repres­sion in Turkey!

Greens, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, peace and nature sup­port­ers, and NGO’s from all over the World gath­ered on the 9th of August to join the 20th inter­na­tion­al Eco­topia gath­er­ing being held at Sarikum nature reserve in Sinop, Turkey. Eco­topia gath­er­ings pro­mote sus­tain­able ways of liv­ing, har­mo­ny with nature, and dis­cuss social jus­tice issues. This year, Eco­topia has sup­port­ed local anti-nuclear groups, raised con­scious­ness of nuclear issues and pro­mot­ed alter­na­tive ener­gy sources. How­ev­er, for the last week, local police have been exert­ing supres­sion on the camp by mak­ing reg­u­lar vis­its, and fol­low­ing and intim­i­dat­ing par­tic­i­pants out­side of the camp.

On Wednes­day 20th August, 6 inter­na­tion­als and 5 Turk­ish peo­ple were placed under cus­tody while stag­ing a peace­ful vig­il out­side the Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (TAEK) in Sinop. Police have also shown supres­sion towards locals of Gerze town who approached the Eco­topia camp to request sol­i­dar­i­ty against the Ther­mal Coal Plant planned for con­struc­tion in their town. Today, the 22nd August, approx­i­mate­ly 10 armed offi­cers, ordered by the gov­er­nor of Sinop, raid­ed the Eco­topia camp to threat­en force­ful evic­tion if the sýte was not emp­tied with­in 3 hours. In sum­ma­ry, 2 days before our legal per­mit for he site ends, it has been force­ful­ly demand­ed that we shut down activ­i­ties imme­di­ate­ly.

In Turkey, where democ­ra­cy is regress­ing, the author­i­ties do not tol­er­ate the advo­ca­cy of their peo­ple to lýve a safe, sus­tain­able and healthy life. In addi­tion, author­i­ties in the Turk­ish state and Sinop (where it it planned to build one nuclear tech­nol­o­gy cen­tre and 3 Ther­mal Coal plants) are dýs­turbed by the increas­ing local atten­tion on these projects, and are reluc­tant to allow peo­ple’s aware­ness and knowl­edge to grow inde­pen­dent­ly. As par­tic­i­pants rep­re­sent­ing more than 30 coun­tries, we are ask­ing for your sol­i­dar­i­ty, and request you to send the fol­low­ing text to the Turk­ish author­i­ties using the con­tact infor­ma­tion giv­en below.

For a nuclear-free world and a more demo­c­ra­t­ic Turkey, let’s block the phones and fax­es of the Turk­ish author­i­ties!

Eco­topia 2008 par­tic­i­pants

EYFA (Euro­pean Youth For Action)

SINYAD (Sinop Nük­leer­siz Kent ve Yaþam Derneði)

———————-

To whom it may con­cern,

We have been informed that the Eco­topia meet­ing being held at Sarikum nature reserve in Sinop, which was announced and received approval of its per­mit many months ago, is now under­go­ing a peri­od of intense police sup­pres­sion. This event is legit­i­mate and legal, and we are demand­ing that the pres­sure is released. We will keep our­selves informed on how this sit­u­a­tion devel­ops and will fol­low up on this request if nec­es­sary.

Name/organization:

Coun­try:

Sig­na­ture:

————————
CONTACTS:

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Ýçiþ­leri Bakan­lýðý (Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs)
Tele­fon: +90 (312 )425 72 14
Fax: + 90 (312) 418 12 60
e‑mail: basin@icisleri.gov.tr

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Sinop Valil­iði ( Gov­ern­er­ship of Sinop)
Tel : 0(368) 261 15 00 -
Fax: 0368 261 15 02 — 261 55 05 -
e‑mail: valilik@sinop.gov.tr, webmaster@sinop.gov.tr

———————————————

LÜTFEN ÇEVRENÝZE DAÐITINIZ…

Acil Dayanýþ­ma Çaðrýsý – 22 Aðus­tos 2008, Sinop

Dünyanýn dört bir yanýn­dan yeþiller, çevre­cil­er, doða ve barýþ yan­lýlarý ve çeþitli örgütler olarak bu yýl 20.‘si yapýlan “Ulus­lararasý Eko­topya Buluþma“mýzý gerçek­leþtirmek üzere 9 Aðus­tos’­ta Sinop Sarýkum’­da top­landýk. Bu yýl Eko­topy­a’nýn amacý yer­el anti-nük­leer guru­plar­la dayanýþ­ma saðla­mak, yenilenebilir ener­ji kay­naklarý ve sosyal adalet konu­larý üzerinde bil­inç art­týr­mak­tý. Bu etkin­lik doðay­la uyum­lu ve sürdüre­bilir bir yaþam hay­al­im­izi kýsacasý ‘eko­topy­amýzý’ kamp deney­im­imizde somut­laþtýrdýðýmýz, ekolo­jik bir yaþamýn mümkün olduðunu gördüðümüz, gös­ter­diðimiz, her katýlanýn evine bam­baþ­ka biri olarak döndüðü, her sene tekrar­lanan 15 gün­lük ortak düþümüz, ütopy­amýzdý. Ancak özel­lik­le son bir haf­tadýr aralýk­sýz devam eden polis ve jan­dar­ma baskýsý bu düþü bir kabusa çevir­di.

Önce, Sinop’­ta­ki Türkiye Atom Ener­jisi Kuru­mu (TAEK) önünde 20 Agus­tos Çarþam­ba günü nük­leer ener­jiyle ilgili olarak hak­lý bil­gilendirmek amacýy­la yap­týðýmýz barýþçýl bir eylem sýrasýn­da 6 yabancý uyruk­lu, 5 TC vatan­daþý, 11 arkadaþýmýz gözaltý­na alýndý. Ardýn­dan bizlere destek olmak için gelen ve yaþadýk­larý bölgede kurul­masý düþünülen ter­mik santrale karþý ses­leri­ni daha fazla duyura­bilmek için bizler­den destek bekleyen Gerze halký sadece biz­im­le görüþtüðü için jan­dar­manýn baskýlarý­na maruz kaldý. Son olarak da bugün bölge jan­dar­masýn­dan gelen yak­laþýk on kiþi­lik grup, hemen kamp alanýný terk etmem­iz gerek­tiði­ni, aksi halde zor kul­la­narak kam­pý daðý­ta­cak­larýný söyledil­er. Öze­tle izn­i­mizin bitme­sine iki gün kala etkin­liðimiz tehditler­le engel­len­m­eye çalýþýl­mak­tadýr.

Demokrasinin giderek ger­ilediði Türkiye’de, bugün otoritelerin artýk yaþamýn savunul­masý­na dahi taham­mülü kalmamýþtýr. Yine görülmek­te­dir ki üç ter­mik ve bir nük­leer teknolo­ji merkezi kurul­masý plan­lanan Sinop’­ta etk­ili güçler ve TC devleti Sinop halkýnýn uyanýþýn­dan ve fes­ti­val­im­ize giderek artan ilgisin­den rahat­sýz olmak­tadýr. Türkiye Cumhuriyeti hiçbir biçimde örgütlü ve bil­inçli bir toplum iste­memek­te, giderek bir polis devle­tine dönüþmek­te­dir. Yak­laþýk 30 ülke­den Eko­topy­a’nýn katýlým­cýsý bireyler olarak bizler, bu baskýlarýn giderek art­masýn­dan endiþe duyuy­oruz.

Siz­leri de aþaðý­da­ki hazýr met­ni kuru­munuz ya da ken­di­niz adý­na, iletiþim bil­gi­leri­ni verdiðimiz Türk kurum­larý­na gön­der­erek biz­im­le dayanýþ­maya çaðýrýy­oruz.

Dünyamýzýn gele­ceði ve daha özgür bir Türkiye için bakan­lýðýn ve Sinop valil­iðinin fak­slarýný kil­itleye­lim!

Eko­topya 2008 Katýlým­cýlarý

EYFA (Euro­pean Youth For Action)

SÝNYAD (Sinop Nük­leer­siz Kent ve Yaþam Derneði)

Sayýn Yetk­ili;

Aylar öncesin­den Türk otoriteler­ine ve Sinop Halký­na duyu­ru­lan “Eko­topya Buluþ­masýnýn” Jan­dar­ma baskýsýy­la engel­len­mek istendiði­ni haber almýþ bulun­mak­tayýz. Bütünüyle yasal ve meþru olan etkin­lik üzerinde­ki baskýlarýn ortadan kalk­masýný talep ediy­oruz. Aksi halde ulusal ve ulus­lararasý kamuoyu olarak olayýn takipçisi ola­caðýmýzý bildirmek ister­iz.

Ýsim / Kurum :

Ülke:

Ýmza:

ÝLETÝÞÝM BÝLGÝLERÝ:

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Ýçiþ­leri Bakan­lýðý:
Tele­fon: +90 (312 )425 72 14
Faks: + 90 (312) 418 12 60
E‑posta: basin@icisleri.gov.tr

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Sinop Valil­iði
Tel : 0(368) 261 15 00 -
Faks: 0368 261 15 02 — 261 55 05 -
e‑posta: valilik@sinop.gov.tr , webmaster@sinop.gov.tr

————-

30 arrest­ed at die-in dur­ing envi­ron­men­tal gath­er­ing Eco­topia in Turkey

Sinop (Turkey), 23rd of August. This after­noon, Turk­ish police arrest­ed 30 for­eign­ers from at least 18 coun­tries and 3 Turk­ish cit­i­zens who took part in a peace­ful “die-in” action in front of the Sinop province Governor‘s res­i­dence in Sinop.

On request of the Ger­man Embassy the Sinop Police Head­quar­ters claimed that nobody was tak­en under cus­tody.

The protests are direct­ed against the plans to build a Nuclear Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre in the Sinop region. Par­tic­i­pants are mem­bers of envi­ron­men­tal­ist move­ments world­wide. They want to draw atten­tion to the fact that nuclear ener­gy is dan­ger­ous, pol­lut­ing and expen­sive. Instead of invest­ing in nuclear tech­nol­o­gy, Turkey should use its great poten­tial for solar and wind pow­er, as well as increas­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy.

“The Turk­ish state seems to be very afraid of their cit­i­zens learn­ing how dan­ger­ous nuclear pow­er is. That is why author­i­ties do not tol­er­ate any protest, espe­cial­ly when for­eign­ers are involved. We are seri­ous­ly con­cerned about the denial of free­dom of speech in Turkey.”, says Niklas Hart­mann from Ger­many.

The action took place while the camp is under threat of evic­tion.

—

24.8.2008
22:54h.
The 32 arrest­ed peo­ple are sit­ting at the police sta­tion still. There is no offi­cial state­ment of arrest or cus­tody. When embassies asked for infor­ma­tion on arrestants police actu­al­ly denied to have tak­en peo­ple into cus­tody(…).
The group has been split into small­er groups and tak­en to hos­pi­tal for the com­pul­so­ry check on tor­ture and is now back at the sta­tion. They have been refused access to their lawyer, a cer­ti­fied trans­la­tor and to con­tact their embassy and even access to food and water.
Rumours have it that our lawyer was told by the police that peo­ple did­n’t want to see him.

Peo­ple have been asked to sign papers in Turk­ish with­out trans­la­tion. Before the promised release they will have to see a pros­e­cu­tor, even though they are not for­mal­ly arrest­ed.

23.20h: first group of 6 peo­ple got released, prob­a­bly because they signed the papers. We’ll deal with it now.

To be con­tin­ued…

01:25h.
Every­body fol­lowed by under­cov­er police all the time. Sev­er­al peo­ple picked from the street that had noth­ing to do with the action! Final­ly, nobody has seen the pros­e­cuter, but every­body out now. Police want­ed to deport us from town back to camp site before every­body was released. Sit­u­a­tion was real­ly threat­en­ing. Peo­ple now stay­ing with trade unions. More tomor­row.

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[press release] Police threat­ens Eco­topia camp in Turkey with evic­tion

23.8.2008
In the moment, the par­tic­i­pants of the 20th Eco­topia inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal­ist gath­er­ing at Sarikum nature reserve, Sinop, on the Turk­ish Black Sea coast, are await­ing and prepar­ing for force­ful evic­tion of their camp site by the Jan­dar­ma (Turk­ish Police), which are already present with under­cov­er agents and sev­er­al cars. The 70 par­tic­i­pants from over 30 coun­tries will peace­ful­ly resist this unjus­ti­fied raid. The off­i­cal rea­son for the announced evic­tion was the announce­ment of the inten­tion to take part in the week­ly per­mit­ted press con­fer­ence of the local anti-nuclear ini­tia­tive SÝNYAD (Sinop Nük­leer­siz Kent ve Yaþam Derneði).

Approx­i­mate­ly 10 armed offi­cers, ordered by the gov­er­nor of Sinop, had already raid­ed the camp on Fri­day to threat­en force­ful evic­tion if the site was not emp­tied with­in 3 hours. Lat­er, this dead­line was post­poned to the next morn­ing. Two days before, six par­tic­i­pants of the camp togeth­er with local activists were arrest­ed dur­ing an action in front of the office of the Turk­ish Nuclear Ener­gy Agency (TAEK) in Sinop. After only ten min­utes of spread­ing fly­ers and hold­ing a ban­ner, they were phys­i­cal­ly aggressed by under­cov­er police with­out any pri­or warn­ing. They were held in a police sta­tion for sev­er­al hours and fined for not obey­ing police orders. Police have also shown supres­sion towards locals of Gerze town who approached the Eco­topia gath­er­ing to request sol­i­dar­i­ty against the Ther­mal Coal Plant planned for con­struc­tion in their town.

“We are shocked by the behav­iour of the police and local author­i­ties who did not allow any peace­ful protest to hap­pen. They have also been con­stant­ly threat­en­ing par­tic­i­pants of the camp and deny­ing them, as well as locals, the right to pub­li­cal­ly express their opin­ion. Now they have can­celled the camp just because we announced that we would like to take part in an offi­cial­ly per­mit­ted anti-nuclear protest. This is not what we con­sid­er to be free­dom of speech! ”, says Lenka Kukuro­va, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Euro­pean Youth for Action (EYFA), the net­work that sup­ports the Eco­topia gath­er­ings.

The protests are direct­ed against the plans to build a Nuclear Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre in the Sinop region. The 20th inter­na­tion­al Eco­topia gath­er­ing is tak­ing place in Turkey this year, to sup­port local move­ments to keep Turkey free of nuclear pow­er. Par­tic­i­pants of the camp are mem­bers of envi­ron­men­tal­ist move­ments world­wide. They want to draw atten­tion to the fact that nuclear ener­gy is dan­ger­ous, pol­lut­ing and expen­sive. Instead of invest­ing in nuclear tech­nol­o­gy, Turkey should use its great poten­tial for solar and wind pow­er, as well as increas­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy.

For back­ground info:
http://ecotopiagathering.org
http://www.eyfa.org

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 82, AUGUST 2008

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UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
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1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK, 13–14.09.08

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK, 13–14.09.08
6) CLIMATE CAMP WHAT NEXT MEETING, MANCHESTER, 26–28.09.08
7) NATIONAL MEETING TO RESIST NEW COAL, MANCHESTER, 11–12.10.08
8) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY 2009, 01.04.09

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RECENT HAPPENINGS:
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1) CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION, KINGSNORTH, KENT, 3–11.08.08
2) DERBYSHIRE COAL MINE EVICTED, 14.08.08
3) US CLIMATE CAMPS, JULY/AUGUST
4) SAVING ICELAND CAMP, JULY/AUGUST
5) AIRPORT OCCUPATION, GERMANY, ONGOING
6) STICKING IT TO THE PM, LONDON, 22.07.08
7) 32 4x4s DISARMED, OXFORD, 18.07.08
8) NEW RISING TIDE LEAFLET
9) NEW REPORT: CASHING IN ON COAL

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
‘These camps are going to take place in or near Ham­burg. It’s two dif­fer­ent camps, but prob­a­bly on the same camp site and doing togeth­er at least two mass actions like block­ades: on 22nd August at the depor­ta­tion air­port of Ham­burg and on 23rd at the har­bour or at the new coal pow­er plant. http://klimacamp08.org

2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
The Soli­taire (the biggest pipe lay­ing ship in the world) is set to begin ille­gal­ly con­struct­ing the off­shore sec­tion of the pipeline. It is believed that the Soli­taire is on a pret­ty tight sched­ule & booked up for the next 2 years, so ANY dis­rup­tion pro­vides us with a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to delay the project sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Mem­bers of the ‘Great Rebel Raft Regat­ta’ recent­ly deployed at the E.ON coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in
Kent, Eng­land, have made their way from Cli­mate Camp UK to Erris, in order to assist Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers in their oppo­si­tion to this pipeline con­struc­tion at Glen­gad.

3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
5 days of work­shops, net­work­ing and plan­ning actions in a beau­ti­ful field in Nor­folk. The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of low-impact eco-liv­ing and non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing. www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk

4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
St Wer­burghs Cen­tre, 10am to 5pm, free entry. With a work­shop by Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide: Why direct action? Social change not cli­mate change? www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK 13–14.09.08
Join the first inter­na­tion­al plan­ning meet­ing in Copen­hagen from the 13–14th of Sep­tem­ber 2008. The meet­ing aims at prepar­ing a large mobil­i­sa­tion for direct action against the root caus­es of cli­mate change in Copen­hagen and through­out the world dur­ing the UN Cli­mate Con­fer­ence (30 Nov-11 Dec 2009). More info:
http://klimax2009.org/?p=33&langswitch_lang=en Tell them you’re com­ing:
sept08@klimax2009.org

6) CLIMATE CAMP WHAT NEXT MEETING, MANCHESTER 26–28.09.08
All are invit­ed to the first Post-Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing. The gath­er­ing will offer a chance to reflect on where we are at, decide where we go from here, and pro­vide info as to how to get involved in the ongo­ing direct action cam­paign to stop Kingsnorth.
Ques­tions? Email process@climatecamp.org.uk

7) NATIONAL MEETING TO RESIST NEW COAL, MANCHESTER, 11–12.10.08
A meet­ing to bring togeth­er groups and com­mu­ni­ties resist­ing coal in the UK – from open cast and deep coal mines, to pow­er sta­tions and coal imports. Share infor­ma­tion, plan for action, and build a strong net­work of resis­tance. www.leaveitintheground.org.uk

8) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY 2009, 01.04.2009
Four con­ti­nents, 150 actions, and an April Fool’s Day with a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly sub­ver­sive (and rad­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary) twist – we’re def­i­nite­ly doing that again! So Fos­sil Fools Day 2009 is a go – start pick­ing your fos­sil fuel tar­get now! Info and resources will be post­ed on the web­site soon, and look out for leaflets to dis­trib­ute in Decem­ber.

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-

1) CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION, KINGSNORTH, KENT, 3–11.08.08
From the Heathrow Con­fer­ence to the Car­a­van, from the work­shops to beau­ti­ful camp life, from the GRRR pirates to the fence breach­ers to the bail break­ers, and the flur­ry of affin­i­ty group actions before, dur­ing and after the camp, the 2008 Camp for Cli­mate Action was a roar­ing suc­cess. We out­smart­ed 26 police forces to run the biggest cli­mate camp ever. We cov­ered the riv­er in boats, filled the streets with peo­ple, cov­ered the pow­er sta­tion gates with ban­ners and hit at least eight oth­er tar­gets with autonomous actions. We flood­ed the nation­al, local and inde­pen­dent media with our sto­ries and mes­sages. E.ON and the Gov­ern­ment threw every­thing they could at us, and they still couldn’t hold us back. Actions, in no par­tic­u­lar order, includ­ed: an office inva­sion of min­ing com­pa­ny BHP Bil­ton, tak­ing over an incin­er­a­tor site in Newhaven, a block­ade of Cargill over its rain­for­est destruc­tion and land-grab­bing, a pro-veg­an roof occu­pa­tion and ban­ner drop at Smith­field Meat Mar­ket, a protest at US air base Milden­hall to high­light mil­i­tary CO2 emis­sions, a ban­ner drop from an elec­tric­i­ty pylon, a naked protest at DBERR, the world’s small­est pro­test­ers climb­ing E.ON’s smoke­stack (at Legoland), actions at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (not once but twice – stu­dents do a die-in and Ris­ing Tiders bust out the super­glue), a demo at Lon­gan­net pow­er sta­tion in Fife, a mul­ti-pronged attack on Gatwick by Plane Stu­pid, the shut­ting down of the South’s biggest bio­fu­el stor­age facil­i­ty, and in
a sin­gle day of may­hem in the City, the Cli­mate Car­a­van tar­get­ed RBS and the PR firms for Shell, BAA & E.ON.
www.climatecamp.org.uk
Pho­to slide show: http://blip.tv/file/1167973
Video: http://www.undercurrents.org/visionon/

2) DERBYSHIRE COAL MINE EVICTED, 14.08.08
The squat in Der­byshire, a protest on the site of a pro­posed new open-cast coal mine, came to end with the evic­tion of the remain­ing two pro­test­ers, who had res­olute­ly resist­ed attempts to clear the site by furi­ous­ly dig­ging for vic­to­ry. Come to the nation­al Leave it in the Ground meet­ing in Octo­ber to help with the next steps. www.leaveitintheground.org.uk

3) US CLIMATE CAMPS, JULY/AUGUST
All three US Cli­mate Camps have now wound down, with action high­lights includ­ing the South­east Cli­mate Con­ver­gence occu­py­ing a nuclear facil­i­ty in Vir­ginia, the Bil­lion­aires for Coal strik­ing Bank of Amer­i­ca 4 times in 3 days and a protest at NW Nat­ur­al Gas fol­low­ing the West Coast Con­ver­gence. And check out http://www.uncampement.net/?q=en/node/775 for
the ongo­ing (8–24 August) camp in Que­bec, Cana­da.

4) SAVING ICELAND CAMP, JULY/AUGUST
Sav­ing Iceland’s fourth action camp is now over but the fight goes on. The three-week camp was at Hell­isheiði, where Reyk­javík Ener­gy is expand­ing their geot­her­mal pow­er plant, first of all to sup­ply ener­gy to alu­mini­um smelters. Actions includ­ed: work on the Cen­tu­ry Aluminum’s exist­ing smelter as well as a steel fac­to­ry were block­ad­ed, hold­ing up a shift
change for sev­er­al hours. A Reyk­javik Ener­gy geot­her­mal drill site at Hell­ishei­di, being built for Cen­tu­ry, was com­plete­ly shut down for a day as activists locked to machines, climbed the drill and occu­pied the pow­er con­trol room. The nation­al pow­er com­pa­ny Landsvirkjun had it’s office invad­ed, and it’s CEO Fridrik Sophus­son had his home vis­it­ed. Sav­ing Ice­land nailed an evic­tion notice to his door. www.savingiceland.org

5) AIRPORT OCCUPATION, GERMANY, ONGOING
In Ger­many cli­mate activists have been squat­ting a wood­land since the begin­ning of June to stop the con­struc­tion of yet anoth­er new run­way for the already mas­sive Frank­furt air­port. The camp con­tin­ues to grow with over 30 peo­ple liv­ing on site and has the sup­port of the com­mu­ni­ty. Demos and actions are being organ­ised togeth­er with local res­i­dents’ groups
against air­port expan­sion. Amaz­ing tree­hous­es, walk­ways and funky ground shel­ters have been con­struct­ed to make life pleas­ant in the woods and to resist evic­tion as long as pos­si­ble. Peo­ple are wel­come to join in. www.waldbesetzung.blogsport.de

6) STICKING IT TO THE PM, LONDON, 22.07.08
On 22nd July a Plane Stu­pid cam­paign­er super­glued him­self to Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown in 10 Down­ing Street. He’d been invit­ed to receive an award for protest­ing, so prompt­ly decid­ed to car­ry on in that vain! Whilst ask­ing Gor­don about refus­ing to meet West Lon­don
res­i­dents opposed to the con­struc­tion of a third run­way at Heathrow, the intre­pid pro­test­er put his super­glue cov­ered hand onto Brown’s poly­ester suit. When Brown went to turn away he found he was stuck and for once had no option but to lis­ten. www.planestupid.com

7) 32 4x4s DISARMED, OXFORD, 18.07.08
32 SUV own­ers woke up in Oxford on 18th July to dis­cov­er that their envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive vehi­cles had been dis­abled using the ‘mung bean trick’ to let down their tires.

8) NEW RISING TIDE LEAFLET
At long last, Ris­ing Tide has a new leaflet – who we are, what we do and why we do it, wrapped up in an inspir­ing pho­to col­lage pack­age. Sneak a peak at , or email info@risingtide.org.uk to get a bunch post­ed to you for dis­tri­b­u­tion in your local area.

9) NEW REPORT: CASHING IN ON COAL
High street banks are mak­ing mil­lions by pro­vid­ing the finan­cial fuel that dri­ves the expan­sion of coal extrac­tion and com­bus­tion. This report exam­ines the role in the last two years of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (RBS), HSBC and Bar­clays in pro­vid­ing and arrang­ing the finan­cial means to the coal indus­try to extract and burn vast quan­ti­ties of coal. The report reveals that RBS has helped lend more mon­ey to the coal indus­try, in more deals, than any oth­er major UK bank. www.carbonweb.org

—————–
Ris­ing Tide UK,
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street,
Lon­don E1 1ES
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk
www.fossilfoolsday.org
Tel: 07708 794665

See also the Camp for Cli­mate Action (www.climatecamp.org.uk), Net­work for Cli­mate Action (www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk) and Cli­mate Indy­media (www.climateimc.org)

———-

Please send any­thing you’d like includ­ed in this news sheet to:
newssheet@risingtide.org.uk

To view pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Ris­ing Tide News Sheet, vis­it the News Sheet Archive at http://risingtide.org.uk/newssheet

This News Sheet was brought to you by Ris­ing Tide, a grass­roots net­work of groups and indi­vid­u­als com­mit­ted to tak­ing action and build­ing a move­ment against cli­mate change.

For more infor­ma­tion…
email: info@risingtide.org.uk
Phone: +44 (0)845 458 8923 / +44 (0)7708 794665
Address: 62 Fieldgate St, Lon­don, E1 1ES
Web site: http://risingtide.org.uk

PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO A FRIEND AND INVITE THEM TO JOIN THE LIST

To sub­scribe or unsub­scribe vis­it:
http://risingtide.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/rt-news

A week of free workshops, discussions & skill-sharing in London

The plan­ning for the Lon­don FreeSchool week is going well with con­firmed work­shops and the such like start­ing to appear on the web­site. Bowl Court Social Cen­tre, the orig­i­nal loca­tion for the weeks event, was sad­ly evict­ed a cou­ple of weeks ago.

The plan­ning for the Lon­don FreeSchool week is going well with con­firmed work­shops and the such like start­ing to appear on the web­site. Bowl Court Social Cen­tre, the orig­i­nal loca­tion for the weeks event, was sad­ly evict­ed a cou­ple of weeks ago. How­ev­er, the event lives on and has moved to the ram­pART ( http://www.rampart.co.nr) and LARC ( http://www.londonarc.org.) After all a free school should not be lim­it­ed and con­tained by con­crete walls!

The dead­line for work­shops is soon approach­ing so if you are up for facil­i­tat­ing some­thing over the week drop us a line ( deschooling_society@lists.riseup.net) with a brief descrip­tion of the event, how long you will need, your avail­abil­i­ty between the 1st and 7th Sep­tem­ber and if you have any spe­cial require­ments (e.g. Tools / equip­ment). If you do this by mon­day then we can include it in the timetable.

If you want to know what is hap­pen­ing over the week and when, you are unfor­tu­nate­ly going to have to wait until the full timetable has been released next Wednes­day. But here’s a lit­tle taster…

MONDAY 1st SEPTEMBER 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Wel­come to Lon­don FreeSchool!
Come along, have some lunch, meet each oth­er and find out about the week ahead.

GENDER & AUTONOMOUS SPACES
Autonomous spaces are not immune from the kind of casu­al sex­ism that is still com­mon in the wider cul­ture but the prob­lem is rarely dis­cussed. One solu­tion has been to set up women only spaces but many peo­ple feel that these avoid the prob­lem rather than address­ing it. This work­shop will be about explor­ing how peo­ple feel about ques­tions of gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty in the con­text of rad­i­cal activism and how we can find ways to address the issues.

SAFER SPACES
Its about acknowl­edg­ing that oppres­sive behav­iours and ideas are still with in our ‘rad­i­cal’ activist com­mu­ni­ties, no mat­ter how ‘rad­i­cal’ we think we are. The point of the work­shop is to get peo­ple to think and talk about this, find ways to deal with this in their com­mu­ni­ties and work to stop their own oppres­sive behav­iours.

GETTING RID OF EDUCATION: COMMUNITIES FOR LEARNING
No ones needs to be edu­cat­ed. We all learn all the time. What peo­ple need are resours­es and sup­port to help them get where they want to go. What does this sort of an organ­i­sa­tion look like and how can you start one? Come and find out!
Leslie Bar­son (Safran) home edu­cat­ed her two chil­dren and found­ed and runs The Oth­er­wise Club, a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre for fam­i­lies choos­ing not to send their chil­dren to school, in NW Lon­don since 1993.

SCHOOL PRIVATISATION
A dis­cus­sion on school pri­vati­sa­tion in the UK and the Wem­b­ley Tent City Occu­pa­tion ( http://www.tentcityoccupation.co.uk/) with Hank Roberts.

A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO FOOD BUYING GROUPS
Have you ever thought of get­ting togeth­er with a group of peo­ple to buy food in bulk? Come and meet oth­er folks who’d like to do the same, to find out more and start plan­ning your food-buy­ing group. Cheap­er food, autonomous organ­is­ing, stronger links with­in our com­mu­ni­ties, and no more
super­mar­kets: let’s make the best of the reces­sion!
Please bring pens and paper, espe­cial­ly mark­ers and flipchart-like paper, to share if you have any

FOOD NOT BOMBS…
is a net­work of inde­pen­dent direct action groups. They all use food that is being thrown away, cook deli­cious veg­an meals and serve it for free to any hun­gry per­son! Come with us for a bit of skip­ping (get­ting food from the bins!), veg­an cook­ing, serv­ing and clean­ing! It’s polit­i­cal, fun and empow­er­ing!

BASICS OF GENETICS
what’s a cell? what’s a chro­mo­some? what’s the DNA? what’s a gene? what’s a genome? what’s a genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­ism? what’s cloning? etc.
Have you ever asked your­self these ques­tions?
We’ll try to talk about all that togeth­er!

INTERNET ARCHITECTURE / PHILOSOPHY
The idea for the dis­cus­sion is to look at the way the tech­ni­cal aspects of the inter­net have polit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions. Some of these are well known, oth­ers not so well known. Start­ing
from a few tech­ni­cal points I hope the group can dis­cuss gen­er­al ideas around the hack­er cul­ture that has shaped the inter­net, as it applies to social net­works and polit­i­cal engage­ment. Some sam­ple prin­ci­ples from inter­net engi­neer­ing cul­ture:
“Be con­ser­v­a­tive in what you do; be lib­er­al in what you accept from oth­ers.” (Jon Pos­tel)
“We reject: kings, pres­i­dents and vot­ing. We believe in: rough con­sen­sus and run­ning code.” (David D. Clarke)

deschooling_society@lists.riseup.net
http://londonfreeschool.wordpress.com

Good news from Titnore + stalls, tidy-ups and open day/tours

Fur­ther suc­cess for the inspir­ing Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers report­ed in todays press

Trees saved from axe
Sun­day 24th August 2008

A con­tro­ver­sial hous­ing devel­op­ment has been revised to save hun­dreds of trees.

Plans to build 875 homes on green fields at West Dur­ring­ton, Wor­thing, sparked fury among envi­ron­men­tal­ists when they were unveiled in 2003.

Fur­ther suc­cess for the inspir­ing Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers report­ed in todays press

Trees saved from axe
Sun­day 24th August 2008

A con­tro­ver­sial hous­ing devel­op­ment has been revised to save hun­dreds of trees.

Plans to build 875 homes on green fields at West Dur­ring­ton, Wor­thing, sparked fury among envi­ron­men­tal­ists when they were unveiled in 2003.

Around 275 trees would have been axed under the orig­i­nal pro­pos­als as Tit­nore Lane, a wind­ing coun­try road, was straight­ened.

But the pro­pos­al led to pro­test­ers set­ting set up a per­ma­nent tree camp in woods near Tit­nore Lane.

Now the West Dur­ring­ton Con­sor­tium, which con­sists of build­ing firms with a stake in the devel­op­ment, has revised its design so that only 75 trees will be chopped.

It said around 2,350 trees would also be plant­ed on the site.

The new plan­ning appli­ca­tion will be con­sid­ered by Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil lat­er this year.

—-

That’s real­ly good news about the plans not to cut the trees, but real­ly it’s no time to cel­e­brate. This is by no means a vic­to­ry as the ques­tion of ecol­o­gy in the area goes far beyond the very small patch of wood­land that was plan­ning to be cut down. If these hous­es are built then the area is fucked.

That is also only look­ing at it from an eco­log­i­cal point of veiw, when real­ly this, as with oth­er hous­ing devel­op­ments goes far beyond the eco­log­i­cal issues. The build­ing of 600 unaf­ford­able hous­es (along with the 200 set aside for “key work­ers”) has many effects on the area, it is anoth­er act of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, this bat­tle is about more then trees and nature (for some involved) but part of an anti cap­i­tal­ist strug­gle.

Not to men­tion it is fuck­ing point­less build­ing more hous­es to rot and be unsold, except that we have more to squat in 10 years time.

They are nice trees though, I would be lying if i would say it did­n’t make smile to think at least some them might remain.

—–

WHEN is a wood not a wood? When it has a road run­ning right through it!

The “new” plan­ning appli­ca­tion for the West Dur­ring­ton devel­op­ment in Wor­thing, West Sus­sex, is being sold to the Wor­thing pub­lic as a “response to pub­lic opin­ion” that will spare many of the Tit­nore trees.

But, like the orig­i­nal plans, it includes access roads that will cut right through the beau­ti­ful ancient wood­land cur­rent­ly occu­pied by the protest camp. A wood is no longer a viable bio-sys­tem with a road cut­ting it in half. Wildlife like dormice and crest­ed newts will not sur­vive in what will be no more than road­side clumps of trees sur­round­ed by tar­mac and exec­u­tive homes.

The devel­op­ers do not men­tion that the lack of road widen­ing was forced on them through legal pres­sure, rather than dreamt up out of the good­ness of their hearts. And they do not men­tion what would be like­ly to hap­pen in a few years’ time, when the mas­sive increase in traf­fic to the new estate and the mega-Tesco would no doubt be expect­ed to force a re-think on Tit­nore Lane for the usu­al “safe­ty” rea­sons.

Need­less to say, the bat­tle against the destruc­tion of our coun­try­side in West Dur­ring­ton goes on! We are urg­ing every­one to send in their let­ters of objec­tion to plan­ning appli­ca­tion WB/04/00040/OUT as soon as pos­si­ble — Octo­ber 9 is the very lat­est dead­line. Write to James Apple­ton, Devel­op­ment Con­trol Man­ag­er, at Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil, Port­land House, Rich­mond Road, Wor­thing BN11 1LF or email planning@worthing.gov.uk

There will also be stalls in Wor­thing town cen­tre, the first being next Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 6, from 11am at Hold­er’s Cor­ner, Mon­tague Street (near Liv­er­pool Gar­dens).

And, of course, the camp is still going strong. There is, how­ev­er, an urgent need for repairs to the infra­struc­ture and defences, which have degrad­ed over the last cou­ple of years. Polyprop rope is bad­ly want­ed — as well as finan­cial con­tri­bu­tions.

If you can spare an hour or two to help at the camp, a tidy-up day is being held on Sun­day Sep­tem­ber 21, from 10am. And then on Sun­day Sep­tem­ber 28 there will be an Open Day, from 2pm. This will includ­ed guid­ed tours, show­ing where the roads and hous­ing are planned to destroy the area. Bring food to share.

More info: www.protectourwoodland.co.uk

Rossport Solidarity Camp reborn…

18.08.2008
Today local res­i­dents and peo­ple from Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp erect­ed a mar­quee in Glen­gad over­look­ing Shel­l’s new com­pound.

Glengad camp, Mayo18.08.2008
Today local res­i­dents and peo­ple from Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp erect­ed a mar­quee in Glen­gad over­look­ing Shel­l’s new com­pound.

Just a short dis­tance away from the camps for­mer loca­tion the new mar­quee will pro­vide a base for action against ear­ly pipeline work on land and against the pipe lay­ing ship,the Soli­taire, when she arrives.

Today after the mar­quee had been put up peo­ple invad­ed the com­pound. Activ­i­ty like this and water based actions will be ongo­ing over the next few weeks.

New peo­ple and a wide array of boats and oth­er water equip­ment are appear­ing all the time. The fol­low­ing weeks should be inter­est­ing…

Come to Mayo and join in the fun.…

Sail and Rail from any­where in UK to Bal­li­na (near­est town to Ross­port) only £35 (aprox)

Earth First! gathering — programme and travel directions

Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise
27 Aug — 1 Sept 2008, Nor­folk
Join us for 5 days of work­shops and plan­ning actions

Trav­el direc­tions:

Earth First! Gathering 2008 - print sizeEarth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise
27 Aug — 1 Sept 2008, Nor­folk
Join us for 5 days of work­shops and plan­ning actions

Trav­el direc­tions:
The gath­er­ing this year will be held at Woolsey­bridge Farm — a love­ly site in Nor­folk with lots of trees and a lit­tle stream. It’s approx­i­mate­ly 1.5 miles NNE of Diss. Diss has reg­u­lar train ser­vices and a whole­food shop. The Grid Ref­er­ence of the site is TM130819. The post code is IP22 5SY.

The site is eas­i­ly acces­si­ble by pub­lic trans­port, you can get the train either to Diss or Nor­wich and then catch the bus route no 1 (Sim­monds) from Diss to Nor­wich or vice ver­sa — this route goes right past the site and we’ll be ask­ing the local bus com­pa­ny if they will stop right out­side the site on request. Or you could walk or cycle — it’s only 1.5miles away from Diss train sta­tion. Please come by pub­lic trans­port if at all pos­si­ble! .
We will run pick-ups from the train sta­tion for any­body who can’t use the bus ser­vice or for larg­er groups of peo­ple. If you need a lift please let us know well in advance (and not in the mid­dle of the night, when you’re at a train sta­tion some­where!). Ring the Gath­er­ing mobile on 07789 331857

For a map and fur­ther details on trav­el includ­ing bus times and direc­tions for dri­vers check out http://earthfirstgathering.org.uk/2008/where.html

Pro­gramme
This year’s pro­gramme focuss­es on info and plan­ning for actions, direct action skills as well as spaces to dis­cuss how we can respond to and deal with the widen­ing eco­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and soci­etal crises. We hope there’s some­thing for every­one.
We rec­om­mend that you arrive Tue evening, as work­shops will start on Wednes­day morn­ing and run until Sun­day evening

For more info about the gath­er­ing check out our web­site or email us (though we won’t be able to answer email after 21 Aug, as we’ll be on site set­ting up)

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk, sum­mer­gath­er­ing _ AT _ earthfirst.org.uk

The work­shops

Wednes­day

12:00
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the gath­er­ing
Deal­ing with the main­stream media — how to get your mes­sage across
Basic electrics — for squats and homes.
Cap­i­tal­ism and cli­mate change — how to make the links vis­i­ble in actions
Queer net­work­ing ses­sion

2:30
Self-defence — mixed prac­tise ses­sion
Squat­ting FAQ — shar­ing tips and tricks
Action Recon­nais­sance for begin­ners
Intro­duc­tion to the root caus­es of eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion and an explo­ration of alter­na­tives
Advanced Nav­i­ga­tion

4:30
Sav­ing Ice­land — Intro­duc­tion to the cam­paign
Nuclear waste and nuclear weapons
Con­sen­sus Deci­sion-mak­ing
Intro­duc­tion to Ecol­o­gy
Con­fronting Abu­sive Behav­iours with­in our Com­mu­ni­ties — with­out the police/prison.

6:00
Library Space: Nego­ti­at­ing Safer Sex: tips on putting the the­o­ry into prac­tice, and mak­ing your sex life more fun as well as safer!

8:00
Cin­e­ma: Talk with video on resist­ing rain­for­est destruc­tion in Tas­ma­nia

Thurs­day

10:30
Deal­ing with Pub­lic Order sit­u­a­tions — under­stand­ing police tac­tics and how we can deal with to them/turn them to our advan­tage (runs until lunch)
State and cor­po­rate oppres­sion of the Aus­tralian Abo­rig­ines
Action recon­nais­sance — advanced skill­share, share your most clever tips and tricks for get­ting info for actions
Prac­ti­cal plant iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (begin­ners)
Activist trau­ma and recov­ery

12:00
Sav­ing Ice­land — an eval­u­a­tion of the camp this sum­mer
Secu­ri­ty for Activists Part I: Do’s and don’ts of organ­is­ing action, from arrang­ing to meet, plan­ning and what hap­pens after
Arrest sup­port for actions — how to pro­vide sup­port for your affin­i­ty group, medi­um sized actions or mega camps and gath­er­ings.
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the sum­mer gath­er­ing

2:30
Wom­en’s self-defence — intro­duc­to­ry ses­sion
Food and Cli­mate Action: info for action
How to plan an action
Police liai­son for actions — what it is, its uses and lim­i­ta­tions and how to make it work.
Chang­ing light bulbs or smash­ing the sys­tem. Shar­ing +/- expe­ri­ences of work­ing within/outside the sys­tem

4:30
Oppos­ing nuclear expan­sion: plan­ning for action
How to plan and run a suc­cess­ful medi­um to long-term cam­paign
Night time skills Part I: intro­duc­tion (fol­lowed by prac­tise ses­sion at 8.30pm)
Legal and arrest work­shop
Intro­duc­tion to anar­chist history/potted anar­chist his­to­ries

6:00
Library space: open dis­cus­sion ?Direct action or pub­lic­i­ty stunt??
8:00

Cin­e­ma: Seashep­herd film and talk
8:30

Night time skills Part II — prac­tice your skills in the field.

Fri­day

10:30
Blockad­ing tac­tics
Cli­mate Camp debrief: a crit­i­cal look at the cli­mate camp, its achieve­ments and pol­i­tics
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! And the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Com­put­er Secu­ri­ty for the non-tech­ni­cal
Prison Abo­li­tion: what’s wrong with prison? what do we mean by abo­li­tion and how can we make it hap­pen?

12:00
Food and cli­mate change: action and cam­paign plan­ning
Self-defence mixed prac­tise ses­sion
Squat­ting to resist — occu­pa­tions to resist the pow­ers of dark­ness
His­to­ry of Earth First!

2:30
The Earth First! Action Update and web­site: feed­back and get­ting involved
Resist­ing agro­fu­els — update on the sit­u­a­tion and action plan­ning
Sea Shep­herd — an intro to its cam­paigns and how to support/get involved.
Grow your own food — share you skills and expe­ri­ence
Queer Activist Forum: Rad­i­cal queers organ­ise for the future!

4:30
Queer Self-Defence: an intro to basic self-defence skills (ver­bal and phys­i­cal)
Set­ting up new direct action groups
Sav­ing Ice­land ? plan­ning actions for the com­ing year
Tech­no-fix­es and cli­mate change ? report by Cor­po­rate Watch
Urban self-reliance and self-suf­fi­cien­cy

7:30
Library: Pris­on­er Sup­port — An infor­mal get togeth­er to dis­cuss the state of pris­on­er sup­port in our move­ments, find out news and get advice on writ­ing to pris­on­ers, as well as mak­ing and writ­ing cards to send to pris­on­ers.

8:00
Cin­e­ma: A talk and film by a trib­al activist from Oris­sa oppos­ing min­ing

Sat­ur­day

10:30
Cam­paigns and Actions Round-up: UK and inter­na­tion­al news (no oth­er work­shops)

12:00
Wom­en’s self-defence prac­tise ses­sion plus run­ning along­side — intro­duc­tion to wom­en’s self-defence
Stop­ping GM test fields — dis­cus­sion on future campaign/actions
Research and destroy — how to research cor­po­ra­tions
Future mod­els of soci­ety — find­ing a path to sus­tain­able liv­ing
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Using tripods for blockad­ing

2:30
Leave it in the ground — build­ing resis­tance to new coal min­ing and pow­er sta­tions
Facil­i­ta­tion of meet­ings
Activist Secu­ri­ty Part III: doing actions with­out leav­ing traces
Restora­tion Ecol­o­gy
Cre­at­ing safer spaces
Vis­it to Burston Strike School

4:30
Region­al meet­ings and action plan­ning (no oth­er work­shops)

6:00
Library Space: Work­ing with­out lead­ers — dis­cus­sion about core val­ues of anar­chism

8:00
Cin­e­ma: Smash Edo film and talk

Sun­day
11:00
Self defence mixed prac­tice ses­sion
Sort­ing out ways of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in EF!
Using radios on actions
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! And the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Fences: get­ting over them/taking them down

12:15
The sum­mer gath­er­ing: feed­back on this year’s and get­ting involved in organ­is­ing the next one

2:30
Con­doms, cap­i­tal­ism and cli­mate change
Smash Edo
Intro­duc­tion to nav­i­ga­tion
What’s new in the world of law?
Fem­i­nist Health
Climb­ing trees, lamp posts and any­thing else

4:30
Rad­i­cal pol­i­tics in the age of col­lapse
The Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and Fos­sil Fuel Financ­ing
Get­ting your elec­tric­i­ty from solar pow­er and wind
Rad­i­cal Par­ent­ing
Look­ing after our men­tal health — shar­ing ideas and expe­ri­ences

8:00
Cin­e­ma: films — cli­mate camp footage, ready steady skip etc

Mon­day
Take-down: please stay for a day or two to help take down the site. If you’ve got access to a vehicle/van, it’d be great if you could help trans­port­ing mar­quees, recy­cling etc to the places they need to go. Cheers!

More info about the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
EF! is about direct action to halt the destruc­tion of the Earth. It’s about doing it your­self rather than rely­ing on lead­ers, gov­ern­ments or indus­try.
Direct action is at the heart of it, whether you’re stand­ing in front of a bull­doz­er, shut­ting down an open-cast mine or rip­ping up a field of GM crops.
We’re a loose net­work of peo­ple, groups and cam­paigns com­ing togeth­er for eco­log­i­cal direct action.
Join us for 5 days of work­shops, net­work­ing and plan­ning actions, run with­out lead­ers by every­one who comes along. The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of low-impact eco-liv­ing and non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing.

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk, sum­mer­gath­er­ing _ AT _ earthfirst.org.uk

Rath Lugh update, Ireland

August 14th 2008

Rath Lugh bannerRath Lugh tree-sitAugust 14th 2008
Pro­tec­tors were stag­ing a Tree Protest near the Col­lier­stown site high­light­ing the fact that rough­ly 62 bod­ies were removed from their sacred bur­ial grounds to make way for the con­struc­tion of the M3 Motor­way. Col­lier­stown grave­yard dates from pre­his­toric times with buri­als con­tin­u­ing into the ear­ly medieval era.

The Tree Protest was giv­en huge sup­port from pass­ing motorists. Locals also joined in com­ing out of their homes to give encour­age­ment and there were plen­ty of vol­un­teers to take stints to main­tain a pres­ence.

Derbyshire Coal Mine Occupation — Eviction Ended

The police have launched a full evic­tion attempt at the Bodge House squat in Ship­ley, Der­byshire. The house is locat­ed on the site of a pro­posed open cast coal mine.

Update Thurs­day 14th August: The last 2 pro­tes­tors were evict­ed from the tun­nel at about 2:30am, and have been hand­ed over to the cops. UK Coal has already pulled Prospect Farm down, leav­ing us with no option but protest day trips to the site!

No to UK Coal at Bodge HouseThe police have launched a full evic­tion attempt at the Bodge House squat in Ship­ley, Der­byshire. The house is locat­ed on the site of a pro­posed open cast coal mine.

Update Thurs­day 14th August: The last 2 pro­tes­tors were evict­ed from the tun­nel at about 2:30am, and have been hand­ed over to the cops. UK Coal has already pulled Prospect Farm down, leav­ing us with no option but protest day trips to the site!

Update Sun­day 10th August: Evic­tion is still ongo­ing at Bodge House, in Der­byshire. This is the 4th day of the oper­a­tion and 4 peo­ple were arrest­ed ear­li­er today. The house is very heav­i­ly bar­ri­cad­ed and 2–3 peo­ple are still report­ed to be inside. 4 vans of police and bailiffs still in atten­dence.

Update Fri­day 8th August: — We were there today to give sup­port to those still in the house. We arrived about 11.00am. There were loads of police as would be expect­ed and 3 peo­ple were tak­en out of the house while we were there and tak­en to Rip­ley police sta­tion. We were not allowed near so could not see who it was. Around 3.00 in the after­noon a chap in a suit and 2 women in inap­pro­pri­ate shoes turned up. We think they were from the bailiff teams. They spoke to the chief inspec­tor in charge and went to the house. All the time the bailiffs on site had been cut­ting down the trees sur­round­ing the house and try­ing to get in the front door of the house. They suc­ceed­ed just before the ‘suits’ arrived. We left around 4pm to run some film to ITN but I heard lat­er that the bailiffs had start­ed up a gen­er­a­tor to get air to the peo­ple in the tun­nel under the house but left the site around 5.30. they are due back tomor­row (Sat­ur­day) to get the 2 peo­ple in the tun­nel out. Any­one who can get there, please get there to give sup­port.

Update Thurs­day 7th August: Around 7.45am about 60 police and 50 bail­liffs arrived at the house. Through­out the day the police have been try­ing to get through the bar­ri­cades and defences. Local peo­ple and media have been at the scene. So far 3 peo­ple have been removed from lock­ons and a car­go net out­side the house and have been arrest­ed. 7 peo­ple are still inside and are heav­i­ly bar­ri­cad­ed in, includ­ed being hid­den in tun­nels under the house. The bailiffs have put up secu­ri­ty fences and although they have man­aged to enter part of the build­ing, the evic­tion attempt has been stopped for today. It is esti­mat­ed the evic­tion will take at least anoth­er cou­ple of days.

Back­ground -
On Fri­day July 18, UK Coal, who own the site, were grant­ed a pos­ses­sion order for the Squat­ted farm­house on the planned Lodge House open cast coal mine site. For some time it has been antic­i­pat­ed that an evic­tion is immi­nent, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the climb­ing team used against road pro­test­ers has been seen around the site. It is evi­dent that with the Cli­mate Camp hap­pen­ing at Kingsnorth Pow­er Sta­tion, the police saw their opper­tu­ni­ty to move in.

Bits from main­stream sources (above from IMC) —

The pro­test­ers have been occu­py­ing the build­ing at Prospect Farm, in Bell Lane, Smal­l­ey, for almost two months in the hope of mak­ing it impos­si­ble for UK Coal to begin open­cast min­ing at the 334-acre site this autumn.

Bailiffs from the Nation­al Evic­tion Team arrived yes­ter­day, lead­ing to the arrest of three pro­test­ers. Three more left vol­un­tar­i­ly.

A spokesman for UK Coal said: “We believe up to eight peo­ple remain in the house, four of whom could be in a labyrinth of tun­nels under­neath the house, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion we have.

We’ve got just over 20 experts from the Nation­al Evic­tion Team, who worked on the site until 6pm last night.

Andy Green, a spokesman for Leave It In The Ground, said: “We’ve built an exten­sive tun­nel net­work and have tree-struc­tures and sus­pend­ed car­go nets.

“As bailiffs and police arrived on site, peo­ple were chained to bar­ri­cades defend­ing strate­gic parts of the prop­er­ty.”

UK Coal has Gov­ern­ment clear­ance to mine for four-and-a-half years from this autumn, despite Der­byshire Coun­ty Coun­cil hav­ing refused to grant plan­ning per­mis­sion.

One of the pro­test­ers, who left vol­un­tar­i­ly and iden­ti­fied him­self only as Ben, said: “We need to find an alter­na­tive to coal and time for action is long over­due because cli­mate change has already start­ed hap­pen­ing.”

Evic­tion starts sto­ry and direc­tions

Short audio report from first day — audio/x‑wav 716K

A lit­tle back­ground: The site was occu­pied on Tues­day June 18 by cli­mate cam­paign­ers from ‘Leave it in the Ground’. They bar­ri­cad­ed them­selves in a dis­used farm build­ing and took to the trees on the site of the open cast mine. Under the cov­er of dark­ness activists secured them­selves in the Prospect Farm build­ing, on the site which is about to be dev­as­tat­ed by huge machines. and claimed squatter’s rights.