Category: Squatting / Free Spaces / Protest Sites

Angry Pen­guins & Cli­mate Refugees to Vis­it Cli­mate Crim­i­nals

Wednes­day 30th July: A large group of dis­placed pen­guins, a home­less polar bear, and sev­er­al human cli­mate refugees crossed Lon­don Bridge to enter the City of Lon­don today

“We have been forced from our homes by the actions of com­pa­nies that are reap­ing huge rewards from the per­pet­u­a­tion of a fos­sil fuel econ­o­my” said Pen­ny LeGuin. “If they are allowed to con­tin­ue with their reck­less behav­iour, you humans will also find your­selves with­out a home – plan­et Earth will become unin­hab­it­able.”

The group will be vis­it­ed a vari­ety of oil, gas and finance com­pa­nies that they have iden­ti­fied as fuelling the run­away cli­mate chaos that is destroy­ing their homes. This event is part of the Cli­mate Car­a­van, which is trav­el­ling through Lon­don, from Heathrow Air­port to the Camp for Cli­mate Action at Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion in Kent.

Paula Bare explained — “Our Car­a­van began in Sip­son, where an entire com­mu­ni­ty faces evic­tion for a sui­ci­dal 3rd Run­way for Heathrow. On our jour­ney to the site of an equal­ly absurd pro­posed new coal-fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth, we are bring­ing the cat­a­stroph­ic impacts of cli­mate chaos to the oil-soaked heart of the prob­lem – the City of Lon­don.”

Notes for Edi­tors:
1. The Cli­mate Car­a­van began on Sun­day July 27th, leav­ing from the site of last years’ huge­ly suc­cess­ful Camp for Cli­mate Action which was held on Sip­son Lane, under the deaf­en­ing roar of Heathrow’s flight­path. By wheel and foot, around 50 peo­ple are mak­ing their way to the Camp for Cli­mate Action under the shad­ow of Kingsnorth Pow­er Sta­tion. The 60+ mile trip will take a week, with events planned at each stop. The Car­a­van will arrive at the Camp on Sun­day 3rd August. See www.climatecamp.org.uk/caravan

2. See www.climatecamp.org.uk for more infor­ma­tion on The Camp for Cli­mate Action.

3. Con­tact the Car­a­van Press Team on 07989 985 442.

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Car­a­van Events Pro­gramme

These events are to act as local out­reach in the run up to the Camp as well as to pro­vide entertainment/interest to Car­a­van­ers.

Sun­day 27th July: Launch of the Cli­mate Car­a­van.
The Cli­mate Car­a­van starts its 60 mile jour­ney from Heathrow to Kingsnorth.
9.30am Har­ling­ton Bap­tist Church, 266 High Street, Har­ling­ton Hayes, UB3 5DG

Sun­day 27th July: Cli­mate Camp-What’s it all about?
Come along & meet the campers.
7.30pm Grove Gar­dens Chapel, Low­er Grove Rd, off Queens Rd, Rich­mond.

Mon­day 28th July: ‘Turn­ing the world upside down’-
The Put­ney Cli­mate Debate.
Arrive 6.30pm. Speak­ers from 7pm. St Mary’s Church, Put­ney High Street, SW15 1SN.
Speak­ers :
Andrew Simms (New Eco­nom­ic Foun­da­tion)
Jen­ny Jones (Lon­don Green Par­ty)
Pen­ny East­wood (The Camp for Cli­mate Action)
Leila Deen ( World Devel­op­ment Move­ment)
Simon Okotie ( Lon­don Cit­i­zens)
Kei­th Wil­son (Treespon­si­bil­i­ty)
Andy Goldring (Per­ma­cul­ture Asso­ci­a­tion)
Dr. Paul Chat­ter­ton (Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty) will intro­duce and facil­i­tate.

Tues­day 29th July: A fair & sus­tain­able tran­si­tion. How do we make it hap­pen?
7.00pm: Syn­er­gy Cen­tre, 220 Farm­ers Road, Oval. SE5 OTW
This evening starts with a 50 minute film “Pow­er of the Com­mu­ni­ty” about Cuba intro­duc­ing peak oil, post fos­sil-fuel com­mu­ni­ties, per­ma­cul­ture, urban food solu­tions and tran­si­tion­ing to a post-fos­sil fuel econ­o­my whilst main­tain­ing a wel­fare state. A brief intro to tran­si­tion towns fol­lows and then an open space cre­ative vision­ing ses­sion to pre­pare us for a pos­i­tive debate around how to get this going here and now.

Wednes­day 30th July: Cli­mate & Cap­i­tal­ism
Finance and The City
A Tour; meet at 3.30pm out­side Liv­er­pool St, Bish­ops­gate exit. (1 ½ hours).
*Tack­ling cli­mate change starts at home, appar­ent­ly.*
Exam­in­ing the root caus­es of cli­mate change has brought us to the bleed­ing
heart of Lon­don: the sin­gle square mile of the busi­ness dis­trict. Deci­sions
made in the City over finan­cial invest­ments across the world are lock­ing us
into decades of car­bon emis­sions. How are we tied up in this? How do we
affect it?
Take the tour, meet­ing at Liv­er­pool St on Bish­ops­gate at 3.30pm.
Look for the suits with umbrel­las..

Thurs­day 31st July: Life Beyond Cars
Fam­i­ly friend­ly for­ay into a fos­sil fuel free future. Bring your bikes-Dr Bike in res­i­dence. Work­shops, talks, dis­plays & demon­stra­tions.
4–6pm: nr Oxleas Wood Cafe, Crown wood lane, Shoot­ers Hill, Green­wich, SE18 35A
Fri­day 1st August: Cli­mate Camp-What’s it all about?
Come along & meet the campers.
7.30pm: St Botolph’s Church Hall, The Hill, North­fleet. DA11 9EU.
Sat­ur­day 2nd August: Cli­mate Camp-What’s it all about?
Come along & meet the campers.
7.30pm: Church of St Fran­cis of Assisi, Gala­had Avenue, Strood, ME2 2YS.

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See also cyclists arriv­ing in New­cas­tle from Scot­land

Heathrow launch con­fer­ence

Stop Incin­er­a­tion car­a­van from Sus­sex

Prac­ti­cal car­a­van info, meet­ing points etc | Route
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29.07.08 Cli­mate camp car­a­van — film stop.

The cli­mate camp car­a­van­ners stopped at the Syn­er­gy cen­tre in Oval for a sched­uled break from their trav­els on Tues­day evening.

Around 30–50 peo­ple of vary­ing back­grounds and ages set­tled in for the night, and after a home-made meal they watched a film about sus­tain­able liv­ing in Cuba, and how to intro­duce tech­niques for sus­tain­able liv­ing into their lives here in the UK. The film was shown on a cycle-pow­ered cin­e­ma, which fea­tured 2 bicy­cles, allow­ing peo­ple to swap when they got tired with­out loss of pow­er.

After­wards the group gath­ered togeth­er for a group dis­cus­sion about sus­tain­abil­i­ty, which began with speech­es by a Cam­den coun­cil­lor, two envi­ron­men­tal thinkers and a mem­ber of the cli­mate camp staff. The theme of the evening was very much about how to try and ensure the com­mu­ni­ties in which the car­a­van­ners live become as self-suf­fi­cient and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly as soon as human­ly pos­si­ble.

Final­ly, an exhaust­ed car­a­van did their best to absorb it all and wash up before crash­ing for the night.

In a few days time the car­a­van will arrive at the site at Kingsnorth, whose site has already been claimed by the Campers, in prepa­ra­tion for their arrival…

Onward.
: ))

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Wednes­day 30th July, the fourth day of the Cli­mate Car­a­van trav­el­ing to this year’s Cli­mate Action Camp in Kingsnorth, Kent. The theme of today’s leg was ‘Cli­mate & Cap­i­tal­ism’, and so, there’s prob­a­bly no bet­ter place to point out the links between Cli­mate Chaos and Cap­i­tal­is­m’s obses­sion with mak­ing bucks out of the deple­tion of the plan­et’s nat­ur­al resources, than the Square Mile.

Flee­ing pen­guins and polar bears, and cli­mate refugees on boats migrat­ing due to the dev­as­tat­ing effects of cli­mate change, invad­ed Lon­don Bridge at about eleven in the morn­ing, and they slow­ly made their way into the City of Lon­don. The traf­fic in Lon­don Bridge was brought to a stand­still for about one hour, whilst pro­test­ers gave away hun­dreds of leaflets and the Cam­p’s news­pa­per to the passers-by.

The Car­a­van then moved into the City itself, with a detour through sev­er­al of the City’s main land­marks. It even­tu­al­ly stopped at the glob­al invest­ment bank­ing and secu­ri­ties firm Gold­man Sachs, where a long speech was made through the bike sound sys­tem about the sort of ‘invest­ments’ Gold­man Sachs are involved in, and how this relates to Cli­mate Change and its effects on com­mu­ni­ties and the envi­ron­ment. It was also point­ed out that Gold­man Sachs had already been tar­get­ed before by the Jus­tice For Clean­ers cam­paign, for their low stan­dards of employ­ment con­di­tions for the City’s army of invis­i­ble clean­ers.

The Car­a­van then moved to St Paul’s Cathe­dral where it stopped for a cou­ple of hours for lunch. A pho­to exhi­bi­tion was set up, whilst the bike sound sys­tem kept play­ing chill tunes for the par­tic­i­pants, as well as for the many tourists that approached it to find out what was all that about.

The Car­a­van then set off for the meet­ing point at Liv­er­pool Street sta­tion, where it was joined by some more peo­ple wait­ing there. It then moved to the near­by head­quar­ters of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, where bags full of pen­nies where thrown at the main entrances to sym­bol­ize the cor­po­ra­tion’s invest­ments in Cli­mate Chaos.

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The car­a­van is on the move! For four days now the col­lec­tion of bikes, trikes, walk­ers, pen­guins, pirate ship and polar bear have manoeu­vred their way from the site of last year’s camp into the heart of Lon­don. From beau­ti­ful city parks to three-laned round­abouts the group has brought bright colours,music and a vibrant, pos­i­tive change to the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment. This was most appar­ent today (Wednes­day) as we danced in sun­shine through the finan­cial dis­trict of Lon­don, fly­er­ing inquis­i­tive onlook­ers and set­ting a dif­fer­ent stage for city lunch-time buy­ers.

The response from pass­ing peo­ple as we weave our way through the streets has been astound­ing. Every­where we have vis­it­ed pedes­tri­ans and dri­vers alike have tak­en a gen­uine inter­est in why we are here- and will­ing to talk about the rel­e­vant issues of cli­mate change.

The Put­ney debates was well attend­ed as groups dis­cussed six pro­pos­als to turn the world upside down. Top­ics ranged from per­ma­cul­ture to envi­ron­men­tal eco­nom­ics, and was hearti­ly begun with a song to remem­ber the dig­gers of 1649.

Petrol sta­tions have been con­stant­ly fre­quent­ed along the route with gui­tar melodies to light­en the mood for those at petrol pumps.

Today, a wad­dle of pen­guins stopped traf­fic on Lon­don bridge and made their way towards the finan­cial and adver­tis­ing insti­tu­tions com­plic­it in the use of fos­sil fuels for short-term eco­nom­ic gain. This was an utter­ly amaz­ing and inspir­ing action. The pen­guins had an open road over the bridge to enter the city as two lanes were used for wad­dling and the rest of the group calm­ly dealt with the traf­fic behind.

Pen­guins made vis­its all over Lon­don to the adver­tis­ing com­pa­nies pro­mot­ing the likes of Shell (in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Ross­port camp), BAA and E‑ON. Occu­pa­tions were made at offices in Hol­born and Tot­ten­ham Court Road areas where nor­mal oper­a­tions were dis­rupt­ed and links to the car­bon web expressed.

A trip was also made to the city hall in Strat­ford where a coun­cil meet­ing was being held con­cern­ing the expan­sion of City Air­port. Tents were put up and mem­bers of the coun­cil giv­en infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the impact of air­port expan­sion and run­away cli­mate change.

Tomor­row we leave Lon­don for Kent “the gar­den of Eng­land” to hear sto­ries of Oxleas Wood and a step clos­er towards our des­ti­na­tion at Cli­mate Camp. Tonight we sang songs in Hack­ney City Farm and par­tied in Lon­don Fields with the locals, after hear­ing the bril­liant news that the site has been tak­en next to the pow­er sta­tion. Come and join us on are jour­ney to Kingsnorth and cer­tain­ly to a fos­sil-free sus­tain­able future!

Fol­low­ing are the expe­ri­ences of some of the car­a­van­ers so far on the route;

* Learn­ing the sto­ries of Lon­don along the route and con­nect­ing the Put­ney debates to anoth­er rad­i­cal point in his­to­ry has made me feel com­plete­ly hope­ful in achiev­ing the big ideas for change.

* I’m tired but inspired by the beau­ti­ful train of bicy­cles and peo­ple with colour­ful flags and pirate ship. Wee­v­ing our way through the city has felt peace­ful despite all the traf­fic. Every day is excit­ing and i can’t wait for the next. A high­light has been danc­ing in sun­shine after nav­i­gat­ing to the Syn­er­gy cen­tre in Oval.

* Come join us! We have been shim­mer­ing our way through the city with the police leav­ing us alone­and self-man­ag­ing are route.

* My favourite moment has been walk­ing past a school with the car­a­van and all the kids look­ing real­ly inter­est­ed in what was going on. As we left the teacher seemed to start explain­ing our pres­ence there.

* Going through hec­tic traf­fic junc­tions and work­ing togeth­er has been so impor­tant in bring­ing the group togeth­er as a sol­id block. I’ve learnt loads about traf­fic con­trol! and that we’re best tight­ly-knit and not as a frag­ment­ed troop.

* I’m real­ly excit­ed and felt tear­ful with joy ear­li­er. It’s empow­er­ing walk­ing on the road and feel amaz­ing­ly safe. It’s real­ly well orga­nized and there’s great chances to chat with peo­ple and inter­act. You for­get where the cars are and just enjoy the jour­ney.

* I’m chuffed with the open­ness and feel of the car­a­van and there’s great free­dom to get involved. it’s com­plete­ly mul­ti-faceted- as some peo­ple seem to walk­ing as a pil­grim­mage, while oth­ers for out­reach. It does­n’t feel like a tra­di­tion­al march, it’s much more engag­ing with who we’re pass­ing because we can take time to talk to pass­ing motorists and pedes­tri­ans.

* I’ve found it absurd and amaz­ing- i had loads of fun played sar­dines in leafy, over­grown Rich­mond grave­yard. We’ve adapt­ed to the new places we’ve arrived at and inter­act­ed well with the locals- from putting on events with them to doing hand­stands and street­danc­ing in Oval!

* I’m tired but very pos­i­tive and elat­ed to be here. It’s a non-stop roller­coast­er of fun from meet­ing new peo­ple and see­ing new place to learn­ing new skills.

* I feel pre­pared, inspired and cre­ative, and also part of a tra­di­tion in learn­ing about the his­to­ry of when peo­ple cre­ate some­thing to stand up togeth­er.

* I feel excit­ed and have gained ener­gy from being part of this amaz­ing group of peo­ple. I had con­cerns about the safe­ty of the car­a­va but these dis­ap­peared on the first day. Every­one is in high spir­its, there’s good veg­an food and wicked cre­ativ­i­ty.