Category: Transport

Earth First! Summer Gathering Update — programme, directions, website and more

It’s only weeks until the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing begins.
Five days of work­shops, info shar­ing and learn­ing new skills, 1–5 August.

It’s only weeks until the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing begins.
Five days of work­shops, info shar­ing and learn­ing new skills, 1–5 August.

The Earth First Sum­mer Gath­er­ing takes place each year to pro­vide a space in which the rad­i­cal ecol­o­gy move­ment can share skills and plan for future cam­paigns and actions.

Dis­cus­sions around the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ty build­ing in inner cities, the state of the anar­chist move­ment and patri­archy in activism.

Skill shares includ­ing wom­en’s self-defence, research­ing cor­po­ra­tions and nav­i­ga­tion.

Cam­paign round ups from Frack Off! Smash Edo and Lud­dites 2000 amongst oth­ers.

If you have work­shops you like to run or dis­cus­sions you’d like to facil­i­tate then email us at earthfirstsummergathering@riseup.net

Full pro­gramme.

Camp­ing is on a slid­ing scale of £30 to £15, pay what is gen­uine­ly appro­pri­ate.

Food will be from Anar­chist Teapot and meal tick­ets will be £5 a day.

Kids can have sep­a­rate meals if they want for £3 a day.

There will be a cou­ple of kids spaces, and spe­cial work­shops being ran for kids. If you’d like to run any kids work­shops get in touch at earthfirstsummergathering@riseup.net.

If you want you dog to come along then you’re going to have to email us at earthfirstsummergathering@riseup.net

And of course there will be enter­tain­ment and a bar open in the evenings.

The camp is ½ mile from the Berring­ton vil­lage, and 1 mile from the larg­er vil­lage of Cross Hous­es.

We encour­age non-cycling campers to use pub­lic trans­port if pos­si­ble as Cross Hous­es is on a bus route.

BY TRAIN
The near­est train sta­tion is Shrews­bury. You can then get the bus to Cross Hous­es (see below). If com­ing from a long dis­tance it can some­times be cheap­er to get a tick­et to a large sta­tion such as Birm­ing­ham, Wolver­hamp­ton, Man­ches­ter or Crewe and then a sep­a­rate tick­et on to Shrews­bury. Check nation­al rail for train times and prices. If com­ing from the Lon­don direc­tion, it’s gen­er­al­ly cheap­er to buy a Super Off­peak Return, spec­i­fy­ing “Lon­don Mid­land & Arri­va only”.

BY BIKE
See here for direc­tions and a map to the camp from Shrews­bury for cyclists and dri­vers.

BY BUS
When you arrive at Shrews­bury train sta­tion, ask some­one to point you to the bus sta­tion. It’s only a few min­utes walk from the train sta­tion. The bus ser­vice that runs from town to with­in a mile of Crabap­ple is the 436 towards Bridg­north. It runs every hour from 7.40am to 5.40pm with a “late” one at 7.40pm. The jour­ney to Cross Hous­es is approx 15 mins. You will need to press the stop but­ton when you see the sign for Cross Hous­es. Some of the ser­vices on this route are low-floor acces­si­ble bus­es. Please note that the last bus leaves Shrews­bury at 7.40pm, Mon­day to Sat­ur­day and there are no Sun­day bus ser­vices. For the bus timetable see here http://shropshire.gov.uk/bustimes/timetable.jsc?timetable=436mfi0412.
The camp itself is about 1 mile from the bus stop. From the bus stop at Cross Hous­es, walk back towards Shrews­bury past the petrol sta­tion (on your right) and take the first left turn signed “Berring­ton”. After about ½ mile, the road forks at the edge of the vil­lage. Take the right turn sign­post­ed “Bet­ton Abbots” and we’re about ¼ mile up the road on the right.
If you intend to come by bus but need help get­ting to and from the bus stop, you can arrange a pick up with us: details will be avail­able near­er the time.

BY TAXI
There is also a taxi rank just out­side Shrews­bury train sta­tion. Acces­si­ble taxis can be got from here.- but it is MUCH cheap­er to book a cab from a local com­pa­ny – Comet Cabs 01743 344444, or Vin­cent Cabs 01743 367777. Vin­cents also have a book­ing office just across the road from the sta­tion, which is handy if you don’t have a phone to book a cab in advance.

USEFUL LINKS
See here direc­tions and a map to the camp from Shrews­bury for cyclists and dri­vers.
See a map of where the site is here
See the bus timetable
Direc­tions from places oth­er than Shrews­bury

Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing Col­lec­tive
earthfirstsummergathering@riseup.net

http://earthfirstgathering.weebly.com

bikes alive bike blockade protest at king’s cross

12.3.12

12.3.12

ear­li­er this evening, a cou­ple of dozen cyclists brought a lit­tle chaos to the junc­tions out­side king’s cross sta­tion in protest at new rev­e­la­tions over TfL’s com­plic­i­ty in road deaths there. despite dozens of deaths and injuries to cyclists at the dan­ger­ous king’s cross road inter­sec­tions, it has recent­ly come to light that between 2005 and 2009, TfL actu­al­ly instruct­ed its plan­ners to ignore the needs of cyclists.

also, where the plan­ners, buchanan and part­ners, made bicy­cle-friend­ly rec­om­men­da­tions, their draft report was watered down by TfL before final pub­li­ca­tion.

tonight’s protest, attract­ing just a cou­ple of dozen cyclists and pedes­tri­ans, held up traf­fic by pro­cess­ing slow­ly in a route up and down the euston road out­side the sta­tion, while more than 200 explana­to­ry leaflets were dis­trib­uted to passers-by. it was the lat­est in a series of fort­night­ly actions, and the next one, to which all pedes­tri­ans and human-pow­ered vehi­cles are invit­ed, will begin prompt­ly at 6.30pm on mon­day the 26th march.

lat­er that week, fri­day 30th will cel­e­brate the 15th anniver­sary of crit­i­cal mass in lon­don.

more info at http://bikesalive.wordpress.com
also see http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk/main.html

Mass Action, Barricades and Lock Downs Fail to Halt Development for the Mega-Rich

18.2.12

City offi­cials said on Wednes­day morn­ing they were pleased with how the oper­a­tion in the Schloss­garten park went. They said 2,500 offi­cers had encoun­tered lit­tle vio­lence.

18.2.12

City offi­cials said on Wednes­day morn­ing they were pleased with how the oper­a­tion in the Schloss­garten park went. They said 2,500 offi­cers had encoun­tered lit­tle vio­lence.

But pro­test­ers, who were try­ing to pro­tect 176 trees that author­i­ties say need to be cut down or moved as part of the project, charged that police had been over­ly aggres­sive dur­ing the evic­tion and had even attacked peo­ple with batons.

A spokesman for the pro­test­ers, Matthias Her­rmann, called the oper­a­tion “hec­tic and esca­lat­ing.”

But a Stuttgart police spokesman said that there had been only “occa­sion­al baton use” when pro­test­ers attempt­ed to set up a bar­ri­cade. A 38-year-old man was arrest­ed after he alleged­ly set off fire­works near offi­cials, accord­ing to police.

Oth­er pro­test­ers had to be forcibly cut away after they chained them­selves to trees. Some used pal­lets to erect bar­ri­ers on access roads, police said. Two even encased their arms in con­crete and police were still fig­ur­ing out how to deal with them as of mid-morn­ing.

Stuttgart 21 is a mul­ti-bil­lion-euro project that aims to trans­form the Baden-Würt­tem­berg state cap­i­tal into a major Euro­pean trans­port hub by lay­ing 57 kilo­me­tres of new track and rebuild­ing the city’s main train sta­tion under­ground while turn­ing it around 90 degrees.

But many have baulked at the cost of the plan and what they say will be dam­age to the local envi­ron­ment. Vio­lent protests flared in 2010, but the gov­ern­ment has insist­ed that con­struc­tion must con­tin­ue. On Sun­day, pro­test­ers tried to mount heavy equip­ment to pre­vent the cut­ting down of trees but were removed by police in a pre­lude to Wednesday’s evic­tion.

At the park, pro­test­ers had set up dozens of tents and tree hous­es before the police oper­a­tion began at about 3 am. Offi­cers first asked pro­test­ers to leave on their own – which some did – before they began the evic­tion.

Stuttgart 21 project spokesman Wolf­gang Diet­rich said the police oper­a­tion had gone “very well” because pro­test­ers had, for the most part, abstained from vio­lence. Author­i­ties could begin felling trees as ear­ly as Wednes­day after­noon.

Protesters mount diggers in bid to save trees in Stuttgart

22nd Jan­u­ary 2012

22nd Jan­u­ary 2012

Demon­stra­tors against the con­tro­ver­sial “Stuttgart 21” rail project tried to block work­ers from felling more than 30 trees ear­ly on Sun­day. Police removed pro­test­ers from trees and demo­li­tion equip­ment to allow teams to fin­ish the work.

On Sat­ur­day, ral­ly organ­is­ers said some 4,000 peo­ple gath­ered to protest the sta­tion’s con­struc­tion, while police esti­mat­ed the num­ber of demon­stra­tors at 1,200.

About 40 pro­test­ers tried to block teams from clear­ing the trees, but a police spokesman said offi­cers were able to dis­perse the crowd. The work was com­plet­ed by 6 a.m. on Sun­day but had to be stopped twice when two demon­stra­tors climbed on top of demo­li­tion equip­ment.

A spokesper­son for Parkschützer, an ini­tia­tive that aims to pre­serve the park, crit­i­cised the action, say­ing the trees should not have been tak­en down due to wind and poor vis­i­bil­i­ty.

Matthias von Her­rmann of Parkschützer took aim at the state gov­ern­ment in Baden-Würt­tem­berg.

“It is a trav­es­ty when (state) pre­mier Kretschmann con­tin­ues to preach about how the gov­ern­ment has to adhere to the law, but then police are out at a con­struc­tion site with­out a build­ing per­mit,” he said.

The mul­ti-bil­lion-euro project aims to trans­form the Baden-Würt­tem­berg cap­i­tal into a major Euro­pean trans­port hub. The sta­tion has sparked a wave of protests.

Deutsche Bahn wants to replace Stuttgart’s exist­ing train sta­tion with an under­ground one that it says would great­ly improve links between Paris, Vien­na and ulti­mate­ly Budapest.

http://www.thelocal.de/tag/Stuttgart_21

Earth First! Winter Moot, what to expect

This years Earth First! Win­ter Moot takes place in South Lanark­shire, Scot­land. In a months time envi­ron­men­tal­ists from across the UK and beyond will con­verge to dis­cuss and debate. Below is an update from the organ­is­ing col­lec­tive who are work­ing on the pro­gram.

This years Earth First! Win­ter Moot takes place in South Lanark­shire, Scot­land. In a months time envi­ron­men­tal­ists from across the UK and beyond will con­verge to dis­cuss and debate. Below is an update from the organ­is­ing col­lec­tive who are work­ing on the pro­gram.

The Moot 2012 col­lec­tive has felt that at pre­vi­ous EF! Gath­er­ings groups have pri­mar­i­ly attend­ed to recruit for their respec­tive cam­paigns. Yet those who attend EF! Gath­er­ings are pre­dom­i­nant­ly already active, mak­ing them good places for net­work­ing, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for out­right recruit­ment. We recog­nise the effort gath­er­ing organ­is­ers put into plan­ning agen­das but often the more dis­cur­sive aspects of the gath­er­ings focus on larg­er, abstract ques­tions and debates have often been framed by self-appoint­ed experts. We feel that these dis­cus­sions inef­fec­tive­ly attempt to find answers or reach con­sen­sus where this is inap­pro­pri­ate.

For exam­ple at the first EF! Gath­er­ing 20 years ago the ques­tion was asked: ‘What is EF!?’ 20 years lat­er in 2011 at the last Moot the same ques­tion was still being asked …

The answer is EF! is what we make it, and this year we are going to make it a space in which we can approach our cam­paigns both crit­i­cal­ly and ana­lyt­i­cal­ly by ask­ing more spe­cif­ic and prac­ti­cal ques­tions. Our activism should be con­stant­ly evolv­ing not stuck in a rut ask­ing the same ques­tions again and again.

The agen­da will be designed to ask ques­tions around four key issues: the tac­tics we use; the strate­gies that we employ in our cam­paigns; com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty; and sus­tain­able activism. There will be no attempt to reach con­clu­sions or con­sen­sus espe­cial­ly about what EF! is. Instead we want to have dis­cus­sions that lead to new ideas that could evolve ongo­ing cam­paigns or give cre­ative inspi­ra­tion to ones that are just get­ting start­ed.

A free space will be pro­vid­ed in which cam­paigns will be able to hold meet­ings and have fur­ther dis­cus­sions if they wish, and there will also be some space giv­en for cam­paign updates with an empha­sis on hon­est analy­sis rather than pro­mo­tion.

For updates and more info check the web­site or email us.

EF!WM Crew
e-mail: efwintermoot@noflag.org.uk
Home­page: http://earthfirstgathering.org.uk

report from tonight’s ‘bikes alive’ protest

9.1.12: ‘bikes alive’ is a new direct action cam­paign­ing group to counter the lethar­gy of trans­port for lon­don, and its pri­ori­tis­ing of lon­don traf­fic flow over the safe­ty of pedes­tri­ans and cyclists.

9.1.12: ‘bikes alive’ is a new direct action cam­paign­ing group to counter the lethar­gy of trans­port for lon­don, and its pri­ori­tis­ing of lon­don traf­fic flow over the safe­ty of pedes­tri­ans and cyclists. tonight saw the first of a series of direct action traf­fic calm­ing gath­er­ings at king’s cross designed to pres­sure TfL into more urgent action over the dead­ly junc­tion.

at the 6pm start num­bers looked a lit­tle thin, with no more than a few dozen cyclists gath­ered on the cor­ner of euston road and york way in front of king’s cross sta­tion. they were observed by sev­er­al police cyclists and a few oth­ers on foot.

num­bers did grad­u­al­ly build up, and by about twen­ty past, the action began with prob­a­bly a lit­tle over a hun­dred cyclists mak­ing their way up york way at a snail’s pace, form­ing an effec­tive block­ade against the rush hour traf­fic.

they looped round and back via the scala before com­plete­ly block­ing the busy junc­tion between euston and pen­tonville roads with york way.

here — next to the white ghost bicy­cle left as a memo­r­i­al to ‘deep’ lee, the young cyclist who was the 16th cycle fatal­i­ty of 2011 — they chant­ed slo­gans against boris, and reclaimed the streets. police began re-direct­ing traf­fic up york way and round, and traf­fic tailed back along euston road a long way.

for the next half an hour, the cycle block­ade, accom­pa­nied by quite a few peo­ple on foot, made slow progress back and forth along both sides of euston road out­side the sta­tion. near the front of the pro­ces­sion were des kay, the bicy­cle activist who won land­mark court bat­tles against police attempts to restrict the month­ly crit­i­cal mass rides, and jen­ny jones, the green cam­paign­er on the lon­don assem­bly and the met­ro­pol­i­tan police author­i­ty.

police response remained (i sus­pect part­ly because of jen­ny jones’ pres­ence) rea­son­ably low key, although inspec­tor mcdon­ald kept ask­ing peo­ple to ‘keep mov­ing’ and he was accom­pa­nied by an over-eager com­mu­ni­ty sup­port offi­cer who liked shout­ing at and grab­bing peo­ple in an offen­sive man­ner.

final­ly at just after 7pm, after hold­ing the start of pen­tonville road for sev­er­al min­utes while traf­fic was once again direct­ed up york way, cyclists agreed to leave en masse rather than dwin­dle in num­bers, des kay recit­ed one of his infa­mous cycle activist poems, and the cyclists went off into the night.

the plan is to hold reg­u­lar, pos­si­bly week­ly, block­ades until TfL promise to act. check the www.bikesalive.wordpress.com site for details of next week’s ride at king’s cross.

‘bikes alive’ action at kings x tomorrow

8th Jan­u­ary 2012

8th Jan­u­ary 2012

In the absence of any timetable or gen­uine will­ing­ness from either the may­or or trans­port for lon­don (tfl), bicy­cle activists will stage the first of sev­er­al direct actions tomor­row evening at king’s cross road junc­tions.

cyclists and sup­port­ers are expect­ed to arrive in large num­bers for tomor­row evening’s ‘crit­i­cal mass’ style block­ade at king’s cross in protest at the large num­bers of cyclist fatal­i­ties at the junc­tion and at tfl and the may­or’s ret­i­cence to do any­thing about it.

tomor­row’s action, which will last an hour from 6pm, fol­lows on from a recent vig­il, pic­tured above, which attract­ed around 100 cyclists and fea­tured speak­ers from the lon­don cycling cam­paign, road peace, lon­don liv­ing streets, and the green par­ty, as well as friends and rel­a­tives of some of those killed.

six­teen cyclists were killed on lon­don roads last year, up from 10 in 2010.

cam­paign­ers are call­ing on tfl to intro­duce dutch-style cycling sys­tems. in dutch cities, cyclists face sta­tis­ti­cal­ly less than half the dan­gers of their lon­don coun­ter­parts, and yet tfl have reject­ed pro­pos­als put for­ward as long ago as 2008, and instead is reduc­ing the num­ber of pedes­tri­an cross­ings to ‘improve traf­fic flow’.

tfl’s grounds for reject­ing junc­tion changes at king’s cross is that they may cause ‘traf­fic delay’.

last year, 24 yr old fash­ion stu­dent ‘deep’ lee was killed by a lor­ry at king’s cross. in decem­ber, after reject­ing safe­ty pro­pos­als at a meet­ing at cam­den town hall, tfl offi­cials asked her boyfriend if they could now remove the flower-cov­ered memo­r­i­al ghost bike. he respond­ed that they should ‘sort out the junc­tion first’.

in response to tfl’s lethar­gy and fail­ures, and in a direct chal­lenge to their con­cerns about ‘traf­fic delays’, bicy­cle activists have called for cyclists and their sup­port­ers to join them at king’s cross at 6pm tomor­row evening and to cycle around the junc­tion en masse at a safe slow speed, per­haps stop­ping every now and then as sheer mass of cycle traf­fic some­times caus­es delays.

this will be the first of sev­er­al reg­u­lar such actions to show tfl that cyclists are fed up of being treat­ed as dis­pos­able cit­i­zens and are enti­tled to pro­tec­tion, safe­ty, and con­sid­er­a­tion in road plan­ning.

for more info and con­tacts for tomor­row’s and future actions, see www.bikesalive.wordpress.com

and for some excel­lent opin­ion pieces and well-researched links, see www.cyclelondoncity.blogspot.com

The militarisation of the Susa Valley: final act & Brief History of the No TAV movement

12.11.11

12.11.11

Berlusconi’s mori­bund gov­ern­ment has final­ly man­aged to pass a decree – with the opposition’s approval – that for­malis­es the cur­rent state of mil­i­tari­sa­tion in the Susa Val­ley. The con­struc­tion site in La Mad­dale­na will become a “site of strate­gic nation­al inter­est”, that is, a mil­i­tary area. The con­se­quences for those who tres­pass will be the same imposed by law for any oth­er mil­i­tary area tres­pass: a prison sen­tence between 3 months and one year, or the pay­ment of a fine between 51 and 309 Euro. That’s not it, though! The rock extract­ed on the site will become a legal con­struc­tion mate­r­i­al, even if con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by ura­ni­um, asbestos and oth­er chem­i­cal prod­ucts released by the exca­va­tion process. This will have a huge impact on the indus­try of the “great use­less pub­lic works” beloved by the cur­rent gov­ern­ment; and it’s a huge present to the con­struc­tion mafia. Also, it’s anoth­er heavy attack to free­dom of protest and dis­sent, and a clear mes­sage for the peo­ple of the Val Susa: don’t dis­turb the con­struc­tion!

In the mean­time, a cou­ple of weeks ago a pub­lic youth hos­tel man­aged by an organ­i­sa­tion close to the NO TAV move­ment was attacked and van­dalised. The build­ing is often used by NO TAV pro­test­ers com­ing from the sur­round­ing areas. The attack­ers stole mon­ey and dam­aged the fur­ni­ture. Spe­cial atten­tion was reserved to the books, mag­a­zines and orig­i­nal mate­ri­als about the Antifas­cist Resis­tance which the build­ing makes avail­able to the pub­lic. Just in case it wasn’t clear who was behind the attack.

Nev­er­the­less, the state of per­ma­nent mobil­i­sa­tion declared last May by the NO TAV car­ries on; the nation­al tour that start­ed in Octo­ber in Bologna will con­clude in the next few days in Genoa, and more ini­tia­tives have been announced to protest against the new decree. 

Sources: this arti­cle, and var­i­ous oth­er things bor­rowed and recy­cled from Italy Indy­media.

Written/translated by Italy Calling.

NO TAV (No to the High Speed Train) is a move­ment based in the Susa Val­ley in Pied­mont that oppos­es the cre­ation of the new high speed rail­way line between Turin and Lyon in France. This line is part of a EU project which plans to con­nect Lyon to Budapest and then onto Ukraine. Sim­i­lar protest move­ments were active in the ear­ly 90s in Flo­rence, Bologna and Rome, but their mil­i­tan­cy and the bru­tal repres­sion that this trig­gered in the Susa Val­ley has made the Pied­mon­tese move­ment the most talked about.

The sim­ple prin­ci­ple behind the move­ment is that a new high speed rail­way line in the Val­ley is com­plete­ly use­less and not need­ed, its only pur­pose being the prof­it of the many pri­vate com­pa­nies that have shares in it. The NO TAV  think that the cur­rent rail­way line between Pied­mont and France is more than suf­fi­cient, con­sid­er­ing that traf­fic in the area has nev­er been incred­i­bly high. More impor­tant­ly, the con­struc­tion of the line would utter­ly and irre­versibly destroy a huge part of the Susa Val­ley, caus­ing not only an envi­ron­men­tal but also an eco­nom­ic and social dis­as­ter, with busi­ness­es clos­ing down and vil­lages being com­plete­ly dis­fig­ured or dis­ap­pear­ing.

High speed rail­way lines in Italy are con­sid­ered to be of “strate­gic inter­est”, which trans­lat­ed from polit­i­cal bull­shit lan­guage means that the law allows this type of works WITHOUT con­sult­ing the local pop­u­la­tion and insti­tu­tions what­so­ev­er. At a time of eco­nom­ic col­lapse such as Italy is going through, the works require bil­lions of Ital­ian tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, at the expense of pri­ma­ry ser­vices like edu­ca­tion and health. It would main­ly be con­struc­tion and oth­er pri­vate com­pa­nies prof­it­ing from it, but when fin­ished and in use, the low demand for the line would end up mak­ing it a loss-mak­ing bur­den on the tax­pay­ers. Like in Ross­port, Ire­land, the locals’ con­cerns and pro­pos­als are being com­plete­ly ignored in the name of the only Mod­ern God: mon­ey.

The NO TAV came up with their own plan for the area which would include:
- chang­ing the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion process­es to decrease trans­port of peo­ple and goods, espe­cial­ly on long dis­tances
- sup­port­ing local sus­tain­able trades instead of big indus­tries  
- cre­at­ing or improv­ing local means of sus­tain­able and green trans­port for work­ers and stu­dents
- sup­port­ing and incre­ment­ing the use of the already exist­ing local rail­way line

The main source of this arti­cle is Turin’s NO TAV web­site.

Earth First! Winter Moot 2012 — 24–26th February 2012. Updated: location & what to expect

A week­end of dis­cus­sion and net­work­ing for those tak­ing direct action against eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion. 

Please note date & loca­tion change (due to date clash & venue prob­lems):

24–26th Feb­ru­ary 2012, near Glas­gow

Near­est train sta­tion: Lanark.

A week­end of dis­cus­sion and net­work­ing for those tak­ing direct action against eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion. 

Please note date & loca­tion change (due to date clash & venue prob­lems):

24–26th Feb­ru­ary 2012, near Glas­gow

Near­est train sta­tion: Lanark.

See earthfirstgathering.org.uk for fur­ther infor­ma­tion about loca­tion,  pro­gramme and con­tact details

Update:

Where — this years Earth First Win­ter Moot will take place in Gle­spin Vil­lage Hall, South Lanark­shire. Gle­spin is a small vil­lage about 14 miles south of Lanark, and 35 miles south of Glas­gow. South Lanark­shire also has many beau­ti­ful areas with rivers, hills, forests and peat bogs.  Full direc­tions

What to expect — this years Earth First! Win­ter Moot takes place in South Lanark­shire, Scot­land. In a months time envi­ron­men­tal­ists from across the UK and beyond will con­verge to dis­cuss and debate. Below is an update from the organ­is­ing col­lec­tive who are work­ing on the pro­gram.

The Moot 2012 col­lec­tive has felt that at pre­vi­ous EF! Gath­er­ings groups have pri­mar­i­ly attend­ed to recruit for their respec­tive cam­paigns. Yet those who attend EF! Gath­er­ings are pre­dom­i­nant­ly already active, mak­ing them good places for net­work­ing, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for out­right recruit­ment. We recog­nise the effort gath­er­ing organ­is­ers put into plan­ning agen­das but often the more dis­cur­sive aspects of the gath­er­ings focus on larg­er,  abstract ques­tions and debates have often been framed by self-appoint­ed experts. We feel that these dis­cus­sions inef­fec­tive­ly attempt to find answers or reach con­sen­sus where this is inap­pro­pri­ate.

For exam­ple at the first EF! Gath­er­ing 20 years ago the ques­tion was asked: ‘What is EF!?’ 20 years lat­er in 2011 at the last Moot the same ques­tion was still being asked …

The answer is EF! is what we make it, and this year we are going to make it a space in which we can approach our cam­paigns both crit­i­cal­ly and ana­lyt­i­cal­ly by ask­ing more spe­cif­ic and prac­ti­cal ques­tions. Our activism should be con­stant­ly evolv­ing not stuck in a rut ask­ing the same ques­tions again and again.

The agen­da will be designed to ask ques­tions around four key issues: the tac­tics we use; the strate­gies that we employ in our cam­paigns; com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty; and sus­tain­able activism. There will be no attempt to reach con­clu­sions or con­sen­sus espe­cial­ly about what EF! is. Instead we want to have dis­cus­sions that lead to new ideas that could evolve ongo­ing cam­paigns or give cre­ative inspi­ra­tion to ones that are just get­ting start­ed.

A free space will be pro­vid­ed in which cam­paigns will be able to hold meet­ings and have fur­ther dis­cus­sions if they wish, and there will also be some space giv­en for cam­paign updates with an empha­sis on hon­est analy­sis rather than pro­mo­tion.

For updates and more info check the web­site or email us.

efwintermoot@noflag.org.uk

London September critical mass — pics and short report

sept 30 crit­i­cal mass. police allow motorist to leave the scene of an assault and refuse to take details despite wit­ness­es. did you wit­ness the assault?

the balmy indi­an sum­mer weath­er ensured a good turn-out for the crit­i­cal mass bike ride last fri­day evening, and hun­dreds of cyclists enjoyed a joy­ous ride round lon­don despite the occa­sion­al psy­cho­path­ic motorist and a cou­ple of crazy cops. the crit­i­cal mass bicy­cle ride, now in in its 17th year, takes place on the last fri­day of each month through­out the year.

sept 30 crit­i­cal mass. police allow motorist to leave the scene of an assault and refuse to take details despite wit­ness­es. did you wit­ness the assault?

the balmy indi­an sum­mer weath­er ensured a good turn-out for the crit­i­cal mass bike ride last fri­day evening, and hun­dreds of cyclists enjoyed a joy­ous ride round lon­don despite the occa­sion­al psy­cho­path­ic motorist and a cou­ple of crazy cops. the crit­i­cal mass bicy­cle ride, now in in its 17th year, takes place on the last fri­day of each month through­out the year.

the crit­i­cal mass bicy­cle ride, now in in its 17th year, takes place on the last fri­day of each month through­out the year. cyclists meet from about 6pm on the south bank under water­loo bridge near the nation­al film the­atre, and nor­mal­ly set off on a ride by about 7.

the ride has no offi­cial organ­is­ers, and the route is nev­er agreed in advance, rely­ing instead on a ‘crit­i­cal mass’ of front run­ners per­suad­ing the rest of the crowd to fol­low in any par­tic­u­lar direc­tion.

on fri­day, the con­voy of four or five hun­dred cyclists (also includ­ing an increas­ing con­tin­gent of skate­board­ers) head­ed north over the bridge, and unusu­al­ly took the under­pass into kingsway before head­ing west and on to oxford street.

as the main pur­pose of the mass is to cel­e­brate human propul­sion over car­bon, reclaim the streets, and show that cyclists have as many rights as dri­vers, it is some­times a lit­tle con­tentious when the route includes oxford street so ear­ly in the evening, as it most­ly dis­rupts pub­lic trans­port rather than gen­er­al traf­fic (which isn’t allowed onto oxford street until lat­er in the evening). how­ev­er, the mass kept up the pace and only stopped briefly at oxford cir­cus before head­ing to mar­ble arch and down park lane.

by this time, cyclists had spread out a lit­tle and so it was hard­er to take all four lanes of the road. so despite the neon sign at the start of park lane warn­ing motorists ‘delays pos­si­ble’, some of them were frus­trat­ed to find cyclists in their path (even though they were quite like­ly to get held up again at a traf­fic jam at the south end of the high­way), and among these motorists there was a police car, whose dri­ver reck­less­ly kept chang­ing lanes with­out sig­nalling, and delib­er­ate­ly cut across cyclists forc­ing them to veer to the left, and seri­ous­ly risk­ing injury.

fur­ther down park lane, there had been some sort of alter­ca­tion, and a woman claimed she had been assault­ed and pushed over by a motorist. the police car had stopped and the offi­cers got out, but instead of inves­ti­gat­ing the assault, one of them was mak­ing com­ments loud­ly that “you cyclists are pests”. the young woman, along with wit­ness­es to the assault, kept telling the police that she want­ed to make a com­plaint and press charges, but the cops just ignored her, return­ing to their vehi­cle and wind­ing their win­dows up. they also for a while refused to give any of their own details until sev­er­al cyclists sur­round­ing the car kept ask­ing for their badge num­bers, with which they even­tu­al­ly com­plied. they how­ev­er refused to take any details of the alleged inci­dent. the young woman is con­sid­er­ing an offi­cial police com­plaint. if any­one wit­nessed the assault or took pics/video, please con­tact me and i’ll put you in touch. i only have the clip of the police ignor­ing her requests.

some­times after an inci­dent like this, the mass gets stretched out or split, but this time, the front run­ners were cycling round and round the duke of welling­ton arch at hyde park cor­ner, so every­one recon­vened and hun­dreds of bicy­cles once again rode togeth­er east along pic­cadil­ly, com­plete­ly trap­ping a red diplo­mat­ic police car at one point, and on into pic­cadil­ly cir­cus, trafal­gar square (where a cou­ple of cyclists jumped into the foun­tains to cool off), and down white­hall to par­lia­ment square. there, one rid­er briefly hitched a lift on the back of a lor­ry before we all head­ed up to buck­ing­ham palace, back to hyde park cor­ner and then down to sloane square.

two hours in, and although num­bers were begin­ning to lessen, when i left the ride there were still at least a hun­dred rid­ers head­ing west down the king’s road.

the next ride will be 28th octo­ber.

http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk/main.html
More pic­tures and videos at http://london.indymedia.org/articles/10323

Check out if there’s a Crit­i­cal Mass in your town — or start one