Category: Unnecessary Developments

Spirit of Freedom (October 2008) — support the eco-prisoners

Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Wel­come to the Octo­ber 2008 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. The last month has been a month of mixed emo­tions for ELP. On the one hand we heard the bril­liant news that the Dutch ani­mal rights activist, Ger­ben Jan, was found not guilty of assault­ing a police offi­cer, caus­ing the offi­cer to break his leg, dur­ing an ani­mal rights demo in Swe­den. Instead Ger­ban was found guilty of resist­ing arrest for which he was fined and deport­ed. Also in an unex­pect­ed move, all the Aus­tri­an Ani­mal Rights pris­on­ers were released from prison pend­ing their tri­al! Plus, the Amer­i­can veg­an, Nathan Kno­erl, was grant­ed bail in his case where he is accused of involve­ment in an anti-vivi­sec­tion protest. Fol­low­ing Nathans release a sup­port cam­paign has been set up to try and help raise mon­ey for Nathan’s forth­com­ing legal case. For more info please e‑mail supportnathan@gmail.com. How­ev­er, just as ELP start­ed to think our pris­on­er lists might start to go down, we received news of fur­ther police raids in Aus­tria. ELP also learnt that, due to Frank Ambrose, grass­ing every­one up, the Amer­i­can’s Marie Mason, Stephanie Lynne Fultz, and Aren Burth­wick, have all had to enter Plea Bar­gains and admit some of the charges set against them. In Marie’s case she has admit­ted her direct role in an ELF arson on a Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing involved with GM crop tests, whilst Stephanie and Aren have admit­ted not report­ing a fire (Stephanie has admit­ted cut­ting Marie’s hair which was burnt fol­low­ing the arson). We don’t know what sen­tences Stephanie and Aren are like­ly to receive, but Marie is look­ing at 15 to 20 years and has been remand­ed into cus­tody. This is real­ly bad news, espe­cial­ly as it was hoped Marie might remain free until her sen­tenc­ing ear­ly next year. Around the world, peo­ple are being impris­oned for stand­ing up for what they believe in and try­ing to
help the ani­mals and the earth. So please, no mat­ter where you are in the world, sup­port the eco-pris­on­ers. And no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth.

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Tre Arrow, #70936–065, (in tran­sit), USA. Serv­ing 78 months for his involve­ment in two ELF arsons. 1) an arson on log­ging trucks 2) an arson on vehi­cles owned by a sand & grav­el com­pa­ny. (Tre is a raw ener­gy veg­an — He has asked that his let­ters of sup­port are writ­ten on scrap paper or tree-free paper).

Grant Barnes #137563, San Car­los Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO 81002, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles. The let­ters ELF were spray paint­ed onto all of the vehi­cles. (Grant is a veg­an).

Nathan Block, #36359–086, FCI Lom­poc, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 3600 Guard Road, Lom­poc, CA 93436, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land. Serv­ing 18 years. 1) Ten years for using explo­sives to destroy elec­tric­i­ty pylons lead­ing from nuclear pow­er sta­tions. 2) Eight years for the mur­der of a Swiss Bor­der Guard whilst on the run. In ’02 Mar­co com­plet­ed a 12-year sen­tence in Italy for destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty pylons in Italy. (Mar­co is a meat eater who encour­ages organ­ic liv­ing).

Daniele Casali­ni, Casa Cir­con­dar­i­ale, Via Burla 59, 43100 Par­ma, Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy. (Daniele is a veg­an).

Rod­ney Coro­n­a­do #03895–000, FCI El Reno, PO Box 1500, El Reno, OK 73036, USA. Serv­ing one-year impris­on­ment after he informed peo­ple how to make an incen­di­ary device dur­ing a speech at an ani­mal rights gath­er­ing. (Meat eater).

Francesco Gioia, C.C. Sol­lic­ciano, Via Giro­lamo Min­ervi­ni 2/R, 50142 Firen­ze Sol­lic­ciano (FI), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy. (Francesco is a veg­e­tar­i­an and Straight Edge).

Pao­la Gori, Via delle Mac­chie 9, 57124 Livorno, Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of allow­ing her house to be used to plan ille­gal activ­i­ty. (Pao­la is a veg­an).

Bryan Lefey #38664–086, FDC SeaT­ac, Fed­er­al Deten­tion Cen­ter, P.O. Box 13900, Seat­tle, WA 98198, USA. On remand accused of an ELF action that saw the dam­ag­ing of GM trees and the dam­ag­ing of US Forestry Ser­vice vehi­cles. (Diet unknown).

Jef­frey Luers, # 13797671, CRCI, 9111 NE Sun­der­land Ave, Port­land, OR 97211–1708, USA. Serv­ing 10 years for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship & the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck. The orig­i­nal sen­tence was 22 years & 8 months, but was reduced on appeal. (Diet unknown).

Marie Jeanette Mason, Neway­go Coun­ty Jail, PO Box 845, White Cloud, MI 49349, USA. Await­ing sen­tenc­ing hav­ing plead­ed guilty to involve­ment in ELF arson against a Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing car­ry­ing out Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied crop tests. Marie also plead­ed guilty to con­spir­ing to car­ry out ELF actions and also admit­ted involve­ment in 12 oth­er ELF actions. Marie is expect­ed to receive a sen­tence of between 15–20 years. (Marie is a veg­an).

Eric McDavid, 16209–097. FCI Vic­torville Medi­um II, PO BOX 5700, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 19 years & 7 months for plan­ning to destroy the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Forestry Ser­vice, mobile phone masts and pow­er plants. At the point of his arrest no crim­i­nal dam­age has actu­al­ly occurred. (Eric is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan, #63794–053, USP Mar­i­on, US Pen­i­ten­tiary, PO Box 1000, Mar­i­on, IL 62959, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an old growth log­ging cor­po­ra­tion. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Daniel is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Jonathan Paul — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Bri­ana Waters 36432–086, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route 37, Dan­bury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing six years for involve­ment in an ELF arson on a Uni­ver­si­ty. (Diet unknown).

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #36360–086, FCI Dublin, 5700 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F, Dublin, CA 94568, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted her role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS
(All Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers fol­low a min­i­mum veg­e­tar­i­an diet and most are veg­an).

Jon Able­white TB4885, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Jon is a veg­an).

Dan Amos VN7818, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter SO22 5DF, Eng­land.
On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Dan is a veg­an)

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter, SO22 5DF, Eng­land. On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Gregg is a veg­an).

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Nat is a veg­an).

Mel Broughton TN9138, HMP Wood­hill, Tat­ten­hoe Street, Mil­ton Keynes, Bucks MK4 4DA, Eng­land. On remand accused of involve­ment with an arson and black­mail cam­paign against an Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty vivi­sec­tion estab­lish­ment.
(Mel is a veg­an).

Jacob Con­roy #93501–011, FCI Vic­torville Medi­um I Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5300, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 48 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Jake is a veg­an).

Don­ald Cur­rie A3660AA, HMP Parkhurst, New­port, Isle of Wight, PO30 5NX, Eng­land. Serv­ing an Inde­ter­mi­nate Sen­tence, of not less than six actu­al years, for car­ry­ing out arsons against tar­gets asso­ci­at­ed the vivi­sec­tion indus­try includ­ing HLS. (Don is a veg­an).

Lau­ren Gaz­zo­la #93497–011, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route #37Danbury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing 54 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Lau­ren is a veg­an).

Joshua Harp­er #29429–086, FCI Sheri­dan Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5000, Sheri­dan, OR 97378 USA. Serv­ing 36 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Josh is a veg­an).

Sean Kirt­ley WC 6977, HMP Stafford, 54 Gaol Road, Stafford, ST16 3AW, Eng­land. Serv­ing four and a half years for run­ning an anti-vivi­sec­tion cam­paign web­site. (Sean is a veg­an).

Kevin Kjon­aas #93502–011, FCI Sand­stone, PO Box 1000, Sand­stone, MN 55072 USA. Serv­ing 72 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Kevin is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Heather Nichol­son VM4859, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign. (Heather is a veg­an).

Jonathan Paul, #07167–085, FCI Phoenix, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 37910 N 45th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85086, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Jonathan is a veg­an).

John Smith, TB4887, HMP Lind­holme, Bawtry Road, Hat­field Wood­house, Don­cast­er, DN7 6EE, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (John is a veg­an).

Andrew Stepan­ian #26399–050, USP Mar­i­on, P.O. Box 1000 Mar­i­on, IL 62959, USA. Serv­ing 36 months for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Andrew is a veg­an).

Ker­ry Whit­burn TB4886, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Ker­ry is a veg­an).

Sarah White­head, VM7684, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx, TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. Serv­ing two years for: 1) res­cu­ing a pup­py from hor­rif­ic con­di­tions. 2) res­cu­ing over 100 ani­mals from a pet breed­er who was lat­er pros­e­cut­ed for ani­mal abuse. Also await­ing tri­al for SHAC activ­i­ty. (Sarah is a veg­an)

PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS

Helen Wood­son, 03231–045, FMC Car­swell — Admin. Max. Unit, POB 27137, Ft. Worth, TX 76127, USA. Serv­ing 8 years 10 months for actions that focused on the inter­re­la­tion­ship of war & the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world. The actions includ­ed pour­ing red paint over the secu­ri­ty desk of a fed­er­al court and mak­ing threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly Helen had served 20½ years for: 1) Using a ham­mer to dis­arm a nuclear mis­sile silo. 2) Burn­ing $25,000 on the floor of a bank whilst denounc­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion & eco­nom­ic injus­tice. 3) Mail­ing warn­ing let­ters with bul­lets attached to Gov­ern­ment & cor­po­rate offi­cials. (Diet unknown).

THE LECCE DEFENDANTS
The Lec­ce Defen­dants have been charged with “sub­ver­sive asso­ci­a­tion” accused of dam­ag­ing Esso petrol pumps to oppose the War on Iraq; sab­o­tag­ing the cash machines of a bank which funds an immi­gra­tion cen­tre; and tar­get­ing the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Benet­ton in sup­port of Mapuche land rights activists in Chile. All of the defen­dants are cur­rent­ly either under house arrest or released on bail.

ANTIFA PRISONERS

Vah­tang Devitlidze, ul. Libbedo­va 42, UO 68/2, otryad 14, briga­da 142, g. Hagyshen­sk, Krasnodarskiy Kray, 352680 Rus­sia. Serv­ing 2½ years for stab­bing a neo-nazi in the leg whilst defend­ing him­self from attack. (Diet unknown).

Fabio Milan, C.C. via Pianez­za 300, 10151 Tori­no, Italy. On remand accused of fight­ing with the police after an anti-fas­cist protest. (Diet unknown).

Andrea Neff, Bnr: 746/07/2, Jus­tizvol­lzugsanstalt fur Frauen in Berlin, Arkonas­trasse 56, 13189 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 14 months for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ty. (Diet unknown).

Chris­t­ian Süm­mer­mann, Bnr: 441/08/5, JVA Plötzensee, Lehrter­str. 61, 10557
Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 40 months for breach­ing the peace whilst serv­ing a sus­pend­ed sen­tence issued for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties. (Diet unknown).

Tomasz Wiloszews­ki, Zak­lad Karny, Orze­chowa 5, 98–200 Sier­adz, Poland.
Serv­ing 15 years for acci­den­tal­ly killing a neo-nazi whilst defend­ing him­self. (Tomasz is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Yuri Yure­vich Milevskiy, SIZO #7 kam­era 38, g. Brest, ul. Kar­la Mark­sa 86, 224000 Belarus. On remand for fight­ing with neo-nazis. (Diet unknown).

OTHER PRISONERS

Olga Alek­san­drov­na Nevskaya, UU163/5, 7 Otryad, pos. Dzerzhin­skiy, Mozhaysk 140090 Moskovskaya oblast, Rus­sia. Eco-activist serv­ing 6 years for arson, crim­i­nal dam­age and caus­ing explo­sions in protest at the war in Chech­nya. Due for release in 2009. (Diet unknown).

Vagge­lis Botzatzis, Komo­ti­ni Juridi­cal Prison (“Dikastikes Fylakes Komo­ti­nis”), T.K. 69100, Greece. On remand accused of set­ting fire to two com­pa­ny cars owned by a energy/power com­pa­ny. It is believed that the per­son or per­sons unknown who car­ried out the arson did so in protest at the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment and in sup­port of two work­ers who died at the pow­er plant. Vagge­lis is also accused of set­ting fire to a bank and start­ing a fire inside a car yard. (Meat Eater).

Richard Sills (Address Unknown, USA). Serv­ing 15 months for bomb hoax­ing a Uni­ver­si­ty say­ing they would be tar­get­ed by the ALF if they didn’t stop their ani­mal exper­i­ments. (Diet unknown).

Michael W. Sykes, 696693, 3855 Coop­er St, Jack­son, MI 49201, USA. Youth held on remand accused of anti-sprawl arsons, crim­i­nal dam­age, spray-paint­ing an anar­chist sign and burn­ing the Amer­i­can flag. (Diet unknown)

Fran Thomp­son, #1090915 HU 1C, WERDCC, PO Box 300, Van­dalia, MO 63382, USA. Serv­ing Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalk­er who had bro­ken into her home. Before her impris­on­ment Fran was an eco, ani­mal & anti-nuke cam­paign­er. (Fran is a veg­an).

MOVE

MOVE is an eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group who car­ried out protests in defence of all life. All move pris­on­ers describe them­selves as veg­e­tar­i­ans. There are cur­rent­ly eight MOVE activists in prison each serv­ing 100 years after been framed for the mur­der of a cop in 1979. 9th defen­dant, Mer­le Africa, died in prison in 1998.

Deb­bie Simms Africa (006307), Janet Hol­loway Africa (006308) and Janine Philips Africa (006309) all at: SCI Cam­bridge Springs, 451 Fuller­ton Ave, Cam­bridge Springs, PA 16403–1238, USA.

Michael Davis Africa (AM4973) and Charles Simms Africa (AM4975) both at SCI Grater­ford, PO Box 244, Grater­ford, PA 19426–0244, USA.

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA.

William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Del­bert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dal­las Draw­er K, Dal­las, PA 18612, USA.

Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Dri­ve, Way­nes­burg PA 15370, USA. In 1981 Mumia, for­mer Black Pan­ther and vocal sup­port­er of MOVE, was framed for the mur­der of a cop. He was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death but is cur­rent­ly await­ing re-sen­tenc­ing fol­low­ing a court hear­ing in 2001.

STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE
Some peo­ple list­ed in this newslet­ter have car­ried out vio­lent actions. ‘Spir­it of Free­dom’ does not con­done vio­lence. But we are also against cen­sor­ship & believe peo­ple can decide for them­selves who they wish to sup­port.

ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORK
ELP is an inter­na­tion­al eco-pris­on­er sup­port net­work found­ed, in Britain, in 1993 to sup­port jailed eco-activists. We sup­port the pris­on­ers by pro­duc­ing var­i­ous reg­u­lar pris­on­er lists:

Spir­it of Free­dom is ELP’s inter­na­tion­al month­ly pris­on­er list­ing which is cir­cu­lat­ed by e‑mail.

Urgent ELP! Bul­letin is an e‑mail ser­vice that dis­trib­utes the names of any new eco-pris­on­er as soon as ELP gets their details. For more info e‑mail ELP4321@hotmail.com

On-Line Newslet­ters — ELP has a num­ber of web­sites that pro­vide news, pris­on­er lists and addi­tion­al info about ELP & the pris­on­ers.

Eng­lish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Greek lan­guage ELP Web­site
http://greekelp.blogspot.com

North Amer­i­can ELP Web­site
www.ecoprisoners.org

Turk­ish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.geocities.com/yesilanarsi/elp.htm

ELP Extra is an e‑mail group that cir­cu­lates the details of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, ELP learns about, who do not fall with­in the remit for sup­port by ELP. To sub­scribe to the list e‑mail ELP4321@Hotmail.com

Aus­tralian ELP.SN is our Aus­tralian con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp4321@hotmail.com

Bel­gium ELP.SN is our Bel­gium con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp_bel@hotmail.com

Ger­man ELP.SN is a pris­on­er led ini­tia­tive run by eco-pris­on­er Mar­co Camenisch. For more info con­tact Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land.

Greek ELP.SN is our Greek con­tact. For more info e‑mail greekelp@yahoo.gr

North Amer­i­can ELP is our North Amer­i­can con­tact. For more infor­ma­tion e‑mail naelpsn@mutualaid.org

Turkey ELP.SN is our Turk­ish con­tact. For more info e‑mail
yesilanarsi@yahoo.com

Earth Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers Sup­port Net­work
elp4321@hotmail.com
http://spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Penan mount logging road blockade

Penan mount log­ging road block­ade
8 Octo­ber 2008

Penan com­mu­ni­ties in Sarawak, Malaysia, have mount­ed a road block­ade against the log­ging com­pa­ny Inter­hill in an attempt to stop the destruc­tion of their last remain­ing rain­forests.

The Penan orga­nized the block­ade after nego­ti­a­tions with Interhill’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the com­pa­ny’s tim­ber camp failed.

Penan mount log­ging road block­ade
8 Octo­ber 2008

Penan com­mu­ni­ties in Sarawak, Malaysia, have mount­ed a road block­ade against the log­ging com­pa­ny Inter­hill in an attempt to stop the destruc­tion of their last remain­ing rain­forests.

The Penan orga­nized the block­ade after nego­ti­a­tions with Interhill’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the com­pa­ny’s tim­ber camp failed.

‘We are ask­ing Inter­hill to respect our Native Cus­tom­ary Rights and to stop log­ging our remain­ing pri­ma­ry forests,’ a Penan spokesman said.

The block­ade, in the Mid­dle Baram area of Sarawak, is being organ­ised by the Ba Abang, Long Item, Long Kawi and Long Pakan com­mu­ni­ties. A sim­i­lar block­ade was erect­ed in the area in June 2006 but was dis­man­tled by the police after two weeks.

The block­ade comes short­ly after Penan women raised a cry of alarm over cas­es of sex­u­al abuse and vio­lence by log­ging com­pa­ny work­ers in the region.

The Penan tribe are nomadic hunter-gath­er­ers. Many now live in per­ma­nent set­tle­ments, but con­tin­ue to rely on the for­est for their exis­tence.

Inter­hill is a Malaysian com­pa­ny, and has been log­ging pri­ma­ry rain­forests in Sarawak since the 1970s.

Source: Bruno Manser Fund

Back­ground info: www.survival-international.org

SWOMP — A freestate in Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Intro­duc­tion

It is the fourth time activists have squat­ted a piece of land in the Pijp (an area of Ams­ter­dam) and by far the most suc­ces­ful action. They are protest­ing against unnec­es­sary demo­li­tion and spec­u­la­tion as well as tak­ing action in sup­port of local neigh­bour­hoods for a sus­tain­able future.

Intro­duc­tion

It is the fourth time activists have squat­ted a piece of land in the Pijp (an area of Ams­ter­dam) and by far the most suc­ces­ful action. They are protest­ing against unnec­es­sary demo­li­tion and spec­u­la­tion as well as tak­ing action in sup­port of local neigh­bour­hoods for a sus­tain­able future.

swomp solar

Some his­to­ry

On July 11, 2008, a group of peo­ple from the Pijp squat­ting group and Groen­front! Ams­ter­dam squat­ted a vacant lot at Rusten­berg­er­straat 438–440. A school had pre­vi­ous­ly stood on the land and was demol­ished against the wish­es of the neigh­bour­hood, prob­a­bly to pre­vent it being squat­ted. There are cur­rent­ly no plans for the site, which has a tree which is pro­tect­ed by per­mits. Pre­vi­ous land squats had been evict­ed quite bru­tal­ly by police so this time the activists were pre­pared — they were in large num­bers, had the sup­port of local res­i­dents and made sure their car­a­vans were well secured in the ground!

After one month, the project declared itself a free state and the res­i­dents pledged to live in a car­bon neu­tral fash­ion on the site. Instead of wait­ing for local gov­ern­ment to decide what to do with the land they decid­ed to take action them­selves! Per­ma­cul­ture gar­dens were set up and solar pan­els were installed. Local squat cafes are doing ben­e­fits in sup­port of the project. In Sep­tem­ber an open day was held with a tour speak­ers and dis­cus­sions

swomp soil

Liv­ing at SWOMP (in the words of one res­i­dent)

The whole thing has grown into a cli­mate friend­ly exper­i­men­tal gar­den. Every day we are learn­ing more about the prob­lems you encounter when hav­ing to pro­vide for your­self (doing it in a way which means in the future you can keep pro­vid­ing your­self). These are the same prob­lems soci­ety / the com­mu­ni­ty will faces soon. We are exper­i­ment­ing with per­ma­cul­tures, we have a ground­wa­ter­pump and a solar­cell and are plan­ning to build our own eco toi­let.

Being busy with this I’m meet­ing a lot of oth­er peo­ple being busy with sim­i­lar stuff, and sud­den­ly the feel­ing of being an activist call­ing out in the land of the deaf is chang­ing. More and more peo­ple seem to be real­is­ing some­thing has to be done, and most impor­tant­ly, we can do it (we are going to win)!

We stum­bled across the con­cept of tran­si­tion towns. Appar­ent­ly oth­ers are doing the same as us. Oth­ers, not activists just com­mu­ni­ties. Com­mu­ni­ties that stop and think: how are we going to deal with the upcom­ing (unavoid­able) oil-cri­sis and cli­mate change? What hap­pens when the trucks stop dri­ving and bring­ing us food and pro­duce from all over the world? Loot­ing, only the fittest will sur­vive? Or can we as a com­mu­ni­ty pre­pare our­selves and equip our­selves with work­able solu­tions. We should start prepar­ing: Where do we get food? Who heals the sick, how do we trans­port? How do make tools with­out our cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy? And most impor­tant of all how do we pre­vent future cri­sis? How can we find a bal­anced way of liv­ing with­out wear­ing out our own sur­round­ings?

New ethics will have to be devel­oped. This all might seem a dis­tant dream or fan­ta­sy but it is already hap­pen­ing all over the world. With 33 tran­si­tion towns in Eng­land and 77 world­wide. And four times more being set up world­wide. It is actu­al­ly a very acces­si­ble way of chang­ing, it’s real­is­ing that we our­selves need to do it and nobody else. It starts with cre­at­ing con­scious­ness. Not about the upcom­ing cri­sis, every­body knows about that by now and activists all over the world feel frus­trat­ed about every­body know­ing but nobody act­ing on it.

We need to grow con­sciousnes about self-deter­mi­na­tion, and about the pos­si­bil­ties that you have as an indi­vid­ual and a com­mu­ni­ty. Of course the gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions won’t change by them­selves. We don’t need to wait for them, we should even exclude them. The steps seem so big but are actu­al­ly small and achiev­able. It starts with grow­ing con­scious­ness, its almost like a sect man! Wher­ev­er some peo­ple start being busy with tran­si­tion towns, all the peo­ple around them get infect­ed and enthu­si­asm soon grows a net­work. A net­work starts hav­ing meet­ings, and in the meet­ing real­is­tic goals will be set. “In how­ev­er many years we should be able to get at least 50% of our food from our own lands, by then we need to have reduced our oil-depen­dence, at least by the year of XXXX, we shall be total­ly inde­pen­dent”.

Stuff like that, read it, it’s inspir­ing. In Eng­land ther are some towns, vil­lages, dwellings, but also neigh­bour­hoods that start­ed think­ing about the future. These towns or dwellings will be the pio­neers in the time of tran­si­tion which pret­ty soon every­body is going to expe­ri­ence. We can wait till our wal­lets force us to change, or we can be the ones who will lat­er have the advan­tages of hav­ing start­ed off ear­ly. It’s just a log­i­cal step to take in a time like this.

Links

http://swomp.wordpress.com/>Home web­site
http://www.steenbreek.org/img/pers/DeMorgen_20080906.pdf>In the Bel­gian press

4 Women Lock Down in LURC Office to Oppose Recent Decision

Sep­tem­ber 29, 2008
LURC Office
Augus­ta, Maine

“Why did you sell our future?” Group Asks LURC
Act of Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence a Way to be Heard When the Sys­tem is Bro­ken?

Sep­tem­ber 29, 2008
LURC Office
Augus­ta, Maine

“Why did you sell our future?” Group Asks LURC
Act of Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence a Way to be Heard When the Sys­tem is Bro­ken?

Today, in an act of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, four women locked their necks togeth­er in the office of the Land Use Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion (LURC). Last week, LURC sig­naled their approval for the con­tro­ver­sial Con­cept Plan put forth by Plum Creek to rezone a large tract of the Moose­head Lake Region. The women, part of Maine Earth First!, refused to leave the office until the LURC staff could explain why they had rec­om­mend­ed approval of the plan.

Last week, the Com­mis­sion approved the plan revi­sions that LURC staff rec­om­mend­ed in a move that sur­prised many who have been watch­ing the process close­ly. Crit­ics of the plan not­ed that LURC received over 1,700 com­ments oppos­ing a resort devel­op­ment at Lily Bay as part of the Plum Creek Con­cept Plan. LURC received only 6 com­ments in favor of the plan. Despite this over­whelm­ing pub­lic state­ment against the Plum Creek devel­op­ment, the com­mis­sion refused to amend their rec­om­men­da­tions by remov­ing the Lily Bay resort. “The pub­lic has spo­ken on this issue, and LURC refus­es to lis­ten. We want to know why they are sell­ing our future,” said Emi­ly Paine, one of the four locked togeth­er.

Many of the groups that inter­vened in the for­mal Con­cept plan review process are expect­ed to file appeals to LUR­C’s deci­sion in Maine Supe­ri­or Court. Some of the grounds for these appeals are like­ly to revolve around the flawed process that has LURC staff writ­ing changes to Plum Creek’s plan so that it can be rub­ber stamped by the Com­mis­sion. The staff that is work­ing on tai­lor­ing the Con­cept Plan for Plum Creek works in the office occu­pied by Paine and oth­ers. “We aren’t leav­ing until the LURC staff who made the rec­om­men­da­tions can ade­quate­ly jus­ti­fy their actions. Many Main­ers believe their process has been unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic and cor­rupt… LUR­C’s deci­sion flies in the face of thou­sands of Main­ers who have expressed seri­ous con­cerns about the Con­cept Plan.” said Meg Gilmartin, anoth­er of the women locked down.

Maine Earth First! has been crit­i­cal of the plan from the begin­ning, but this is the first time peo­ple from that group have com­mit­ted civ­il dis­obe­di­ence to express their con­cerns. LURC will meet on Wed. Octo­ber 1st to present its final ver­sion of the plan to Plum Creek who will then have ten days to accept or reject the plan. Mem­bers of Maine Earth First! are pledg­ing con­tin­ued resis­tance to the plan as it moves for­ward in the com­ing months. Gilmartin said, “We are com­plete­ly ded­i­cat­ed to doing what LURC has refused to do: pro­tect­ing a way of life, safe­guard­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty, pro­mot­ing cli­mate sta­bil­i­ty and pre­serv­ing the cul­ture that makes the Moose­head Lake Region so unique and so won­der­ful. This is just the begin­ning.”

Maine Earth First! is an all vol­un­teer move­ment ded­i­cat­ed to pro­tect­ing the long term cli­mate sta­bil­i­ty of the plan­et, max­i­miz­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty, and main­tain­ing the rur­al way of life and cul­ture of Maine. No Com­pro­mise in Defense of Moth­er Earth!

Plum Creek pro­pos­es to rezone 20,000 acres, for devel­op­ment of high-end resorts and sec­ond homes as part of its Moose­head Lake Con­cept Plan. The plan includes 90,000 acres of con­ser­va­tion ease­ments to sat­is­fy the Land Use Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion’s (LURC) require­ment for a con­ser­va­tion bal­ance. An addi­tion­al 266,000 acres worth of devel­op­ment rights on Plum Creek land will be sold to The Nature Con­ser­van­cy and The Appalachi­an Moun­tain Club for $35 mil­lion. This con­ser­va­tion is being hailed by many as an unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­tect a large tract of land in North­ern Maine, how­ev­er, the con­ser­va­tion ease­ments only pre­vent fur­ther devel­op­ment. They still allow eco­log­i­cal­ly destruc­tive prac­tices such as grav­el min­ing, spread­ing of sewage sludge, com­mer­cial water extrac­tion, indus­try defined “sus­tain­able forestry,” road build­ing and the erec­tion of pow­er-lines.

A con­tentious com­po­nent of the Con­cept Plan is Plum Creek’s devel­op­ment visions for Lily Bay on the unde­vel­oped east­ern shore of Moose­head Lake. This area is nat­ur­al habi­tat for the endan­gered Cana­da Lynx and abuts the high­ly val­ued and uti­lized Lily Bay State Park. Plum Creek wish­es to build a resort that can accom­mo­date over 700 units, a mari­na and golf course. Plum Creek’s lead attor­ney, Sev­erin Beliv­eau told LURC that “Lily Bay is the key­stone to this plan. With­out Lily Bay there is no plan.” How­ev­er, over 1700 cit­i­zens have writ­ten to LURC express­ing a dif­fer­ent view, oppos­ing any devel­op­ment in this area (just six have writ­ten LURC in favor of Lily Bay devel­op­ment). LURC is pre­peared to approve the Con­cept Plan, includ­ing Lily Bay devel­op­ment and dis­card this clear pub­lic out­cry against Plum Creek’s pro­posed eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion of the Moose­head Region.

Saving Iceland Targets International Aluminium Conference

Today, Sep­tem­ber 25, the 11th Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Alu­mini­um Aloys (ICAA) met with angry protests. Activists from the envi­ron­men­tal­ist net­work Sav­ing Ice­land dis­rupt­ed the pro­ceed­ings at the Uni­ver­si­ty in Aachen.

Today, Sep­tem­ber 25, the 11th Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Alu­mini­um Aloys (ICAA) met with angry protests. Activists from the envi­ron­men­tal­ist net­work Sav­ing Ice­land dis­rupt­ed the pro­ceed­ings at the Uni­ver­si­ty in Aachen. Ear­ly this morn­ing, dur­ing one of Rio Tin­to Alcan’s lec­tures, the fire alarms in the build­ing were put on. Lat­er today — again dur­ing Rio Tin­to Alcan’s lec­ture — stink bombs were thrown and a high vol­ume rape alarm was put on and sus­pend­ed out of reach by green and black heli­um baloons. The audi­to­ri­um was also strewn with infor­ma­tion leaflets. The aim was to call atten­tion to the industry’s sin­gu­lar involve­ment in eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion in Ice­land, as well as on a glob­al scale.

The ICAA con­fer­ence is a week­long event held at a dif­fer­ent inter­na­tion­al loca­tion every 2 years. This is its first appear­ance in Ger­many and as such is run in par­al­lel to the Alu­mini­um trade fair in Essen, about 80 km away. This dou­ble event is sure to call togeth­er all major play­ers of an indus­try that still tries to present itself as hav­ing a green con­science, and with some suc­cess: Alcoa has been includ­ed in the Dow Jones Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Index, for the 7th year run­ning. [1] Envi­ron­men­tal­ists dis­pute this depic­tion in the strongest terms.

Glob­al Impacts
“There is no lev­el on which the con­tin­ued expan­sion of the alu­mini­um indus­try can be pur­sued sus­tain­ably” says Andreas Jager of Sav­ing Ice­land,” In India, for exam­ple, the pri­ma­ry mate­r­i­al, baux­ite, is open-cast mined and refined into alu­mi­na, strip­ping rain­fores cov­ered moun­tains, dis­plac­ing trib­al peo­ple from their land and pol­lut­ing the water sup­ply with “red mud” residue [2, 3]. In Aus­tralia and Jamaica, vir­gin forests are also destroyed for the same prize — and with the same tox­ic con­se­quences [4].

Destruc­tion of Ice­landic Wilder­ness, for weapons
“ In Ice­land, the country’s unique nat­ur­al land­scape is being raid­ed for its ener­gy poten­tial by these multi­na­tion­al invaders: at a time when the world is final­ly wak­ing up to cli­mate change, the effect of our high ener­gy depen­dence, the process of alu­mini­um pro­duc­tion requires colos­sal quan­ti­ties of elec­tric­i­ty, for which it plans to block and har­ness every glacial riv­er, exploit every geot­her­mal field and trans­form Iceland’s wild beau­ty into a spent and pol­lut­ed waste­land, dot­ted with smelters. This does not equate to green ener­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­sid­er­ing that the planned Ice­landic alu­mini­um smelters will far exceed the gen­er­ous 1,600,000 tonnes of emis­sions per­mit­ted to that coun­try under the Kyoto Con­ven­tion [5].

“And the end prod­uct? For the most part, mil­i­tary hard­ware used for destruc­tion of every imag­in­able kind, avi­a­tion, which is increas­ing­ly being shown to be incom­pat­i­ble with a sta­ble cli­mate, and dis­pos­able pack­ag­ing, a symp­tom of our waste­ful soci­ety. There can be no future for this indus­try, above all oth­ers, if we are to avoid envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis.”

Rio Tin­to Alcan’s Envi­ron­men­tal and Human Crimes
Sav­ing Ice­land protests Rio Tinto’s invest­ments in Ice­land and in Africa. In Ice­land the RT-Alcan smelter in Haf­nar­fjor­dur, south­west Ice­land is being upgrad­ed to increase pro­duc­tion. The Budarhals dam is cur­rent­ly being con­struct­ed to pow­er the smelter expan­sion.

“The peo­ple of Haf­nar­fjor­dur vot­ed against expan­sion of the smelter in a local ref­er­en­dum, but still pro­duc­tion is being increased,” says Jager. “The smelter dis­cards its tox­ic spent potlin­ings in a land­fill in the sea that floods at high tide [6]. We do not want more pol­lu­tion and we do not want more dams here in Ice­land, which are destroy­ing our beau­ti­ful wilder­ness. Espe­cial­ly for a com­pa­ny with the most abysmal record in human rights,” states Jager.

Rio Tin­to has been accused of sub­ject­ing it’s work­ers to poi­son­ing in mines, of hav­ing secu­ri­ty guards shoot­ing locals look­ing for small amounts of gold in one of it’s mines and hav­ing union-mem­bers spied upon and fired [7, 8]. It has also hired mer­ce­nary forces against local pop­u­la­tions protest­ing it’s oper­a­tions in Papua and Bougainville [9, 10, 11].

The Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment has sold its shares in Rio Tin­to because it’s Gras­berg mine in West Papua has dev­as­tat­ed the land of the Amungme and Kamoro tribes. Nor­way sold its almost £500 mil­lion shares in Rio Tin­to fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from its Coun­cil on Ethics to exclude the com­pa­ny from its gov­ern­ment pen­sion fund [12].

Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty
Peo­ple all around the world are wak­ing up and becom­ing aware of the destruc­tion caused by the alu­mini­um indus­try, as well as the sit­u­a­tion in Ice­land. Last week, big ban­ners were hanged up in Copen­hagen say­ing: “The Alu­mini­um Indus­try is Destroy­ing All Major Ice­landic Rivers!” [13].

Foot­notes and fur­ther ref­er­ence:

[1] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=3182&a…
[2] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=602&am…

[3] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=2607&a…
[4] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=2233&a…
[5] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?page_id=…
[6] Rio Tin­to Alcan (2008). Alcan Envi­ron­ment: Potlin­ings. http://www.riotintoalcan.is/?PageID=111 [Accessed Sep­tem­ber 24th, 2009].
[7] SBS Aus­tralia (200). Date­line, Report on Rio Tin­to, August 2000.
[8] Asia-Pacif­ic Human Rights Net­work, “Rio Tinto’s Record and the Glob­al Com­pact,” July 13th 2001.
[9] Wikipedia Ger­many (22–7‑2007), http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandline-Af…
[10] Con­tract between PNG Gov­ern­ment and San­d­line: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/PNG….
[11] Sarei v Rio Tin­to, 456 F.3d 1069 (9th Cir. 2006), USA.
[12] Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al (2008). Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment – Rio Tinto’s Papua mine uneth­i­cal. http://www.survival-international.org/ne… [Accessed Sep­tem­ber 24th, 2008]
[13]

CRUSH the Cabot CREDIT Circus

This Thurs­day the 25th of Sept, a call to action came to dis­rupt the far­ci­cal open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of Bristol’s brand new abom­i­na­tion.

CRUNCH the CABOT CREDIT CIRCUSThis Thurs­day the 25th of Sept, a call to action came to dis­rupt the far­ci­cal open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of Bristol’s brand new abom­i­na­tion.

CRUNCH CABOT CREDIT CIRCUS was embla­zoned across the vile new shop­ping complex’s adver­tis­ing hoard in plain view of motorists arriv­ing through the new­ly rout­ed, soon to be con­gest­ed, road sys­tem that snakes around the £500 mil­lion project that offers yet more ster­ile, soul­less, cap­i­tal­ist con­sumerism.

The ridicu­lous tim­ing of the advent of this unnec­es­sary mon­stros­i­ty, dur­ing the so-called ‘cred­it crunch’, offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to think about just how lit­tle com­mu­ni­ty con­sul­ta­tion took place; about the mass dis­place­ment of the poor­er sec­tions of our com­mu­ni­ty to make way for its con­struc­tion; and about the sheer slap in the face to peo­ple on low-incomes whose lives hang in the bal­ance as banks crum­ble and cred­it becomes scarce. All the while the Bris­tol (Impe­r­i­al) Alliance siphon off what prof­its they might make, out of our city, to Birm­ing­ham, Lon­don and the hands of a few cor­po­rate prof­i­teers.

This rup­ture with the Alliance’s image and ethos – where ‘retail ther­a­py’ has replaced com­mu­ni­ty con­tact and our social inter­ac­tions are increas­ing­ly chan­nelled through mon­e­tary trans­ac­tions and mate­ri­al­ist con­sump­tion – serves as an excla­ma­tion. This is a call for fur­ther and sus­tained action against this odi­ous sym­bol of aggres­sive glob­al cap­i­tal­ism and the gen­tri­fi­ca­tion that is seep­ing into our city.

Already full of emp­ty shops, at such a finan­cial­ly unsta­ble time, if it doesn’t crum­ble of its own accord, this dis­ease must be purged from the city,

BUY LESS, LIVE MORE!

Take your own actions.

Whis­tle crews, musi­cal chair shop inva­sions, dress like the drones that make this sham­bol­ic cir­cus pos­si­ble and cause some mis­chief!

Join the Zom­bie march this Sat­ur­day the 27th of Sept, assem­ble 11am at the Band­stand in Cas­tle Park, sham­ble & lurch from noon.

Buy Noth­ing: Steal Some­thing Day: http://www.buynothingday.co.uk/

CABOT CIRCUS on Indy­media: http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/688930

Bath Bomb 14 hits the streets

Anoth­er issue of Bath’s should-be award win­ning grass­roots pub­li­ca­tion…

anti-cop, right? copy and dis­trib­ute
The Bath Bomb
Issue #14
“All the news the Chron did­n’t Use!”

free/donation

Sept ‘08

Reds, Shite And Booze

Bath Bomb logoAnoth­er issue of Bath’s should-be award win­ning grass­roots pub­li­ca­tion…

anti-cop, right? copy and dis­trib­ute
The Bath Bomb
Issue #14
“All the news the Chron did­n’t Use!”

free/donation

Sept ‘08

Reds, Shite And Booze

Sat­ur­day the 16th of August was to be the sec­ond annu­al Red, White and Blue Fes­ti­val of the BNP, a so-called fam­i­ly event, held on the farm of for­mer Tory coun­cil­lor Alan Warn­er, in Den­by, Der­byshire. Though pitch­ing them­selves as the media-friend­ly ‘Nazi-Lite’ face of mod­ern nation­al­ism, Nick Griffin’s par­ty still can’t quite drag itself away from its hard­line right-wing roots, as betrayed in the pro­gram’s high­lights: talks on ‘her­itage and cul­ture’, night-time nav­i­ga­tion and sur­vival skills, kooky Mor­ris-style danc­ing around a horse skull, stalls sell­ing Union Jack attired gol­li­wogs, and let’s not for­get the Hitler Youth-esque kids’ camp, teach­ing 12-year-olds live ammo marks­man­ship, knife-fight­ing, tech­niques for deal­ing with ‘Marx­ist teach­ers,’ and how to make ‘Dutch arrow’ throw­ing spears (erm.. that does­n’t sound very British). How­ev­er, this insan­i­ty isn’t the sort of shit that ordi­nary peo­ple stand for and, whilst res­i­dents and local activists have been mak­ing plans to shut it down, nation­al­ly, Antifa and the organ­ised Left con­verged.

Though the pow­ers-that-be have no issue with the fas­cist nature of the event, as soon as they realised the storm of resis­tance that was build­ing, police banned the fes­ti­val’s music and liquor licens­es — but did­n’t sub­ject the fes­ti­val to even a mod­icum of the has­sle they did with Cli­mate Camp. Their true colours shined even more so on the day, releas­ing hood­ied-up agents provo­ca­teurs into the 400-strong SWP, UAF, TUC-dom­i­nat­ed march and ral­ly, and Mersey­side cops out­did them­selves by phon­ing and attempt­ing to fit up known anti-fas­cist activists by offer­ing sup­posed lifts to the demo. Whilst the marchers were engag­ing in token pushy-shovey and chant­i­ng with the police line (a lip ser­vice ges­ture to demo­c­ra­t­ic free­dom was made in the form of 30 pro­test­ers escort­ed to the entrance to the fes­ti­val for an insult­ing 15 min­utes, against a hail of BNP abuse), Antifa made their own plans. That morn­ing, 80 masked up and made their way through the under­growth to con­front the fash direct­ly, intend­ing to set up a sys­tem of road­blocks and sab­o­tage. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the first bar­ri­cade, police vio­lence forced them back and into a string of run­ning bat­tles — cul­mi­nat­ing in more than 30 arrests and one injured cop.

So unfor­tu­nate­ly, RWB was­n’t crashed, but was sur­round­ed by chaos (as well as drunk­en sieg-heils) and vil­lagers are now plead­ing with the BNP not to come back; to add your voice to this request, con­tact Alan Warn­er (The Bun­ga­low, Cod­nor Den­by Lane, Den­by Vil­lage, Der­byshire, DE5 8PT, 01773 748129/ 07810 383595, or alan.warner@w3z.co.uk) or organ­is­er David Shap­cott (6 The Spin­ney, Burn­ley, Lan­cashire, BB12 0PB, 07871 029681). But Antifa’s antics do bring up seri­ous ques­tions — con­sid­er­ing the strate­gic impor­tance of the BNP’s RWB, why did so few oppo­nents put in an appear­ance? And how did small, yet admit­ted­ly rabid, clus­ters of cops put supe­ri­or num­bers of deter­mined mil­i­tants to rout and infight­ing, with thrown bricks occa­sion­al­ly hit­ting their own? Beyond talk of machis­mo, organ­i­sa­tion and vio­lence, per­haps more activists need to focus on their own per­son­al lim­its and be hon­est with them­selves over what threats they are pre­pared to face… Not only for the suc­cess of indi­vid­ual actions and the move­ments’ cred­i­bil­i­ty, but also in terms of both our own safe­ty and that of our com­rades And next year, let’s real­ly stop them!

http://www.antifa.org.uk/
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/688740
http://netcu.wordpress.com
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/09/03/bnp…22309

Sainsbury’s And Tesco — Destroy­ing Com­mu­ni­ties All Over The World

While Tesco threat­ens to infest Bath with crap­py ‘food’ and depress­ing, repet­i­tive jobs under patron­iz­ing boss­es who don’t care about you, Sainsbury’s look set to crawl their way into Odd Down. The site pro­posed by Store­gap Com­mer­cial and Odd Down Devel­op­ments would be the same size as Bath’s Mor­risons. If you’re in favour of good qual­i­ty food prod­ucts made with a regard to ani­mal wel­fare and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, work­er’s rights and the fair dis­tri­b­u­tions of wealth — or if you sim­ply hate being rushed around as if you were in a chaot­ic cat­tle mar­ket every time you go out to buy gro­ceries, while being blind­ed by arti­fi­cial light­ing — we’d love to have you on board our cam­paign, aimed at resist­ing super­mar­ket expan­sion and cre­at­ing viable alter­na­tives. Email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk for more details.

A brief update on the Tesco Express on Bath­wick Hill — orig­i­nal­ly due to open ear­ly this year, now, due to the actions of local com­mu­ni­ty and activists, it’s still yet to open its doors due to the enforce­ment of the con­di­tions they tried to weasel out of com­plet­ing.

Watching/Smashing Up The Watch­ers

Your faith­ful, yet para­noid jour­nal­ists here at Bath Bomb tow­ers have giv­en many col­umn inch­es over the past few months to the increas­ing sur­veil­lance we are sub­ject­ed to nowa­days. Britain is now the most sur­veil­lance-heavy coun­try in the world, nar­row­ly best­ing notable com­peti­tors such as Chi­na and the good ol’ US of A. Indus­try insid­ers have agreed that CCTV is almost use­less in deal­ing with real crimes, such as rape and mur­der, and only real­ly comes in use­ful when deal­ing with those things that only politi­cians and the rich count as crimes, such as shoplift­ing. Tak­ing into account their inef­fi­cien­cy at solv­ing seri­ous crime, it can be sen­si­bly assumed that the prime func­tion of CCTV (on which our per­vy gov­ern­ment spends mil­lions each year) is social con­trol; of spread­ing the idea that you can­not step out of line because you are always being watched. Well, now, final­ly, we have a chance to strike back! Octo­ber the 11th is an inter­na­tion­al day of protest and decen­tralised action against CCTV and sur­veil­lance. Want to be part of the fun? A plas­tic bag or well aimed spray can blast can tem­porar­i­ly dis­able a CCTV cam­era, while ham­mers and screw­drivers can do a much less sub­tle, yet longer last­ing job! Won­der­ing how to access those cam­eras in hard to reach places? A paint­brush tied to a bam­boo stick does the trick! There are lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of legal and ille­gal ways we can strike back against big broth­er, so let’s use the 11th as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to show the state we can live out­side of their con­trol, laws, author­i­ty and oppres­sion. If noth­ing else, use the day as a chance to look a CCTV cam­era (or com­mu­ni­ty sup­port offi­cer) dead in the eye, flip a fin­ger and defi­ant­ly shout (safe in the knowl­edge that thou­sands across the globe are doing the same thing) ‘stop look­ing at me fun­ni­ly you weirdos!’.

CCTV News Part Deux

The Bath Bomb can exclu­sive­ly reveal that Big Broth­er (as in 1984, not that real­i­ty TV farce of squawk­ing, ego­ma­ni­a­cal lobot­o­my-cas­es) is chang­ing the way it inter­feres with The Peo­ple and scape­goats the young. Pre­vi­ous­ly obvi­ous CCTV instal­la­tions are now being gut­ted into redun­dant bluff cam­eras, with the real cam­era place­ments being hid­den near­by in tiny black case­ments, though their lens will still need to be exposed to the light of day. And, it’s also recent­ly emerged that sin­is­ter sci­en­tists at Bath Uni have been spy­ing on Blue­tooth users in the city for the last three years, with­out con­sent, with ‘City­ware’ scan­ners fol­low­ing around 3,000 devices every week­end, fol­low­ing cit­i­zens’ move­ments and shop­ping pat­terns. Tar­get­ed mar­ket­ing, or mark­ing tar­gets? We’ve heard it all. Stay out of trou­ble kids!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/21/civilliberties…yfull

The­o­ry Cor­ner Part A: Are All Cops Real­ly Bas­tards?

After read­ing the The­o­ry Cor­ner: ‘Are All Cops Bas­tards?’ arti­cle in July’s issue 12, I got the per­mis­sion of said arti­cle’s author to have my say on this com­plex issue. Yes, the police have devolved from your friend­ly neigh­bour­hood bob­by; the one who made you feel a bit safer, who gave you direc­tions and popped round for a cup of tea (how wrong can you go with old TV pro­grammes as your barom­e­ter for real­i­ty?) They’ve gone from this to a mind­less mass automa­ton who go on pow­er trips and think that any­one who finds them­selves at a demon­stra­tion of any sort, be they strong or not so strong, young or not so young, deserves to at best be spo­ken to in a patron­iz­ing man­ner and at worst be man­han­dled away and arrest­ed for no good rea­son.

BUT, and this is a big but. Tak­ing it as read that the ulti­mate goal of ‘chang­ing the world’ is, in fact, to make that world a bet­ter place for every­one, then we have to realise that cops are in fact human, despite the lengths they can go to try to hide this fact. Take away the uni­form, the weapons, the smug above-you atti­tude and you will find some­one with the same basic needs and desires as every­one else. I’m sure the answer is not to engage in this cat-and-mouse rela­tion­ship with them, slag­ging them off (though they often have no qualms about doing the same to us — for exam­ple the sick­en­ing com­ments on the ‘Police Inspec­tor’s Blog’), just as that is not the way to go with the Rich, though that is anoth­er arti­cle. This, to me, seems a lazy way of going about things that will just enable the sta­tus quo to be kept; we get to make our jokes about PC Plod and nev­er have to come to terms with the fact that they will be part of this new soci­ety.

I don’t know what the way for­ward is, I think it is a slow path, where we get out of our cosy activist cor­ners and mix with peo­ple of all walks of life, even those who make us feel ill with what they’re doing to the world. We wel­come peo­ple and talk to them about our way of life, with­out judg­ing or forc­ing any­one to see it our way. Some will come over to our side. Some will resist, but we nev­er know what effect our view­point is hav­ing on them. It is hard to change, and won’t hap­pen over night. But only with these small vic­to­ries and grad­ual changes will any real and last­ing change ever come about. To describe a group of peo­ple as large­ly irre­deemable, will cause defen­sive­ness — we have to believe in the pos­si­bil­i­ty in peo­ple to change, whether they show us any proof of this or not. You can do so much more with peace and wel­come than you can with vio­lence, judge­ment and iso­la­tion — isn’t that what ‘our side’ is all about? After all, this oth­er way’s been tried so many times before, in fact it’s all we as a human race has ever done, and has it ever worked? With this dis­mis­sive atti­tude we con­demn our­selves to a lim­it­ed suc­cess, when with all our skills, ener­gy, ideas and com­pas­sion, we can achieve so much more.

http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/young‑m…n‑go/ (police inspec­tor’s blog)
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&…34851 (newslet­ter issue 12)

Stop The Wars, Stop The Walls & Stop Wall Street

Despite what the Dai­ly Mail would have us believe, we are all now a wit­ness to an unprece­dent­ed rise in bor­der man­age­ment and social con­trol. Neo-Labour is at the fore­front of this squeeze, and are hold­ing their annu­al par­ty con­fer­ence in Man­ches­ter this month. Coin­cid­ing with this, with vio­lence peak­ing in Afghanistan, drag­ging on in Iraq, and break­ing in Geor­gia, Stop The War have called for a ‘Troops Out’ march on Sat­ur­day the 20th at 12 mid­day, and the UK No Bor­ders net­work have also jumped in — anti-author­i­tar­i­ans and all oth­ers against bor­ders, states and war can con­sid­er them­selves humbly invit­ed to join the ‘Free­dom of Move­ment’ bloc, assem­bling at the north end of Albert Square — fol­low the red and black flags!

http://www.manchesternoborders.org.uk
http://www.stopwar.org.uk
http://www.acbar.org
http://www.bathstopwar.org.uk/

Racist BIAs­tards Feel The Heat In Bris­tol

In oth­er immi­gra­tion-relat­ed news, No Bor­ders activists recent­ly paid a vis­it to the British Immi­gra­tion Author­i­ty offices in Por­tishead. BIA round up failed immi­gra­tion appli­cants for forced depor­ta­tion. Favourite tac­tics include ‘dawn raids’, intend­ed to round up the whole fam­i­ly before the kids can get to school. Recent brave deeds by our jack­boot­ed friends have includ­ed the forced removal of a Columbian sin­gle moth­er from the Bris­tol area, her 7‑year-old son send­ing a let­ter to his class mates from a deten­tion cen­tre read­ing ‘I don’t know why I am here, they have put me in prison, but I promise I haven’t done any­thing wrong’. When activists arrived at the Por­tishead BIA cen­tre, from which Bath and Bris­tol dawn raids are launched, the build­ings’ locks were glued, the entire fleet of vehi­cles used for dawn raids were destroyed with span­ners, etch­ing flu­id and paint strip­per and the slo­gan ‘racist thugs work here’ was daubed over walls for all to see. BIA rep­re­sent the sharp end of the state’s racist war on asy­lum seek­ers, who, hav­ing fled per­se­cu­tion, ter­ror and tor­ture, ask only for a safe place to live, and not to be deport­ed to cer­tain death and impris­on­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the major­i­ty find out the hard way that gov­ern­ment the world over is a bru­tal mech­a­nism for the repres­sion and incar­cer­a­tion of ordi­nary peo­ple. We must stand side by side with oth­er oppressed peo­ples strug­gling for a decent stan­dard of life, and like the BIA sabo­teurs, fight for a world with­out bor­ders or gov­ern­ments, and respond by any means nec­es­sary to the vio­lent and destruc­tive forces of state and cap­i­tal.

Frothy Cin­e­mat­ic Under­cur­rents

After the sum­mer break, the Bub­bling Under series of rad­i­cal film lunch­es will return to the big[ish]screen at the Porter Cel­lar, start­ing again on Sun­day the 28th Sep­tem­ber, from 1 til 4pm, free entry. This month, we will be show­ing a cou­ple of film­lets — one about the recent Camp for Cli­mate Action in Kent, and the oth­er about the upcom­ing Shut I.T.T./Smash EDO day of action in Brighton, fol­low­ing up on June’s suc­cess­ful Car­ni­val Against the Arms Trade. Come along for great grub, food for thought, and mediocre com­pa­ny! Drop us a line if you have any ideas for upcom­ing films, to show on the third Sun­day of the month.

http://www.smashedo.org.uk/shut-itt.htm
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/

The­o­ry Cor­ner Part B: Meta­mor­pho­sis and Lib­er­a­tion

It’s all too easy to feel help­less in the face of the state, like a tiny cog in a tow­er­ing machine. Reli­gion and tele­vi­sion preach the impor­tance of “find­ing your­self” and “stay­ing true” to that self once you’ve found it. But we should­n’t feel trapped and lim­it­ed by our genes and the expe­ri­ences and con­di­tion­ing soci­ety has giv­en us — we have no true self and life should be about cre­at­ing it, not find­ing it! As human beings we have a vast poten­tial for self-change. The aware­ness of the abil­i­ty you pos­sess to change your­self can be extreme­ly lib­er­at­ing. It’s impor­tant to start small — choose a habit at ran­dom you wish to adopt or elim­i­nate. At first, this should be some­thing so sim­ple you can’t fail at it, like hav­ing an extra sug­ar in your tea each morn­ing. Keep the same goal for two or three weeks, and scrib­ble it on a post-it note and stick it to the fridge, if this helps you remem­ber. There are all sorts of self-hyp­no­sis tech­niques that can help. Focus­ing intent­ly on your goal while in an altered state of con­scious­ness accessed by med­i­ta­tion, danc­ing, drum­ming, chant­i­ng, orgasm, art… (try star­ing intent­ly at your­self in a mir­ror while try­ing not to let your eyes dis­tort the image) are all ways to do this. Remem­ber to ground after­wards! Laugh­ter helps.

It’s impor­tant to set a new tar­get once you’re done with the old one. Start small and your con­fi­dence and self-dis­ci­pline will grow so long as you make willed self-change a habit. Work up to big­ger goals and you’ll realise that things you thought you could­n’t do are total­ly pos­si­ble — con­fronting a pho­bia, going veg­an, tak­ing direct action. Elim­i­nat­ing fears and smash­ing taboos (eat­ing food from skips, act­ing odd­ly in pub­lic) can be so empow­er­ing and widen your range of pos­si­ble expe­ri­ences.

http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/rites/beyondwa.…html

EVENTS

Mon­days
Bath Hunt Sabs Meet­ing, 8pm, Bell
Wednes­days
Lon­don Rd Food Co-op, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, 4–7pm
Sat­ur­days
Bath Stop The War Vig­il, Abbey Court­yard, 11.30–12.30
Sat­ur­day 20th Sept
No Wars No Bor­ders, All Saints Park, Man­ches­ter, 12.30
Fri­day 26th Sept
Anti-foie gras demo, out­side Mini­bar, John St, 7–9pm
Sun­day 28th Sept
Bub­bling Under, the Porter Cel­lar Bar 1–4pm
Wednes­day 1st Oct
Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, back room of the Bell, 7.30–8.30pm
Thurs­day 2nd Oct
Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Hob­gob­lin, down­stairs 7.30–9pm
Fri­day & Sat­ur­day 3–4th Oct
No Bor­ders Fest, TJs, New­port
Sat­ur­day 11th Octo­ber
Day of action against sur­veil­lance
Sat­ur­day 11th Oct
West­side Cli­mate Camp Gath­er­ing, Wind­mill Hill City Farm, Bris­tol, 10–5
Sat­ur­day 11th Oct
Bath Freeshop, Stall St, 12–3pm
Wednes­day 15th Oct
Smash I.T.T, opp Falmer Sta­tion, Brighton, meet 12noon

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.myspace.com/bathbomb

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

Q: Who Are Bath Activist Net­work? A: A local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

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Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request.

‘Leave it in the ground’ national meeting on 11 and 12 October in Manchester

Announce­ment – ‘Leave it in the ground’ nation­al meet­ing

Cli­mate change is the biggest threat fac­ing us, and burn­ing coal is the biggest his­tor­i­cal cause of cli­mate change. Every day more coal is burned, yet indus­try and gov­ern­ment seem intent on burn­ing even more.

Announce­ment – ‘Leave it in the ground’ nation­al meet­ing

Cli­mate change is the biggest threat fac­ing us, and burn­ing coal is the biggest his­tor­i­cal cause of cli­mate change. Every day more coal is burned, yet indus­try and gov­ern­ment seem intent on burn­ing even more.

‘Leave it in the ground’ is the slo­gan of a new net­work for groups tak­ing action oppos­ing new coal devel­op­ments in the UK, includ­ing the 30+ planned open­cast sites and sev­en new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions. Added to those already oper­at­ing, and the coal import and trans­port facil­i­ties, these projects rep­re­sent a mas­sive threat to our abil­i­ty to cut green­house gas emis­sions to safe lev­els, and would be a dis­as­ter for the cli­mate as well as for local areas.

The first ‘Leave it in the ground’ meet­ing will be held at the Yard The­atre, 41 Old Bir­ley
Street, Hulme, Man­ches­ter M15 5RF, on 11 and 12 Octo­ber.

The net­work plans to be a way for groups to share skills and expe­ri­ence in dif­fer­ent areas and to encour­age col­lab­o­ra­tion on com­mon goals. It is a loose net­work of equals, and is not affil­i­at­ed to any polit­i­cal par­ty or NGO.

The pro­posed agen­da for this meet­ing includes:

Sat­ur­day 11th

§ Intro­duc­tion to the UK coal indus­try
§ Updates on oppo­si­tion to coal devel­op­ments in the UK, includ­ing the cam­paigns against the Ffos-y-Fran (near Merthyr Tyd­fil) and Lodge House (Der­byshire) open­cast sites, the 2008 Cli­mate Camp and the pro­posed Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion block­ade.
§ Dis­cussing cli­mate change solu­tions, includ­ing the impor­tance of a social­ly just tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon econ­o­my.
§ Think­ing about how our net­work will func­tion, its deci­sion-mak­ing struc­ture, name and com­mu­ni­ca­tions
§ Plan­ning ini­tial events and strat­e­gy for the net­work
§ Region­al net­work­ing between groups

Sun­day 12th

§ Media train­ing
§ Intro­duc­tion to direct action plan­ning
§ Fur­ther dis­cus­sions on cli­mate change, cli­mate jus­tice and inter­na­tion­al net­work­ing

If you can only make one day of the meet­ing, please try to come on Sat­ur­day. We will aim to start at 10:00 and to fin­ish by 18:00 to allow for trav­el. The meet­ing will free, lunch and evening meal on Sat­ur­day and lunch on Sun­day will be avail­able for dona­tions.

If you would like to attend, please reg­is­ter by email­ing info@leaveitintheground.org.uk, with ‘meet­ing’ in the sub­ject line, stat­ing how many of your group wish to attend, any spe­cial dietary or access require­ments and whether you want accom­mo­da­tion for Sat­ur­day night. Free accom­mo­da­tion will prob­a­bly be ‘crash­pad’ only, but we can pro­vide details of near­by hotels etc.

For those trav­el­ling from far off, we will oper­ate a ‘pool fare’ sys­tem to even out the costs of trav­el. The venue is about ten min­utes walk from Man­ches­ter Oxford Road sta­tion, and is served by num­ber 54 and 86 bus­es, with many oth­ers serv­ing the near­by Stret­ford road. More details on the GMPTE web­site.

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

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.

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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.

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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