Category: Wilderness Defence

Wilder­ness defence

Sabotage Action in Mayo

June 13, 2012

June 13, 2012

Last week a stone crush­ing machine cen­tral to the oper­a­tion of Bar­retts Quar­ry in Ban­gor, Coun­ty Mayo was decomis­sioned. Bar­retts Quar­ry was tar­get­ed because it sup­plies mate­ri­als cru­cial to the con­struc­tion of Roy­al Dutch Shel­l’s dan­ger­ous and destruc­tive raw gas pipeline in Broad­haven Bay.

This action was tak­en in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the local com­mu­ni­ty who have been in strug­gle against Roy­al Dutch Shell for the past ten years, and should serve to demon­strate that any com­pa­ny com­plic­it in sup­port­ing Roy­al Dutch Shel­l’s activ­i­ties in Mayo, and beyond, can and will be tar­get­ed.

Tree protest called off after Network Rail concessions

28 May 2012

Cam­paign­ers — includ­ing three pro­test­ers who chained them­selves to a tree — claim vic­to­ry after Net­work Rail post­pones planned tree clear­ance on a rail­way embank­ment near Whit­stable in Kent.

28 May 2012

Cam­paign­ers — includ­ing three pro­test­ers who chained them­selves to a tree — claim vic­to­ry after Net­work Rail post­pones planned tree clear­ance on a rail­way embank­ment near Whit­stable in Kent.

 

More than 100 pro­test­ers held a demon­stra­tion on the Cromwell Road rail­way embank­ment in an attempt to halt the start of work to remove trees, which Net­work Rail claims could cause insta­bil­i­ty on the track.

The pro­test­ers, many of whom were local res­i­dents, are con­cerned that the works would take place dur­ing the bird-breed­ing sea­son when many are nest­ing in the trees.

A five-hour long protest, dur­ing which three female pro­test­ers in their 50s and 60s chained them­selves to a tree on the embank­ment, start­ed at 7.30am with cam­paign­ers bran­dish­ing plac­ards bear­ing slo­gans includ­ing “stop the slaugh­ter of wildlife”.

The demon­stra­tion was called off after Net­work Rail informed cam­paign­ers in writ­ing that it was halt­ing the works until Sep­tem­ber, after the bird breed­ing sea­son has fin­ished.

‘Claim­ing vic­to­ry’

The state­ment by Net­work Rail ful­fils two of the pro­test­ers’ three demands. One cam­paign­er said that they would now con­cen­trate on per­suad­ing Net­work Rail to agree to their remain­ing demand, for bet­ter con­sul­ta­tion with res­i­dents and the use of tru­ly inde­pen­dent con­ser­va­tion experts.

“Whit­stable peo­ple are now claim­ing this as a vic­to­ry,” said Julie Wass­mer, who was among the three who had chained them­selves to the tree. “Today, Net­work Rail are now aware that the peo­ple of Whit­stable are not back­ing off.”

The rail infra­struc­ture oper­a­tor planned to start remov­ing the trees because of con­cerns about sub­si­dence caused by their roots.

An inde­pen­dent ecol­o­gist car­ried out an assess­ment this morn­ing on behalf of Net­work Rail to deter­mine how many birds’ nests were in the affect­ed trees.

Fiona Tay­lor, Net­work Rail’s route man­ag­ing direc­tor for Kent, said: “After a thor­ough inspec­tion with an inde­pen­dent ecol­o­gist, the work to remove select­ed trees along this stretch of rail­way has been post­poned owing to the sus­pect­ed num­ber of nest­ing birds.

“Because this work is essen­tial for the future safe­ty of the rail­way, we will return at a lat­er date to com­plete it once the nests have been vacat­ed. Res­i­dents will receive a min­i­mum of 10 days’ notice before the start date and we will car­ry out a full inspec­tion before the work begins.”

‘Use­ful reminder’

The trees had already been giv­en a tem­po­rary stay of exe­cu­tion after plans to remove them in April were put on hold.

Mark Thomas, an RSPB inves­ti­ga­tions offi­cer, said: “The attempts by Net­work Rail to clear track­side veg­e­ta­tion from a line in Kent is a use­ful reminder to every­one that the nests of all wild birds are pro­tect­ed by law dur­ing the nest­ing sea­son.

“Thanks to protests the RSPB, Kent and British Trans­port Police, and not least local cam­paign­ers, Net­work Rail are aware of this.

We now trust they will plan their track clear­ance work out­side the bird-nest­ing sea­son where they will be able to car­ry out essen­tial work with­out caus­ing envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and spark­ing the out­rage of com­mu­ni­ties who care about their local wildlife.”

—-

Ear­li­er sto­ry, 3rd May:

CAMPAIGNERS have promised “direct action” in a bat­tle with Net­work Rail boss­es over trees.

Pro­test­ers call­ing them­selves Whit­stable Tree Savers will meet the com­pa­ny tonight (Thurs­day) to try to per­suade it to stop felling trees along the rail­way line – and have vowed to con­tin­ue their fight if the meet­ing does­n’t work.

Cam­paign spokes­woman Julie Wass­mer, who lives in Cromwell Road, said: “There will be a mas­sive protest – and I don’t mean peti­tions. They will phys­i­cal­ly be obstruct­ed from get­ting into the car park.

“Feel­ings are run­ning so high about this it is unbe­liev­able.”  More

http://saveourwoods.co.uk/get-involved/local-campaigns/tree-savers-save-rail-side-trees/

http://twitter.com/#!/TreeSavers

http://saverailsidetrees.webs.com/

Spectre of Shell Reapers hangs over AGM

22nd May 2012

 

22nd May 2012

 

At today’s Shell AGM link at the Bar­bi­can the suits on the Shell board were giv­en a 3 hour grilling, with ques­tion­ers focus­ing atten­tion on its envi­ron­men­tal and human rights crimes around the world. Spread through­out the audi­to­ri­um hood­ed Lon­don Ris­ing Tide & friends’ grim Shell reapers, stood silent­ly await­ing direc­tion from the board toward their next appoint­ment with Shell induced death and envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.  They stood motion­less for almost an hour while Messrs Ollila and Voss­er, Chair­man & CEO, attempt­ed to defend Shel­l’s rav­en­ous pur­suit of prof­it above all else at the expense of : the pris­tine Arc­tic- where drilling and prob­a­bly spilling will begin in the sum­mer; the Cana­di­an bore­al for­est-where Tar Sands “extrac­tion” has increased by 100k bar­rels per day;  the once beau­ti­ful fish spawn­ing grounds of the Niger Delta- now clogged with a “Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon’s” worth of oil every year; and lis­tened intent­ly to Voss­er spout­ing that so-called “eth­i­cal com­pa­ny sta­tus” was “very close to my heart and we are dri­ving sus­tain­abil­i­ty”. 

We all know where its being dri­ven.  Remem­ber cli­mate change?

Cli­mate change may not be a fash­ion­able sub­ject these days, but it’s already claim­ing 300,000 lives a year. Glac­i­ers are dis­ap­pear­ing, sea lev­els are ris­ing and extreme weath­er is becom­ing more extreme. As tem­per­a­tures rise, we’ll see more flood­ing, drought, dis­ease, famine and war, cre­at­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of refugees  and destroy­ing entire ecosys­tems and species.  We can’t  afford to for­get about cli­mate change – or the fact that com­pa­nies like Shell are at the heart of the prob­lem and a shift to Fos­sil Fuel Gas and land grab­bing bio­fu­els isn’t help­ing!

Mean­while out­side, many more Shell Grim Reapers man­aged to gain entry into the lob­by before being eject­ed by what one share­hold­er inside referred to as “over the top secu­ri­ty”. There they met with Occu­py Shell Oil cof­fin bear­ers who had processed the cor­po­rate body of Shell from St.Pauls Cathe­dral to be laid to rest at the feet of a 6 degree Cel­sius glob­al tem­per­a­ture rise this cen­tu­ry. There among the share­hold­ers, City cops and many pri­vate secu­ri­ty and cor­po­rate spies, the Shell Reapers hand­ed out leaflets to inform of impend­ing Shell dev­as­ta­tion.

A del­e­ga­tion from Indige­nous peo­ples attend­ed Shell’s main Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in The Hague, Nether­lands, they detailed the mas­sive human and eco­log­i­cal rights vio­la­tions and eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion that Shel­l’s oper­a­tions have brought to local com­mu­ni­ties. The tar sands devel­op­ment in  Alber­ta, Cana­da cov­ers an area the size of Eng­land, with tox­ic lakes so huge they are vis­i­ble from space, leak­ing poi­sons into the local water sup­ply.  The effects that tar sands  are hav­ing on local First  Nations com­mu­ni­ties  are dev­as­tat­ing. Not  only are indige­nous  liveli­hoods and  futures being  destroyed, but  com­mu­ni­ties on land  where tar sands extrac­tion has been imposed  are expe­ri­enc­ing dis­turbing­ly  high rates of rare forms of can­cer and auto-immune dis­eases.

Eriel Deranger, com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber and spokesper­son for the Athabas­ca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), Alber­ta – an Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty resid­ing down­stream from tar sands oper­a­tions and who are cur­rent­ly suing Shell for vio­lat­ing past agree­ments, stat­ed:

“Tar sands extrac­tion projects on our tra­di­tion­al lands are being approved at a pace that is both irre­spon­si­ble and irrepara­bly destruc­tive. Peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty of Fort Chipewyan
are gen­uine­ly afraid. Our food and water sources are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, result­ing in a fear of eat­ing tra­di­tion­al foods and erod­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of our cul­tur­al and sub­sis­tence lifestyles. Yet Shell plans to aggres­sive­ly expand its activ­i­ties, dou­bling pro­duc­tion. The Athabas­ca Chipewyan First Nation is call­ing on Shell to meet its past agree­ments and halt expan­sion until our broad­er con­cerns about the cumu­la­tive impacts of tar sands oper­a­tions are addressed.”

Ron Plain, from Aamji­w­naang First Nation, Ontario – which has been called ‘the most pol­lut­ed place in North Amer­i­ca’ by the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety, and the ‘the most con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed air­shed in Cana­da’ by the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion due to its prox­im­i­ty to ‘Chem­i­cal Val­ley’ where Shell’s and oth­er tar sands oper­a­tors’ refiner­ies are caus­ing seri­ous health and repro­duc­tive impacts – said:

“Aamji­w­naang is the first com­mu­ni­ty in the world to expe­ri­ence birth ratios of 2 girls to 1 boy due to endocrine dis­rup­tion from the pol­lu­tion. This is the first step towards extinc­tion. Shell have admit­ted that their cur­rent facil­i­ty, which is locat­ed at the fence­line of Aamji­w­naang, ‘could not meet today’s envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions or stan­dards.’ But Shell’s pro­pos­al for a new facil­i­ty with­in Aamji­w­naang ter­ri­to­ry was recent­ly denied by Cana­da for a whole host of envi­ron­men­tal, social and oth­er rea­sons. The cor­po­rate response to that set-back was to build onto the anti­quat­ed facil­i­ty the equip­ment need­ed to process more tar sands bitu­men.”

Robert Thomp­son, Chair­man of REDOIL and an Inu­pi­at from Kak­tovik, a vil­lage on the edge of the Arc­tic Ocean in Alas­ka, where Shell plans to drill off­shore in Arc­tic waters this sum­mer, said:

“Shell plans to drill in the Arc­tic this sum­mer with­out the proven tech­nol­o­gy or infra­struc­ture to deal with inevitable spills. They have not demon­strat­ed the abil­i­ty to clean up spills with­in or from under the ice or dur­ing storms. Our cul­ture depends on a clean ocean, and we have sub­sist­ed in this region for 12,000 years. We oppose Shell’s plans that have the poten­tial to destroy the cul­ture of our peo­ple and will fur­ther push the plan­et into irre­versible cli­mate change.”

Ben Pow­less, a Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario, rep­re­sent­ing the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work, said:

“Not only have Shell rev­eled in being a cli­mate crim­i­nal, they have also been exposed as fight­ing the Euro­pean Union’s pro­posed Fuel Qual­i­ty Direc­tive, in col­lu­sion with the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment. Their con­tin­ued envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and vio­la­tion of Indige­nous rights across Cana­da, Alas­ka and Nige­ria show that Shell needs to change their oper­a­tions or face increas­ing protest and oppo­si­tion across the world. Our orga­ni­za­tion is sup­port­ing an Indige­nous-led cam­paign against Shell’s extreme ener­gy projects to bring togeth­er front­line impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties.”

To find out more about the Cana­di­an Indige­nous Tar Sands Cam­paign, see:http://ienearth.org/tarsands.html

 So, what else can we do about Shell in Lon­don?

Apart from street cor­ner Petrol Garage block­ades we can wage war on cor­po­rate brand­ing. Join us to help kick Shell-out Spon­sor­ship = buy­ing us off .

 Shel­l’s spon­sor­ship acts as a green­washed blind­fold to pre­vent us see­ing the  rav­ages of fron­tier oil extrac­tion bound­aries being pushed. When we chal­lenge this, we strike a blow at Shell’s brand, chip away at its pow­er and move towards the day when Big Oil – like Big Tobac­co – is no longer seen as social­ly accept­able. As we once kicked the tobac­co com­pa­nies out of our cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions we must now do the same to the oil indus­try.

Lon­don Ris­ing Tide, c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, Lon­don E1 1ES;

tel: 07708 794665

 

Forests instead of Coal: Interviews with the occupiers of Hambach Forest.

Last week I went to North-West Ger­many to vis­it a new for­est occu­pa­tion cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in the Ham­bach for­est – the pur­pose of it? To stand direct­ly in the way of the expan­sion of Europe’s largest open-cast coal mine. Through the con­struc­tion of tree-hous­es and defences, by engag­ing with the local com­mu­ni­ty and by bring­ing peo­ple and ener­gy to the area, this new camp in the woods is the lat­est stand against the ener­gy giant RWE (Rheinisch-West­fälis­ches Elek­triz­itätswerk), a com­pa­ny which plans to clear cut the area and gouge out the con­tents of the earth with some of the biggest death machines on the plan­et.

It is beau­ti­ful here. The for­est is very old and peace­ful and, at the moment, the leaf-car­pet­ed floor is dot­ted with blue and green tents. The only nois­es fil­ter­ing through the trees are the chat­ter­ing of birds and the dis­tant thud of an axe cut­ting wood by the fire pit. Up in the trees, plat­forms sway in a breeze car­ry­ing the tell-tale smell of wood smoke. Peo­ple busy them­selves with the day-to-day tasks of life here; chop­ping wood, coax­ing the fire into life, find­ing a clean(ish) pot, boil­ing water, mak­ing tea, toast­ing bread, eat­ing. Peo­ple talk and make plans, some­body jug­gles, and the sun shines warm­ly on.

It’s inter­est­ing to me how sim­i­lar these places are all over the world, how the com­mu­ni­ties of peo­ple you meet are so much like the friends you left at home. So, while I was stay­ing at the camp, I decid­ed to “inter­view” a few peo­ple and explore the par­al­lels between this anti-coal for­est occu­pa­tion in Ger­many, and the anti-coal action camps that I have been involved in in Scot­land [1]. I want­ed to explore what it is that moves peo­ple to live in places like this and invest them­selves so com­plete­ly in this kind of action.

- J -

 

I spoke to J one evening around the camp fire when I could bare­ly see my note­book by the light of my head­torch, let alone keep up with all the inter­est­ing things he had to say! J is involved in the WAA (Work­shops for Action and Alter­na­tives) [3] and has been part of the occu­pa­tion from the begin­ning..

Why do you think this kind of occu­pa­tion is impor­tant?

What makes this type of occu­pa­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant and rel­e­vant to me is how the action to occu­py this area was organ­ised and how we con­tin­ue to organ­ise while we live here – that is, in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal and hor­i­zon­tal way. To not have to ask the politi­cians or RWE to change their pol­i­tics or to change to green cap­i­tal­ism but to take mat­ters into our own hands, is empow­er­ing. The way we organ­ise here is an open struc­ture so new peo­ple can join in with this way of liv­ing and organ­is­ing and expe­ri­ence it for them­selves.

I think it is already inspir­ing local peo­ple and lots of oth­er forms of resis­tance. The local peo­ple here have in the past always been told to rely on the legal sys­tem for change. Big envi­ron­men­tal NGO’s in this area have encour­aged them to pur­sue this strat­e­gy, and because peo­ple place their trust in these organ­i­sa­tions this is what they have done. How­ev­er when the legal route fails local peo­ple (as it so often does) these NGO’s leave behind cyn­i­cism and res­ig­na­tion. So we want to show them an alter­na­tive strat­e­gy to this dead end. Peo­ple come here and get inspired when they see that you can take mat­ters into your own hands and do some­thing to change the sit­u­a­tion for your­self.

What brought you here?

I was inspired by the Frank­furt occu­pa­tion [4] which was a for­est occu­pa­tion against air­port expan­sion. At the time I was involved in the young greens which I had been involved with for two years. How­ev­er, after we vis­it­ed the Frank­furt occu­pa­tion 14 of the 17 peo­ple in the young greens left to join the for­est occu­pa­tion and I’ve nev­er looked back. To me, the green par­ty is a great exam­ple of good active peo­ple giv­ing their time and ener­gy to some­thing that ends up co-opt­ing their orig­i­nal aims for change.

When you wake up in the morn­ing what do you hope to find?

That there would be no peo­ple in this for­est! We need forests just for them­selves. I love liv­ing in the for­est, but it’s a tac­tic. Actu­al­ly just by being here at the moment we have stopped hunt­ing because there is a law that you can’t hunt ani­mals in a for­est occu­pied by humans. Also, a lot of hunt­ing plat­forms in this for­est have mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared…

What would a suc­cess look like to you?

A vis­i­tor from Buir (the clos­est town to the mine) said she had the impres­sion that we don’t have the atti­tude that this is a win or loose sit­u­a­tion. Even if they cut down the trees here, destroy the for­est, dig coal here – we have already won some­thing. We are part of a big envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice move­ment and this action achieves a big change in and of itself. It’s a meet­ing point, an ideas shar­ing hub, new things are tried out here, dif­fer­ent ways to inter­act are exper­i­ment­ed with, and so peo­ple can learn a lot just by being here.

How do you think we could encour­age more peo­ple to come and do this kind of thing?

If I observe why peo­ple come here I think it’s often because they have per­son­al con­tacts. Or because they feel well here because it’s a nice atmos­phere. They come here because it makes them feel good not just because they want to “save the world.” I real­ly don’t like the per­cep­tion that I’m here because I am an extreme­ly moral per­son above oth­ers, who wants only to be self­less and “save the world.” I love it here and enjoy myself, that’s why I’m here! I would real­ly like that good feel­ing to be passed on to oth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly locals and peo­ple who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have dread­locks or who are already in our “sub­cul­ture.”

Involv­ing oth­er kinds of peo­ple in this kind of action also chal­lenges us to chal­lenge out own prej­u­dice about so-called “nor­mal peo­ple” and to get rid of our activist arro­gance. We need all kinds of inputs, to see things from oth­er per­spec­tives. Often, peo­ple who are already active in the way that you and I are, are all young 20-some­things. A lot of peo­ple here clear­ly went through a process of ques­tion­ing their last 20 years of social con­di­tion­ing and arrived at con­clu­sions that made them want to take direct action. But it’s hard­er to do this for the first time if you are old­er I think. It’s much much hard­er to analyse your assump­tions about soci­ety at a lat­er stage, because you’ve already com­mit­ted to a cer­tain life path for a long time. It’s eas­i­er to ques­tion the last 20 years of your life than the last 50 if you’ve only got a few left!

What’s your favourite thing about the for­est?

I think the best thing about it is that I’m not so much in front of my com­put­er, which is pas­sive, here I am very active. Here the rhythm of the day with the chang­ing light is amaz­ing. It’s hard to say the fresh air (because there is so much dust here from the near­by coal mine) but it’s still fresh­er than some of the rooms where I live (in the WAA) I like the birds! A lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple vis­it, often real­ly inter­est­ing peo­ple with lots of inter­est­ing ideas and ways of doing things and expe­ri­ence. The best is how much ener­gy there is if there is space for peo­ple to be cre­ative and to realise their ideas and if they don’t have to ask per­mis­sion, but can just do it. Like here, so much has been organ­ised in such a short space of time already (the camp has only been going since the 14th of April 2012) and lots has been built. I think peo­ple are more moti­vat­ed when they don’t have a boss.

- Tina -

 

I spoke to Tina dur­ing a week­end gath­er­ing at the camp when a lot of peo­ple were vis­it­ing the occu­pa­tion to par­tic­i­pate in a com­mu­ni­ty walk around the for­est and eat cake that locals from Buir had brought to share with the occu­piers. She had trav­elled from Cologne to vis­it the camp for a cou­ple of days. We sat togeth­er under the kitchen tar­pau­lin to escape the rain and dis­cuss some of her ideas..

What brought you here?

I am involved in a group called “AusgeCo2hlt” [5] which has been organ­is­ing against brown coal for two years now. We organ­ised a cli­mate camp last year and got to know peo­ple from the WAA. Some peo­ple from the WAA came to one of our meet­ings and told us that they were plan­ning to get a house and hadn’t decid­ed where to get it yet and we sug­gest­ed this area (Buir/Duren.) So we were involved in the for­est fes­ti­val here on the 14th of April and some of us keep com­ing back to stay involved.

Do you plan to live here per­ma­nent­ly?

It depends on the sit­u­a­tion. I haven’t decid­ed in my mind yet. I’m not so good at climb­ing, so I’m com­ing and going at the moment.

Do you think it is impor­tant for more peo­ple to live here?

I think it can work if dif­fer­ent groups of peo­ple come and go, like we are doing. For exam­ple a group can come and stay here one week and then go, and then anoth­er group can come and stay for a week etc. To take the deci­sion to quit school or a job to live here is quite a big one. And if you do have these respon­si­bil­i­ties you have to split your time. But there is a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple liv­ing here (in the Ham­bach for­est) and oth­ers else­where in Europe who are spe­cialised in climb­ing and site occu­pa­tion – I hope more of these peo­ple come here! Sol­i­dar­i­ty is impor­tant though and works quite well. Hope­ful­ly between June and Sep­tem­ber this year the core group liv­ing here at the moment will grow because then there are uni­ver­si­ty hol­i­days in Ger­many.

I’m not pes­simistic, but the envi­ron­men­tal scene in Ger­many is not that big. Peo­ple are involved in a lot of oth­er strug­gles. Many of which you need to be in a city or have com­put­ers to do, so if you choose to live here you have to make it your main focus. One of my main focus­es is to work on press releas­es and try to make links between this and oth­er cam­paigns.

What would a suc­cess here look like for you?

That RWE stops killing the for­est for coal min­ing! But we have to mea­sure suc­cess in oth­er ways as well because we might not achieve that. This occu­pa­tion is rais­ing aware­ness of oth­er issues to peo­ple, espe­cial­ly peo­ple in the local area, such as a cri­tique of cap­i­tal­ism and the sys­tem. A suc­cess would also be if an evic­tion threat would get a lot of peo­ple to come here and act in sol­i­dar­i­ty. It would be cool if the region­al media would start to talk about the issues here. And not just here but also in Cologne (near­est large city.) The mes­sage not just of the for­est but about RWE, coal min­ing, and fos­sil fuel ener­gy.

When we held the last cli­mate camp in Man­heim in 2011 200 peo­ple came. Last week we mobilised against RWE’s Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, but for this demo there were only 150 peo­ple. Forty peo­ple attempt­ed to block­ade the entrance but unfor­tu­nate­ly 300 police, pri­vate secu­ri­ty and dogs pre­vent­ed us and sev­er­al peo­ple were arrest­ed. Next week we will dis­cuss in a meet­ing why there were not very many (in our opin­ion) peo­ple com­ing to this demon­stra­tion – as we had expect­ed more because there are not so many days like this organ­ised around envi­ron­men­tal issues in Ger­many. In the end we thought, ok it would have been cool if there had been lots more peo­ple, but actu­al­ly it was also a suc­cess to raise aware­ness through this action.

We have to accept that we (the anti-coal move­ment) can only grow slow­ly. We try to learn from the anti-nuclear move­ment which took 20 – 30 years to become so estab­lished. So we need to be patient. But it’s hard because cli­mate change is so urgent! Dur­ing cas­tor (anti-nuclear protests) they had 2000 peo­ple sit­ting on the rail­way line so the police couldn’t do much about it. We did the same action on a coal rail­way line and there were only 60 of us so in the end we had to leave. We need the peo­ple with us. We are afraid of repres­sion in small num­bers. But at the same time the repres­sion here is noth­ing com­pared to (the strug­gle against coal min­ing) in Colom­bia so we need to remem­ber this. And although we are a small group we have strong bonds between us, we real­ly like each oth­er. We make mis­takes and are crit­i­cal of our actions but we go for­ward!

- Clum­sy -

 

I inter­viewed Clum­sy on the stump of a tree in the area of clear cut, just a stones throw from the mine on one side and the camp site on the oth­er. From our van­tage point we could see the mine and the colos­sal bag­gers (coal dig­gers) churn­ing coal from the earth in the dis­tance. He has been liv­ing here from the begin­ning of the occu­pa­tion..

Why are you here?

Because Jesus told me, only kid­ding, the rea­son is that this region is Europe’s cli­mate killer num­ber 1. I came here last year for the cli­mate camp and saw all the destruc­tion. I was just trav­el­ling around look­ing for some­where where peo­ple are active and I always want­ed to live on a tree protest site. At the cli­mate camp peo­ple were talk­ing about it but at the time there weren’t enough peo­ple, so I moved into the WAA and did research and made prepa­ra­tions to help make it hap­pen.

Why did you always want to live on a tree protest site?

I like liv­ing out­side, the sim­ple life, the for­est, climb­ing. Life free from the con­straints of soci­ety – rent, work, school, pay­ing for food. I think protest sites are real­ly good exam­ples of oth­er ways of liv­ing.

So do you think that this kind of action is always about more than just one kind of oppres­sion or issue?

Yeah def­i­nite­ly. Of course you always have the main focus – in this case open cast coal min­ing. But with stuff like safer spaces we also try to chal­lenge oth­er forms of oppres­sion like racism and sex­ism. Every activ­i­ty is open to peo­ple of all gen­ders – any­one can climb or any­one can cook. Every­one par­tic­i­pates in the dai­ly chores. And it’s an exam­ple for oth­er peo­ple. When I told my gran about places like this she couldn’t believe that men actu­al­ly do the wash­ing up and that women do con­struc­tion work, or that we decide things by con­sen­sus. Where­as in soci­ety we get taught that there are typ­i­cal ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles and men hold a very priv­i­leged posi­tion – it’s con­di­tion­ing. Often peo­ple that come here are sur­prised that we don’t have lead­ers.

How do you think we could encour­age more peo­ple to come and do this kind of thing?

It’s hard because liv­ing this kind of life – you can’t get a lot of stuff that we’re always told it’s nice to have – T.V, lux­u­ry items. As soon as peo­ple realise that mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions don’t make them hap­py they might want to live like this. I guess by hav­ing this space and show­ing that this life can be sat­is­fy­ing and empow­er­ing peo­ple might want to do the same.

What brings hap­pi­ness?

It’s dif­fer­ent for every­body, but for me it’s hav­ing friends around and hav­ing a lot of time to do what I want. Doing stuff against the destruc­tive RWE makes me hap­py. I always had the feel­ing I want­ed to do some­thing to change soci­ety. This works for me.

What’s your favourite thing about the for­est?

A lot of stuff. It’s qui­et, not the annoy­ing sounds of the city. The air is nice, it’s green, the for­est is full of cute ani­mals – deer, fox­es, mice.. I just like it because it is a big liv­ing thing, where­as cities are just big dead blocks of con­crete and smelly stuff.

When you wake up in the morn­ing what do you hope to find?

The open­cast flood­ed and only the tops of the dig­gers vis­i­ble! No air planes in the sky. My tree-house built! Do you mean what I real­ly want? That’s a big ques­tion! Er.. I’d like to see all the oppres­sive stuff gone. It’s a hard ques­tion.. I’d like to see indus­tri­al civil­i­sa­tion col­lapse.

Any­thing you’d like to add?

To send an open invi­ta­tion to any­one who would like to come and vis­it us and stay as long as pos­si­ble!

- Erde -

Towards the end of speak­ing with clum­sy, Erde emerged from the for­est and came to sit with us in the clear cut. Erde was vis­it­ing the WAA just before the occu­pa­tion took place and then liked the for­est so much he end­ed up stay­ing. A the moment he either lives in his lor­ry or up on his plat­form defence in the trees..

Why are you here?

Because doing noth­ing is giv­ing up. For me per­son­al­ly, it wasn’t enough to do noth­ing. I heard of this occu­pa­tion when I was vis­it­ing the WAA and I thought I will bring my skills and stay the week­end. But then I real­ly liked the peo­ple and the place and the action and I’ve end­ed up stay­ing.

Why do you think this occu­pa­tion is impor­tant?

The first rea­son is because this for­est is to be chopped next win­ter and I want to stop that. Sec­ond is that it is a very old for­est and there is much more life in an old for­est than a new one.

What were you doing before this?

Liv­ing with­out oppres­sion is the way I have lived for the last 15 years. But the dif­fer­ence now, in a project, is that I’m not on my own. Before this I was a free­lancer in a busi­ness and I was treat­ed in anoth­er way and this is a total­ly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. When I became unem­ployed I got re-inter­est­ed in social and polit­i­cal issues. The wish to be with nature was first awak­ened in me in Ham­burg squats after which I moved into my lor­ry.

How is it dif­fer­ent to how you lived in the past?

Here I’m com­plete­ly in nature and not in an office. I’m here with peo­ple who have an enhanced con­scious­ness and sense of self-aware­ness and that is very inter­est­ing and chal­leng­ing. I think we are try­ing to make anoth­er world here, in com­bi­na­tion with the polit­i­cal aspect – and that’s a com­bi­na­tion for opti­mum life qual­i­ty!

What are the ingre­di­ents for opti­mum life qual­i­ty?!

I tried work­ing ‘slave jobs’ after uni­ver­si­ty, I worked two and didn’t try a third. In the end I saw that mon­ey and mate­r­i­al things don’t give me the good life that I am dream­ing of. What are the essen­tial ingre­di­ents of a good life? Peace, love, free­dom, good food, music, colours, flavours, nature..

How do you think we could encour­age more peo­ple to come and do this kind of thing?

I think if we want to build up a bet­ter world we have to reach any­one. We need to get peo­ple here to show them the good life, to expe­ri­ence this way of liv­ing. So they can see and feel it. They get an idea by com­ing here and expe­ri­enc­ing a free, autonomous life. To be the own­er of your time. To get away from wastes of time, like T.V.

When you wake up in the morn­ing what do you hope to find?

Refer to my recipe for the good life! My desire is that peo­ple respect each oth­er and look after each oth­er, because if they do this then they wouldn’t destroy our basic life sup­port sys­tem. What is cre­at­ing the prob­lems of the world and what needs to be destroyed? I’ve thought for a long time that I would like to make two plac­ards, each with the words “cap­i­tal­ism” and “oppres­sion” on them, so that when peo­ple ask me ques­tions like yours I just have to hold one or the oth­er up in answer!

What I would love to see is this coal mine total­ly sur­round­ed by peo­ple, which since it is so big, would prob­a­bly need at least 3,000 – 4,000 peo­ple! So please come and join us.

- Vis­it, Join In, Take Action -

If you want to vis­it the Ham­bach for­est in Ger­many, it is easy to get to and you will always be wel­come. Go for a day, a week, a month – any time you can give to it will be appre­ci­at­ed and there is lots to do and to get involved in. For direc­tions to the for­est vis­it their blog here: http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

For myself, it was time (reluc­tant­ly) to leave Ham­bach and return to Scot­land to re-join the anti-coal organ­is­ing col­lec­tive (Coal Action Scot­land) I am involved with here. At the moment we are busy plan­ning for an action camp against coal min­ing which is going to take place from the 12th – 18th of July 2012. So, once you have been to vis­it Ham­bach For­est it would be fan­tas­tic to see you here in Scot­land to take action in the sum­mer. For more infor­ma­tion vis­it our web­site here: http://takebacktheland.org.uk/

Links and Sources of Infor­ma­tion

[1] Coal Action Scot­land

http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/

“News, views, and action from com­mu­ni­ties and cam­paigns against new coal in Scot­land”

[2] Ham­bach For­est

http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

News, info and direc­tions to The Ham­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion.

[3] The WAA

http://waa.blogsport.de/

WAA stands for “Work­shops for Action and Alter­na­tives” and is an open activist project in Duren.

[4] For­est Occu­pa­tion Kel­ster­bach

http://waldbesetzung.blogsport.de/english-information/

Direct Action against the Frank­furt Air­port Expan­sion, the camp was evict­ed in 2009.

[5] Ausgeco2hlt

http://www.ausgeco2hlt.de/

An anti-coal cam­paign­ing group organ­is­ing cli­mate camps in Ger­many.

 

Take the Flour Back! anti-GM wheat action 27 May — final details

‘Take the Flour Back’ will be a nice day out in the coun­try, with pic­nics, music from Seize the Day and a decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion. It’s for any­one who feels able to pub­li­cal­ly help remove this threat and those who want to show their sup­port for them.

What to bring, action you should take before the 27th May, trans­port info and more info on the web­site — http://taketheflourback.org/

How to get there, OS map and pho­to of the new fence

Farm occupied in USA

29 April 2012

We are reclaim­ing this land to grow healthy food to meet the needs of local com­mu­ni­ties. We envi­sion a future of food sov­er­eign­ty, in which our East Bay com­mu­ni­ties make use of avail­able land — occu­py­ing it where nec­es­sary — for sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture to meet local needs.

http://takebackthetract.com/

29 April 2012

We are reclaim­ing this land to grow healthy food to meet the needs of local com­mu­ni­ties. We envi­sion a future of food sov­er­eign­ty, in which our East Bay com­mu­ni­ties make use of avail­able land — occu­py­ing it where nec­es­sary — for sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture to meet local needs.

http://takebackthetract.com/

OCCUPY OIL — THE SEQUEL

Tak­ing place WORLDWIDE on Tues­day 22nd May 2012

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gbXnBXoTzI

#Occu­py­Oil the Sequel: The road to SHELL is paved with bad inten­tions…

Tak­ing place WORLDWIDE on Tues­day 22nd May 2012

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gbXnBXoTzI

#Occu­py­Oil the Sequel: The road to SHELL is paved with bad inten­tions…

BLOODY MONEY: Tar Sands, Ross­port, Niger Delta

On the 8th of Feb this year Occu­py Oil held it first day of mass action.

Shell Sta­tions across the UK and indeed fur­ther afield were block­ad­ed or pick­et­ed. We are back and on the 22nd of May 2012 we are hold­ing Occu­py Oil the Sequel, Roy­al Dutch Shell will be hold­ing their AGM in The Hague with an audio-visu­al link to a satel­lite meet­ing place in Lon­don.

We are call­ing on all occu­piers, groups and indi­vid­u­als to come togeth­er and send a clear mes­sage to Shell.

NIGER DELTA

Shell Oil in the Niger Delta have done untold destruc­tion, the oil giant’s 2008 spills have wrecked liveli­hoods of 69,000 peo­ple and will take 30 years to clean up.

Guardian Arti­cle from 2011: www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/10/shell-nigerian-oil-spills-amnesty

ROSSPORT, CO MAYO, IRELAND

The Oil giant con­tin­ues to destroy the com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, Co Mayo Ire­land. Read more about the Shell to Sea cam­paign at www.shelltosea.com

TAR SANDS, CANADA

Roy­al Dutch Shell is one of the largest play­ers in tar sands, pro­duc­ing approx­i­mate­ly 276 000 bar­rels per day or rough­ly 20% of total exports from Alber­ta. Shell has put forth appli­ca­tions to expand its capac­i­ty through new mines and in situ projects, to a pro­ject­ed 770 000 bar­rel per day capac­i­ty. How­ev­er, strong com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance to Shell has dam­aged their rep­u­ta­tion with both share­hold­ers and the pub­lic. Indeed, Shell has been named in five law­suits relat­ed to tar sands devel­op­ments and has faced share­hold­er res­o­lu­tions demand­ing greater clar­i­ty over the risk of tar sands invest­ments.

UK Tar Sands Net­work: www.no-tar-sands.org

It’s time to make a stand. On 22nd of May 2012 we will occu­py petrol sta­tions across the GLOBE. We call on activists to organ­ise your­selves into affin­i­ty groups and join this action world-wide. Make ban­ners, get sound sys­tems and pick tar­gets. As the date approach­es we can co-ordi­nate actions for max­i­mum impact. Let’s send anoth­er shot in our war against the glob­al elites.

E‑MAIL: info@occupyoil.co.uk
TWITTER: @OccupyOil, hash­tag #Occu­py­Oil
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/events/230582443683609
WEB: www.occupyoil.co.uk

Forest to be Coal Mined occupied in Germany

On Sat­ur­day the 14th of April, part of the Ham­bach for­est near Cologne, Ger­many was squat­ted by a group of activists in oppo­si­tion to the planned open cast coal mine by RWE. Peo­ple are more than wel­come to join in the cam­paign and vis­it.

For more infor­ma­tion see: http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

e‑mail: hambacherforst@riseup.net

 

Here‘s a 10min. video (sorry,no eng­lish sub­ti­tles yet)

 

This is the first dec­la­ra­tion by the squat­ters:

First Declaration of the Hambach jungle

 

The Forest is now squatted!

A part of the Ham­bach for­est has been squat­ted in order to save it from the exca­va­tors sent by the giantic ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion RWE to dig up the coal.
Along­side the “Wald­fest”, a cul­tur­al hap­pen­ing in the woods (with the slo­gan “For­est, not coal!”), activists have squat­ted the wood­land, although both activ­i­ties remain inde­pen­dent of each oth­er.
At the „Wald­fest“ peo­ple from dif­fer­ent groups met up form­ing a broad coali­tion to get active in sav­ing the Ham­bach For­est and stop the extrac­tion as well as the pro­duc­tion of ener­gy from coal.
Ham­bach for­est, near Cologne, is set to be com­plete­ly destroyed, mak­ing space for the largest coal mine in Europe „Ham­bach­er Tage­bau“ accord­ing to the plans of RWE.

By squat­ting we are also tak­ing over respon­si­bil­i­ty adopt­ing our trees, pro­tect­ing them our own way.

 

Why squatting?

We have decid­ed to squat know­ing that it is sur­pass­ing the small path of legal protest. Nev­er­the­less two rea­sons lead us to this con­clu­sion:

First­ly: The gap between what is legal­ly allowed and what is regard­ed as jus­ti­fied by us is too big.
RWE is destroy­ing local com­mu­ni­ties, as well as endan­ger­ing peo­ples health  by destroy­ing the for­est in order to mine the brown coal, not to men­tion caus­ing cli­mate change, and they are legal­ly allowed to do so.
Nonethe­less we are not able to see any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in their action.
By squat­ting this for­est we’re not act­ing legal­ly accord­ing to cur­rent Laws, but the action is jus­ti­fied by the aim of try­ing to stop RWEs world destruc­tion course.

Sec­ond­ly: We believe that the gap between what is legal and what is just will always exist. Due to this sim­ple fact, a neu­tral point of view can­not exist. Just and legal remain dif­fer­ent because every­body them­selves has their own opin­ion of what is just and what is not.
There­fore estab­lish­ing free and live­ly forms of inter­ac­tion, defin­ing what is just and sen­si­ble, is a must; As opposed to hav­ing the def­i­n­i­tion derivat­ed from ancient laws which, for the most part, are only pro­tect­ing the inter­ests of the rul­ing elites.
By squat­ting this land we’re try­ing to gen­er­ate a process of vivid nego­ti­at­ing, fur­ther­more bring­ing atten­tion to the top­ic of how cli­mate and envi­ro­men­tal destruc­tion shall be dealt with.
Loud­ly we’re shout­ing „No!“ at any­body whose solu­tion is to go on just like they used to, and who are ‑just like RWE- even speed­ing up the destruc­tion by build­ing a new coal plant!

If we are to be evict­ed by police force then we are fac­ing the answer of a repres­sive state which is try­ing to sub­due any hor­i­zon­tal and vivid process of self-orga­ni­za­tion. That is the ide­ol­gy of the state as well as of the cap­i­tal­ist cor­po­ra­tions who are far too inflex­i­ble, not to men­tion unable to give sen­si­ble answers to the top­ics of our time.
They will even­tu­al­ly per­ish just like the dinosaurs who were also unable to cope with the chang­ing con­di­tions. In fact the solu­tion is not to mod­i­fy the exist­ing sys­tem of exploita­tion and supres­sion into some­thing more flex­i­ble, but to over­come that sys­tem!

 

Against coal energy — Here and Everywhere

This squat is oppos­ing coal ener­gy in gen­er­al as it is the most CO2 inten­sive form of gain­ing ener­gy. The „Rheinis­che BraunkohleRe­vi­er“ (Rhi­nan­ian Brown Coal Area) is Europe’s cli­mate killer no. 1. In contrast,most of the coal burnt here is shipped from oth­er parts of the world e.g.Columbia where the extrac­tion coin­cides with bru­tal human rights vio­la­tions.
World­wide the con­flicts aris­ing along­side coal extrac­tion and burn­ing are get­ting worse. Espe­cial­ly in South­east Asia where in the last few years activists resist­ing coal extrac­tion have been mur­dered.
We want to cre­ate an aware­ness of these strug­gles to help the peo­ple fighting.Therefore we’ll include more infor­ma­tion about the sit­u­a­tion in the­sear­eas in our fur­ther dec­la­ra­tions, let­ting those activists speak.
Fur­ther­more we declare our sol­i­dar­i­ty towards the rad­i­cal anti-coal cam­paigns like the coal-action-net­work in the U.K., ris­ing-tide-groups in Aus­tralia and North-Amer­i­ca, or the „wij stop­pen steenkool“ cam­paign in the Nether­lands. With their direct form of action, these groups gave us inspi­ra­tion, and we hope they will inspire oth­er groups world-wide as well.

 

The woods for all!

Occu­py­ing the for­est shall be an act for re-empow­er­ment by the locals. The „Occu­py­ing Force“ RWE shall loose their „right“ of „direct­ing“ over the region unscru­plous­ly destroy­ing the local and glob­al fun­da­men­tals of life.
Peo­ple should decide what will hap­pen to the for­est in a coop­er­a­tive man­ner instead. This space should be open to all on the basis of equal treat­ment of each oth­er. There­fore it is nec­es­sary that the peo­ple in the for­est ques­tion which role-mod­els and ways of act­ing they repro­duce, what struc­tures of oppres­sion and dom­i­nance exist direct­ly and indi­rect­ly. We think that it is impor­tant that we all act togeth­er to fight, pre­vent and inter­vene in dis­crim­i­na­tion of any kind.

 

Space for preparing the change

Squat­ting the Ham­bach For­est is a direct action direct­ly con­fronting the injus­tice of the coal indus­try. But we want to go on fur­ther: It’ll also be a place for peo­ple of dif­fer­ent back­grounds to meet up and net­work. Peo­ple that used to have only the fight against coal expan­sion in com­mon can now come togeth­er and exchange ideas and expe­ri­ences of the ongo­ing strug­gle.
Through this we hope that peo­ple are enabled to net­work and orga­nize — for fur­ther resis­tance and more.

We do need a place where peo­ple are able plan the cli­mate-just future them­selves.
First­ly: The cur­rent pol­i­tics — they total­ly failed and keep on fail­ing in answer­ing the press­ing mat­ter of cli­mate change!
Sec­ond­ly: Orga­niz­ing our­selves from below is much more fun!
Maybe this squat might become such a place. The off­shoot of a new world amidst the heart of fos­sil-nuclear cap­i­tal­ism.

 

Why „declarations out of the Hambach jungle?

The name of this text came up fol­low­ing the tra­di­tion of the Zap­atis­tas in Mex­i­co and their „Dec­la­ra­tions of the lacan­don jun­gle“. The Zap­atis­tas achieved their aim of liv­ing in dig­ni­ty in the bor­ders of the poor­est Mex­i­can state through a strong direct and deter­mined push back of the repres­sive police and para-mil­i­tary Mex­i­cos.
We are not claim­ing our action to be com­pa­ra­ble to the things that hap­pened in Mex­i­co but nev­er­the­less our aim is the same. Fight­ing for a self-deter­mi­nat­ed life in dig­ni­ty inmidst a sys­tem of destruc­tion and oppres­sion.
We believe that suc­cess­ful stug­gles like in Chaipas are pos­si­ble all over the world and nec­es­sary. We want to make the first steps in this direc­tion.

The form of a dec­la­ra­tion was also cho­sen because we are tired of cor­rupt­ing and short­en­ing the con­tents only to make them fit into a stan­dard press for­mat, after which they’re still total­ly cor­rupt­ed by the press.
Instead we’re opti­mistic that this and the fol­low­ing dec­la­ra­tions will reach ‑hope­ful­ly a lot of- peo­ple direct­ly.

We call the woods the for­est Ham­bach jun­gle know­ing that this ter­mi­nol­o­gy is incor­rect.
But Ham­bach Jun­gle is, in its struc­ture, one of the old­est forests in West­ern Europe. Rare habi­tats are found here. Unlike RWE, who wish to destroy the for­est in total, we pledge anoth­er solu­tion, an exper­i­ment where­by the nat­ur­al for­est will, in a few decades, turn into jun­gle-like wood.
Then, we would leave the Ham­bach Jun­gle delib­er­ate­ly!

Actioncamp Foz da Tua (Portugal)

We are reach­ing the crit­i­cal stage to stop one of the biggest atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted in one of the most beau­ti­ful rivers in Por­tu­gal.

We are reach­ing the crit­i­cal stage to stop one of the biggest atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted in one of the most beau­ti­ful rivers in Por­tu­gal. This is a strug­gle span­ning sev­er­al years already, although all the effort made to pre­serve the Tua Riv­er Val­ley, it’s nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al wealth, has been con­tra­dict­ed by the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­i­cal forces orga­nized to expro­pri­ate us from a uni­ver­sal com­mon good.

Con­struc­tion work for the dam has already start­ed! The Tua riv­er val­ley is encom­passed with­in the Alto Douro Vin­hateiro Region – a World Her­itage Site that  cel­e­brat­ed 10 years of UNESCO clas­si­fi­ca­tion last Decem­ber – and is now under the threat of being com­plete­ly destroyed. We must act. We must work togeth­er to pre­serve a Her­itage that is all of ours.

The build­ing of the Tua val­ley dam is part of the Nation­al Dam Plan, an ener­gy strat­e­gy cre­at­ed by the last gov­ern­ment propos­ing build­ing 10 news dams of high hydro­elec­tric poten­tial. Most civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions protest­ed against this, since it defines the biggest envi­ron­men­tal assault being com­mit­ted in the coun­try. In spite of all the effort invest­ed by these orga­ni­za­tions, the eco­nom­ic inter­ests that dri­ve the com­pa­nies involved have over­come all the legal chal­lenges set in their course.

We need all the help we can get to stop the Foz-Tua dam. So then we make an Open Call for a wide mobi­liza­tion of peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions to pro­tect and val­orize the World Her­itage and the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment of the Peo­ple.

The 14 of March cel­e­brates the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action for Rivers. The rivers Tua, Sabor, Tâmega and all the threat­ened rivers must not be for­got­ten. We want to mark this date with an event where our voice will be heard. From the 10 to the 18 of March 2012 we will orga­nize a camp for the preser­va­tion of the Tua Val­ley and the pub­lic cen­sor­ship of the pro­po­nents of this dead­ly project.

This camp seeks to bend over this his­tor­i­cal moment for the region, when it’s on the brink of loos­ing the poten­tial for ground­ed devel­op­ment, and share the real­i­ty and cul­ture of a com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing in com­mu­nion with the riv­er val­ley for so long. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly the camp will be a place for net­work­ing, skill shar­ing and debat­ing envi­ron­men­tal, social and polit­i­cal ideas and con­cerns. It will also be a plat­form for protest, along­side the peo­ple and places most direct­ly affect­ed, to call for the imme­di­ate sus­pen­sion of the build­ing work. We can­not allow the con­struc­tion of this dam to con­demn the Tua Riv­er Val­ley region with loos­ing the World Her­itage sta­tus, the flood­ing of the 125 year old train line, so we walk against the build­ing of the EDP dam.

The Camp
 

The camp is being orga­nized by a con­stel­la­tion of vol­un­teers. We need all the help from asso­ci­a­tions and indi­vid­u­als that wish to par­tic­i­pate in the orga­ni­za­tion of this camp. This is a self-orga­nized camp and we ask for every­one to orga­nize actions and mate­ri­als for the Tua, against the dam. Sup­port could take sev­er­al forms:

  • broad­cast­ing cam­paign mate­r­i­al, invi­ta­tions, oth­er infor­ma­tion;
  • orga­niz­ing col­lec­tive trans­porta­tion to Trás-os-Montes;
  • col­lect­ing mate­ri­als such as tents/marquees/wooden structures/composting toilets/cooking equipment//paints;
  • get­ting involved in plan­ning meetings/proposing work­shops;
  • help­ing in the kitchen staff, search­ing for local food sup­pli­ers and and prepar­ing every­day meals
  • con­tribut­ing with dona­tions;

 
The impacts that the dam will cause are numer­ous and irre­versible. Here are some:

  • the drown­ing of a his­toric train line of local pop­u­la­tions, the only trans­port suit­able for peo­ple and goods in this region, that has also enor­mous tur­is­tic poten­tial and is there­fore instru­men­tal for eco­nom­ic and social devel­op­ment;
  • the for­feit­ing of a com­mon asset at a huge cap­i­tal cost with zero total gain;
  • the irre­versible destruc­tion of farm land, ecosys­tem bal­ance, nat­ur­al and human land­scapes, social, eco­log­i­cal and eco­nom­i­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty;
  • the loos­ing of the UNESCO World Her­itage Site clas­si­fi­ca­tion (see ICOMOS report on EDP dam impacts on UNESCO World Her­itage);
  • the unmea­sur­able loss of vis­i­tor flux and wealth gen­er­a­tion for the region;
  • the vio­la­tion of the Water Qual­i­ty Direc­tive, an action plan by the Euro­pean Union to ensure water pro­tec­tion.

 

All hands are wel­come! Let’s not allow the Tua Riv­er Val­ley to flood!
Actua Camp, 10 to 18 March 2012, Foz-Tua, Trás-os-Montes

Actua pelo Tua Art Con­test // Use Your Art // every art form accept­ed
Exhi­bi­tion // 14 March Foz-Tua // On going call out for entries

Con­tact: acampamentoactua@gmail.com

 
Info: http://acampamentoactua.wordpress.com/english/

Quebec Police Dismantle Innu Blockade Against Controversial Hydro Complex

March 11, 2012

Que­bec provin­cial police went on the march last Fri­day to dis­man­tle a block­ade that a group of Innu cit­i­zens erect­ed to protest the con­struc­tion of hydro trans­mis­sion lines through their tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry.

March 11, 2012

Que­bec provin­cial police went on the march last Fri­day to dis­man­tle a block­ade that a group of Innu cit­i­zens erect­ed to protest the con­struc­tion of hydro trans­mis­sion lines through their tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry.

Accord­ing to avail­able reports, no one was arrest­ed dur­ing the court-backed offen­sive, which the Innu pas­sive­ly tried to resist. How­ev­er, a total of thir­teen peo­ple were arrest­ed, includ­ing ten women.

The blockade/checkpoint went up went up on March 5 after Innu rep­re­sen­ta­tives walked away from nego­ti­a­tions with Hydro-Québec over the pro­posed La Romaine Hydro­elec­tric Com­plex.

The $6.5 bil­lion project includes four new hydro dams that would ulti­mate­ly pro­vide elec­tric­i­ty for var­i­ous indus­tri­al projects includ­ing mines and alu­minum refiner­ies as part of the Plan Nord, “the Que­béc gov­ern­men­t’s plan to rav­age north­ern Québec, with many eco­log­i­cal­ly dev­as­tat­ing projects slat­ed for devel­op­ment on Innu ter­ri­to­ry, or Nitassi­nan, with­out the con­sent of the Innu peo­ple,” com­ments Col­lec­tif sol­idaire anti-colo­nial / Anti-Colo­nial Sol­i­dar­i­ty Col­lec­tive.

The project was approved by Que­bec’s envi­ron­men­tal assess­ment board more than two years ago. How­ev­er, the Innu com­mu­ni­ties of Uashat and Maliote­nam have con­tin­u­ous­ly chal­lenged that deci­sion because, the Innu say that the board failed to con­sid­er how the trans­mis­sion lines for the project would affect their lands.

Speak­ing from the block­ade, Michael MacKen­zie, vice-Chef at Innu Takuaikan Uashat mak Mani-Ute­nam com­ment­ed, Every­thing is peace­ful. There’s no aggres­sion from our side. What we’re doing today is legit­i­mate and this is what it’s come to. Our rights have been tram­pled.”

“We had the Arab Spring, I think we’re now see­ing an Innu Spring,” added Christo­pher Scott, a spokesper­son from the Alliance Romaine, who has been sup­port­ing the Innu.

Clear­ly, Hydro-Québec did­n’t think much of that. Soon after the block­ade set­tled in, the Crown cor­po­ra­tion ran to the Supe­ri­or Court com­plain­ing of loss­es amount­ing to more than $1/2 mil­lion for every day that the block­ade remained in place. It also spiced things up by alleg­ing that it would have to shut down any ongo­ing work on Fri­day, unless the block­ade was dis­man­tled.

On Fri­day after­noon, the Supe­ri­or Court grant­ed Hydro-Québec a tem­po­rary injunc­tion. The Sureté du Québec made their move lat­er that night.

Video

The injunc­tion will be in effect until March 19, 2012, at which time the mat­ter will be dis­cussed in court.

For those in the Mon­tre­al Area, the Anti-Colo­nial Sol­i­dar­i­ty Col­lec­tive is orga­niz­ing a protest for Mon­day March 12 to “Demon­strate our sol­i­dar­i­ty in the face of legal harass­ment by Hydro-Québec and the arro­gance of the Québec state.