Category: London

Lon­don

Plane Stupid issues 48hr subvertising challenge

It’s that time of year when every air­line starts aggres­sive­ly adver­tis­ing for your busi­ness. Well, we’ve had enough. Plane Stu­pid is invit­ing all of you to take part in its very own sub­ver­tis­ing com­pe­ti­tion.

Sticker kidIt’s that time of year when every air­line starts aggres­sive­ly adver­tis­ing for your busi­ness. Well, we’ve had enough. Plane Stu­pid is invit­ing all of you to take part in its very own sub­ver­tis­ing com­pe­ti­tion. From Thurs­day 22nd April — Fri­day 23rd April, we’ll be launch­ing 48 hours of stick­er-whack­ing, sub­ver­tis­ing, adbust­ing pan­de­mo­ni­um.

The avi­a­tion indus­try spends mil­lions every year telling us that we’re no good to any­one unless we keep fly­ing with them. So it’s time to hit back! Like tobac­co adverts, avi­a­tion adver­tis­ing needs to become a thing of the past. But until then, let’s sub­ver­tise. Any poster, advert or bill­board is fair game.

Whether you’re a first time activist look­ing for an easy way-in, or an old timer look­ing for some light relief.….….it’s time to take to the streets and reclaim some pub­lic space. Tak­ing part is easy:

1. You can down­load a choice of designs from our Flickr site, or use your design skills to make your own.
2. Print them out on stan­dard, non divid­ed, A4 stick­er paper (avail­able from most print­ers and sta­tion­ers).
3. Then find your near­est avi­a­tion adver­tise­ment.
4. Stick ’em up punk!
5. Take pho­tographs, set up a new tem­po­rary email address in an inter­net cafe (under a pseu­do­nym) and email your images to info@planestupid.com.

The group who stick­ers the most adverts in the 48 hour peri­od wins. Wins what? Prizes! We got the bumper crop of 5 spray cans, Cul­ture Jam by Kalle Lasn, Do It Your­self, A hand­book for chang­ing our world, by the Trapese Col­lec­tive and Scrib­ble­boy by Philip Rid­ley to give away.

Of course don’t feel lim­it­ed to indi­vid­ual stick­ers, think big! You can write your own mes­sage on large stretch­es of blank wall paper to cov­er whole bill boards. Make up some wall paper paste, get a paint roller, a stick it up. If nec­es­sary — attach the roller to a broom han­dle for those hard to reach places. Help­ful­ly, there’s some great how-to guides on t’in­ter­net.

One last point. Please be respect­ful about where you stick­er. Cor­po­rate nas­ties are fine.….but the local old peo­ple’s homes may not appre­ci­ate your art on their walls!

Use your head, and remem­ber to dress well for the occa­sion — caps and scarves are the in thing this sub­ver­tis­ing sea­son. Some offi­cers of the law may be con­vinced that sub­ver­tis­ing is bor­der­line ille­gal, so take a friend as look­out, keep an eye open for CCTV and don’t get caught.

BP FORTNIGHT OF SHAME – LONDON MASS ACTION

Save the date!
Sat­ur­day, 10th April. 1PM. Lon­don.

Join us at a secret Lon­don loca­tion for an after­noon of sun, sound sys­tems and sub­ver­sion. Make sure BP knows that they won’t go into the tar sands with­out a fight. Meet­ing point and more details to be announced near­er the time, and keep an eye on:

Party at the pumpsSave the date!
Sat­ur­day, 10th April. 1PM. Lon­don.

Join us at a secret Lon­don loca­tion for an after­noon of sun, sound sys­tems and sub­ver­sion. Make sure BP knows that they won’t go into the tar sands with­out a fight. Meet­ing point and more details to be announced near­er the time, and keep an eye on:
www.tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com

More info about the BP Fort­night of Shame, April 1 – 15 2010

The BP Fort­night of Shame is a call to action from the UK Tar Sands Net­work, Ris­ing Tide and the Camp for Cli­mate Action to force BP to
reverse their crazy plans to move into Canada’s tar sands – the sin­gle most destruc­tive project on earth. It runs between the annu­al Fos­sil Fools day on April 1st, which in recent years has seen a flur­ry of action against the fos­sil fuels indus­try, and BP’s Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing on April 15th. Grass­roots groups across the UK and around the world, will be tak­ing action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with First Nations com­mu­ni­ties in Cana­da to stop BP’s dead­ly plans in their tracks.

www.tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.climatecamp.org.uk
www.ienearth.org/cits

Rampart — Three Colts Lane Eviction

At 10.30 this morn­ing (16 march 2010) high court bailiffs arrived at the new­ly opened Ram­part build­ing, war­rant in hand, and only days after they lost the court case. The res­i­dents inside repeat­ed­ly asked to be shown the war­rant but to no avail. Legal observers out­side were threat­ened with vio­lence, abuse and crow­bars, and were told that it was none of their busi­ness.

At 10.30 this morn­ing (16 march 2010) high court bailiffs arrived at the new­ly opened Ram­part build­ing, war­rant in hand, and only days after they lost the court case. The res­i­dents inside repeat­ed­ly asked to be shown the war­rant but to no avail. Legal observers out­side were threat­ened with vio­lence, abuse and crow­bars, and were told that it was none of their busi­ness. The angle grinder came out and the res­i­dents were giv­en 10 sec­onds to open up, which of course they did­n’t, so the cut­ting start­ed and the door was soon forced open. The peo­ple inside grabbed what they could and were man­han­dled out of the build­ing.

The library was saved thanks to some mem­bers of the col­lec­tive and assort­ed helpers who dragged them­selves out of bed ear­ly Fri­day morn­ing to res­cue it. It has found a home at 195 Mare Street. Thanks to every­one who helped. We’ll be announc­ing a new build­ing very soon. Mean­while, Mon­day meet­ings con­tin­ue at Mare Street unless oth­er­wise announced. Come down and get involved. Lon­don needs social cen­tres!

Same shit, dif­fer­ent day. Ram­pART will con­tin­ue. Thanks to every­one who turned up. I love that some­one had come to paint the front of the build­ing and remove the graf­fi­ti only to find bailiffs at the door.

http://therampart.wordpress.com/

Evic­tion bailiffs:

these bas­tards seem to spe­cialised in trav­eller, gyp­sy and squat­ter types. more info here.….…..

http://www.constantand.co.uk/index.htm

Con­stant & Com­pa­ny
66 Harpur Street,
Bed­ford,
MK40 2RA

(t) 01234 340091
(f) 01234 301299

DX 5641 BEDFORD

bedford@constantandcompany.co.uk

Con­stant & Com­pa­ny
163 Queensway,
Bletch­ley
MK2 2DZ

(t) 01908 374374
(f) 01908 370073

DX 100029 BLETCHLEY
miltonkeynes@constantandcompany.co.uk

Free the climate prisoners! Solidarity demo

Demo at the Dan­ish Embassy on Sloane Street, Mon­day 15th March 2010, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the COP15 cli­mate pris­on­ers.

This morn­ing 15 cli­mate activists protest­ed out­side the Dan­ish Embassy, Sloane Street, West Lon­don, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Tash and Noah, the first two pro­test­ers from the COP15 sum­mit to go on tri­al. See video of the protest.

Demo at the Dan­ish Embassy on Sloane Street, Mon­day 15th March 2010, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the COP15 cli­mate pris­on­ers.

This morn­ing 15 cli­mate activists protest­ed out­side the Dan­ish Embassy, Sloane Street, West Lon­don, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Tash and Noah, the first two pro­test­ers from the COP15 sum­mit to go on tri­al. See video of the protest.

Dur­ing the Copen­hagen sum­mit, over 2000 peo­ple were detained with­out cause. 7 will be going on tri­al, and the first tri­als are on Tuues­day 16th and Thurs­day 18th. All those detained durng the sum­mit were forced to sit in the ‘her­ring-bone’ lines, hands tied behind their backs, and denied toi­let breaks, food and water.

The protest this morn­ing last­ed about an hour, and the police kept turn­ing up, increas­ing from a cou­ple of bob­bies to as many as there were pro­test­ers by the end. They asked for a lia­son, but the pro­test­ers just chant­ed ‘Drop the charges’ in their faces. The pro­test­ers began by hold­ing a ban­ner read­ing ‘Drop the Charges’ in front of the Embassy entrance, and then sat down in the street in a ‘her­ring-bone’ line.

While Tash and Noah are fac­ing seri­ous charges, some­thing like con­spir­a­cy to cause civ­il unrest, they are not the first activists to be on tri­al for Cop15. There have already been more than sev­en tri­als, luck­i­ly most of them end­ing in acquit­tal or minor con­vic­tions with only one three month prison sen­tence.

All the charged deserve our sol­i­dar­i­ty!

For updates from the anti-repres­sion group check out: http://cop15antirep.blogsport.eu/

Social Centres in a Time of Crisis

A week­end of work­shops, dis­cus­sions and social­is­ing for every­one with an inter­est in rad­i­cal autonomous social cen­tres.

• How can a new gen­er­a­tion of social cen­tres learn from the suc­cess­es and fail­ures of estab­lished ones? What are the ways in which we can best face up to the chal­lenges?

Social Centres crisis posterA week­end of work­shops, dis­cus­sions and social­is­ing for every­one with an inter­est in rad­i­cal autonomous social cen­tres.

• How can a new gen­er­a­tion of social cen­tres learn from the suc­cess­es and fail­ures of estab­lished ones? What are the ways in which we can best face up to the chal­lenges?

• How can we sus­tain ener­gy and dynamism? Can we stop the dai­ly grind of actu­al­ly run­ning a social cen­tre from eclips­ing the pol­i­tics and pas­sion behind it

• Is there a way in which we can cap­i­talise on the cur­rent wide­spread dis­af­fec­tion with main­stream pol­i­tics? What is the role of social cen­tres in a time of cri­sis?

• What is the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with your social cen­tre? What’s going right, what’s going wrong, and what sup­port do you need?

At the Com­mon Place, Leeds 17–18th April 2010
http://www.thecommonplace.org.uk/

Sat­ur­day: 10am – 6pm, fol­lowed by din­ner and enter­tain­ment
Sun­day: 10am for brunch, 11am – 4pm

Lunch avail­able on both days.

socialcentres2010@googlemail.com

BP Fortnight of Shame

The BP Fort­night of Shame is a call to action from the UK Tar Sands Net­work, Ris­ing Tide and the Camp for Cli­mate Action to force BP to reverse their crazy plans to move into Canada’s tar sands.

BP horse-rider of the apocalypseThe BP Fort­night of Shame is a call to action from the UK Tar Sands Net­work, Ris­ing Tide and the Camp for Cli­mate Action to force BP to reverse their crazy plans to move into Canada’s tar sands. It runs between the annu­al Fos­sil Fools Day on April 1st, which in recent years has seen a flur­ry of action against the fos­sil fuels indus­try, and BP’s Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing on April 15th. Grass­roots groups across the UK, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with First Nations indige­nous peo­ples, will be tak­ing action to stop BP’s dead­ly plans in their tracks. This will include a glob­al day of action on Sat­ur­day 10th April. All are encour­aged to get involved.

Why Tar Sands?

Attempts to avert the plan­et from slid­ing into cli­mate cri­sis are being threat­ened by a sin­gle mas­sive project in the Cana­di­an wilder­ness. Already, mil­lions of bar­rels of tar sands oil are being extract­ed every day, pro­duc­ing three to five times as many green­house gas emis­sions as con­ven­tion­al oil. The extrac­tion process is immense­ly resource-inten­sive, cur­rent­ly using enough nat­ur­al gas every day to heat 3.2 mil­lion Cana­di­an homes. Add to this the mass defor­esta­tion the projects are caus­ing, rid­ding us of des­per­ate­ly need­ed car­bon sinks, then it becomes clear this project can­not be allowed to con­tin­ue if we are seri­ous about pre­vent­ing run­away cli­mate change.

The effects tar sands are hav­ing on local First Nations indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties are dev­as­tat­ing. The tar sands devel­op­ment in Alber­ta cov­ers an area the size of Eng­land, with tox­ic tail­ing ponds so huge they are vis­i­ble from space, leak­ing poi­sons into the local water sup­ply. 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.

Why BP?

BP are the only major oil com­pa­ny with no tar sands extrac­tion projects cur­rent­ly in oper­a­tion. This is about to change. Since 2007, BP have qui­et­ly ditched the ‘Beyond Petro­le­um’ sham, because invest­ing in renew­ables sim­ply was­n’t mak­ing them enough prof­it. They have decid­ed to go Back to Petro­le­um, with a vengeance, under the lead­er­ship of new Chief Exec­u­tive Tony Hay­ward.

Mov­ing into tar sands was one of the first steps Tony Hay­ward took, acquir­ing a half share in the Sun­rise Project with Husky Ener­gy. The Sun­rise Project will be huge, pro­duc­ing 200,000 bar­rels of filthy oil a day, and using Steam-Assist­ed Grav­i­ty Drainage (SAGD), an extrac­tion process even more ener­gy and water inten­sive than the more vis­i­ble sur­face-min­ing oper­a­tions.

The reces­sion has giv­en us a win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty. BP have been forced to post­pone their final deci­sion on whether to go ahead until the sec­ond half of 2010. This means it is not too late for us to stop this out­ra­geous project. BP are des­per­ate for Sun­rise to go ahead, and will cer­tain­ly not go down with­out a fight, but with effec­tive and sus­tained action we can win this one.
What can I do?

Local groups across the UK, from Brighton to Scot­land, are already engaged in plot­ting and plan­ning for the Fort­night of Shame. If your local group isn’t already plan­ning some­thing, then get sug­gest­ing ideas. If you haven’t already got a local group, then check out the local groups that form the Camp for Cli­mate Action net­work. All are open to every­one to join.

Coal Action Scotland InfoTour dates

The Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is going on tour! Check our list of dates below to see if we’re com­ing any­where near you. If you’d like us to to a talk where you are and its not on the list, email us at main­shill [at] riseup.net and we’ll get back to you as soon as pos­si­ble.

10th March
Brighton
7pm at the Cow­ley Club
Lon­don Road

The Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is going on tour! Check our list of dates below to see if we’re com­ing any­where near you. If you’d like us to to a talk where you are and its not on the list, email us at main­shill [at] riseup.net and we’ll get back to you as soon as pos­si­ble.

10th March
Brighton
7pm at the Cow­ley Club
Lon­don Road

12th March
Leeds
7pm at the Band­stand Com­mu­ni­ty Allot­ments
Wood­house Ridge, Mean­wood Road
15th March
Brad­ford
7pm at the 1 in 12 Club
21–23 Albion Street

16th March
Lan­cast­er
7pm at the Lan­cast­er Action Resource Cen­tre
78a Pen­ny Street

Livesey Occupiers Re-Open Community Museum

1.3.2010
Fam­i­lies flock to the Livesey Muse­um for the re-open­ing of the for­mer chil­dren’s muse­um to mark two years since South­wark Coun­cil shut the build­ing down

Livesey1.3.2010
Fam­i­lies flock to the Livesey Muse­um for the re-open­ing of the for­mer chil­dren’s muse­um to mark two years since South­wark Coun­cil shut the build­ing down

It was a wet Sun­day morn­ing in South Lon­don as com­mu­ni­ty activists scur­ried round the beau­ti­ful Livesey muse­um on the Old Kent Rd, putting the final touch­es to the space for a free fam­i­ly fun­day.

Police had called the occu­piers the day before stat­ing their intent to arrest peo­ple open­ing the build­ing, for bur­glary. After being being told that such arrests would be ille­gal, they rang back to say they would shut the build­ing down on grounds of health and safe­ty, and also take details of any­one going into the build­ing . If details were refused, the indi­vid­ual would be arrest­ed. Again ille­gal police work.

The fire ser­vice arrived at 11, and gave the thumbs up for the build­ing to be used.

And then sud­den­ly the fam­i­ly rush began!

———-

Two years ago South­wark coun­cil shut the Livesey down as part of a bud­get cut. The cost of run­ning the build­ing was less than mon­ey spent on coun­cil lunch­es. The coun­cil then tried to sell the build­ing only to find that in the deeds George Livesey left the Livesey for the peo­ple of Peck­ham and Cam­ber­well. As a trustee they had no right to sell it.

After a com­mu­ni­ty cam­paign to save the chil­dren’s muse­um by the Friends of Livesey, the coun­cil accept­ed a pro­pos­al from The­atre Peck­ham to use the space for rehearsals. Two years lat­er noth­ing had hap­pened in the build­ing.

And so it was occu­pied six weeks ago by a group who want to see the build­ing used by the com­mu­ni­ty.

A pub­lic meet­ing was held with 40 peo­ple and there was con­sen­sus to hold a re-open­ing for local fam­i­lies.

After two weeks of orga­niz­ing fam­i­lies flocked from all around to attend the day of activ­i­ties: veg­etable grow­ing work­shops, a trea­sure hunt, sto­ry­telling, arts and crafts, a the­atre work­shop and bicy­cle main­te­nance.

Around 80 peo­ple attend­ed, and the kids had a ball espe­cial­ly on the trea­sure island. The muse­um came back to life, and was placed back into use for its orig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ty pur­pose.

Around 2.30pm the fire ser­vice returned to see what we would do if there was a fire. They walked around to see every­thing was fine and then let every­one play on the fire engine. Hoses and sirens went off, and there was a new activ­i­ty for the event.

One police, and a com­mu­ni­ty police­man turned up and hang around at the gate for a while, after being refused entry after ask­ing to see inside for poten­tial crime. So the phone calls the day before seemed to be an attempt at intim­i­da­tion.

So the Livsey Muse­um was shut to the com­mu­ni­ty two years ago, and yes­ter­day the com­mu­ni­ty re-opened it, to have a bril­liant day with the fire ser­vice being co-opt­ed into the fun.

With a court date immi­nent, we will see what hap­pens next at the Livesey but for now it is re-open and in the hands of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Fossil Fools Day 2010

Cli­mate change is no laugh­ing mat­ter – but that doesn’t mean we can’t con­front the Fos­sil Fuel Empire with sub­ver­sive humour.

WHAT: Direct actions, prac­ti­cal jokes and throw­ing a span­ner in the works to stop the fos­sil fools.
WHERE: Your street, town or city.
WHEN: April 1st, 2010.

FFD graphic - bigCli­mate change is no laugh­ing mat­ter – but that doesn’t mean we can’t con­front the Fos­sil Fuel Empire with sub­ver­sive humour.

WHAT: Direct actions, prac­ti­cal jokes and throw­ing a span­ner in the works to stop the fos­sil fools.
WHERE: Your street, town or city.
WHEN: April 1st, 2010.

Last Decem­ber in Copen­hagen, the politi­cians sold us out to the fos­sil fools, cor­po­rate lob­by­ists and big banks. Now we’re left with “green cap­i­tal­ism,” a deeply unjust car­bon mar­ket and con­tin­ued assaults on our com­mu­ni­ties and ecosys­tems. If we’re going to stop cli­mate chaos, the only real solu­tion is to keep fos­sil fuels in the ground.

The stakes couldn’t be high­er: desta­bil­i­sa­tion of the glob­al cli­mate, local com­mu­ni­ties destroyed by dirty ener­gy extrac­tion and com­bus­tion, dev­as­tat­ing freak storms, droughts, floods, the list goes on …

This April 1st, join Ris­ing Tide in some cre­ative direct action … use the sim­ply sub­ver­sive to the down­right dis­rup­tive: office occu­pa­tions, ban­ner drops, clown­ish parades, road block­ades, spoof web­sites, sub­ver­tis­ing, street the­atre, leaflets, lock-ons or laugh-ins. What­ev­er works for you and your group.

Join us this Fos­sil Fools Day and hatch some hare­brained schemes that will strike a blow to cli­mate crim­i­nals every­where!

WANT MORE? Fos­sil Fools Day also marks the launch of the BP Tar Sands Fort­night of Shame: a two-week cam­paign cul­mi­nat­ing in actions sur­round­ing BP’s AGM on April 15th. The goal? To stop BP from going into the Cana­di­an Tar Sands – the biggest, dirt­i­est fos­sil fuel project on earth. Find out more: Tar Sands in Focus.. And a word to BP: be afraid… be very afraid.

NEED A HAND? If you would like ideas for actions, graph­ics for leaflets or web­sites, advice on deal­ing with the press, etc., send us an email and we’ll do our best to help out: info@risingtide.org.uk

For more infor­ma­tion see: Fos­sil Fools Day.

In the words of that mas­ter of pranks: “That’s All Folks”.

New eco village starting soon in London

20.02.2010
Fol­low­ing the evic­tion threat to Kew eco vil­lage, there will be a new eco vil­lage set up in Lon­don. A new site has already been locat­ed. Peo­ple are need­ed to help set it up. A cou­ple of oth­er sites have also been locat­ed in case the cho­sen site gets blocked off before we can occu­py it. No details of the loca­tion can be giv­en at this stage.

20.02.2010
Fol­low­ing the evic­tion threat to Kew eco vil­lage, there will be a new eco vil­lage set up in Lon­don. A new site has already been locat­ed. Peo­ple are need­ed to help set it up. A cou­ple of oth­er sites have also been locat­ed in case the cho­sen site gets blocked off before we can occu­py it. No details of the loca­tion can be giv­en at this stage.

Full details of the site will be post­ed on here with­in a cou­ple of weeks when the eco vil­lage is set up. But first peo­ple are need­ed to help out with it.

Con­tact diggers360@yahoo.co.uk for more details and to get involved.