Category: London

Lon­don

Social Centre in Hackney Downs- London- is Calling for Support

Dear all
Social Cen­tre in Hack­ney Downs is call­ing for sup­port.
We have been squt­ting this place for 4 years. We have gone through lots and now that final­ly we could do some­thing with this beau­ti­ful place we have to be evicted.The land­lord wants to build new flats.

Social Centre in Hackney Downs is Calling for SupportDear all
Social Cen­tre in Hack­ney Downs is call­ing for sup­port.
We have been squt­ting this place for 4 years. We have gone through lots and now that final­ly we could do some­thing with this beau­ti­ful place we have to be evicted.The land­lord wants to build new flats.
We are still going to do as much as we can.
The local com­mu­ni­ty is also sup­port­ing us. The plan is to cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, play cen­tre, youth club, art centre.We are cre­at­ing a coop with the neigh­bours.

But we need all the sup­port from every­one who wants to help.

Ongo­ing Gallery — Call for Artistes
Planned is Film Night-Call for inde­pen­dent film mak­ers- ani­ma­tors-short films
Chil­dren activ­i­ties in the after­noons end­ing with show case of their work and final chil­dren par­ty
Life draw­ing Class wed 25 March and week ends Open Class­es every­one wel­comed!
Fla­men­co Class­es from 1–3 every week day
Crit­i­cal Mass end­ing here with Film and sound system?cycles pow­ered — ( To be con­firmed)
Jum­ble sale to raise mon­ey for court case and future Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre organ­ised by the neigh­bours
Cafe’- we need peo­ple to bake-cook-help
Open mike-
Call for Acoustic musi­cians- Chill out ‑djs-min­i­mal elec­tron­i­ca- any­thing that is not gonna be too loud!
Although we could have live bands dur­ing the day;;we will keep you informed!

Events from Fri­day 20 March — Evic­tion 3 April 11.45am
Assem­bly Rooms
8, Andre Street
E8 2AA

utopia.unknown@gmail.com
WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Attempted RampArt Eviction Under False Pretence

12 March 2009

12 March 2009
Ear­li­er this morn­ing there was a minor fire in the derelict part of the block on Ram­part Street. After the fire had been put out, sev­er­al men knocked on the door at Ram­pARTS, claim­ing to be from the fire brigade. After they had gained entry under this false pre­tense, they were revealed to be agents of the own­er of the build­ing. The pro­ceed­ed to call the police and evict­ed the per­son inside. With­out both­er­ing to ascer­tain that there were no more peo­ple in the house, they start­ed to board up the build­ing, plac­ing secu­ri­ty per­son­nel at the doors. In the mean­time some peo­ple man­aged to climb back into the build­ing, car­ry­ing on with the suc­cess­ful occu­pa­tion. About 30 peo­ple are out­side and are ask­ing for every­one to join them and show their sup­port for this com­mu­ni­ty.

The evic­tion comes 20 days before the G20 hits Lon­don, on a day were one of sev­er­al relat­ed events was announced for ram­pART. The Social Cen­tre had also announced to keep the doors open dur­ing the G20.

++ 15:00 ++

Secu­ri­ty dragged on per­son out of house num­ber 7 and beat him up. Police have with­drawn, but fire­bri­gade is there.

Peo­ple are still inside ram­pART, and are call­ing for sup­port to defend it from being board­ed up.

++ 16:00 ++

Evic­tion has been suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ed.

Secu­ri­ties are still next door, there are few­er peo­ple at ram­pART, and still call­ing for more peo­ple to come, as they want to retain a strong pres­ence.

WE NEED MORE NUMBERS.

Ram­parts has been an amaz­ing com­mu­ni­ty and polit­i­cal activ­i­ty cen­tre for a few years. There was an evic­tion order which ran out after the own­er failed to act for 6 months. nev­er­the­less, today’s events threat­en to take Ram­parts away once again, and for good. we need sup­port NOW.

ram­pART
15 ‑17 Ram­part Street, Lon­don E1 2LA (near Whitechapel, off Com­mer­cial Rd)
rampart[at]mutualaid.org
07050 618445
ram­pART | ram­pART MySpace |

The Greening of Peter Mandelson & Hoon ‘hooned’ — arrrested update

6th March

Mandelson slimed6th March
Green cus­tard was this morn­ing thrown in the face of the Labour gov­ern­ments Busi­ness Sec­re­tary, Peter Man­del­son by Plane Stu­pid activist Leila Deen. The for­mer North­ern Ire­land Sec­re­tary was accost­ed moments after step­ping out of his limo to attend a so-called ‘low-car­bon’ sum­mit in Lon­don. In full view of the assem­bled TV cam­eras he got a face full of cus­tard and hur­ried inside. Leila then explained to the cam­eras that the action had been over Man­del­sons unelect­ed and unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic role in grant­i­ng per­mis­sion for Heathrows third run­way on behalf of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Man­dle­son referred to the inci­dent as an ‘ado­les­cent protest’. He joked, “I sup­pose in a democ­ra­cy peo­ple are enti­tled to have their say but I would rather peo­ple said it to my face rather than throw it. I am pre­pared to take my fair share of the green rev­o­lu­tion on my shoul­ders but I am less keen on hav­ing it in my face.”

When inter­viewed lat­er on the BBC Leila Deen described the move as a “last resort” after the demo­c­ra­t­ic process failed. She said that Man­del­son was an unelect­ed politi­cian and he was sid­ing with the “inter­ests of busi­ness” rather than the “inter­ests of the peo­ple and the plan­et” in back­ing the new run­way.

She jus­ti­fied the “direct action” as the best way of bring­ing about change, claim­ing she and oth­ers were exclud­ed from the demo­c­ra­t­ic process. “When democ­ra­cy is fail­ing you have to resort to any means nec­es­sary as long as it is peace­ful and does not harm oth­er human beings,” she said.

She con­tin­ued, “Peter Man­del­son is the same per­son who effec­tive­ly bul­lied Ed Miliband and oth­er mem­bers of the cab­i­net to accept a third run­way that nobody wants, a third run­way that no one was con­sult­ed on and no one is able to say no to. It’s not right that some­one like Peter Man­del­son can stand up and talk about being green.”

Leila Deen, 29, said:

“That such a clear­ly cor­rupt human being is still in gov­ern­ment, despite being unelect­ed, is an affront to democ­ra­cy and a threat to any hope we have of stop­ping the impact that cli­mate change is already begin­ning to have on our lives. We have a tiny win­dow left to stop cli­mate change. I want to tell my chil­dren that I did not stand back and applaud as Man­del­son ruined our last chance.”

—-

March 5th 2009

Hoon ‘hooned’ in sil­ly stunt

Geoff Hoon woke up yes­ter­day and went out to give a speech to the Roy­al Soci­ety about the many solu­tions to avi­a­tion and cli­mate change. The solu­tion, of course, is to let every­one fly as much as they like, because tech­nol­o­gy would save us. Tech­nol­o­gy and the Emis­sions Trad­ing Scheme, which, as he remind­ed his audi­ence, is a real and effec­tive cap on avi­a­tion emis­sions in Europe…

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!

The Sec­re­tary of State was cut off in mid-flow, as a loud honk­ing noise blared out across the room. Up popped a young woman who apol­o­gised for mak­ing a rack­et. She’d rather fool­ish­ly for­got­ten to turn off her lie detec­tor horn, which had picked up on Hoon’s rather bla­tant fib­bing. It would­n’t hap­pen again, she promised.

Of course it did; oth­er peo­ple in the audi­ence had brought their lie detec­tors and these kept sound­ing as Hoon tried to give his speech. If only, he thought to him­self, I’d remem­bered to tell the truth, instead of a bunch of non­sense that sound­ed good when Fly­ing Mat­ters told it to me. Maybe these sil­ly stunts have a pur­pose after all…

—-

Update: Leila Deen, Cus­tard Queen, Arrest­ed

8th March
Lon­don activist Leila Deen was arrest­ed Sat­ur­day for throw­ing green cus­tard over gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Peter Man­del­son on Fri­day to protest at his unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic involve­ment in the deci­sion to Heathrow air­port. She received a text mes­sage and phone call from the police to inform her she was to be arrest­ed for com­mon assault. After being inter­viewed she was released with­out charge, and bailed to return on the 9th of April.

Lelia had man­aged to avoid secu­ri­ty out­side the Roy­al Soci­ety on Fri­day morn­ing where Man­dle­son he was due to attend a co-called ‘low-car­bon’ sum­mit in Lon­don. After Leila threw the cus­tard over him, Man­dle­son rushed inside the build­ing drip­ping with green goo. About five min­utes lat­er he returned to face the media with some hasti­ly pre­pared dam­age con­trol ‘wit’.

There is con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion on whether Man­del­son had made a com­plaint or whether the police were oblig­ed to inves­ti­gate the inci­dent with­out a for­mal com­plaint being made. Lelia said that the police had been told that they had to take action although Man­del­son had appar­ent­ly not made a for­mal com­plaint but some of the main­stream media reports sug­gest­ed that Man­del­son had now mad a com­plaint. Man­del­son was also report­ed as say­ing he was sur­prised that his attack­er “could just saunter off with­out being appre­hend­ed”.

Bank climate rush at RBS

5th March 2009
About 100 peo­ple gath­ered out­side RBS this lunch time.

RBS Climate Rush 1RBS Climate Rush 25th March 2009
About 100 peo­ple gath­ered out­side RBS this lunch time.

Envi­ron­men­tal “Cli­mate Rush” activists gath­er out­side RBS (Roy­al Bank of Scot­land) to protest the pen­sion pay out to Sir Fred Good­win, for­mer RBS Chief Exec­u­tive, of 16 Mil­lion GBP.

The sec­ond event organ­ised by Cli­mate Rush in less than a week, around a hun­dred peo­ple gath­ered out­side the RBS head offices near Liv­er­pool Street Sta­tion, although a large per­cent­age of those were press or oth­ers with cam­eras. The police were there to in great num­bers guard­ing every door to the vast RBS build­ing and plen­ty more in reserve in vans hid­den away in the back street just in case. An uncom­fort­able mix of Met and City cops, they need­n’t have wor­ried as the hasti­ly organ­ised ‘rush’ had attract­ed only a small crew and the action turned into more of a pic­nic than an full frontal assault on the bank.

Despite being a cli­mate rush event it did attract the local Whitechapel Anar­chist, the Gov­ern­ment of the Dead and Class War’s Ian Bone. So-called ‘FIT’ were there too to take some snaps and make voice inac­cu­rate obser­va­tions about peo­ple per­son­al lives. Crowds of city work­ers took pho­tos with their mobiles from van­tage points on the oppo­site side of the road and RBS employ­ees watched from the bal­conies inside their glass fortress.

Speech­es where made (ampli­fied over the tan­dem towed trail­er sound sys­tem) and high­light­ed the how this bank which is now most­ly owned by the tax pay­er con­tin­ues to sup­ply fund­ing to indus­tries com­plic­it in cli­mate crimes. Much was made of a cer­tain wankers retire­ment pay-off and a cap was hand­ed round to top up his pen­sion should he choose to for­go his unde­served wind fall (the £8.27 col­lect­ed was lat­er giv­en to a home­less per­son who seemed more in need). Also raised dur­ing the speech­es was the mobil­i­sa­tions being planned around the G20 in April.

Many passers by enquired what was going on, at least one joined in. There were no arrests, no rush. Lots of cam­eras, lit­tle to shoot. Some food, some tea, lit­tle anger but a bit of danc­ing.

Final update: Climate Camp in London’s Square Mile, April 1 2009.

Final update at bot­tom of sto­ry — Because nature does­n’t do bailouts.

G20 CCA logo
Final update at bot­tom of sto­ry — Because nature does­n’t do bailouts.

April 1 in the evening… the sun has gone down, the sky is clear and stars are on view… instead of going home we get fire­wood from our back­packs, make tea and cof­fee on rock­et stoves and then, just as the hunger pangs start, jack­et pota­toes!

Yes, we are actu­al­ly going to camp in the city…

The G20 meet­ing is com­ing up fast, as are our plans to shut down car­bon mar­kets and be camp­ing in Lon­don’s Square Mile as the 20 heads of state arrive. Below we’ve includ­ed more infor­ma­tion and the lat­est update.

You can check out http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20 as we get clos­er to Finan­cial and Fos­sil Fools Day — April 1st.

In the mean­time, we all need to get the word out. Basi­cal­ly the suc­cess of the Camp in the City is a game of get­ting as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble to the City on April 1.

**The call­out can be for­ward­ed to your friends and email lists- it is here: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20

**Invite your friends to the face­book event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=49600653225

**For­ward this update to your mates, any rel­e­vant lists you are on, and post it on web­sites.

**Hold a local group meet­ing to dis­cuss the G20

**Down­load the post­card ver­sion for pho­to­copy­ing and get it out:
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/files/G20PostcardB_4onA4.pdf

**Stick­ers and colour post­cards are avail­able — email g20 at climatecamp.org.uk to get them.

Below you’ll find:

1) THE CLIMATE CAMP IN 2009
2) PRACTICAL INFORMATION
3) INFORMATION FOR NEIGHBOURHOODS AND AUTONOMOUS GROUPS
4) CALL OUT FOR WORKSHOPS
5) CALL FOR LEGAL OBSERVERS
6) FOOD AT THE G20 CAMP, MESSAGE FROM THE FOOD GROUP
7) DETAILS OF NEXT MEETING — NOTTINGAM MARCH 7/8

This infor­ma­tion is also avail­able at http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20-practicalities.

1) THE CLIMATE CAMP IN 2009

The Cli­mate Camp new year nation­al gath­er­ing made huge progress, con­ceiv­ing a strate­gic deci­sion to focus on the failed eco­nom­ic sys­tem, and devel­op­ing four ambi­tious and excit­ing projects stem­ming from this. If you weren’t at the gath­er­ing, or haven’t yet had a chance to look over the deci­sions made, check them out: http://climatecamp.org.uk/?q=node/501

The most urgent project going ahead is “Cli­mate Camp hits the City”, a one day and night camp in the square mile of Lon­don tak­ing place on April 1st, the eve of the G20. Cli­mate Camp has nev­er organ­ised an action at such a fast pace, and so every­one is encour­aged to get net­work­ing local­ly across the UK to make Cli­mate Camp first event of 2009 an enor­mous suc­cess! To find out more about the details of the G20, go to http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20

2) PRACTICAL INFORMATION

CONVERGE. There will be a con­ver­gence cen­tre from Sat­ur­day the 28th April, so you can go to the ‘Put Peo­ple First’ march by the big NGO’s and Unions, and stay in Lon­don until the Wednes­day 1st April, and camp­ing in the City.
There will be plen­ty of work to do over those last days! See www.climatecamp.org.uk near­er the time for the exact loca­tion.

ARRIVE. Come for the day, or if pos­si­ble come for the day and night! The adven­ture will begin at noon, April 1st, Euro­pean Cli­mate Exchange, Hasil­wood House, 62 Bish­ops­gate, EC2N 4AW. More details near­er the time. For some back­ground on car­bon mar­kets, and why we’re shut­ting down the exchange, vis­it http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20-why

LOOK AFTER EVERYONE. Although we hope to pro­vide some food, and shel­ter for those who want to sleep, please try to arrive as self-suf­fi­cient as pos­si­ble — when you are camp­ing in the heart of the finan­cial dis­trict, there are no guar­an­tees that we’ll be able to have much infra­struc­ture!
Bring water, warm clothes, a pop-up tent if you’ve got one, sleep­ing bag, and if you can, some blan­kets and tarp. Car­ry­ing your own food to share and water will also put less strain on our kitchen, and please arrive well fed.

TRANSFORM. We also want to trans­form the finan­cial dis­trict, both sym­bol­i­cal­ly and visu­al­ly into a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of our desired worlds. Doing that is up to all of us. We want our space to look beau­ti­ful. So come with your own plans, cos­tumes, the­ater, enter­tain­ment and spec­ta­cle. Wind tur­bines, mobile cin­e­mas, action plans — what­ev­er you think you can pull off.

Let’s imag­ine anoth­er world or two or three.…

3) INFORMATION FOR NEIGHBOURHOODS AND AUTONOMOUS GROUPS

If you are part of a Cli­mate Camp neigh­bour­hood, or would like to be part of one, con­tact your local group: http://climatecamp.org.uk/node/40.

If you are in a local group, give the Process Group (process@climatecamp.org.uk) your details for the Cli­mate Camp web­site.

With an excit­ing process up and run­ning again, peo­ple are hope­ful­ly look­ing to get involved. How­ev­er, our Local Group page is out of date.

There­fore, if you are a local Cli­mate Camp group (whether or not you were a neigh­bour­hood at the Camp ’08), give us some text about the basic details (when and where you meet, con­tact details, a bit about your­selves) and we’ll get it on the web­site. We can also arrange for your local group to have an @climatecamp.org.uk email address.

If groups arrive sort­ed, that will put less strain on every­one. Think about how you would like to trans­form our space, and come with the mate­ri­als you need to do so. We are also urg­ing all groups to have back up plans and actions. There is no Plan­et B, but every­one should have a Plan B…

4) WORKSHOPS AT CLIMATE CAMP PART 1

The camp is look­ing for work­shops for the day. We would love to hear from you if you can offer a work­shop, espe­cial­ly (but not lim­it­ed to) work­shops on car­bon trad­ing, mar­ket solu­tions to cli­mate change, and the eco­nom­ic cri­sis. We are also real­ly keen to hear from you if you can offer music, street the­atre or any­thing else which will make the day inspir­ing and edu­ca­tion­al!

Please let us know if you would be able to offer a work­shop. Con­tact: at g20workshops at riseup.net

5) LEGAL OBSERVERS FOR CLIMATE CAMP PART 1

Want to be a trained legal observ­er? If so we real­ly want lots of legal obser­va­tion for the G20 camp on the 1st April. There will be a train­ing event on 31st March. Remem­ber we need peo­ple for both the 1st and 2nd of April. Email: legal at climatecamp.org.uk.

6) FOOD AT THE G20 CAMP, MESSAGE FROM THE FOOD GROUP

First. Bring plen­ty of fresh WATER; Bring Food; Bring a bog roll!; Bring bin lin­ers to take away rub­bish; bring a bowl, cup and fork.

Sec­ond. Do NOT bring propane bot­tles or sharp knives.

Third. If you can bring a Rock­et Stove — it would be won­der­ful — it’s prop­er camp­ing and visu­al­ly cool.

Fourth. There is a food and kitchens group who will work hard in col­lab­o­ra­tion with local groups to pre-pre­pare SUPPLEMENTARY veg­an food through­out the 24 hours of action — some in the loca­tion and in oth­er places. This could include a light din­ner on the 1st April and pos­si­bly hot break­fast on April 2nd. Dona­tions of £2–3 per head will be request­ed to fund this pro­vi­sion.

Fifth. Join the food group and help to make and dis­trib­ute food. Email tum­my­filler at riseup.net

7) NEXT MEETING — NOTTINGAM MARCH 7/8

The next nation­al Camp for Cli­mate Action gath­er­ing is going to be in Not­ting­ham, from the 7th to 8th of March. The Venue is the won­der­ful Sumac Cen­tre, details of which can be found on their web­site at:
http://www.veggies.org.uk/sumac/welcome.html

The Gath­er­ing will run from 10.30am on the Sat­ur­day till 5pm on the Sun­day, so get book­ing your trains and coach­es. We’ll not only be dis­cus­sion the G20, but also, oth­er cli­mate camp projects.

——

Update (25th March):

The G20 Swoop & cru­cial infor­ma­tion for the Cli­mate Camp in the City of Lon­don!

April 1st is only a week away! Below is the cru­cial infor­ma­tion you will need for camp­ing in the square mile dur­ing the G20.

Please for­ward this to your friends, any groups you are a part of, and post it on web­sites. Check out http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20 for updates. Once again, our list goes to 11.

(1) THE SWOOP & OVER-POLICING
(2) TEXT ALERTS & COMMUNICATION
(3) THE MAP
(4) INFOPOINTS & BRIEFINGS
(5) SLEEPING SPACE
(6) THINGS TO BRING
(7) AUTONOMOUS ACTIONS & MEDIA
(8) LEGAL
(9) WORKSHOPS & CEILIDH
(10) PUT PEOPLE FIRST MARCH
(11) IT’S A NUMBERS GAME

(1) THE SWOOP & OVER-POLICING

To be suc­cess­ful, we must all arrive at the Cli­mate Exchange at the same time. We must swoop in from dif­fer­ent direc­tions, using dif­fer­ent means to arrive with­in a minute or two of each oth­er. Its a good idea to meet up with your friends ear­ly, and some­where with­in easy reach of the Cli­mate Exchange. Then, at the appro­pri­ate moment, leave quick­ly, to arrive at exact­ly 12:30. You may even want to prac­tice before­hand.

Be aware that in light of cur­rent over-polic­ing tac­tics, if you miss the swoop, you may be unable to join the camp. In places where our num­bers are too low, the police may attempt to stop and search indi­vid­u­als, and con­fis­cate items to pre­vent us from set­ting up the camp safe­ly. We can avoid this by mov­ing con­fi­dent­ly and togeth­er. The police may also attempt to sur­round peo­ple to pre­vent us from mov­ing (some­times called a “ket­tle”). Near­by tube sta­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly Liv­er­pool Sta­tion, as well as the Bank (where the G20-melt­down protest is occur­ring at noon), are pos­si­ble loca­tions where the police may try to ket­tle peo­ple. If you see a ket­tle form­ing and don’t want to be stuck for the day in one, move and help oth­ers move out of it before it clos­es.

You are like­ly to have greater free­dom of move­ment if you’ve planned your swoop and know the area. Because things may change on the day, please take copies of our map with grid ref­er­ence points, and have a per­son in your group sub­scribed to the text alerts.

(2) TEXT ALERTS & COMMUNICATION

Things may change on the day, per­haps sig­nif­i­cant­ly. There is a text mes­sage news ser­vice which will be avail­able in advance and dur­ing the G20 Lead­ers meet­ing. We strong­ly rec­om­mend that peo­ple sub­scribe to it. It is pos­si­ble, even like­ly, that the place that we final­ly set up camp will not be the Cli­mate Exchange.

http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/text-updates

We also use Twit­ter http://twitter.co /ClimateCamp but please note that twit­ter does not reach mobile phone num­bers and is now a web-ser­vice, so on the day this will only be use­ful for those with web-enabled phones or those with friends at home ready to call.

You may want to also exchange phone num­bers with your friends and peo­ple in oth­er groups so that our com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­work is as decen­tralised as pos­si­ble.

(3) THE MAP

A map of the city, with grid ref­er­ence points will be released at http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/map in the com­ing days. Please print copies for you and your friends. It will be used on the day when the text alert gives the loca­tion of the camp, or any oth­er infor­ma­tion through­out the day.

Var­i­ous car­bon off-set com­pa­nies, car­bon trad­ing firms, green­wash­ing firms, and oth­er cli­mate-crim­i­nals will also be high­light­ed on the map. If the police pre­vent us from safe­ly set­ting up the camp, groups are espe­cial­ly encour­aged to do an action at one of these loca­tions, or any oth­er loca­tion they have researched. It can also aid com­mu­ni­ca­tion between you and your mates. Los­ing your friends in a crowd real­ly sucks!

(4) INFOPOINTS & BRIEFINGS

From Thurs­day March 26th until Thurs­day April 2nd ram­pARTS will be a G20 info­point, open to drop by from 2–10 pm. The Camp for Cli­mate Action will have infor­ma­tion there dur­ing this peri­od.

On Sat­ur­day March 28th at 5 pm, and on Sun­day March 29th at 2 pm, the camp will be serv­ing tea and cake for those who want to meet up and share infor­ma­tion, or make some ban­ners and props.

On Tues­day March 31st at 7 pm, there will be a brief­ing at ram­pART, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on new peo­ple who need infor­ma­tion about the April 1st camp.

ram­pART is locat­ed at 15 ‑17 Ram­part Street, Lon­don E1 2LA (near Whitechapel, off Com­mer­cial Rd). rampart[at]mutualaid.org, 07050 618445
http://therampart.wordpress.com/location-contact/

(5) SLEEPING SPACE

If you are com­ing from out of town, places are avail­able to stay! Please con­tact us ear­ly so that we can reserve you a place. Email iwanttocrashinasquatfortheg20@hushmail.com to let them know how many peo­ple will be stay­ing, and the dates you need.

(6) THINGS TO BRING

If you’re stay­ing for the full 24 hours, please check out http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/what-to-bring for what to bring.

(7) AUTONOMOUS ACTIONS AND MEDIA

Are you plan­ning an autonomous action and would you like to try and get media there as soon as it hap­pens? You can chat to the cli­mate camp media crew about it before­hand who can point the media your way, or can help you get your press release out. You don’t have to give them the details before­hand, but do get in touch with press@climatecamp.org.uk or call 07040 900905 to arrange some­thing.

(8) LEGAL

Our legal team have pre­pared a handy crib sheet of infor­ma­tion about your legal rights and what to do if some­thing goes wrong. These will be hand­ed out on the day, but there’s no guar­an­tee you’ll get one before encoun­ter­ing the police, so we advise you to print a copy to bring along.
Check it out at http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/legal

(9) WORKSHOPS & CEILIDH

Work­shops and music are on! Work­shops will include: Trad­ing our way into trou­ble, the Fos­sil Fuel Econ­o­my, A his­to­ry of Direct Action, Tech­no fix­es, Tran­si­tion to a low car­bon econ­o­my, the lat­est cli­mate sci­ence from Copen­hagen, Mobil­is­ing for Copen­hagen, Debt and Cli­mate Change, Car­bon Trad­ing and Copen­hagen, Sus­tain­able Activism, Sam­ba, Poet­ry vs Cli­mate Change … and more!

Check out http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/events for the lat­est sched­ule

We also need more musi­cians to play at the ceilidh. More musi­cians and sound sys­tems are wel­come!

(10) PUT PEOPLE FIRST MARCH AND LEAFLETING

A Camp for Cli­mate Action block for the Put Peo­ple First March on Sat­ur­day the 28th of March will be meet­ing at 11 am out­side Char­ing Cross Nation­al Rail Sta­tion, on the strand. We need help hand­ing out leaflets dur­ing the march. 07534 598733 for more info.

(11) IT’S A NUMBERS GAME

The only way we can win this is through a mass mobil­i­sa­tion of peo­ple. With a week to go we can still get peo­ple to join us for the camp. Talk to your friends and bring them along; change your sta­tus and pro­file pic­ture on social net­works, and invite your con­tacts to our face­book event http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=49600653225 . On the day, make sure you let the peo­ple back home know how the camp is going, and how they can dis­sem­i­nate our mes­sage. If each of us brings some­one along, we dou­ble our num­bers and our strength.

——

Final update (31st March):

Hi campers, not long to go before we join each to set up camp in the city on April 1st! This is the final update, please read it care­ful­ly and for­ward it to all your friends who are com­ing…

WHAT TO BRING:

We hope many of us will be stay­ing overnight, please bring a pop­up tent, food, 4 litres of water, warm clothes, hand clean­ing gel (for hygiene, we might not get water) and what­ev­er you might need for 24 hours of rebel camp­ing adven­ture. (a full list is here http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/what-to-bring)

HOW TO DO IT:

1) SYNCHRONIZE YOUR WATCHES: It is impor­tant that we swoop at exact­ly the same time, and those arriv­ing too late or too ear­ly might not make it in. You can use the speak­ing clock or this: http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com

2) PLUG IN: Sign up to text mes­sages here: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/text-updates You will only get text mes­sages if there is a change of plan.

3) PREPARE: Print out the map from http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/map and if you still need some­where to sleep the night before check http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/sleepspace Remem­ber that there may be lim­it­ed toi­let facil­i­ties so don’t arrive with burst­ing bow­els !!!

3) SWOOP DOWN: Arrive at 62 Bish­op’s Gate, the Euro­pean Cli­mate Exchange at 12:30 on the dot. Swoop swift­ly and stealth­ily from a loca­tion of your choice. It might be good to avoid Bank and Liv­er­pool Street sta­tions where oth­er protest groups are meet­ing at 11.00am as you may be unable to leave due to police Ket­tles (when police sur­round a crowd). Avoid ket­tles at all costs and if when you get to the Cli­mate Exchange the police invite you into a protest pen, say “no thanks, we’ll camp else­where”, keep mov­ing and wait for text mes­sages.

4) SPREAD INSPIRATION: You can use your phone to send reports, pic­tures, audio etc from the streets to Indy­media. Its very easy – see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/03/425262.html for num­bers and details.

If you are cov­er­ing the action using twit­ter, please include the hash­tags #g20cc or both #g20 and #protest so we can pull tweets into one sin­gle feed of the event.

5) AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST — ENJOY: The next few days will be extra­or­di­nary days for extra­or­di­nary times…

Fossil Fools Day 2009, 1st April — actions & resources

FFD is only five weeks away! We know of var­i­ous affin­i­ty group actions around the UK but thought we’d upload some inspi­ra­tional pub­lic actions you can get involved with on the April 1st and some resources to help inspire you to take action in you local area.

PUBLIC ACTIONS

12 Noon

FFD 09FFD is only five weeks away! We know of var­i­ous affin­i­ty group actions around the UK but thought we’d upload some inspi­ra­tional pub­lic actions you can get involved with on the April 1st and some resources to help inspire you to take action in you local area.

PUBLIC ACTIONS

12 Noon

Help build a Camp for Cli­mate Action in the City of London.Stopping car­bon mar­kets — because nature does­n’t do bailouts. Meet at the Euro­pean Cli­mate Exchange, Hasil­wood House, 62 Bish­ops­gate, EC2N 4AW. Bring a pop-up tent, sleep­ing bag, wind tur­bine, mobile cin­e­ma, action plans and ideas … let’s imag­ine anoth­er world. Don’t let the finan­cial and fos­sil fools make the rules!

For more details vis­it — http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20

6PM — *** POSTPONED by BP fol­low­ing police advice. ***

For rea­sons unfath­omable yet deeply pleas­ing, BP* has cho­sen Fos­sil Fools Day to cel­e­brate its cen­te­nary. This will take place at the British Muse­um, where the not-so-great and the far-from-good will quaff cock­tails, snaf­fle canapes and watch a cel­e­bra­to­ry film. And Ris­ing Tide and Art Not Oil will be there too, between 6–7pm, to say ‘Your Par­ty’s Over!’ Bring ban­ners, musi­cal instru­ments, a sense of cli­mate jus­tice and a non­sense of fool­ery. Meet at 6pm at the British Muse­um’s Gt. Rus­sell St. gate. * BP = Burn­ing Plan­et, British Plun­der, Bloody Prof­its, Bro­ken Promises,Boring Par­ties, Breath­tak­ing Protests and..? Send your unrav­elled acronyms to info@artnotoil.org.uk

RESOURCES

Media — Ris­ing Tide has pro­duced an 11 page Media Q&A for Fos­sil Fools Day. If you think you’ll be talk­ing to the media on the day and want a few tips for tricky ques­tions send us an email (info@risingtide.org.uk) and we’ll email you a copy.

Action Ideas — For a short guide on why and how to take direct action against the fos­sil fuel indus­try … includ­ing plan­ning tips, tar­get loca­tions, exam­ples of suc­cess­ful actions and much more vis­it the RT Resources page were you can down­load ‘15 Actions to Top­ple the Fos­sil Fuel Empire’.

FFD is only 5 weeks away so whether you’ve been look­ing for a chance to dip a toe into the grow­ing cli­mate action move­ment, or have had your kick-ass action planned since last year, now is the time to do it — what­ev­er it is. On April 1st, join the glob­al day of resis­tance and pull a prank that packs a punch.

http://risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday2009

Climate Rush at UK Coal HQ & coal awards — Doncaster & London — and next one 5th March at RBS

North­ern Cli­mate Rush vis­it to UK coal head­quar­ters

UK Coal rush 1UK Coal rush 2North­ern Cli­mate Rush vis­it to UK coal head­quar­ters

Around 15 cli­mate activists from the North of Eng­land vis­it­ed the head­quar­ters of UK Coal near Don­cast­er yes­ter­day, 26th Feb­ru­ary, in a protest against new coal and call­ing for tougher mea­sures to con­trol CO2 emis­sions.

Two peo­ple climbed up lam­posts to sus­pend a 6m ban­ner read­ing ‘Leave it in the Ground’, while on the ground below the pro­tes­tors played a bit of sam­ba, danced, and had a pic­nic. The pro­tes­tors wore Edwar­dian themed dress includ­ing red sash­es with the words ‘No New Coal’ writ­ten across them.

UK Coal is the UK’s largest coal com­pa­ny. The Don­cast­er protest was timed to coin­cide with the Cli­mate Rush at the UK Coal Awards, host­ed by UK coal, in Lon­don.

The police reac­tion was fair­ly low-key and non-obstruc­tive, although they did take an awful lot of pho­tos (I sup­pose they had noth­ing else to do). A van dri­ver was has­sled by cops, had his details checked and was told he was not insured to dri­ve the vehi­cle (which was not the case).

—

Thurs­day 26th Feb­ru­ary 2009
PRESS RELEASE: North­ern Cli­mate Rush vis­its UK Coal head­quar­ters

Cli­mate activists from the North vis­it­ed the head­quar­ters of UK Coal near Don­cast­er today in a protest against new coal and call­ing for tougher mea­sures to con­trol CO2 emis­sions. The protest coin­cid­ed with the ‘Cli­mate Rush’ in Lon­don where peo­ple intend­ed to gate­crash the Coal UK Con­fer­ence and Awards 2009 at the Land­mark Hotel in Regents Park. How­ev­er, the Lon­don pro­test­ers arrived to find the Con­fer­ence had moved venue at the last minute. Around 200 pro­test­ers in Lon­don occu­pied the lob­by of the Land­mark and dropped ban­ners. They asked that the hotel to refrain from host­ing any future events with fos­sil fuel indus­tries such as UK Coal, to which the man­age­ment agreed.

The pro­tes­tors of both demon­stra­tions wore Edwar­dian themed dress includ­ing red sash­es with the words ‘No New Coal’ writ­ten across them. In Don­cast­er two female pro­test­ers scaled lamp-posts to hang a ban­ner read­ing ‘Leave it in the ground’ across the entrance to the UK coal head­quar­ters.

Coal is the dirt­i­est form of ener­gy pro­duc­tion yet the gov­ern­ment has plans to expand the coal indus­try, includ­ing a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in Kent. UK Coal are respon­si­ble for oper­at­ing sev­er­al open cast mines across the UK. Open cast coal min­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly dam­ag­ing to the local envi­ron­ment since it involves scalp­ing the land­scape and typ­i­cal­ly pro­vides an aver­age of only 40 jobs per site, for a hand­ful of years only.

Vanes­sa Hall, spokes­woman for the North­ern Cli­mate Rush said, “It is essen­tial that we take cli­mate change seri­ous­ly and move away from dirty fos­sil fuels like coal. There is no way we can avoid run­away cli­mate change if we con­tin­ue to burn coal.”

Megan Beech, 24, said, “The coal indus­try talk about Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age (CCS) as the mag­ic bul­let that will allow us to keep burn­ing coal. How­ev­er CCS is as yet an unproven tech­nol­o­gy. You don’t start a fire on the promise that one day we”ll invent a fire extin­guish­er with which to put it out.”

ENDS

Notes to Edi­tors

This is the third major ‘Cli­mate Rush’ event, fol­low­ing from the first in Par­lia­ment square in Octo­ber 2008 on the cen­te­nary of the Suf­fragette rush on Par­lia­ment. Pro­test­ers demand­ed ‘Deeds Not Words’ on cli­mate change, includ­ing an end to air­port expan­sion and no new coal. The sec­ond was at Heathrow and Man­ches­ter air­ports to draw atten­tion to the threat of avi­a­tion and cli­mate change.

The North­ern Cli­mate Rush is made up of cam­paign­ers from Man­ches­ter, Leeds, Hud­der­s­field, Brad­ford and Liv­er­pool.

www.climaterush.co.uk
www.northernclimaterush.wordpress.com

———
'Coal: so last century' banner
Coal canary climate rush
Cli­mate Rush host­ed cock­tail par­ty for the coal indus­try out­side of the Land­mark Hotel on Maryle­bone Road, Lon­don.

Coal UK planed to pre­sent­ed cel­e­bra­to­ry awards to the most dam­ag­ing com­pa­nies in the coal indus­try. Cli­mate Rush offered an alter­na­tive awards based on the eco­log­i­cal dam­age that the coal indus­try is inflict­ing on the envi­ron­ment.

How­ev­er after sev­er­al tries at rush­ing the hotel peo­ple dis­cov­ered that the award din­ner had been can­celled.

Brochure for the awards din­ner:
http://conf.mccloskeycoal.com/journals/McCloskey/Conferences/Conferences/attachments/Coal%20UK%20Brochure%20web.pdf

Cli­mate Rush calls for:

1. No new coal to avoid run­away cli­mate change

Coal is the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuel, and by far the dirt­i­est way to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty. We must leave coal in the ground and not build any new coal fired pow­er sta­tions if we want to avoid run­away cli­mate change. CCS is an unproven tech­nol­o­gy that may nev­er be a viable option. Cli­mate change is hap­pen­ing now and we must act now to stop it.

2. We can’t have infi­nite growth on a finite plan­et

At this out­dat­ed and fos­silized awards cer­e­mo­ny UK Coal is cel­e­brat­ing the worst excess­es of our fail­ing eco­nom­ic sys­tem. Just like over­paid bankers these heads of cor­po­ra­tions are receiv­ing plau­dits for plun­der­ing the plan­et.

3. A tran­si­tion to a low car­bon soci­ety with sus­tain­able jobs

We must coun­ter­act any jobs loss­es from the coal indus­try with a major re-skilling pro­gram in sus­tain­able trades. Many more jobs will be cre­at­ed by a huge retro­fitting pro­gram of old hous­ing stock and in the new renew­able ener­gies sec­tor than in new coal. The Ger­man clean ener­gy rev­o­lu­tion has seen the cre­ation of 250,000 new jobs.

More pho­tos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/filkaler/tags/climaterush/

—

Land­mark Deci­sion Against Coal Indus­try
For imme­di­ate release: 26 Feb­ru­ary 2009

LANDMARK DECISION

A top class Lon­don hotel has vowed com­pa­nies and organ­i­sa­tions which con­tribute to cli­mate chaos will no longer be wel­come to use their facil­i­ties for cor­po­rate pro­mo­tion and enter­tain­ment

The move fol­lows a Cli­mate Rush action on the Land­mark Hotel in Maryle­bone, where hun­dreds of pro­test­ers con­verged on Thurs­day to halt a coal indus­try awards cer­e­mo­ny.

Coal is acknowl­edged among sci­en­tists and cli­mate change activists as the world’s worst con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change in the form of CO2 emis­sions.*

The coal indus­try under the ban­ner of UK Coal were booked into the Land­mark to host an awards cer­e­mo­ny with five star food and drink where they planned to hand out gongs for UK coal per­son­al­i­ty of the year and the best open cast min­ers among oth­er cat­e­gories.

Pro­test­ers dropped ban­ners and staged a peace­ful sit-in to speak out at the hotel’s sup­port and the coal industry’s insis­tence of “busi­ness as usu­al” in the face of evi­dent esca­lat­ing cli­mate chaos.

The Landmark’s land­mark deci­sion has been applaud­ed by activists. “At Last! For too long prof­i­teer­ing from cli­mate change has been sold to the pub­lic as a neces­si­ty of ‘busi­ness as usu­al’. But with glob­al tem­per­a­tures ris­ing and cli­mate chaos run­ning riot in the form of drought (Africa and Aus­tralia) and flood­ing (low lying lands all over), we all need to work togeth­er.

“ We applaud the Land­mark for their good sense and the vision to say ‘enough is enough’. They right­ly don’t want to be asso­ci­at­ed with the cor­rupt sys­tem that needs over­turn­ing. We wel­come the Land­mark to play their role in the new way of doing things so need­ed.”

The Land­mark now plans to deny com­pa­nies such as the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (the biggest sin­gle investor in coal and oil indus­tries) and oil com­pa­nies, such as ESSO, BP and Shell, as well as the coal indus­try from using their ball­rooms and ban­quet halls to pro­mote their cause.

The hotel has also pledge to com­mu­ni­cate with the 24 oth­er five star hotels in its’ group to sug­gest they do the same.

Cli­mate Rush has pledged to work with the Land­mark Hotel to ensure the right com­pa­nies are blocked, to send a clear mes­sage to pol­luters: they’re not wel­come.

ENDS
Notes and foot­notes to Edi­tors

Coal is respon­si­ble for 50 % of the cli­mate change gas­es in the atmos­phere caused by human activ­i­ty.

Cli­mate Rush is a cut­ting edge move­ment of car­bon cut­ting indi­vid­u­als who have seen the light and want to spread the word through their remit: Deeds not words, based on the clar­i­on call of the suf­fragettes

For high qual­i­ty pho­tos and fur­ther com­ments please ring 075 2839 8441 or email media@climaterush.co.uk

For com­ments from the land­mark hotel please ring Fran­cis T Green 0207 631 8000

–

UK No New Coal Awards

Cli­mate Rush is delight­ed to announce that it will be pre­sent­ing the fol­low­ing “Canary in the Coalmine” awards:

Sci­ence Fic­tion award
goes to the most unbe­liev­able tech­nol­o­gy not yet avail­able to stop CO2 emis­sions, Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age.

Finan­cial Fool award
goes to the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, for help­ing to raise $16 bil­lion in loans to finance the world­wide coal indus­try over the past two years.

Life­time Achieve­ment award
goes to Drax coal fired pow­er sta­tion, for the Great­est Emis­sions in the UK, equiv­a­lent to that of the 54 poor­est coun­tries in the world.

Best Sup­port­ing Role
goes to the biggest Cli­mate Cow­ard, Gor­don Brown, for his use­less lead­er­ship over Cli­mate Change.

Best New­com­er
goes to the next like­ly “fac­to­ry of death”, Kingsnorth coal fired pow­er sta­tion in Kent.

and final­ly…

UK Coal Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year
goes to Paul Gol­by, CEO of ener­gy com­pa­ny E.ON, for out­stand­ing ser­vices to Green­wash (whilst plot­ting to build Kingsnorth)

——

CLIMATE RUSH: THURSDAY 5TH MARCH, 1PM, RBS HQ

GIVE US OUR MONEY BACK and STOP TRASHING THE PLANET

Roy­al Bank of Scot­land: £33 bil­lion in bail outs SO FAR!

Using OUR MONEY!

RBS boss 50-year-old Sir Fred: retires ear­ly with a whop­ping £16 mil­lion pen­sion fund.

Using OUR MONEY!

OUR bank: arranges £16 bil­lion in loans to the coal indus­try in just two years.

RBS: the BIGGEST investor in cli­mate chaos.

FOR THE LOVE OF OUR MONEY, WHAT PLANET ARE THEY ON?

Grab your mates, bring some lunch and get down to the bank to demand OUR mon­ey back.

Roy­al Bank of Scot­land HQ

Thurs­day 5th March

1.OOPM PROMPT: think flash­mob…

280 Bish­ops­gate, near Liv­er­pool Street Sta­tion

ANGRY? You bet­ter believe it: Let’s rush!

See what they’re say­ing about the RBS Cli­mate Rush in the Guardian here

Face­book invite here: invite ALL your friends

Please help spread the word by down­load­ing the poster as a pdf here to print out and stick up wher­ev­er you go!

Be sure to keep check­ing the site for updates… and don’t for­get to sub­scribe and join our face­book group!

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 86, February 2009

————————————
UPCOMING/ONGOING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————————

1. ARTIVISM, Smash EDO’s week of anti-war cre­ativ­i­ty — Brighton – 24.02.09–01.03.09
2. Cli­mate Rush – Lon­don and Man­ches­ter – 26.02.09
3. Camp for Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing – Not­ting­ham – 7–8.03.09

————————————
UPCOMING/ONGOING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————————

1. ARTIVISM, Smash EDO’s week of anti-war cre­ativ­i­ty — Brighton – 24.02.09–01.03.09
2. Cli­mate Rush – Lon­don and Man­ches­ter – 26.02.09
3. Camp for Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing – Not­ting­ham – 7–8.03.09
4. Earth First! & Treespon­si­bil­i­ty Tree Plant­i­ng week­end – Heb­den Bridge – 13–15.03.09
5. Peo­ple’s Block­ade of the World’s Biggest Coal Port – New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia — 21.03.09
6. Direct action and car­bon trad­ing edu­ca­tion week­end – Lon­don and Brighton – 21–22.03.09
7. Fos­sil Fools Day – all over – 01.04.09
8. Coal Car­a­van – Mid­lands, York­shire and North East – 24.04.09–04.05.09

——————
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
——————

1. Bio­fu­elled attacks in Suma­tra, Indone­sia – 18.12.08
2. Plane Stu­pid turns Southamp­ton air­port into a refugee camp — 17.01.09
3. Cli­mate Rush activists lock on to Par­lia­ment — 20.01.01
4. E.On Ref Off! – 24.01.09
5. A not-so-Roy­al wel­come for the nuclear indus­try — 09.02.09
6. Man­ches­ter RBS branch roof occu­pa­tion — 11.02.09
7. Occu­pa­tion of Kel­ster­back For­est, Frank­furt Air­port, Ger­many — Ongo­ing
8. New report – Cater­ing for the Coal Indus­try

————————————
UPCOMING/ONGOING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————————

1. ARTIVISM, Smash EDO’s week of anti-war cre­ativ­i­ty — Brighton – 24.02.09–01.03.09
Includ­ing an Art Exhi­bi­tion, Music & Voic­es in Exile, Peace Choir, Images from the Smash EDO cam­paign and the world events that inspired the resis­tance to Brighton’s local bomb builders. Events include Guy Small­man, inter­na­tion­al pho­to-jour­nal­ist; on the ground pho­tog­ra­phy from Israel’s inva­sion of Lebanon in 2006; the clas­sic draw­ings of John Catt, vet­er­an anti-war activist; pho­tog­ra­phy by Medyan Dairieh, Al-Jazeera jour­nal­ist; ‘On the Verge’ the film they tried to ban; Clan­des­tine Rebel Clown Train­ing; Rad­i­cal Cheer­lead­ing: make pom-poms, write cheers and prac­tice your moves; car­ni­val cre­ations and mask mak­ing; and Ben­e­fit Finale at the Albert Pub.
www.smashedo.org.uk

2. Cli­mate Rush – Lon­don and Man­ches­ter – 26.02.09
Cli­mate Rush cor­dial­ly invites you to an awards cer­e­mo­ny for the coal indus­try, to hon­our the world’s great­est emit­ters of CO2, on THURSDAY 26TH FEBRUARY at THE LANDMARK HOTEL. Dress for­mal­ly for cock­tails in the Win­ter Gar­den at 6.30 prompt.
www.climaterush.co.uk

And in Man­ches­ter, North­ern Cli­mate Rush will be pay­ing a vis­it to the UK’s largest coal com­pa­ny – UK Coal. Meet in front of the Stu­dent Union build­ing at 1pm.
www.northernclimaterush.wordpress.com

3. Camp for Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing – Not­ting­ham – 7–8.03.09
With the G20, cli­mate crim­i­nals and COP 15 in mind, be part of the gath­er­ing – inspi­ra­tion, action and sol­i­dar­i­ty guar­an­teed.
www.climatecamp.org.uk/?q=node/468

4. Earth First & Treespon­si­bil­i­ty Tree Plant­i­ng week­end – Heb­den Bridge – 13–15.03.09
The annu­al and socia­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to plant thou­sands of native trees on a eco­log­i­cal­ly degrad­ed hill­side is hap­pen­ing in March. Organ­ised by Earth First! activists in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Calderdale com­mu­ni­ty group Treespon­si­bil­i­ty. Based in Heb­den Bridge in Calderdale. A week­end of hard but sat­is­fy­ing work plant­i­ng native wood­land com­bined with good food and social­is­ing.
More info: treesponsibility@yahoo.co.uk or 07983743894

5. Peo­ple’s Block­ade of the World’s Biggest Coal Port – New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia — 21.03.09
Coal exports are Aus­trali­a’s sin­gle biggest con­tri­bu­tion to glob­al cli­mate change, and the fastest grow­ing. In New­cas­tle, the world’s biggest coal port, com­mu­ni­ty groups have been cam­paign­ing against the dou­bling of coal exports from New­cas­tle Har­bour. There have been three com­mu­ni­ty block­ades of New­cas­tle Har­bour now, and each of them has man­aged to keep coal ships from enter­ing or leav­ing for most of the day. The next one is on Sat­ur­day 21 March 2009.
www.risingtide.org.au

6. Direct action and car­bon trad­ing edu­ca­tion week­end – Lon­don and Brighton – 21–22.03.09
Cli­mate Camp Car­bon Trad­ing Edu­ca­tion Week­end, Lon­don. With Cli­mate Camp tar­get­ing car­bon mar­kets this year, find out every­thing you ever want­ed to know about car­bon trad­ing and more but were afraid to ask! More info:international@climatecamp.org.uk

Also this week­end, a two-day direct action train­ing at the Cow­ley Club, Brighton. 10 AM start.
www.cowleyclub.org.uk

7. Fos­sil Fools Day – all over – 01.04.09
Cli­mate Camp at the Euro­pean Cli­mate Exchange, fol­lowed by a “cel­e­bra­tion” of BP’s cen­te­nary at the British Muse­um; inter­spersed with local actions all over the coun­try and the world!

Cli­mate camp hits the city: stop­ping car­bon mar­kets // because nature doesn’t do bailouts
On April 1st the G20 lead­ers arrive in Lon­don. At a time of cli­mate cri­sis their response to the mar­ket melt­down is emer­gency loans to car man­u­fac­tur­ers, increased spend­ing to encour­age con­sump­tion, and bailouts for the very peo­ple who got us into this mess — just the thing that will make the cli­mate cri­sis worse. Don’t let them get away with it: join our camp in the Square Mile! Gath­er at noon, April 1st, at the Euro­pean Cli­mate Exchange, Hasil­wood House, 62 Bish­ops­gate, EC2N 4AW.
www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20

“Cel­e­brate” BP’s cen­te­nary: Tell them the party’s over!
For rea­sons unfath­omable yet deeply pleas­ing, BP has cho­sen Fos­sil Fools to cel­e­brate its cen­te­nary. This will take place at the British Muse­um, where the not-so-great and the far-from-good will quaff cock­tails, snaf­fle canapes and watch a cel­e­bra­to­ry film. Join us between 6–7pm, to say ‘Your party’s over!’ Bring ban­ners, musi­cal instru­ments, a sense of cli­mate jus­tice and a non­sense of fool­ery. Meet at 6pm at the British Museum’s Gt. Rus­sell St. gate.
www.fossilfoolsday.org
www.artnotoil.org.uk

8. Coal Car­a­van – Mid­lands, York­shire and North East – 24.04.09–04.05.09
The fab­u­lous cli­mate car­a­van lives on, as the COAL CARAVAN, walk­ing and cycling between the sites for pro­posed open cast mines and new pow­er sta­tions in the Mid­lands, York­shire and North East. On our route we’ll be talk­ing to local peo­ple, organ­is­ing bicy­cled pow­er films and events, hold­ing pub­lic dis­cus­sions and dis­plays, and link­ing groups from dif­fer­ent areas to help strength­en iso­lat­ed cam­paigns. For route details see:
www.earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21915
More info or to get involved: caravan@climatecamp.org.uk.

——————
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
——————

1. Bio­fu­elled attacks in Suma­tra, Indone­sia – 18.12.08
In the rush to clear sub­sis­tence farms and for­est for agro-fuel plan­ta­tion, local vil­lages in the glob­al South are suf­fer­ing. On 18th Decem­ber 2008 the vil­lage of Suluk Bongkal in Suma­tra, Indone­sia was attacked by hun­dreds of armed police and para­mil­i­taries with fire-arms and tear­gas and was also fire-bombed from a heli­copter. Hun­dreds of hous­es were burned down and lat­er bull­dozed. Most of the vil­lagers fled into the forests and oth­ers were arrest­ed. The attack is linked to a sub­sidiary com­pa­ny of Sinar Mas, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) which is clear­ing land for pulp and paper tree plan­ta­tions. Sinar Mas is one of the biggest own­ers of palm oil and pulp and paper plan­ta­tions in Indone­sia. A protest let­ter is col­lect­ing sig­na­to­ries to send to the Indone­sian author­i­ties.
To sign and for more info: www.regenwald.org/international/englisch/index.php

2. Plane Stu­pid turns Southamp­ton air­port into a refugee camp — 17.01.09
Activists chained them­selves to the entrance of Southamp­ton air­port and erect­ed tents at the main entrance in a bid turn the region­al air­port into a cli­mate refugee camp. In addi­tion to set­ting up camp, activists for­mal­ly sub­mit­ted a plan­ning appli­ca­tion with East­leigh Bor­ough Coun­cil to turn the air­port into refugee hous­ing.
www.planestupid.com

3. Cli­mate Rush activists lock on to Par­lia­ment — 20.01.01
On the day that Par­lia­ment vot­ed about the third run­way, nine Cli­mate Rush activists high­light­ed the high farce that is UK democ­ra­cy by chain­ing them­selves to the gates of Par­lia­ment. Despite stay­ing for hours and enter­tain­ing tourists and the press, when the police final­ly cut them out, the activists walked away scot free.
www.climaterush.co.uk

4. E.On Ref Off! – 24.01.09
On Sat­ur­day 24th Jan­u­ary a group of Lon­don Cli­mate Camp activists turned up at Stam­ford Bridge dressed as foot­ball ref­er­ees to show E.ON the red card. Over 40,000 Chelsea and Ipswich fans arriv­ing for the game heard us blow­ing the whis­tle on E.ON’s dirty FA Cup spon­sor­ship mon­ey, and thou­sands of them were per­son­al­ly hand­ed an “E.ON F.OFF” red card explain­ing how the com­pa­ny is mak­ing foul prof­its from the cli­mate cri­sis. It was all good fun and reac­tions were pret­ty pos­i­tive — E.ON them­selves would have paid tens of thou­sands to get the oppo­site pub­lic­i­ty for their brand!
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/420346.html

5. A not-so-Roy­al wel­come for the nuclear indus­try — 09.02.09
Hun­dreds of tourists, vis­it­ing the Palace for the Chang­ing of the Guard, were amused to see “nuclear guards” tak­ing their place at the gates. They held up a large ban­ner read­ing “Nuclear Pow­er is Not the Answer to Cli­mate Chaos!” and a plac­ard read­ing “Roy­al Nuclear Fam­i­ly? No Thanks!”, draw­ing atten­tion to the fact that Prince Andrew, the UK’s Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Inter­na­tion­al Trade and Invest­ment, was host­ing a gala lunch at the Palace for the nuclear indus­try, pre­sum­ably to plot how best to pro­mote their tox­ic green­wash agen­da at home and abroad.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/02/421693.html

6. Man­ches­ter RBS branch roof occu­pa­tion — 11.02.09
Around 35 stu­dents held a cli­mate change ‘Evic­tion Demon­stra­tion’ out­side (and on top of) a Roy­al Bank of Scot­land branch at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter Stu­dents Union. The group from Peo­ple and Plan­et also sub­mit­ted a motion to the Union Gen­er­al Meet­ing propos­ing that the Union does not renew the lease for RBS’ branch when it expires in Jan­u­ary 2010. Stu­dents climbed up on to the roof of the branch, and dropped ban­ners adver­tis­ing RBS’ fos­sil fuel invest­ments. Oth­ers engaged in ‘rapid infor­ma­tion dessim­i­na­tion’, rac­ing off to speak to as many peo­ple as they could in 20 min­utes before return­ing back to the RBS branch to com­pare scores.
http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/22169

7. Occu­pa­tion of Kel­ster­back For­est, Frank­furt Air­port, Ger­many — Ongo­ing The occu­pa­tion of the threat­ened Kel­ster­back For­est con­tin­ues. This is a large and beau­ti­ful for­est that has already been encroached upon for exist­ing air­port infra­struc­ture and is “in the way” of a planned, addi­tion­al run­way.
http://waldbesetzung.blogsport.de

8. New report – Cater­ing for the Coal Indus­try A per­son­al account from an activist on the ground in Columbia,documenting resis­tance to exploita­tion in Columbia’s’ coal industry.The report is focused on the lives of those who pre­pare and serve the food nec­es­sary for the mine to func­tion. They want peo­ple out­side of La Loma to hear of their inhu­mane, dan­ger­ous and humil­i­at­ing work­ing con­di­tions. Read­ing and shar­ing this report helps to break the invis­i­bil­i­ty of the exploita­tion with­in the glob­al coal infra­struc­ture.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/419675.html

———-

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newssheet@risingtide.org.uk

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This News Sheet was brought to you by Ris­ing Tide, a grass­roots net­work of groups and indi­vid­u­als com­mit­ted to tak­ing action and build­ing a move­ment against cli­mate change.

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Upcoming action dates, activist gatherings, & the official meetings en route to the Copenhagen climate summit, 2009 — updated

‘Offi­cial’ meet­ings on the Road to Copen­hagen:

31 March to 8 April 2009
First Post-Kyoto Cli­mate Nego­ti­a­tions (UNFCCC Inter­ces­sion­al Meet­ing), Bonn, Ger­many

‘Offi­cial’ meet­ings on the Road to Copen­hagen:

31 March to 8 April 2009
First Post-Kyoto Cli­mate Nego­ti­a­tions (UNFCCC Inter­ces­sion­al Meet­ing), Bonn, Ger­many
The first meet­ing on the “road to Copen­hagen” and first inter­na­tion­al cli­mate meet­ing for the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. Expect­ed Out­come: Broad dis­cus­sions on respec­tive mit­i­ga­tion goals for devel­oped and devel­op­ing coun­tries. How­ev­er, it is unclear whether Pres­i­dent Oba­ma will have a cli­mate nego­tia­tor and under sec­re­tary in place at this time so there will real “nego­ti­at­ing” at this meet­ing. http://unfccc.int/meetings/items/2654.php

2 April 2009
G20 Meet­ing, Lon­don, Eng­land
This will like­ly be Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s first large-scale meet­ing with oth­er world lead­ers. The agen­da will like­ly look to tack­le the finan­cial cri­sis, but the G20 web­site men­tions the need to “make progress on long-term issues such as cli­mate change and inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment.” Expect­ed Out­come: Devel­op a com­mit­ment that the glob­al eco­nom­ic recov­ery will fac­tor in car­bon emis­sions. http://www.g20.org/

24–26 May 2009
World Busi­ness Sum­mit on Cli­mate Change, Copen­hagen, Den­mark
The Copen­hagen Cli­mate Coun­cil is orga­niz­ing the World Busi­ness Sum­mit on Cli­mate Change, which will bring togeth­er the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, top sci­en­tists, econ­o­mists and oth­er lead­ing thinkers. Expect­ed Out­come: Issue rec­om­men­da­tions for the next inter­na­tion­al glob­al warm­ing agree­ment. http://www.copenhagenclimatecouncil.com/

1–12 June 2009
Sec­ond Post-Kyoto Cli­mate Nego­ti­a­tions (UNFCCC Inter­ces­sion­al Meet­ing), Bonn, Ger­many
Draft nego­ti­at­ing text is expect­ed to be issued before or dur­ing this meet­ing and will like­ly be very gen­er­al with all the con­tentious items placed in brack­ets, but it will be the basis for actu­al nego­ti­a­tions. Expect­ed Out­come: Draft nego­ti­at­ing text. http://unfccc.int/meetings/items/2654.php

8–10 July 2009
G8 Sum­mit, La Mad­dale­na, Italy
The host, Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlus­coni, does not share the com­mit­ment to address­ing cli­mate change of pre­vi­ous G8 hosts. Address­ing cli­mate at this meet­ing will be crit­i­cal for keep­ing momen­tum toward Copen­hagen. Expect­ed Out­come: G8 Agree­ment set­ting the stage for Copen­hagen
http://www.g8italia2009.it/G8/G8-G8_Layout_locale-1199882116809_Home.htm

31 August – 4 Sep­tem­ber 2009
World Cli­mate Con­fer­ence Three, Gene­va, Switzer­land
The World Cli­mate Con­fer­ences (WCC) is the major “sci­en­tif­ic” meet­ing for 2009 and is the third in a series of inter­na­tion­al meet­ings, orga­nized by the World Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Orga­ni­za­tion
about glob­al cli­mate issues. The sec­ond WCC in 1979 result­ed in the cre­ation of the U.N.‘s Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change. http://www.wmo.int/pages/world_climate_conference/index_en.html Expect­ed Out­come: Group will address cli­mate pre­dic­tion, dis­as­ter risk reduc­tion and adap­ta­tion to cli­mate change.

August 2009 (date not set)
Third Post-Kyoto Cli­mate Nego­ti­a­tions (UNFCCC Inter­ces­sion­al Meet­ing), Bangkok, Thai­land
This is the third meet­ing on the “road to Copen­hagen” and, by this point, par­i­ties should have set their nego­ti­at­ing posi­tions so the frame­work for the next inter­na­tion­al treaty can start to be craft­ed. Expect­ed Out­come: Nation’s set nego­ti­at­ing posi­tions. http://unfccc.int/meetings/items/2654.php

21–25 Sep­tem­ber 2009
Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly Cli­mate Sum­mit, Copen­hagen
New York, New York — *UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Bon Ki Moon has indi­cat­ed that he plans to hold a spe­cial ses­sion with heads of state to address cli­mate change. Expect­ed Out­come: Indi­ca­tions of nation’s nego­ti­at­ing posi­tion for

Octo­ber 2009 (date not set)
Fourth Post-Kyoto Cli­mate Nego­ti­a­tions (UNFCCC Inter­ces­sion­al Meeting/Minister’s Meet­ing), Loca­tion to be deter­mined
Expect­ed Out­come: Final draft text agreed to. This is the final nego­ti­at­ing ses­sion before Copen­hagen and may be attend­ed only by envi­ron­ment min­is­ters mak­ing it a closed door meet­ing designed to set the stage for COP 15.

7–18 Decem­ber 2009
UNFCCC Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties 15, Copen­hagen, Den­mark
If there is to be no gap between the Kyoto Pro­to­col and a new agree­ment, a frame­work must be agreed to at this meet­ing. Expect­ed Out­come: New inter­na­tion­al glob­al warm­ing treaty. http://www.cop15.dk/en

2010 (dates uncon­firmed)
UNFCCC Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties 16, Jamaica

=============

Old dates from this cal­en­dar:

Com­piled at the recent EF! Win­ter Moot (scroll down for your sum­mer of fun — dates up until Decem­ber ’09):

21–22 Feb­ru­ary 2009
No Bor­ders UK gath­er­ing, Bris­tol

26 Feb­ru­ary 2009
Demon­stra­tions at UK Coal Awards (www.climaterush.co.uk) & at UK Coal HQ (www.northernclimaterush.wordpress.com)

5 March 2009
Next Cli­mate Rush, Lon­don
> http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/22254

13–15 March 2009
EF! Treeplant­i­ng, Heb­den Bridge
(trees@riseup.net > www.earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/22158)

13–15 March 2009
COP15 Inter­na­tion­al Mobil­i­sa­tion Net­work meet­ing, Copen­hagen, Den­mark (www.climateaction09.org)

14–15 March
Nation­al squat meet­up, Bris­tol
(www.squatmeet09.wordpress.com)

21–22 March 2009
Cli­mate Camp Car­bon Trad­ing Edu­ca­tion Week­end, Lon­don
(international@climatecamp.org.uk)

21–22 March 2009
Direct Action train­ing, 10am at Cow­ley Club, Brighton
(www.cowleyclub.org.uk)

1 April 2009 Fossil/Financial Fools Day
G20 Protests + Events List + Loca­tions Map
Squar­ing up to the Square Mile: the Lon­don G20 map

Cli­mate Camp in the City, Lon­don (www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20)
G20 Melt­down at the Bank of Eng­land (www.g20meltdown.org)
Fos­sil Fools’ Day, every­where (www.risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday2009)
Times & resource links > http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/22258

* G20 Crit­i­cal Mass
9:00 AM Meet at Bank Junc­tion (Bank tube sta­tion) EC2

* Finan­cial Fools Day Street Par­ty
Assem­ble at Can­non Street, Moor­gate, Liv­er­pool Street or Lon­don Bridge sta­tions 11am to form four march­ing blocks head­ing towards the Bank of Eng­land for 12-noon, in the ‘Square Mile’ of the City of Lon­don.
See: http://www.g‑20meltdown.org/
Bring a portable radio!

* Cli­mate Camp in the City
The cli­mate camp are camp­ing in the Euro­pean Car­bon Exchange, Hasil­wood house, City of Lon­don 12-noon.
See: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20
Final update on what to bring and what to do where at http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/22291

* Fos­sil Fools Day: ‘Your Par­ty’s Over!’ *** POSTPONED by BP fol­low­ing police advice. ***
Cli­mate Crim­i­nal BP is cel­e­brat­ing its cen­te­nary with cock­tails and canapes at the British Musem. And we will be there too, between 6–7pm, to say ‘Your party’s over!’
Meet at 6pm at the British Museum’s Gt. Rus­sell St. gate
See: http://www.fossilfoolsdayofaction.org
Bring ban­ners, musi­cal instru­ments, a sense of cli­mate jus­tice and a non­sense of fool­ery.

2 April 2009
* Crash the Stock Exchange
Eat cap­i­tal­ism for break­fast. Dis­rupt the traders whose finan­cial ego­ma­nia per­pet­u­ates glob­al injus­tice: let’s shut­down trad­ing for the day.
Meet out­side the Lon­don Stock Exchange, 10 Pater­nos­ter Square, City of Lon­don, Lon­don EC4M. 7am (traders arrive at 7am, trad­ing com­menc­ing 8am). Near­est tube: St Pauls — have a pleas­ant jour­ney in… tubes might be busy.
* Excel Cen­tre
Direct action all day against the Excel Cen­tre, Can­ning Town where the G20 will be meet­ing
ExCeL Lon­don, One West­ern Gate­way, Roy­al Vic­to­ria Dock, Lon­don, E16 1XL
A coali­tion of groups includ­ing: The Pales­tine Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign, Stop the War Coali­tion, The British Mus­lim Ini­tia­tive, and CND have called two protests at the G20; a march and ral­ly in cen­tral Lon­don on the after­noon of April 1st, and a protest to the con­fer­ence itself on April 2nd.

3–5 April 2009
Demon­stra­tions at NATO 60TH Anniver­sary Sum­mit, Baden-Baden, Ger­many & Stras­bourg, France
http://dissent.fr/taxonomy/term/165

24 April‑5 May 2009
Coal Car­a­van, cycling from Not­ting­ham, through Der­byshire, York­shire & .
Stop­ping off at a vari­ety of open-cast sites, pow­er sta­tions and oth­er beau­ti­ful places! Full details of how to book, itin­er­ary for where to join.
(caravan@climatecamp.org.uk > www.coalcaravan.org.uk)

25/26th April 2009
Sizewell anti-nuclear Camp and Demo

2–3rd May 2009
Anti-mil­i­tarist con­fer­ence, Brighton
(http://antimilitaristnetwork.noflag.org.uk)

4th May 2009
Smash EDO May­day! May­day! Street par­ty against war and greed, Brighton.
(http://www.smashedo.org.uk)

6 May 2009
A Wake for BP at the oil behe­moth­’s cen­te­nary par­ty

29 May‑1 June
Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp sum­mer gath­er­ing

1 June
Cli­mate Rush Ped­al Pow­er
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/22611

6 June 2009
Eco-vil­lage occu­pa­tion, SW Lon­don
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/22593

6–7 June 2009
Nation­al Anar­chist Gath­er­ing, Lon­don
www.conference09.org.uk

11–14 June 2009
Scot­tish Cli­mate Camp Con­ver­gence
(http://climatecampscotland.org.uk)

23th-29th June 2009
Calais No Bor­ders Camp
(http://calaisnoborder.eu.org/)

3–5 July
For­est Cir­cus fes­ti­val, Lap­pers­fort, Bel­gium

8–10 July 2009
Demon­stra­tions at G8 Sum­mit, La Mad­dale­na, Italy

11–12 July 2009
Anti-Mil­i­tarist Net­work Gath­er­ing, Not­ting­ham
(http://www.antimilitaristnetwork.org.uk)

11–19 July 2009
Dan­ish Cli­mate Camp, near Copen­hagen
(http://camp09.dk/)

12–19 July 2009
Das Kli­ma Work­shop Festival/Le camp cli­ma­tique, near Berne, Switzer­land
(http://www.netzwerkzeug.org/)

18th-? July
Sav­ing Ice­land Sum­mer Mobil­i­sa­tion 2009
(www.savingiceland.org)

20–26 July 2009
NO to Ura­ni­um Pow­er — Anti­nu­clear Cli­mate Camp, Ter­vola, Fin­land
(http://www.hyokyaalto.org/category/english)

23rd-27th July 2009, Oxford­shire.
You are invit­ed to Peace News’ first ever sum­mer camp.
(http://www.peacenewscamp.info)

3–9 August 2009
French Camp Action Cli­mat, Notre Dame des Lan­des, Nantes
(www.campclimat.org)

3–9 August 2009
Dutch/Belgian Cli­mate Camp
(www.klimaatactiekamp.org)

3–10 August 2009
Scot­tish Camp for Cli­mate Action
(http://climatecampscotland.org.uk)

13–16 August 2009
Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru, Near Merthyr Tyd­fil, South Wales
(http://climatecampcymru.org)

15–23 August 2009
Irish Cli­mate Camp
(http://www.climatecamp.ie)

18–24 August 2009
Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, Cum­bria
(www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk)

20–23 August 2009 IN SALENTO, NUCLEAR CLIMATE CAMP, Italy – Lec­ce
More info

21–23 August 2009
Beyond Bor­ders week­end, Not­ting­ham
A week­end of skill­shar­ing and dis­cus­sion about fight­ing bor­der con­trols and show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with migrants
(http://beyondbordersweekend.wordpress.com)

27 August‑2 Sep­tem­ber 2009
UK Camp for Cli­mate Action — con­ver­gence with­in the M25/London (www.climatecamp.org.uk)

Sep­tem­ber 2009 (dates uncon­firmed)
Cli­mate Camp, South Aus­tralia
(http://climatecampsa.org)

North Amer­i­can action camps sum­mer 2009
inter­na­tion­al list of Con­ver­gences for Cli­mate Action

12–20 Sep­tem­ber 2009
Bris­tol Co-Mutiny

18–19 Sep­tem­ber 2009
squats and autonomous spaces — 2 days of direct action around hous­ing and the cre­ation of more autonomous spaces at this time of cri­sis. See link

10–11 Octo­ber
Work­ers’ Cli­mate Action con­fer­ence, Lon­don

12–16 Octo­ber 2009
Glob­al Mobil­i­sa­tion in Defence of Moth­er Earth and the Peo­ples
called by the 4th Con­ti­nen­tal Sum­mit of Indige­nous Peo­ples Abya Yala (”Amer­i­ca”)
More info/resources

16–18 Octo­ber 2009
COP15 Inter­na­tion­al Mobil­i­sa­tion Net­work meet­ing
(www.climateaction09.org)

17–18 Octo­ber 2009
The Great Cli­mate Swoop, clos­ing down Rat­cliffe-on-Soar coal-fired pow­er sta­tion
More info

24 Octo­ber 2009
Lon­don Anar­chist Book­fair
(http://www.anarchistbookfair.org)

24 Octo­ber 2009
Inter­na­tion­al Day of Cli­mate Action
http://www.350.org/

31 October‑1 Novem­ber
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/23245

31 Oct‑1 Nov 2009
Gath­er­ing Against the Prison Soci­ety, Brighton
Dis­cus­sions & pre­sen­ta­tions about the strug­gle for lib­er­a­tion, inside and out­side of the prison walls
More info

21–22 Novem­ber 2009
No New Nuclear. Plan­ning to win strate­gis­ing week­end, Lon­don

28 November‑1 Decem­ber 2009
Week­end of Action and Work­shops at Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp

5 Decem­ber 2009
COP15 OUT, a secret plan to take a space in the City of Lon­don away from and after the Wave. It’s time to show our ‘lead­ers’ how we’re going to take action to reduce emis­sions our­selves.

3–9 Decem­ber 2009
Social and Cli­mate Jus­tice Car­a­van from the WTO Min­is­te­r­i­al in Gene­va to the COP15 sum­mit in Copen­hagen.
http://www.climatecaravan.org

7–18 Decem­ber 2009
Demon­stra­tions at COP15 Sum­mit, Copen­hagen, Den­mark
(www.climateaction09.org)
See this arti­cle for back­ground & links to Action Guide & Map

7–18 Decem­ber 2009
Kli­mafo­rum: Peo­ple’s Cli­mate Sum­mit
http://www.klimaforum09.org

11 Decem­ber 2009
* Our Cli­mate! Not Your Busi­ness! (organ­ised direct action to stop Cor­po­ra­tions tak­ing part in COP process)
http://notyourbusiness.hacklab.dk/

12 Decem­ber 2009
* Flood for Cli­mate Jus­tice (demon­stra­tion by FoE)
http://www.foei.org/en/what-we-do/un-climate-talks/global/2009/the-flood-is-coming
* Glob­al day of Action
http://www.globalclimatecampaign.org/
* March for Cli­mate Jus­tice (includ­ing sys­tem change, not cli­mate change bloc)
* Don’t Nuke the Cli­mate! Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action
http://www.dont-nuke-the-climate.org/index.php?lang=en

13 Decem­ber 2009
Hit the Pro­duc­tion of Cli­mate Chaos
http://htp.noblogs.org/
* Farm­ers action (Via Campesina against agro-indus­try)

14 Decem­ber 2009
* No Bor­ders, No Cli­mate Refugees! (Day of action in Copen­hagen. Call to action to inter­na­tion­al no bor­ders groups dur­ing the COP 15 in Copen­hagen)
http://info.interactivist.net/node/13135
* Repa­ra­tions for Cli­mate Debt

15 Decem­ber 2009
* Resis­tance is Ripe! Agri­cul­ture Action Day (Change the food sys­tem not the cli­mate)
http://www.climate-justice-action.org/mobilization/agriculture-action-day/

16 Decem­ber 2009
* RECLAIM POWER! — Push­ing for Cli­mate Jus­tice! (Mass action to enter the COP15 con­fer­ence area and dis­rupt the ses­sions in order to hold a Peo­ple’s Sum­mit for Cli­mate Jus­tice. Con­fronta­tion­al civ­il dis­obe­di­ence)
http://www.climate-justice-action.org

18 Decem­ber 2009
* (last offi­cial day of the sum­mit) — “Nev­er Trust a COP” actions through­out the city
http://www.nevertrustacop.org/

26th Feb Climate Rushes — north and south

North­ern Cli­mate Rush — Rush on UK Coal!

North­ern Cli­mate Rush — Rush on UK Coal!

Fresh from their Man­ches­ter Air­port incur­sion, North­ern Cli­mate Rush is back, and we are pay­ing a vis­it to the UK’s largest coal com­pa­ny! We will be trav­el­ling by minibus to the head­quar­ters of UK Coal in Don­cast­er. Meet in front of the Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Stu­dent Union build­ing at 1pm on Thurs­day Feb 26. Dress in Edwar­dian fash­ion (if you so desire) and bring food to share, ban­ners, and musi­cal instru­ments.

WHAT IS NORTHERN CLIMATE RUSH?

It’s a group of intre­pid activists who, tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from the suf­fragettes, use civ­il dis­obe­di­ence to bring about a tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon econ­o­my. We believe that, giv­en gov­ern­men­t’s total fail­ure to take mean­ing­ful action on cli­mate change, a cam­paign of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence is nec­es­sary, and in fact it is the only respon­si­ble way for­ward, giv­en that the fate of all future gen­er­a­tions rests on the deci­sions that are made now and in the next cou­ple of years.

Our sis­ter group of Cli­mate Rush­ers in the South will be pay­ing a vis­it to a coal indus­try awards cer­e­mo­ny in Lon­don on the same day.

WHY UK COAL?

Coal com­pa­nies such as UK Coal are active­ly stand­ing in the way of the nec­es­sary tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon econ­o­my based on renew­ables. They invest in new coal mines, and by lob­by gov­ern­ment against the changes need­ed for a tran­si­tion to alter­na­tives.

HOW CAN WE LIVE WITHOUT COAL?

Var­i­ous recent sci­en­tif­ic reports* have shown how the UK could tran­si­tion from fos­sil fuels, to a low-car­bon econ­o­my. We would have to switch to renew­able pow­er sources (main­ly wind and wave) and reduce our ener­gy con­sump­tion by fly­ing much less, by reduc­ing the use of pri­vate cars by cre­at­ing a vast­ly improved pub­lic trans­port sys­tem, by ensur­ing that with­in the next few years all UK homes and build­ings are prop­er­ly insu­lat­ed, and by requir­ing all appli­ances to have the high­est stan­dard of ener­gy effi­cien­cy.

WHAT ABOUT JOBS?

Dur­ing the min­ers’ strikes of the 70’s and 80’s most coal mines in the UK were deep pit mines, which required hun­dreds of min­ers to work them. But now most of the coal that can be deep-mined has already been dug up, and new UK coal mines are open-cast — huge dig­gers are used to rip the top off a hill, and then coal is sift­ed from the rub­ble. It is tremen­dous­ly destruc­tive to local ecolo­gies, and also employs far few­er work­ers.

By con­trast the cre­ation of new wind and wave-pow­er infra­struc­ture, a pro­gram of build­ing insu­la­tion instal­la­tion, and lay­ing on more trains, trams and bus­es, would all cre­ate new, sus­tain­able jobs. We are call­ing for gov­ern­ment to pro­vide train­ing pro­grams so that work­ers from fos­sil fuel indus­tries which need to be phased out can move direct­ly into posi­tions in the new, sus­tain­able indus­tries.

It’s now or nev­er time for the cli­mate, join us!

All gen­ders wel­come.

* See for exam­ple:
— Nico­las Stern, “Stern Review of the Eco­nom­ics of Cli­mate Change”, http://www.occ.gov.uk/activities/stern.htm

- Tyn­dall Cen­tre for Cli­mate Change Research, “Decar­bon­is­ing the UK”, http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/media/news/tyndall_decarbonising_the_uk.pdf

northernclimaterush@googlemail.com
http://www.northernclimaterush.wordpress.com

————-

UK Coal will be pre­sent­ing cel­e­bra­to­ry awards to the most dam­ag­ing com­pa­nies in the coal indus­try on Feb­ru­ary 26th Feb­ru­ary at the Land­mark Hotel on Maryle­bone Road, Lon­don. Cli­mate Rush will be in atten­dance to offer alter­na­tive awards based on the eco­log­i­cal dam­age that the coal indus­try is inflict­ing on the envi­ron­ment.

We invite you to join us in your best cock­tail fin­ery (fab­u­lous hats a rec­om­men­da­tion, and sooty styling a sug­ges­tion) to show UK Coal pre­cise­ly what “indus­try play­ers can expect to chal­lenge them in 2009.”

NO NEW COAL AWARDS

THURSDAY 26TH FEBRUARY

THE LANDMARK HOTEL
Dress for­mal­ly for cock­tails in the Win­ter Gar­den at 6.30 prompt.

WHAT CLIMATE RUSH SAYS TO THE UK COAL AWARDS

No new coal to avoid run­away cli­mate change
Coal is the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuel, and by far the dirt­i­est way to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty. We must leave coal in the ground and not build any new coal fired pow­er sta­tions if we want to avoid run­away cli­mate change. CCS is an unproven tech­nol­o­gy that may nev­er be a viable option. Cli­mate change is hap­pen­ing now and we must act now to stop it.

We can’t have infi­nite growth on a finite plan­et
At this out­dat­ed and fos­silized awards cer­e­mo­ny UK Coal is cel­e­brat­ing the worst excess­es of our fail­ing eco­nom­ic sys­tem. Just like over­paid bankers these heads of cor­po­ra­tions are receiv­ing plau­dits for plun­der­ing the plan­et.

A tran­si­tion to a low car­bon soci­ety with sus­tain­able jobs
We must coun­ter­act any jobs loss­es from the coal indus­try with a major re-skilling pro­gram in sus­tain­able trades. Many more jobs will be cre­at­ed by a huge retro­fitting pro­gram of old hous­ing stock and in the new renew­able ener­gies sec­tor than in new coal. The Ger­man clean ener­gy rev­o­lu­tion has seen the cre­ation of 250,000 new jobs.

http://climaterush.co.uk/