Category: North East England

North East Eng­land

Activist Tat training week

There will be a free AT Co-op train­ing week in Not­ting­ham, from Thurs­day 6th of May to Mon­day 10th of May 2010.

There will be a free AT Co-op train­ing week in Not­ting­ham, from Thurs­day 6th of May to Mon­day 10th of May 2010.

This will include putting up mar­quees, erect­ing and mend­ing the flat pack toi­lets and paint­ing them for beau­ty and dura­bil­i­ty, as well as all the tech­ni­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal (pow­er, plumb­ing etc) skill­shar­ing that launched the site crews of the No Bor­ders Camp in Calais, and the Camp for Cli­mate Action in Black­heath in 2009.

We would like to see 50 new peo­ple there. We can cope with 70 if they are
con­sid­er­ate and co-oper­a­tive.

You can come for the whole week or just a cou­ple of days. We’ll share the cost of excel­lent veg­an food, and bring sleep­ing bags for the friend­liest floors in For­est Fields, Not­ting­ham. E‑mail jed2f4[at]yahoo.co.uk if you’re com­ing.

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Do you have equip­ment? Spaces activist groups can use? Skills you would like to share with oth­ers? ATC are cur­rent­ly doing an audit of grass­roots move­ments to see what mate­ri­als we have and what we have to offer each oth­er. Please take part in our ques­tion­naire, and help us cre­ate a strong net­work where we share skills and mate­ri­als.

The AT Coop­er­a­tive (com­mon­ly known as ‘activist tat col­lec­tive’) is a group of peo­ple who have come togeth­er to pro­vide equip­ment, trans­port and train­ing for grass­roots move­ments. The aims of the group are as fol­lows:

1. To source and pro­vide equip­ment for events to grass­roots cam­paigns at below com­mer­cial rates, by using exist­ing resources and pur­chas­ing new mate­ri­als.

2. To train peo­ple up in essen­tial skills for putting on out­door events.

3. To be a point of con­tact for indi­vid­u­als and groups seek­ing who are hap­py for oth­ers to use their equip­ment or who want to pass on their skills.

In all this, ATC aims to be as pro­fes­sion­al as pos­si­ble, main­tain­ing and stor­ing equip­ment respon­si­bly and ensur­ing that it is returned or replaced. This will reduce waste and free up valu­able time for actu­al cam­paign­ing!

There is a lot more infor­ma­tion on our web­site, so please read on.

http://www.atcoop.org.uk

Earth First! Summer Gathering, 4th — 9th Aug 2010, Derbyshire — location & programme announced/set-up plans & call-out

Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise

5 days of work­shops, skill shar­ing and plan­ning action, plus low-impact liv­ing with­out lead­ers.

Meet peo­ple, learn skills, take action.

For lat­est details, see http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/
Set-up plans & call-out
Loca­tion
Pro­gramme

EF! Summer Gathering poster 2010Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise

5 days of work­shops, skill shar­ing and plan­ning action, plus low-impact liv­ing with­out lead­ers.

Meet peo­ple, learn skills, take action.

For lat­est details, see http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/
Set-up plans & call-out
Loca­tion
Pro­gramme
Want to do some­thing to stop our plan­et from get­ting trashed?

EF! is about direct action to halt the destruc­tion of the Earth. It’s about doing it your­self rather than rely­ing on lead­ers, gov­ern­ments or indus­try. Direct action is at the heart of it, whether you’re stand­ing in front of a bull­doz­er, shut­ting down an open-cast mine or rip­ping up a field of GM crops.

We’re a loose net­work of peo­ple, groups and cam­paigns com­ing togeth­er for eco­log­i­cal direct action.

Join us for 5 days of work­shops, net­work­ing and plan­ning actions, run with­out lead­ers by every­one who comes along. The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of low-impact eco-liv­ing and non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing.

What’s hap­pen­ing?
Over 80 work­shops, dis­cus­sions, plan­ning, strat­e­gy and ‘where next’ ses­sions:

*Share and learn skills for kick-ass actions on land and water.
Small boat han­dling and blockad­ing using kayaks / Blockad­ing — tripods, lock-ons/ Fences / Climb­ing skills / Action recon­nais­sance / Secu­ri­ty for Activists / Strat­e­gy and tac­tics / How to research cor­po­ra­tions /

*Net­work cur­rent cam­paigns against eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion
Open-cast min­ing / Genet­ic engi­neer­ing / Agro­fu­els / Sav­ing Ice­land / Cli­mate actions / Pipeline resis­tance in Ross­port / Anti-nuclear / Air­port expansion/ Tar Sands

*Think about eco-cen­tric ethics and alter­na­tive ways of organ­is­ing
Deep green ethics / Anar­chist eco­nom­ics / Anar­chist his­to­ry / Rad­i­cal Pol­i­tics / Work­ing with­out leaders/ Con­sen­sus deci­sion-mak­ing

*Prac­ti­cal skills for eco­log­i­cal restora­tion and sus­tain­able liv­ing.
Intro­duc­tion to Ecol­o­gy / Restora­tion ecol­o­gy / Flo­ra and Fau­na iden­ti­fi­ca­tion / Veg­an Cake mak­ing / Pow­er from solar and wind / wild food / Squat­ting / Bike main­te­nance

As well as inter­na­tion­al cam­paigns round-up, net­work­ing and plan­ning for future actions.

Cost and prac­ti­cal things
£20–30 accord­ing to what you can afford.
The gath­er­ing is in Der­byshire, the exact loca­tion will be announced the week before. More info on our web­site.

Find out more and join in!

Email us if you can offer a work­shop, want to help out with the gath­er­ing or if you would like posters and leaflets to dis­trib­ute.

We have now a stack of fresh­ly print­ed posters adver­tis­ing the gath­er­ing. If you’d like to send you some to stick up in your area or to take to events, fes­ti­vals and the like, please email us. Alter­na­tive­ly you can also down­load the files and print your own. They are fair­ly large files! EF! gath­er­ing poster (A4)

We are now look­ing for peo­ple to run work­shops and dis­cus­sions at the gath­er­ing. Please con­tact us if you can offer some­thing. Have a look at our pro­gramme page to see the kind of thing we’re look­ing for.

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk, sum­mer­gath­er­ing _ NOSPAM _ @ _ NOSPAM earthfirst.org.uk

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.

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

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”.

Support the Local Campaign Against Bradley Proposed Open-cast

This years EF! win­ter moot was held in Dip­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, which looks over the pro­posed site for an open-cast at Bradley. Mem­bers of the local cam­paign against the mine have asked if peo­ple who attend­ed the moot, (as well as those who did­n’t) would write in their objec­tion to the devel­op­ment.

This years EF! win­ter moot was held in Dip­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, which looks over the pro­posed site for an open-cast at Bradley. Mem­bers of the local cam­paign against the mine have asked if peo­ple who attend­ed the moot, (as well as those who did­n’t) would write in their objec­tion to the devel­op­ment.

UK Coal’s appli­ca­tion is expect­ed to be heard by the plan­ning offi­cials in the near future. The local cam­paign would appre­ci­ate it if peo­ple would write in let­ters of objec­tion to the fol­low­ing address, stat­ing the APPLICATION No. CMA/1/37

Mrs C.L.Teasdale
Plannng Devel­op­ment Con­trol Team
Regen­er­a­tion and Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment
Durham Coun­ty Coun­cil
Durham
DH1 5UQ

Appar­ent­ly let­ters hold more weight if you say that you have vis­it­ed the area.

The facts about this pro­posed mine:
UK Coal has applied to sur­face mine 556,000 tonnes of coal from a coal seem cov­er­ing 22,000 acres.
The cur­rent ver­sion of the appli­ca­tion is has not yet gone to the Plan­ning Author­i­ty.
The appli­ca­tion is being resist­ed by The Pont Val­ley Net­work www.pontvalley.net
If the appli­ca­tion goes ahead the res­i­dents are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the loss of their her­itage sites.
The final des­ti­na­tion for the coal is either the steel indus­try or a pow­er sta­tion gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty.
Burn­ing this coal will release over 2 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmos­phere.
UK coal say the mine will cre­ate 38 jobs. Mr Cory of UK Coal says that there will be no new jobs but peo­ple will be trans­ferred to this site.
The mine will need 3 lor­ry trips per hour, each way.
UK coal and oth­er sur­face min­ing com­pa­nies have appli­ca­tions at the plan­ning stages for a fur­ther 13 mines in the area and a fur­ther 5 have been grant­ed in the area.
The near­est planned site also cur­rent­ly at the plan­ning stages is Skons Park, which Hall con­struc­tion are apply­ing to extract half a mil­lion tonnes of coal fire clay. This appli­ca­tion was last refused in 2007 but Halls have since reap­plied this year.

The Bradley site is 10 miles south of New­cas­tle in a beau­ti­ful area. The pro­posed site can be seen from New­cas­tle and Cheviot on a clear day. A mine would scar the land­scape; cause habi­tat destruc­tion which would affect many species, includ­ing Great Crest­ed Newts and Red Kites; con­tribute to glob­al warm­ing; increase traf­fic local­ly and destroy the remains of wag­on-ways and bell pit and shaft mines in the area. Res­i­dents are also con­cerned that if the mine is giv­en the go ahead then they will see fur­ther exten­sions applied for and grant­ed.

For more infor­ma­tion about the site and to add strength to let­ters of objec­tion please see http://pontvalley.net under NOTT cam­paign on the left hand side.

The new EF! Action Update — bursting onto the seams…

In the Spring edi­tion of the EF! Action Update, see how King Coal is being con­front­ed — chim­neys climbed, con­vey­ors locked-on to, mines invad­ed, machin­ery occu­pied, eco­tage, and more.

EF! AU logo 1In the Spring edi­tion of the EF! Action Update, see how King Coal is being con­front­ed — chim­neys climbed, con­vey­ors locked-on to, mines invad­ed, machin­ery occu­pied, eco­tage, and more.

Mar­vel at the Main­shill strat­e­gy of con­tin­u­ous action, look with awe at the range of tac­tics they used in the many months before eviction…and then think about what you can do, with who, where and when.

“If not you, who? If not now, when?”

The Main­shill fea­ture includes an action time­line, local com­mu­ni­ty links and ideas for the future.

The Nuclear New Build CON­sul­ta­tion is over on 22nd Feb­ru­ary — read about what hap­pens next, who’s involved, and an anti-nuclear camp in April.

“in the end we just need rebel­lion. Every­where.” — what was your response to the Copen­hagen cli­mate chaos, whether you went or stayed at home?

Be inspired by an inter­view with “D Lock,our mys­tery dig­ger div­ing activist” — get out there, bicy­cle lock in hand. In Jan­u­ary, one per­son so-armed brought a whole coal ter­mi­nal to a halt for many hours.

And from across the seas, read about our broth­ers and sis­ters strug­gling against high-speed train destruc­tion in Italy, high-volt­age pow­er lines in Cat­alo­nia, and whale hunt­ing on the High Seas.

And if you don’t get high on all that, try not to be inspired by con­fer­ences block­ad­ed, dams delayed, earth-trash­ing machin­ery sab­o­taged, trees hugged, archi­tects impost­ed, genet­ics roofed, bio­mess bio­massed and much more.

“We are going to inher­it the earth . There is not the slight­est doubt about that. We Are not afraid of ruins. We car­ry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is grow­ing this minute.” — Dur­ru­ti

To down­load the lat­est EF!AU for print­ing, go to http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/efau/actionupdate_feb10print.pdf

To read the lat­est EF!AU online, go to http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/efau/actionupdate_feb10.pdf

climate camp ‘where next?’ regional gatherings and reader

PROPOSALS FOR 2010 SO FAR

We’ve got a new dis­cus­sion board up on the Cli­mate Camp web­site with all the pro­pos­als for the region­al gath­er­ings received so far, plus some oth­er use­ful texts from the Where Next? dis­cus­sions. Join the dis­cus­sion here:

http://discussion.climatecamp.org.uk

REGIONAL GATHERINGS IN JANUARY

PROPOSALS FOR 2010 SO FAR

We’ve got a new dis­cus­sion board up on the Cli­mate Camp web­site with all the pro­pos­als for the region­al gath­er­ings received so far, plus some oth­er use­ful texts from the Where Next? dis­cus­sions. Join the dis­cus­sion here:

http://discussion.climatecamp.org.uk

REGIONAL GATHERINGS IN JANUARY

Here are the lat­est con­firmed details of our region­al gath­er­ings in Jan­u­ary…

(More details as we have them will be post­ed at:
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/get-involved/national-gatherings/next)

—

Cli­mate Camp Read­er

Dysophia and Shift Mag­a­zine have joined forces to put togeth­er a Cli­mate Camp Read­er, “Crit­i­cism with­out Cri­tique”, pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2010. This read­er hopes to encour­age and facil­i­ate debates at the next cli­mate camp gath­er­ings. To down­load it fol­low this link:
http://dysophia.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/cca_reader.pdf
The edi­to­r­i­al is post­ed below:

Edi­to­r­i­al

In Jan­u­ary & Feb­ru­ary 2010, the Camp for Cli­mate Action will go through a peri­od of intro­spec­tion as it works out where it shall go next. While in some ways the Camp has been a suc­cess, it has also come under a bar­rage of crit­i­cism from some quar­ters with­in the rad­i­cal move­ments that spawned it.

To help this debate we have put togeth­er a set of resources and rel­e­vant arti­cles to inform and spark dis­cus­sion relat­ing to this crit­i­cism. Our bias is obvi­ous, though the opin­ions expressed are those of the authors alone. Whether you agree with them or not, we believe they are worth tak­ing on board. We hope at least that you feel con­fi­dent answer­ing their chal­lenges, rather than just dis­miss­ing them.

Now is the time for the Camp to exam­ine its pol­i­tics in more depth, to work out just what it stands for. This is a cross-roads in its devel­op­ment, to con­tin­ue down a path of ever increas­ing lib­er­al, reformist approach, or to be the noisy rad­i­cal, point­ing out all the white ele­phants in the cli­mate change debate. The future of the move­ment around the camp is being shaped here. The deci­sions being made now will have pro­found impacts on who is and who is not involved in the future.

The Camp for Cli­mate Action grew out of the rad­i­cal anar­chist and envi­ron­men­tal move­ments, a syn­the­sis of the organ­i­sa­tion­al skills devel­oped at the Anti-G8 protest camp at Stir­ling, and the eco­log­i­cal direct action move­ments such as Earth First! The per­cep­tion that emerges from these crit­i­cisms is this has been lost along the way.

We accept that this book­let makes chal­leng­ing read­ing and that we offer lit­tle in the way of solu­tions. These, we believe, must come from with­in the camp itself. How­ev­er, it is appar­ent that there is a need for two things. First­ly, a greater vis­i­bil­i­ty for the anar­chist roots with­in the day to day life of the CCA process and pro­pos­als. Sec­ond­ly, and just as impor­tant, a more open and explic­it cri­tique of cap­i­tal­ism and how it is the root cause of cli­mate change.

If we do nei­ther out of fear of a main­stream media back­lash, then we are reduced to being anoth­er NGO. Yet, the pow­er of the Camp has always been the promise of a gen­uine alter­na­tive action in the face of pre­var­i­ca­tion and obstruc­tion from gov­ern­ments and cor­po­ra­tions – now is the time to spell that cri­tique out and use it to build real alter­na­tives, not legit­imis­ing the sys­tem we com­plain of. It was the strength of the Camp’s found­ing cri­tiques that gave it the bold­ness its sub­se­quent suc­cess­es have rest­ed on.

Ulti­mate­ly, the mes­sage of the Camp is a very rad­i­cal one – that rad­i­cal social change is need­ed, espe­cial­ly if we are to tack­le of the root caus­es of cli­mate change. The answer is not to water down our actions and our mes­sages, but to be bold­er than ever. That is the excite­ment and pow­er that gives the Camp its life.

To down­load the read­er fol­low this link:
http://dysophia.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/cca_reader.pdf

http://dysophia.wordpress.com/
http://www.shiftmag.co.uk/