Category: South East England

South East Eng­land

No More Bull On Climate Change: Action this Saturday

24.07.2007

PRESS RELEASE
NO MORE BULL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Cli­mate change cam­paign­ers to descend on Corn­mar­ket Street

Drowning bull24.07.2007

PRESS RELEASE
NO MORE BULL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Cli­mate change cam­paign­ers to descend on Corn­mar­ket Street

No more bull…

This Sat­ur­day many envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers will descend on Corn­mar­ket Street to raise aware­ness about cli­mate change. A colour­ful, vibrant, and var­ied crowd will be run­ning around Oxford.

One activist who will be tak­ing part in one of the many actions this Sat­ur­day said:
“Cli­mate change is the most press­ing issue of our time, if we don’t take action now to slow down the oncom­ing dis­as­ter then no-one can.”

The main action will occur from 12pm at a well-known land­mark, oth­er actions will be tak­ing place around the town. There will also be a Flash Mob beach par­ty resplen­dent in biki­nis and bermu­da shorts.

The recent flood­ing in Oxford­shire led to many peo­ple being removed from some of the worst hit areas, the Oxford Mail report­ed that over 200 peo­ple need­ed to be evac­u­at­ed to safety[1]. The Guardian report­ed that the ‘flash floods in Britain are like­ly to be the biggest imme­di­ate prob­lem caused by cli­mate change’[2].

Anoth­er cam­paign­er semi-joked of the cur­rent flood­ing:
“If the water keeps on ris­ing, we’ll have to build an ark!”

This action has been called as part of the upcom­ing Camp for Cli­mate Action[3] where hun­dreds of peo­ple will meet, par­tic­i­pate in work­shops, and take action on the root caus­es on cli­mate change.

The Camp for Cli­mate Action will be at Heathrow Air­port from the 14th – 21st August.

ENDS

Notes to edi­tor:

1.Matt Wilkin­son, ‘Flood­ing: Evac­u­a­tion hotel full’, Oxford Mail, 24/07/07
2.Matthew Weaver, ‘Flash floods ‘biggest cli­mate threat to UK’, The Guardian, 12/07/07
3.The Camp for Cli­mate Action is a nation­al cam­paign to encour­age peo­ple to tack­le the root caus­es of cli­mate change. In 2006, 600 cam­paign­ers marched on Drax Pow­er Sta­tion in Sel­by to protest against car­bon emis­sions; this year the avi­a­tion indus­try will be chal­lenged. See www.climatecamp.org.uk for more details.
4.A study by Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, pub­lished by the Inter-gov­ern­men­tal Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, found that there will 25 mil­lion envi­ron­men­tal refugees who will be dis­placed by cli­mate chaos.

Activist targetted in latest arrest at EDO MBM

At a peace­ful demon­stra­tion against Brighton arms com­pa­ny EDO MBM on July 18th 2007
a pro­test­er was arrest­ed and a sound sys­tem seized in the lat­est show of
force by Sus­sex police. Police used an obscure coun­cil bylaw which has

At a peace­ful demon­stra­tion against Brighton arms com­pa­ny EDO MBM on July 18th 2007
a pro­test­er was arrest­ed and a sound sys­tem seized in the lat­est show of
force by Sus­sex police. Police used an obscure coun­cil bylaw which has
nev­er been used in a pros­e­cu­tion to con­fis­cate the equip­ment. Last week the
same pro­test­er had charges for a pub­lic order offence dropped after hav­ing
to spend two days in court.

The week­ly protest was policed by around 10 police offi­cers includ­ing two
inspec­tors and an evi­dence gath­er­ing team film­ing the protest.

Sus­sex police have made over 40 arrests dur­ing the three-year cam­paign
against the US-owned bomb com­po­nent man­u­fac­tur­er EDO MBM, the vast major­i­ty
of which have result­ed in acquit­tals or charges being dropped. As well as
the two activists who had charges against them dropped last week, two
pro­test­ers who staged a rooftop demo at the EDO MBM fac­to­ry against
Israel’s bom­bard­ment of Lebanon last year won their court case last month.

Spokes­woman Sarah John­son said ’ Despite Sus­sex Police repeat­ed­ly fail­ing
in their attempts to crim­i­nalise peace­ful protest they con­tin­ue to tar­get
activists who demon­strate against a com­pa­ny on their doorstep respon­si­ble
for war crimes com­mit­ted across the globe. We refuse to be intim­i­dat­ed and
will con­tin­ue our cam­paign against EDO MBM until they shut down.’

First Directions to The Camp for Climate Action 2007.….

The camp dates are draw­ing near­er and near­er and we’re all des­per­ate to know where it will be… but we’ll just have to wait a lit­tle longer!

But what we do know is that if you get your­self to Staines rail­way sta­tion in West Lon­don by 10am on Tues­day 14th August, you will be greet­ed by our friend­ly wel­come team and prompt­ly trans­port­ed via a mag­i­cal mys­tery tour, to the camp! (There will also be lifts to the camp lat­er in the day and through­out the week.)

The camp dates are draw­ing near­er and near­er and we’re all des­per­ate to know where it will be… but we’ll just have to wait a lit­tle longer!

But what we do know is that if you get your­self to Staines rail­way sta­tion in West Lon­don by 10am on Tues­day 14th August, you will be greet­ed by our friend­ly wel­come team and prompt­ly trans­port­ed via a mag­i­cal mys­tery tour, to the camp! (There will also be lifts to the camp lat­er in the day and through­out the week.)

Camp for Cli­mate Action comes to Heathrow this sum­mer.

Avi­a­tion is the fastest grow­ing source of green­house gas emis­sions in the UK, and all our efforts to tack­le cli­mate change in oth­er sec­tors are undone by the mas­sive growth in air trav­el.
Hold­ing the camp at Heathrow aims to high­light the luna­cy of the gov­ern­men­t’s air­port expan­sion plans, tar­get indus­try giants prof­i­teer­ing from the cli­mate cri­sis, and raise aware­ness of the need to fly less.
The camp will also sup­port local res­i­dents in their long-term strug­gle against the build­ing of a third run­way and the destruc­tion of their com­mu­ni­ties.

There will be a day of mass direct action aim­ing to dis­rupt the activ­i­ties of the air­port and the avi­a­tion indus­try, but in the inter­ests of pub­lic safe­ty there will be no attempt to block­ade run­ways.

Although the loca­tion is dif­fer­ent, the phi­los­o­phy of the camp remains the same: to be a place for the bur­geon­ing net­work of peo­ple tak­ing rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change around the coun­try to come togeth­er for a week of low-impact liv­ing, edu­ca­tion, debate, net­work­ing, strate­gis­ing, cel­e­bra­tion, and direct action.
The camp will fea­ture over 100 work­shops cov­er­ing top­ics such as cli­mate change impacts, car­bon off­set­ting, bio­fu­els, peak oil, per­ma­cul­ture, prac­ti­cal renew­ables, cam­paign strat­e­gy, skills for direct action, and much more.
Run with­out lead­ers by every­one who comes along, it will be a work­ing eco­log­i­cal vil­lage using renew­able ener­gy, com­post­ing waste and sourc­ing food local­ly.

It all comes down to us, now. We are the last gen­er­a­tion that can do any­thing about cli­mate change. In 20 or 30 years’ time, should we not change our ways, we’ll be com­mit­ted to emis­sions increas­es that will see forests burn, soils decay, oceans rise, and mil­lions of peo­ple die. If we don’t get this issue right, so much else is lost too.

We still have time, but not for long. Make it count.

Why tar­get avi­a­tion?

It is the fastest grow­ing source of CO2 emis­sions.
It has been left out of the first fal­ter­ing frame­works to con­trol emis­sions, eg. the Kyoto Pro­to­col and the Cli­mate Bill.
It is the most dam­ag­ing form of trans­port.
Unlike the oth­er high emit­ting sec­tors (e.g. ener­gy and food pro­duc­tion), there is no alter­na­tive sus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy.

The only way to reduce emis­sions from avi­a­tion is to reduce the num­ber of flights.
And unlike those oth­er sec­tors, avi­a­tion is not a neces­si­ty.
There is a major air­port expan­sion pro­gramme planned at 21 air­ports, with increas­es in capac­i­ty equiv­a­lent to a new Heathrow every 5 years. This expan­sion pro­gramme locks us into increased emis­sions, and undoes all our oth­er efforts else­where to reduce emis­sions.

Why tar­get Heathrow?

Nowhere in the UK is there a larg­er source of CO2 emis­sions. Most coun­tries emit less green­house gas­es than Heathrow’s planes.

Heathrow is the world’s busiest inter­na­tion­al air­port. It is an icon­ic glob­al sym­bol of avi­a­tion.
Heathrow is the heart of the UK?s avi­a­tion indus­try.
Heathrow is the cen­tral plank of the gov­ern­men­t’s air­port expan­sion plans. Heathrow has a planned third run­way that can be stopped.

The third run­way would bull­doze entire vil­lages and destroy com­mu­ni­ties. There is a big, estab­lished, long-term local cam­paign against Heathrow and BAA that we can join forces with.

There is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to high­light bias in the cor­rupt plan­ning process in favour of big busi­ness and devel­op­ment.

The pres­ence of Har­mondsworth deten­tion cen­tre near­by high­lights the plight of envi­ron­men­tal refugees and the fact that cli­mate change is fun­da­men­tal­ly an issue of social and glob­al injus­tice.

Protesters decontaminate the UK’s last remaining GM potato trial

Dur­ing the night of Fri­day 6th July, a group of activists con­verged on Britain’s last remain­ing GM tri­al site just out­side Cam­bridge. They scaled the secu­ri­ty fences and destroyed the crop of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­toes.

Biohazard (red)Dur­ing the night of Fri­day 6th July, a group of activists con­verged on Britain’s last remain­ing GM tri­al site just out­side Cam­bridge. They scaled the secu­ri­ty fences and destroyed the crop of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­toes.

The pota­to plants were already flow­er­ing, spread­ing genet­ic con­ta­gion into the sur­round­ing coun­try­side.

A sim­i­lar tri­al planned in Hull was aban­doned ear­li­er this year after a strong cam­paign and mas­sive con­cern from near­by farm­ers. With the destruc­tion of the Cam­bridge crop, Britain is once again GM free.

Pub­lic con­cern and demon­stra­tions had failed to sway NIAB, the Nation­al Insti­tute for Agri­cul­ture and Botany, who are car­ry­ing out the five-year tri­al on behalf of BASF, a multi­na­tion­al chem­i­cal cor­po­ra­tion. Many feel that if cor­po­ra­tions refuse to lis­ten to pub­lic opin­ion it is nec­es­sary to take direct action.

Fri­day’s action fol­lows the lat­est in a series of protests, on the pre­vi­ous Sun­day (July 1st), when demon­stra­tors marched on the pota­to field. On that occa­sion, they were met by over­whelm­ing num­bers of police and two par­tic­i­pants were arrest­ed.

This time, how­ev­er, no such obsta­cles were met, and the activists were able to suc­cess­ful­ly decon­t­a­m­i­nate the field.

If this tri­al had been allowed to run full term it could have led to a whole new gen­er­a­tion of GM crop tri­als in this coun­try. Fri­day night’s events show that pub­lic con­cern about GM food and will­ing­ness to take direct action to keep Britain GM free remain high.

Cambridge GM potato demo report & photo series & court update (with added video)

There was a protest today against the last remain­ing GM pota­to tri­al in the UK just out­side of Cam­bridge.

Despite being heav­i­ly out­num­bered by the police & Chubb secu­ri­ty guards, pro­test­ers were able to make their way right up to the twen­ty metre perime­ter fence sur­round­ing the tri­al site (with elec­tric fence inside). Two demon­stra­tors were arrest­ed, one for attempt­ing to breach the fence and anoth­er some dis­tance from the site.

Cambridge GM protest 3Cambridge GM protest 8Cambridge GM protest 4There was a protest today against the last remain­ing GM pota­to tri­al in the UK just out­side of Cam­bridge.

Despite being heav­i­ly out­num­bered by the police & Chubb secu­ri­ty guards, pro­test­ers were able to make their way right up to the twen­ty metre perime­ter fence sur­round­ing the tri­al site (with elec­tric fence inside). Two demon­stra­tors were arrest­ed, one for attempt­ing to breach the fence and anoth­er some dis­tance from the site.
Cambridge GM protest 1
Pro­test­ers played fris­bee and ate a pic­nic at the site but, due to being out­num­bered, were not in a posi­tion to get through the fence to decon­t­a­m­i­nate the site.
Cambridge GM protest 5
Cambridge GM protest 6
Cambridge GM protest 7
Cambridge GM protest 2

Full write up of protest and some back­ground

One knew right from arriv­ing at the start point of this protest in Gir­ton that the police were going to be total­ly in con­trol. Pro­test­ers were great­ly out­num­bered. Also there were no main­stream jour­nal­ists present at all. There were lines of police pho­tog­ra­phers with big cam­eras and long lens­es posi­tioned all around the cen­tre of the vil­lage. This was clear­ly a way of warn­ing any locals who might wish to become involved that they would be treat­ed as poten­tial crim­i­nals even though it was a very fluffy protest. Pro­test­ers set off along the road, turned off onto a pub­lic foot­path towards the site, escort­ed and watched all the way by dozens of police on foot and in vehi­cles. Police made a token attempt to stop every­one from leav­ing the foot­path but the deter­mined pro­test­ers quick­ly nipped through a gap in the hedge and straight onto the cor­po­rate land that was alleged­ly pro­tect­ed by a hur­ried­ly obtained injunc­tion. From there, one could see the test plot in the dis­tance across corn fields with many expen­sive police 4X4s sur­round­ing it. Pro­test­ers then walked care­ful­ly along the head­lands so as not to be accused of dam­ag­ing the adjoin­ing (hope­ful­ly non GM) wheat and bar­ley crops and then set­tled down to pic­nic right next to the block and mesh fence that had only just been erect­ed around the pota­to test site. Many of the pic­nicers lunch box­es seemed to con­tain pota­to sal­ad! One very brave pro­test­er man­aged to leap over this fence when most of the yel­low jack­ets were dis­tract­ed but was imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed. A lit­tle while lat­er a very polite man from Chubb secu­ri­ty came to announce that an injunc­tion had been obtained and that every­one was with­in the injunct­ed area and that he would be very great­ful if every­one were to leave soon. After con­fer­ring amongst them­selves, pro­test­ers realised that because they were so out­num­bered by both police and pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards and because a six foot fence stood between them and the much despised crop, the protest could only be a sym­bol­ic one and so they upped and left.

The pupose of this genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crop tri­al is alleged­ly to eval­u­ate the resis­tance of a new GM pota­to vari­ety to late blight in the field. I real­ly can­not see why this exper­i­ment has to be done in the open coun­try­side rather than inside a closed lab­o­ra­to­ry. Blight needs par­tic­u­lar con­di­tions of tem­per­a­ture, humid­i­ty and air cir­cu­la­tion in order to strike. These con­di­tions would be easy to sim­u­late in a large cli­mat­i­cal­ly con­trolled green­house but out in a field, the cor­rect con­di­tions may not be achieved from one year to the next despite the fos­sil fuel cor­po­ra­tion’s best/worst attempts to change our cli­mate. Not only that but the grow­ing pota­toes were vis­i­bly in flower, there­fore pro­duc­ing GM pollen and I did indeed see at least two bee hives pre­sum­ably installed and main­tained by BASF about 300 metres away near the hedge. Since it would be eas­i­ly pos­si­ble to pinch out the GM pollen pro­duc­ing flow­ers on such a small plot (doing this actu­al­ly INCREASES pota­to yield by about 15%) and since the flow­ers had­n’t been removed, one has to con­clude that BASF delib­er­ate­ly want to spread GM pollen around Cam­bridgeshire as part of their open-air exper­i­ment. Pity any local hon­ey pro­duc­ers as they could lose their organ­ic sta­tus over this. I’m won­der­ing if BASF have any mon­i­tor­ing hives 3km away rather than just 300m as bees can eas­i­ly trav­el this dis­tance in search of flow­ers or maybe BASF don’t want to know such a fact?

Being a keen pota­to fanci­er and grow­er, I have a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in this blight issue. Pota­to late blight is a par­tic­u­lar­ly dev­as­tat­ing fun­gus that spreads faster than any oth­er plant dis­ease.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_blight
This is the same dis­ease that caused the famous 1845 Irish pota­to famine that claimed a mil­lion lives. (In fact it would be more accu­rate to say that the British gov­erne­ment caused the deaths by com­plete­ly ignor­ing the famine and suf­fer­ing that they knew was occur­ring.) Blight, being a fun­gus, thrives in warm damp still weath­er. Last year’s very wet ear­ly autumn weath­er caused my own pota­to crop to dra­mat­i­cal­ly suc­cumb to blight in just two days. In that short peri­od, the foliage changed from healthy green to a black putre­fy­ing slime and the only rem­e­dy at that stage is to attempt to remove every scrap of infect­ed mate­r­i­al from the soil, lift all the tubers from the ground and dry the intact ones as quick­ly as pos­si­ble before stor­ing them. It’s not over then — one has to fre­quent­ly check the stored pota­toes for months and pull out the con­sid­er­able num­ber that con­tin­ue to go putrid before the tuber blight spreads to the entire sack. As a rule, fun­gal dis­eases can only be con­trolled by spray­ing with quite strong chem­i­cals. The only per­mit­ted (just) organ­ic con­trol is Bor­deaux mix­ture — cop­per sul­phate and lime. This is only mod­er­ate­ly effec­tive — rather use­less under severe con­di­tions like last year as, since cop­per suphate is sol­u­ble, it has to be reap­plied after each heavy rain by which time, the dis­ease may have become unstop­pable. So you can see that inor­gan­ic pota­to grow­ing can require strong chem­i­cals and organ­ic grow­ing is real­ly quite prob­lem­at­ic. In these days of unsta­ble weath­er, my over­rid­ing cri­teri­um for choos­ing pota­to vari­eties to grow now is no longer flavour or out­ra­geous colour but blight resis­tance. I would tru­ly love a 100% blight resis­tant pota­to to grow myself. How­ev­er I can­not see myself trust­ing an injunc­tion wield­ing GM cor­po­ra­tion’s cre­ation any fur­ther than I could throw that entire cor­po­ra­tion uphill. As I see it their over­rid­ing inter­est is not to help strug­gling farm­ers or alle­vi­ate world famine. It is prof­it and the wish to mono­plise and dom­i­nate the pota­to seed mar­ket with just a very few expen­sive patent­ed-up-to-the-hilt vari­eties.

If you go to the super­mar­kets, you’ll see on dis­play just six or so vari­eties of pota­toes. In fact world­wide there are an amaz­ing 5000 dif­fer­ent vari­eties, 800 or so vari­eties in this coun­try and about 150 of these are eas­i­ly avail­able com­mer­cial seed vari­eties. The con­se­quences of any mar­ket dom­i­nat­ing GM vari­ety could cause the grad­ual extinc­tion of many irre­placa­ble her­itage vari­eties. Being bru­tal­ly hon­est, the few her­itage vari­eties that I’ve tried grow­ing myself have been too sus­cep­ti­ble to blight for me to con­tin­ue to grow them organ­i­cal­ly. How­ev­er tucked in amongst all those thou­sands of vari­eties there could be some almost for­got­ten about ones that have nat­u­ral­ly high resis­tance. Not only that but this huge repos­i­to­ry of vari­eties can be used in tra­di­tion­al selec­tive breed­ing pro­grams to pro­duce new non GM vari­eties that have much high­er resis­tance. This year I am try­ing Sár­po Mira, Sár­po Axona and Ver­i­ty which are all new vari­eties recent­ly cre­at­ed in just this way and that are claimed to have excep­tion­al resis­tance. So the point I am mak­ing is that there are clear and hope­ful­ly viable alter­na­tives to genet­ic manip­u­la­tion with­out the risks.

.»»»»»»»»

GM pro­test­er court news

Two pro­test­ers were in court this morn­ing hav­ing been arrest­ed on Sun­day dur­ing protests at the site of the UK’s only GM tri­al — pota­toes.

Both were charged with Crim­i­nal Dam­age. One pled not guilty, and that tri­al will resume in 4 weeks. The oth­er pled guilty and was fined.

Ted­dy Bears Pic­nic — video/quicktime 31M

Miffed by Miffy

I don’t know how it came about but the Miffy rab­bit char­ac­ter has for a long time been asso­ci­at­ed with the Earth First! move­ment and rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action. But do the cre­ators and copy­right own­ers of the char­ac­ter know or approve of Miffy’s polit­i­cal activ­i­ties?…



Rabbit under fence

EF! summer gathering 2007 logo



Rabbit with wrenchEF! gathering '07 logo (rabbit/fence)

I don’t know how it came about but the Miffy rab­bit char­ac­ter has for a long time been asso­ci­at­ed with the Earth First! move­ment and rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action. But do the cre­ators and copy­right own­ers of the char­ac­ter know or approve of Miffy’s polit­i­cal activ­i­ties?…

Miffy is a pic­ture book char­ac­ter cre­at­ed by Dick Bruna in 1955, after telling his one-year-old son Sierk sto­ries about a rab­bit they had seen on hol­i­day. Miffy now fea­tures in about 30 titles which have been trans­lat­ed into 40 dif­fer­ent lan­guages, sell­ing over 80 mil­lion copies all over the world.

Drawn in a very min­i­mal­ist style, Miffy requires only a few lines and one or two pri­ma­ry col­ors drawn in two dimen­sions to be recog­nis­able. Per­haps this, and the sense of air of inno­cence over mis­chief explains why she become involved in eco­log­i­cal direct action.

It’s unclear exact­ly when exact­ly it began but you can trace her polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, in this coun­try at least, back to the ear­ly 90’s and the anti-roads move­ment. Seen coy­ly hold­ing a span­ner behind her back, one could only imag­ine the trail of mon­key wrench­ing she left behind her in her efforts to defend the fields, wood­land and hedgerows she loved.

By the late nineties, with the roads build­ing pro­gram in retreat, Miffy joined the grow­ing anti GM move­ment, tak­ing up a spade to join the resis­tance. More recent­ly, Miffy joined her fel­low pro­test­ers for a game of golf up in Scot­land dur­ing the 2005 G8 sum­mit and who know, per­haps she also took part in the block­ades in Heili­gen­damm this year.

At over fifty years old you’d think that Miffy would be her own per­son, free to express her polit­i­cal beliefs as she sees fit but sad­ly it appears not. The copy­right own­ers of all Dick Bruna’s char­ac­ter con­stant­ly hunt down unli­censed users of her image in order to defend their prof­itable mer­chan­dis­ing busi­ness.

While Miffy was cre­at­ed for a chil­dren’s book, the design has been cap­i­talised on to sell numer­ous oth­er prod­ucts like clothes, sta­tionery, toys, glass­es, house­hold items etc. A search for Miffy prod­ucts on google brings up over 100,000 pages and no doubt many of the prod­ucts sold are unli­censed copies made in far east­ern sweat shops.

How­ev­er, Mer­cis, the Dutch com­pa­ny that owns the copy­right, are not con­tent to sim­ply take action on those pro­duc­ing ‘fake’ mer­chan­dise, they appears to have stum­bled on Miffy’s rad­i­cal secret life and they are not amused. They are deeply offend­ed, iron­i­cal­ly, by Miffys involve­ment in the cam­paign against patents on life, as depict­ed in stick­er pro­duced many years ago pro­mot­ing the (long dead), www.resistanceisfertile.com web­site — copies of which can now only be found in resource archives of the (no longer main­tained) Totnes Against Genet­ics (ToGG) web­site.

Mer­cis (www.mercis.nl) have unleashed their legal team to threat­en expen­sive legal action against who­ev­er might be held account­able — the inac­tive Totnes Genet­ics Group who’s long unmain­tained web­site sill con­tains a pic­ture of that Miffy stick­er.

While ToGG vol­un­teers try to get long for­got­ten pass­words and access from the inter­net ser­vice provider which hosts the web­site in order to remove the offend­ing image, more impor­tant ques­tions have been raised. Will Miffy tol­er­ate this attack on her free­dom of expres­sion and will her friends in the move­ment stand idly by and watch as her free­dom to protest is tak­en away?

Oth­er sit­ing of Miffy can be found at https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/06/374195.html?c=on#comments

Ramona Africa — ON A MOVE tour of UK

Ramona Africa is tour­ing the UK speak­ing about the incred­i­ble sto­ry of MOVE. MOVE are a large­ly black eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group based in Philadel­phia. They have cam­paigned on envi­ron­men­tal, ani­mal rights and anti-police repres­sion issues for thir­ty years. They have nev­er backed down in the face of overt racist police repres­sion.

More info: www.onamove2007.org.uk

Ramona Africa is tour­ing the UK speak­ing about the incred­i­ble sto­ry of MOVE. MOVE are a large­ly black eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group based in Philadel­phia. They have cam­paigned on envi­ron­men­tal, ani­mal rights and anti-police repres­sion issues for thir­ty years. They have nev­er backed down in the face of overt racist police repres­sion.

More info: www.onamove2007.org.uk


In 1978 nine mem­bers of MOVE were impris­oned for a bla­tant­ly framed mur­der, they are still impris­oned with their first chance of parole in August 2008. In 1985 the city of Philadel­phia sort the ‘final solu­tion’ for the MOVE ‘prob­lem’ by attack­ing their home with 10,000 rounds of ammu­ni­tion, tear gas, water can­nons and final­ly a bomb that burnt 60 homes to the ground. 6 MOVE adults and 5 chil­dren were burned to death. Ramona man­aged to escape with one of the chil­dren.
She was sen­tenced to sev­en years for ‘riot’.

MumiaMumia Abu-Jamal is a MOVE sup­port­er who also has also expe­ri­enced the injus­tice of the sys­tem whilst spend­ing over 26 years on death row for a crime he did not com­mit.

Come and hear about all these events and see the MOVE doc­u­men­tary nar­rat­ed by Howard Zinn.

.
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June:
Thu 21ST @ 1in12 Brad­ford
Fri 22nd @ The Work­shop Cafe Bar Nor­wich 7pm
Sun 24th @ The Com­mon Place Leeds 6pm
Mon 25th @ The West Indi­an Club Leeds 6.30pm
Wed 27th @ The Cow­ley Club Brighton 7pm
Thu 28th @ The Ram­part Cen­tre Lon­don 7pm
Fri 29th @ Bath Place Leam­ing­ton Spa
Sat 30th @ The Drum Birm­ing­ham 7pm
July:
Sun 1st @ The Star and Shad­ow Cin­e­ma New­cas­tle 7.30pm
Mon 2nd @ The Cube Cin­e­ma Bris­tol 8pm
(Kebele are also turn­ing their reg­u­lar Sun­day Veg­an cafe into a
ben­e­fit for MOVE on Sun­day 1st July)

West London residents halt traffic outside DfT Headquarters

20.06.2007
West Lon­don res­i­dents protest­ing about plans to expand Heathrow dra­mat­i­cal­ly stopped traf­fic this morn­ing out­side the Depart­ment for Trans­port (DfT) offices in Cen­tral Lon­don before attempt­ing an inva­sion of the build­ing.

Heathrow DfT protest 1
Heathrow DfT protest 2Heathrow DfT protest 3Heathrow DfT protest 4Heathrow DfT protest 520.06.2007
West Lon­don res­i­dents protest­ing about plans to expand Heathrow dra­mat­i­cal­ly stopped traf­fic this morn­ing out­side the Depart­ment for Trans­port (DfT) offices in Cen­tral Lon­don before attempt­ing an inva­sion of the build­ing.

The pro­tes­tors car­ried a bed along Mar­sham Street from the flat of BAA Chief Exec­u­tive Stephen Nel­son (1) to the Depart­ment for Trans­port. In the bed were two fig­ures sym­bol­is­ing the close rela­tion­ship between BAA and the DfT under the slo­gan “DfT in bed with BAA”.

As they crossed Mar­sham Street a dozen res­i­dents halt­ed the traf­fic when they paint­ed a run­way on the road. The res­i­dents, assist­ed by the direct action net­work Plane Stu­pid, then left the bed out­side the DfT offices.

The action fol­lows the rev­e­la­tion last week that the Depart­ment for Trans­port had secret­ly passed key infor­ma­tion sup­port­ing expan­sion of Heathrow to BAA six months before it is due to be pub­lished (2).

Ear­li­er in the year, on March 5th, West Lon­don res­i­dents invad­ed Chatham House and dis­rupt­ed a speech by Trans­port Sec­re­tary Dou­glas Alexan­der.

Long-time West Lon­don res­i­dent Dr John Hunt and mem­ber of the Green Par­ty said, “This action is to expose the unhealth­ily close rela­tion­ship there is between BAA Fer­rovial and the Depart­ment for Trans­port. While BAA and the Depart­ment plot and plan the expan­sion of Heathrow, res­i­dents and local author­i­ties are left in the dark”.

Mag­gie Thor­burn, a long-time West Lon­don res­i­dent, said, “Although I live under the flight path and am affect­ed by the noise of the planes, I took part in today’s action not just because of the increased noise lev­els I would expe­ri­ence if expan­sion went ahead, but also because I firm­ly believe that any fur­ther expan­sion at Heathrow should be ruled out on cli­mate change grounds.”

ENDS

Notes for Edi­tors:

(1). BAA owns a flat for its Chief Exec­u­tive (Flat 905, St Johns, Mar­sham St) about 60 yards from the Depart­ment for Trans­port head­quar­ters at 76 Mar­sham St.

(2). Ear­li­er this month (6th June) the Times www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1890224.ece revealed that “The Depart­ment for Trans­port has secret­ly passed key infor­ma­tion sup­port­ing the expan­sion to the Span­ish-owned com­pa­ny six months before it is due to be pub­lished in a con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment. The depart­ment has also allowed senior BAA offi­cials to influ­ence a series of tests designed to show whether the third run­way would breach lim­its on air pol­lu­tion and noise. The Times has learnt that BAA has a team of 34 peo­ple work­ing with civ­il ser­vants, influ­enc­ing the tests so that they find in favour of build­ing the new run­way. The depart­ment has giv­en BAA a full copy of the pre­lim­i­nary results but is refus­ing to allow any oppo­nents of the expan­sion to see them. Mike Forster, BAA’s head of strat­e­gy for Heathrow, admit­ted at a recent con­fer­ence that he had seen the results and that they were “encour­ag­ing”.” The full report is not expect­ed to be made pub­licly avail­able until just before a con­sul­ta­tion into plans to expand Heathrow, expect­ed in the autumn.

Common Ground Community Garden — EVICTION UPDATE — Resistance successful so far.

Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den, is a self-man­aged squat­ted com­mu­ni­ty project in the heart of Read­ing. The land and sur­round­ing build­ings are coun­cil owned, and they have tried to obstruct this ini­tia­tive every step of the way — and thanks to the spir­it of the squat­ters and our neigh­bours, they have failed every step of the way.

Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den, is a self-man­aged squat­ted com­mu­ni­ty project in the heart of Read­ing. The land and sur­round­ing build­ings are coun­cil owned, and they have tried to obstruct this ini­tia­tive every step of the way — and thanks to the spir­it of the squat­ters and our neigh­bours, they have failed every step of the way.

Today, 20th June, is sup­posed to be evic­tion day. The day when the coun­cil takes back con­trol of our land, and is able to flog it off to the high­est bid­der, for devel­op­ment of yet more unnaford­able prison block flats. How­ev­er, so far, its not going accord­ing to their plan…

Bail­lifs showed up ear­ly this morn­ing, about 9am. How­ev­er, activists were all­ready busy bar­ri­cad­ing the build­ing that has been our home for the last 9 months and our beau­ti­full squat­ted gar­den. Reporters and tele­vi­sion cam­eras showed up, tak­ing inter­views from us and our neigh­bours (so if you are in the South­east or Thames Val­ley, check local news ser­vices out!). A mix­ture of activists and local neigh­bours are hold­ing a pick­et out the front of the build­ing, and oth­ers are sit­ting in the gar­den enjoy­ing the sun­shine! At this point bal­liffs have left, and we have won for now. But we are sure they will be back fair­ly soon with back­up, so any help is appre­ci­at­ed.

So long as the bail­lifs keep their dis­tance, the rest of the day will be enjoyed in the gar­den with a pic­nic and acoustic punk rock show lat­er.

EXISTANCE IS RESISTANCE!

P.S. Our sol­i­dar­i­ty greet­ings to Bre­con evic­tion resisters! FIGHT THE PIPE!

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

01:07
Hi,

Just to give a last quick update, the bail­lifs stayed well away all day, and the rest of the day has been fan­tas­tic!

Quite a lot of local res­i­dents have been through dur­ing the day, telling us how much they love the gar­den, use it all the time etc etc.

Some res­i­dents have even showed a fair amount of inter­est in anti-cap­i­tal­ist/a­n­ar­chist pol­i­tics, includ­ing ex-Labour mem­bers who agreed all polit­i­cal par­ties are the same now and ‘this’ (i.e. direct-action, DIY etc like the gar­den) IS the alter­na­tive now, and a local cou­ple hav­ing trou­ble at work who are now inter­est­ed in join­ing IWW!

A cou­ple of local peo­ple were among those who stayed in the gar­den past evic­tion time, being pre­pared to face arrest to defend the gar­den.

This evening the day has been fin­ished off with a pub­lic BBQ and absolute­ly fan­tas­tic acoustic punk-rock show. Again, sev­er­al neigh­bours stuck around all night hav­ing a drink and enjoy­ing the music, and the tunes were amaz­ing. Big thanks to the artists who trav­elled down to play tonight for free!

Obvi­ous­ly, this project is most like­ly not going to last much longer (although you nev­er know and we’ll keep fight­ing!), but all our neigh­bours are say­ing they want the squat­ters to stay and do sim­i­lar things, and who are we to refuse!? 🙂

Spir­its are high,
LA LUCHA SIGUE!

Common Ground Garden — EVICTION RESISTANCE! Wed 20th June, 9.30am, Reading.

// Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den Evic­tion Resis­tance!

// FUCK THE EVICTION, SAVE THE GARDEN!

// WEDNESDAY 20TH JUNE

// Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den Evic­tion Resis­tance!

// FUCK THE EVICTION, SAVE THE GARDEN!

// WEDNESDAY 20TH JUNE

// Meet at 9.30am, in Com­mon Ground Gar­den, through the alley­way next to the Wom­ens Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre, at the bot­tom of Sil­ver Street, Read­ing.

They left the land to rot, cov­ered in trash and nee­dles. They hope the build­ings will fall down, so they can jus­ti­fy flog­ging to the high­est bid­der. They hope to see more unnaford­able prison-block apart­ments. Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil call it devel­op­ment, regen­er­a­tion. We call it gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, exclu­sion. Just prof­it and pow­er.

The land is ours. We occu­pied it, we cleared it, we worked it and we made it bloom. We recy­cled and re-used, and on our squat­ted land we cre­at­ed sanc­tu­ary from the ram­pant cap­i­tal­ism of Read­ing. Our friends, fam­i­ly and neigh­bours chipped in, and through direct-action and self-organ­i­sa­tion, we cre­at­ed a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in our neigh­bour­hood, Kates­grove. The land is ours? Well, not exact­ly. The land is nobody’s, because it is every­body’s. And so we called it Com­mon Ground.

On 19th May, we opened the gar­den to the pub­lic. We invit­ed our friends, fam­i­lies and neigh­bours. Embarassed and scared, the Coun­cil tried to stop us. Their court gave them an injunc­tion against us, mak­ing it ille­gal to open the gar­den. So, we informed our com­mu­ni­ty and re-invit­ed em. Fuck the injunc­tion! 200 peo­ple came and enjoyed the gar­den that day, laugh­ing at the Coun­cil and meet­ing oth­ers peo­ple who think the same things they do. Even the media told the truth about us.

Then the Coun­cil got their injunc­tion extend­ed. They told us it was ille­gal to open our gar­den at all and they want ‘their’ land back. They dont under­stand, it has nev­er been theirs, they were just look­ing after it for us. And since they don’t do a very good job, we’ve found a bet­ter use for it. For our­selves, our neigh­bours and local work­ers, for young and old, the gar­den is open every­day. So, now they say they will take it back by force, and demol­ish our gar­den and give it to the rich. Their courts have giv­en them the law, and their thugs will evict us on Wednes­day morn­ing — if they can…

For us, exis­tance is resis­tance — and Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den exists. Our self-organ­i­sa­tion and direct-action exists. On Wednes­day and for­ev­er, our resis­tance exists. Demon­strate, bar­ri­cade, block­ade, occu­py — we will resist in dif­fer­ent ways, because ‘we’ is made of dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and now hope­ful­ly will include one more — you.

In Love n Rage,
Some gar­den­ers.

katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk