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.

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)

Climate Mass: Bristol Temple Meads to Bristol International Airport for 16 June aviation action day

Sat­ur­day 16 June — 2nd Euro­pean Day Of Action On Avi­a­tion — a bike ride from Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads to Bris­tol Inter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Stop Bris­tol Air­port Expan­sion will be join­ing many oth­er groups around the UK and across Europe in protest­ing against air­port expan­sion, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on short-haul flights. We will be focus­ing on a theme of ‘trains not planes’ with a bike ride from Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads to Bris­tol Inter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Sat­ur­day 16 June — 2nd Euro­pean Day Of Action On Avi­a­tion — a bike ride from Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads to Bris­tol Inter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Stop Bris­tol Air­port Expan­sion will be join­ing many oth­er groups around the UK and across Europe in protest­ing against air­port expan­sion, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on short-haul flights. We will be focus­ing on a theme of ‘trains not planes’ with a bike ride from Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads to Bris­tol Inter­na­tion­al Air­port.

So we’re call­ing on expe­ri­enced cyclists to join Stop­BI­Ae in mak­ing thi­er point. Stop­BI­Ae have planned a route that will take you through Ash­ton to Long Ash­ton and then to the A38 via Bar­row Gur­ney. Because the route is par­tial­ly down the A38.

There will be a pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty for the press at each end: at Tem­ple Meads we will be empha­sis­ing the point that Gov­ern­ment is focus­ing on air­port expan­sion and large­ly ignor­ing the rail net­work — yet Tem­ple Meads urgent­ly needs new sig­nalling to improve its capac­i­ty (we may be joined by some rail cam­paign­ers); at the BIA end we will be arrang­ing a visu­al illus­tra­tion of the theme — to be revealed on the day!

After that we hope to pic­nic on Fel­ton Com­mon close to the air­port. A free lunch will be pro­vid­ed for all cyclists and we hope non-cycling SBAE sup­port­ers will join us with a pic­nic. Fel­ton Vil­lage Hall, which is next to the Com­mon and has bath­room facil­i­ties, will be avail­able in case of bad weath­er.

It would be very use­ful if you could let Stop­BIA know a few days in advance if you can join the ride so we have an idea of the num­bers to expect. If you can help with organ­is­ing or on the day please get in touch too! You can con­tact us by email­ing Stop­BI­Ae — http://www.nobristolairportexpansion.co.uk/aboutthecoalition.html

Full details of the cycle route will be avail­able clos­er to 16 June.

If you have anoth­er meet­ing you would like us to men­tion here please email email Stop­BI­Ae — http://www.nobristolairportexpansion.co.uk/aboutthecoalition.html

http://www.nobristolairportexpansion.co.uk/

G8 climate day of action reports — London, Norwich, New Zealand, Bristol, Germany, USA, Nottingham, Portugal, Brasil

Lon­don: Cli­mate activist ‘super-glued to door’ of lastminute.com

An envi­ron­men­tal activist was so enraged that lastminute.com con­tin­ue to push ‘short haul’ flights whilst know­ing the dam­age they do to the cli­mate, that she super-glued her­self to the front door of the company’s Vic­to­ria HQ.


Lon­don: Cli­mate activist ‘super-glued to door’ of lastminute.com

An envi­ron­men­tal activist was so enraged that lastminute.com con­tin­ue to push ‘short haul’ flights whilst know­ing the dam­age they do to the cli­mate, that she super-glued her­self to the front door of the company’s Vic­to­ria HQ.

At 8am this morn­ing, Pen­ny East­wood – a mem­ber of cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid, past­ed super­glue over her hands and glued her­self to the front doors of the build­ing — block­ing staff from enter­ing their offices.

Pen­ny said, “Whilst G8 lead­ers have sim­ply spout­ed more hot air, I’ve showed what one woman alone can do to shut down cli­mate crim­i­nals.”

She added, “Lastminute.com irre­spon­si­bly encour­age peo­ple to binge-fly five times a year. They’re forc­ing the world towards the brink of eco-melt­down and all for a quick buck!”

Pen­ny East­wood is one of those plan­ning to attend this summer’s Camp for Cli­mate Action at Heathrow.

info@planestupid.com
http://www.planestupid.com

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Esso Chelsea 1
Lon­don Ris­ing Tide and Friends descend­ed on Chelsea Trac­tor coun­try on Fri­day night in a protest against the G8’s pathet­ic attempt to “con­sid­er” cli­mate change and to reduce CO2 emis­sions.

The Tigers and Clowns block­ad­ed the E$$O sta­tion at Ful­ham Rd for over to two hours to high­light Exxon Mobil/E$$Os role in bankrolling our future down the pipe. Their sup­port for the Liq­uid Nat­ur­al Gas pipeline com­ing to a city near you is paving the way for new Gas Fired pow­er sta­tions, lock­ing us into anoth­er 30 years with these emis­sion-spout­ing beasts. The emis­sions from these sta­tions are com­pa­ra­ble to the exist­ing Coal Fired ones!

Because the tankers car­ry­ing this gas have to come from Qatar and are so huge, they can­not nav­i­gate the Suez Canal so have to cir­cum­nav­i­gate Africa, freez­ing the gas as they go. In terms of emis­sions this makes the final fig­ures at use almost as high as ener­gy derived from coal. LNG is NOT a clean fuel!

The protest went well with the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of peo­ple, includ­ing car dri­vers… were pos­i­tive to the mes­sage that we were giv­ing out. The Police arrived after about thir­ty min­utes, but after telling us to stay out of E$$Os fore­court, we remained for anoth­er hour: their threat of “ten min­utes of you’re in the van” being the usu­al brava­do. A good time was had by all, and the Tigers will con­tin­ue to prowl…….

To get in touch:
london@risingtide.org.uk

For more info on ESSO’s pipeline http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk

STOP THE PRESS:
With the pipeline con­verg­ing on two fronts the protest three camp in the Bre­con Bea­cons has just been served with an evic­tion notice and are now on high alert for Mon­day 11th. Activists are now dug-in and locked-on up trees with sup­port from local peo­ple, ready to resist. They need your sup­port. If you can get down there, ring the camp hot­line on 07917383517, or email
bristol@risingtide.org.uk

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Esso West London
At around 7.15 pm on the 8th May, in a non-vio­lent action activists from Lon­don Ris­ing Tide, who are con­cerned about cli­mate change, block­ad­ed an ESSO petrol sta­tion in West Lon­don.

They claim ESSO’s huge eco­nom­ic clout enables the com­pa­ny to influ­ence ener­gy pol­i­cy, and that that a high pres­sure pipeline cur­rent­ly being con­struct­ed to car­ry ESSO nat­ur­al gas to UK pow­er sta­tions is unsafe. They main­tain that the solu­tion to the cli­mate change prob­lem is an over­all reduc­tion in ener­gy use. The con­struc­tion of the pipeline has also led to con­cerns over its dam­age to envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive areas.

Fun­ny clowns with red noses sup­port­ed activists who were dressed as ESSO tigers while motorists were leaflet­ed and engaged in debate about their ener­gy use. The police arrived after an hour or so and where gen­er­al­ly well behaved. At one point the police told activists they could only car­ry on their protest for anoth­er 10 min­utes how­ev­er a deal was done allow­ing access to for motorists to the petrol sta­tion, and the action car­ried on for anoth­er 45 min­utes or so.

This action was timed to coin­cide with the end of the G8 in Ger­many.

For more info on ESSO’s pipeline http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk

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Nor­wich petrol sta­tion shut down on DoA Against Cli­mate Change and the G8

Dur­ing this morning’s rush hour twelve activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide braved the East Coast storm warn­ings and shut down their local Jet petrol sta­tion as part of the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against Cli­mate Change and the G8.

Hav­ing met up at sil­ly o’clock in the morn­ing and gath­ered togeth­er ban­ners, rope and ‘Dan­ger, Glob­al Warm­ing’ haz­ard tape, we arrived at the Jet petrol sta­tion on Dere­ham Road only to find 8 of Norfolk’s finest lying in wait. Ignor­ing them, we unpacked our ban­ners and stretched them across the three entrances, pre­vent­ing vehi­cles from fill­ing up. Pass­ing motorists rush­ing to work were treat­ed to the sight of us jump­ing up and down in the rain, wav­ing ban­ners bear­ing the slo­gans ‘Closed for a Total Re-think’; ‘Social Change, Not Cli­mate Change’; and ‘Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against Cli­mate Change and the G8.’

We hand­ed out leaflets to dri­vers and pedes­tri­ans, explain­ing that the block­ade was part of a series of events tak­ing place around the world to high­light the role played by the lead­ers of the high-emit­ting G8 nations in caus­ing cli­mate change, and to show up this week’s so-called ‘cli­mate deal’ for the sham that it is.

One of the ban­ner wavers was heard to shout: ‘We will not stand by and watch the plan­et burn as the G8 lead­ers and their cor­po­rate bed­fel­lows triv­i­alise the great­est threat fac­ing human­i­ty with a blind faith in tech­no-fix­es and mar­ket mech­a­nisms such as fraud­u­lent car­bon off­set schemes. If we are going to tru­ly solve this prob­lem, we need a rapid trans­for­ma­tion to a low-ener­gy soci­ety – start­ing with the dis­man­tling of the oil indus­try.’

We chose the less well-known Jet as our tar­get to show that there is no such thing as a good oil com­pa­ny. Jet is owned by Cono­coPhillips, the fifth largest oil refin­er in the world, and the first West­ern oil com­pa­ny to enter Iraq after the start of the war. Jet and Cono­coPhillips have so far escaped the crit­i­cism that has been jus­ti­fi­ably heaped upon indus­try giants like Shell and BP, but they are no dif­fer­ent. Cono­coPhillips, like all oil com­pa­nies, destroys ecosys­tems and com­mu­ni­ties around the world, and is prof­i­teer­ing from oil wars and cli­mate chaos.

The response from dri­vers and passers-by was pre­dictably mixed, and although the ear­ly arrival of the police forced us to change our plans slight­ly, the action still served its pur­pose: to high­light the inabil­i­ty of G8 lead­ers to tru­ly tack­le cli­mate change, and to take action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those dis­rupt­ing the sum­mit in Ger­many and those already suf­fer­ing from the effects of cli­mate change around the world.



norwich@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk

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TOUR OF EEEEVIL IN WHANGANUI-A-TARA, NEW ZEALAND — ACTION REPORT

The num­ber of pro­test­ers had been few, the atten­tion by our friends in blue aston­ish­ing­ly intense — 2 cop cars and one pad­dy-wag­on were fol­low­ing the small group close­ly.

the Tour of EEEEEvil start­ed in Mid­land Park with a phat boom-box hail­ing out loud. first they cycled towards the US embassy. crayons were used to beau­ti­fy the pave­ment, being under heavy scruti­ny by secu­ri­ty guards and police.

a cat’s leap lat­er, the pro­test­ers rang the door-bell of the Ger­man embassy to tell them they are all scum­my pol­luters of the envi­ron­ment. next sta­tion was the British High Com­mis­sion where a ban­ner was unfold­ed to make cap­i­tal­ism his­to­ry.

final­ly, the group was not keen on vis­it­ing the oth­er embassies of the G8 and cycled through the CBD and dis­persed around Vic­to­ria St, receiv­ing smiles and applause from some peo­ple on the streets.

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Bristol CM deaths banner
BRISTOL CRITICAL MASS — ACTION REPORT

This morn­ing saw a good natured crit­i­cal mass reclaim the streets of Bris­tol from car-cul­ture. A crowd of 40 to 50 rid­ers gath­ered in sol­i­dar­i­ty with protests against the G8 and to draw atten­tion to the chaos of cli­mate change.

This morn­ing saw a good natured and fun crit­i­cal mass reclaim the streets of Bris­tol from car-cul­ture! A good crowd of 40 to 50 rid­ers gath­ered in the cen­tre ready to move off in a car­ni­val of cycling in sol­i­dar­i­ty with protests against the G8 and to draw atten­tion to the chaos of cli­mate change.

This morn­ing saw a good natured and fun crit­i­cal mass reclaim the streets of Bris­tol from car-cul­ture! A good crowd of 40 to 50 rid­ers gath­ered in the cen­tre ready to move off in a car­ni­val of cycling in sol­i­dar­i­ty with protests against the G8 and to draw atten­tion to the chaos of cli­mate change. It was inter­est­ing to note there was lots of media here this time – nor­mal­ly at a crit­i­cal mass these is no media, but (being cyn­i­cal) I won­der if the media arrived this time because there was a lit­tle agro at the last one? Shame that the media go for sen­sa­tion­al­ist news and not real news!

Any­way, the crowd moved off towards Tem­ple Quay, the new finan­cial heart of bris­tol (?) down Bald­win Street, over the bridge and down towards the round­about that con­nects to Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads, then over into tem­ple quay where we found a mur­al on the floor ‘We Have the Pow­er’ – very apt! Then on towards Broad­mead and onto the bot­tom of the M32 and round back to the foun­tains. A good morn­ings work!

The recep­tion was almost total­ly pos­i­tive, fly­ers were hand­ed out to pedes­tri­ans and fel­low cyclists and dri­vers explain­ing what this was all about. Lots of peo­ple waved, cheers and beeped as we passed. There were bemused faces in cor­po­rate Bris­tol as the be-suit­ed Tem­ple Quay was invad­ed by ped­al-pow­er!

This event just going to show how peo­ple can reclaim a pub­lic space from the relent­less grind of the rat-race and build some com­mu­ni­ty. Unlike the G8, we care about cli­mate change and got off our ass to do some­thing! See you at the next one!

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G8 German Shell 1
G8 German Shell 2
Ger­many: 60 — 70 peo­ple are blockad­ing a Shell-Sta­tion in Ever­sha­gen. Nine police emer­gency vehi­cles are at the loca­tion, how­ev­er hold­ing back.

20070608_Shell — video/x‑ms-wmv 7.6M
20070608_Shell — video/x‑ms-wmv 7.6M

On Fri­day sam­ba bands and pro­tes­tors shut down the Shell garage in Ever­sha­gen, Ros­tock

Police, unsur­pris­ing­ly, arrived in sec­onds, and the riot squads sur­round­ed the garage.

But, despite this, the Shell sta­tion was blocked for an hour.

In Ger­many fuel sta­tions are not kept in stock by tanker trucks. They run huge fuel pipelines from one to the oth­er, link­ing them across the city. And in every fuel sta­tion is an emer­gency shut-off but­ton.

And, low and behold, some­one hit the but­ton, shut­ting off the fuel sup­ply to some if not all the Shell garages across Ros­tock, caus­ing a slight headache for the multi­na­tion­al oil and gas com­pa­ny’s prof­its that day in the love­ly north-west Ger­man city.

More pho­tos at http://indymedia.ie/article/82971
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Port­land, Ore­gon, USA

ACTION #1: Anti-Bor­ders Action

The Lead­ers of the 8 most pow­er­ful coun­tries, who main­tain glob­al inequal­i­ty, war, and star­va­tion will meet behind closed doors to plot our future for us at a lux­u­ri­ous health resort in Ger­many June 6th thru 8th. There has been a call out for inter­na­tion­al days of action across the globe to coin­cide with the mobi­liza­tion against the G8. Hun­dred of thou­sands of peo­ple from around the world are con­verg­ing on Ger­many, even some of our neigh­bors in Port­land.

We hear that call and come togeth­er in Port­land as decen­tral­ized and autonomous groups to say No to the G8, No to there Lies, and No More Tricks. They are eight, we are six billion…lets start act­ing like it and reject their chaot­ic sys­tem of exploita­tion and con­trol.

We meet at the INS Office to say No to the Bor­der fence being built, ICE Raids, and to reject the idea that mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions can freely cross bor­ders to exploit peo­ple and steal land. While the peo­ple are being con­tained by bor­ders, forced off lands and con­trolled by mil­i­ta­riza­tion.

Fri­day, June 8th at 5:30pm
INS Office
NW Broad­way

Sup­port­ed by: Cas­ca­dia Ris­ing Tide, Port­land Sin Fron­teras, Food not bombs, and Stu­dents for Uni­ty.

ACTION #2: Anti-Dam Action

On Fri­day, Stop La Paro­ta PDX launched its cam­paign to pres­sure com­pa­nies with ties to the financ­ing of La Paro­ta Dam to sev­er all con­nec­tions to the destruc­tive project.

Activists held a col­or­ful demon­stra­tion in front of the Lloyd Cen­ter Sears to demand the Sears Hold­ing Cor­po­ra­tion cut all ties to Grupo Car­so. Grupo Car­so is the finan­cial umbrel­la of Mex­i­can bil­lion­aire, Car­los Slim Helú, who has pub­licly declared that Grupo Car­so sub­sidiaries will be involved in every aspect of La Paro­ta.

La Paro­ta, a 765-megawatt hydro­elec­tric dam slat­ed for the Papa­gayo Riv­er in Guer­rero, Mex­i­co, is a clas­sic infra­struc­ture expan­sion project result­ing from trade agree­ments like NAFTA and the FTAA in the worst of ways. The dam would sub­merge 43,000 acres of for­est and farm­land along the river’s banks, dis­plac­ing at least 25,000 most­ly indige­nous campesinos (sub­sis­tence farm­ers) from the Com­mu­nal Lands of Cac­ahu­ate­pec. Already, indige­nous resis­tance to the dam has been met with impris­on­ment and mur­der.

Far from being a renew­able ener­gy source, sed­i­ment accu­mu­la­tion lim­its the elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing capac­i­ty of dams to 50–100 years. Mean­while, large dams are sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tors to glob­al warm­ing. As the tremen­dous bio­mass of a trop­i­cal for­est decays beneath a reser­voir, it gives off green­house gas­es. Dams in trop­i­cal regions have been shown to pro­duce any­where from two to 40 times as much car­bon diox­ide as an equiv­a­lent coal-fired plant.

The rea­son for this bla­tant exploita­tion and eco­cide? Elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed from La Paro­ta would be incor­po­rat­ed into an inter­na­tion­al ener­gy grid and used to pow­er fac­to­ry-cen­ters, maquilado­ras (export-ori­ent­ed sweat­shop cor­ri­dors). The phe­nom­e­non of seiz­ing indige­nous lands and then forc­ing inhab­i­tants into work­ing for sub­op­ti­mal wages is not ‘eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment,’ but a mod­ern ver­sion of colo­nial­ism.

The CFE made no attempt to include the campesinos in the deci­sion-mak­ing process regard­ing La Paro­ta. In July 2003, with­out giv­ing notice or seek­ing per­mis­sion, the com­mis­sion sim­ply sent in machin­ery to build two tun­nels to divert the flow of the Papa­gayo. Farm­ers from sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties respond­ed with road block­ades and encamp­ments to keep CFE equip­ment out of the area. The ongo­ing road­blocks have been large­ly suc­cess­ful, and the CFE has been forced to pull out most of its equip­ment In Chilpancin­go, the state cap­i­tal, the pro­test­ers were 30,000 strong. Their mes­sage was clear: “We are ready to die for the land.”

The demon­stra­tion was held both in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the resist­ing campesinos as well as the resis­tance in Ger­many to the G8. La Paro­ta is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the glob­al sys­tem of oppres­sion cre­at­ed by orga­ni­za­tions like the G8 to fur­ther the inter­ests of transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions at the cost of peo­ple and envi­ron­men­tal integri­ty.

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Asheville Critical Mass
Bank of America climate action 1Bank of America climate action 2
For Imme­di­ate Release
June 8, 2007
www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

Asheville Crit­i­cal Mass Con­fronts Bank of Amer­i­ca for Invest­ments in Coal Indus­try

Today dozens of cyclists paid a sur­prise vis­it to Bank of Amer­i­ca to protest their finan­cial back­ing of coal com­pa­nies as a part of the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against Cli­mate Change and G8. After tying up down­town traf­fic, the 30-strong bike ride descend­ed on the down­town Asheville head­quar­ters of Bank of Amer­i­ca. Once there, a num­ber of peo­ple dumped coal in front of the main entrance, while anoth­er per­son spon­ta­neous­ly sac­ri­ficed their bike lock and locked the front doors shut.

With police still not in sight, the bike ride con­tin­ued on to anoth­er Bank of Amer­i­ca branch, where par­tic­i­pants plas­tered the bank in stick­ers, hand­ed out fly­ers to cus­tomers, and held ban­ners read­ing, “Stop Bank­ing on Cli­mate Change” and “Cli­mate Chaos: Brought to you by Bank of Amer­i­ca.”

The protest was held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the mas­sive anti-G8 protests in Ger­many, where lead­ers of the 8 rich­est coun­tries con­tin­ue to drag their feet on mak­ing any mean­ing­ful reduc­tions in green­house gas emis­sions. The bike ride was orga­nized by Asheville Ris­ing Tide, a group ded­i­cat­ed to con­fronting the root caus­es of cli­mate change.

Bank of Amer­i­ca plays a major role in per­pet­u­at­ing cli­mate change by its mas­sive invest­ments in the coal indus­try. Pound for pound, burn­ing coal releas­es more C02 emis­sions then any oth­er fos­sil fuel. Bank of Amer­i­ca has facil­i­tat­ed near­ly $1 bil­lion in loans to Massey Ener­gy and Arch Coal, two of the largest com­pa­nies involved in the envi­ron­men­tal­ly dev­as­tat­ing process of moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing. Moun­tain­top removal min­ing has already reduced 500 square miles of moun­tains to rub­ble and buried over 1,200 miles of streams in South­ern Appalachia.

Bank of Amer­i­ca has also made loans and facil­i­tat­ed stock offer­ings for Peabody Ener­gy to the tune of sev­er­al bil­lion dol­lars. Peabody is infa­mous for its human rights vio­la­tions against Native Amer­i­cans. Since 1975, over 14,000 indige­nous peo­ple, most­ly Dine’, have been forcibly relo­cat­ed off of their ances­tral lands to make way for Peabody’s Black Mesa strip mine in north­east­ern Ari­zona. This strip mine, the largest in the US, has dev­as­tat­ed thou­sands of acres of indige­nous land and drained local aquifers that are essen­tial for sus­tain­ing life in this desert cli­mate. In addi­tion to these abus­es, Peabody Ener­gy, along with a num­ber of oth­er com­pa­nies fund­ed by Bank of Amer­i­ca, are pur­su­ing the con­struc­tion of a new wave of dirty coal plants.

“By tar­get­ing coal indus­try investors, we can under­mine their finan­cial sup­port which they depend on to con­tin­ue oper­a­tion. The less mon­ey they have, the less coal they can extract and burn. In the face of cat­a­clysmic cli­mate change, we do not have time to wait for gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions. We must direct­ly inter­vene now!” said Jen­nifer Clayson, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ride.

This week’s G8 meet­ings failed to even begin to address cli­mate change. While some Euro­pean coun­tries pushed for 50% emis­sions cuts by 2050, the US man­aged to derail even this goal, which falls far short of the reduc­tions that are nec­es­sary. In the end, the G8 coun­tries agreed to “con­sid­er” cut­ting green­house gas emis­sions. “In the face of mas­sive species extinc­tion, drought, and ris­ing sea lev­els, the best these world lead­ers can come up with is to ‘con­sid­er’ doing some­thing? Until there is real change, we, along with peo­ple around the world, will con­tin­ue to take direct action
against those respon­si­ble for cli­mate change,” said Liam Jef­fer­son. Accord­ing to sci­en­tists, green­house gas emis­sions need to be slashed by at least 80% by 2050 to avoid the worst impacts of cli­mate change.

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San Francisco G8 Critical Mass
San Fran­cis­co Bike ride against G8

On Fri­day June 8, 2007, there was a crit­i­cal mass-style bicy­cle ride with an anti-G8 theme which ini­tial­ly gath­ered at Justin Her­man plaza, and then pro­ceed­ed along the Embar­cadero, Colum­bus Avenue, Mar­ket Street, Valen­cia St., and then end­ed at Dolores Park. Every­thing pro­ceed­ed peace­ful­ly, and the size of the group was good for being able to be aware of every­one’s loca­tion. There was a large police pres­ence the entire time. This might have stemmed from a fias­co of police response to the 2005 G8 protest which result­ed in com­man­ders get­ting reas­signed, inven­tive charges against par­tic­i­pants and FBI vis­its to jour­nal­ists.

Most peo­ple on the side­walks appeared hap­py to see us, or at least had no neg­a­tive reac­tion. Some­times call-in radio shows and rant­i­ng sec­tions on youtube and news­pa­per web­sites give the feel­ing that the pub­lic has a lot of antibi­cy­cle fanat­ics, but we did­n’t see any.

Appear­ances were made by both Gabe Myers, who was basi­cal­ly arrest­ed dur­ing the 2005 protest as a ‘suck­er’ and charged (and lat­er let go) with felony lynch­ing after drop­ping a foam sign in the road as a police car drove at high speed towards him, and also Josh Wolf, who spent a record amount of time in jail for refus­ing to speak to a grand jury formed to probe the bat­tery of the oth­er offi­cer who was dri­ving the vehi­cle. Grand juries gath­er­ing evi­dence and issu­ing indict­ments are allowed unre­strict­ed ques­tion­ing of wit­ness­es, unlike reg­u­lar court­room prac­tice, and a wit­ness is not allowed to have a lawyer present. In sit­u­a­tions where a polit­i­cal group is involved (such as the Red Scare of the 1950s), these juries are capa­ble of vast­ly over­reach­ing and gath­er­ing long lists of names of peo­ple unin­volved in crimes, who could be brand­ed as sus­pects. Press reports cre­at­ed a con­fus­ing pic­ture, but Wolf was not con­sid­ered in con­tempt of court for refus­ing to tes­ti­fy about the injury of the offi­cer, or to show his video tape, but rather he did­n’t agree to unre­strict­ed ques­tions about par­tic­i­pants who he had a con­fi­den­tial jour­nal­is­tic rela­tion­ship with.

The ride was pret­ty nice. It was very sun­ny, and most of the route had long stretch­es unin­ter­rupt­ed by short cycle lights. The nature of the large police response was inter­est­ing in that only a small group of friend­ly bicy­cle offi­cers, plus some Harley and motor­bike rid­ing police offi­cers were mixed togeth­er in the crowd. We had no trou­ble split­ting the road and tun­nel with cars, and things felt much safer than dur­ing ordi­nary times when you inevitably split the right lane with bus­es and right-turn­ing cabs. In a few cas­es, there was mixed body lan­guage when some offi­cers object­ed to the tail-end of the group con­tin­u­ing to move on a red light, so peo­ple became wor­ried and stopped. Yet oth­er offi­cers appeared to be hur­ry­ing the group through on the red by stop­ping traf­fic. In any case, every so often one could squint two blocks down and make out police vans, Chevy Suburban/Tahoes, and cars mov­ing by, some­times briefly sound­ing a horn as though they were try­ing to get around traf­fic. Occa­sion­al­ly the ride would come across a new group of police parked well away from the start, such as Colum­bus avenue. Then at the end where peo­ple lis­tened to music, while a small­er group stood across the street, it seemed like more vans with police emblem kept turn­ing the cor­ner to dri­ve by.
Rea­sons behind the neg­a­tive response by thou­sands of peo­ple (from the left, right, and cen­ter) to the G8 are dif­fi­cult to sum­ma­rize briefly. On the sur­face, a meet­ing of world lead­ers might appear to be a pos­i­tive thing, akin to the cre­ation of the UN. In addi­tion, it isn’t clear how much could real­ly get dis­cussed dur­ing 2–3 days of talks, or how any­thing so omi­nous could arise out of this.

The eas­i­est way to explain it is that the era of colo­nial­ism nev­er end­ed. Gov­ern­ments (span­ning mul­ti­ple pres­i­dents) have spent the last few decades work­ing close­ly with large com­pa­nies and are con­trol­ling the economies and gov­ern­ments of most of the third world against the inter­ests of their pop­u­la­tions. It is easy to let your eyes glaze over and think “yes, we just need to invest in Africa” and not real­ize that the areas of Africa with the most for­eign ‘invest­ment’ are the most impov­er­ished, for instance the hor­ri­ble resource wars in the Con­go (where the Unit­ed States helped assas­si­nate their demo­c­ra­t­ic leader in the 60s, and installed a dic­ta­tor), or Shell Oil destroy­ing the land base in the Niger­ian Delta while shar­ing none of its prof­its.

Much of the deci­sions and con­tent of these meet­ings is worked out before­hand. Insti­tu­tions such as the World Bank are where the details of public/private plans are worked out by small com­mit­tees. One of the most com­mon mech­a­nisms for cre­at­ing third world pover­ty is the forc­ing of coun­tries to take loans for large infra­struc­ture projects such as dams, water­works and pow­er grids which aren’t used by work­ing class, are car­ried out by first world cor­po­ra­tions (such as Bech­tel in Bolivia) and end up indebt­ing the pop­u­la­tion for decades.

Final­ly, while it seems like indi­vid­u­als have lit­tle chance of influ­enc­ing such pow­er­ful insti­tu­tions, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that the WTO has had to make major con­ces­sions to embold­ened latin amer­i­can, african, and SE asian con­tin­gents after the major turn­ing point after the 1999 protests. The sign­ing of Merkel’s Cli­mate state­ment was regard­ed as a big suc­cess dur­ing this meet­ing, although the lack of con­crete actions promised in this agree­ment makes it seem like the pub­lic was just suc­cess­ful in mak­ing the lead­ers want to seem respon­sive. You as an indi­vid­ual might not be able to change it all by your­self, but it is com­ing about as an emer­gent prop­er­ty of a move­ment of less than 10% of the pop­u­la­tion who become activists.

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FLORIDA: CRITICAL MASS
Pick­et signs blew in the wind as three bik­ers rode slow­ly but sure­ly down Dix­ie High­way. Unit­ing with activists world­wide in protest of the Group of Eight sum­mit in Heili­gen­damm, Ger­many, Lake Worth con­tributed a total of six. But the issues they brought hit close to home.

Their des­ti­na­tion was the Palm Beach Gar­dens home of FPL Group Inc. Chief Exec­u­tive Lewis Hay III.
Their com­plaint: FPL’s deci­sion to build the West Coun­ty Ener­gy Cen­ter, a nat­ur­al gas plant, about 1,000 feet from a wildlife pre­serve, accord­ing to the group’s fli­er. “You can’t smoke 1,000 feet from a school, but you can put a pow­er plant 1,000 feet from an ani­mal pre­serve?” asked sup­port­er Rachel Kijew­s­ki, 22.

The group rode a large part of the four-hour trek in front of their veg­gie truck. The beat-up blue solu­tion to glob­al warm­ing fights petrol with veg­etable oil. “Its exhaust smells like tem­pu­ra,” said bike rid­er Pana­gi­oti Tsolkas.

Most dri­vers’ reac­tions to the trio were pos­i­tive, giv­ing them thumbs-up. Their jour­ney, how­ev­er, was not with­out chal­lenges. Moth­er Nature poured down rain all Fri­day after­noon. Aver­ag­ing 7 to 10 mph on the high­way, the group pressed on, stop­ping traf­fic the entire way until they were stopped out­side the gate lead­ing to Hay’s home inside Old Marsh Coun­try Club.

As the G‑8 sum­mit’s gath­er­ing of the eight indus­tri­al pow­er­hous­es comes to a close, Lynne Purvis said she feels their fight is just begin­ning.
“It’s hard you know,” Purvis said.
“We’re all pret­ty low bud­get. These rich exec­u­tives have all this secu­ri­ty and mon­ey and to sup­ply these things and we use card­board signs and pub­lic tran­sit.” Laugh­ing in spite of their small num­bers, the pro­tes­tors remained opti­mistic.
“We’d love if he decid­ed not to build an ener­gy cen­ter,” she said. “As easy as it is for him to keep this in his nine-to-five life, it affects us too.”

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Not­ting­ham: Activists pick­et A453 exhi­bi­tion

The High­ways Agency held a fan­cy exhi­bi­tion in Clifton today, to pro­mote their planned widen­ing of the A453. So cli­mate-change activists pick­et­ed it.

With thoughts of the G8 and the inter­na­tion­al day of action on cli­mate change in our heads, we came to the road­builder’s PR show to put the oth­er side of the argu­ment. Our dis­play was a lot less flash than that of the H.A. but we got our mes­sage across, and many vis­i­tors to the exhi­bi­tion were very sup­port­ive.

We want­ed to point out the links between the pro­posed A453 scheme and the pro­posed M1 widen­ing and EMids Air­port expansion…a com­bined recipe for more traf­fic growth, more pol­lu­tion, more C02 pumped into our dying atmos­phere. Strange­ly the H.A. exhi­bi­tion made no men­tion of cli­mate change, although they were tack­ling pol­lu­tion by giv­ing away free in-car air fresh­en­ers!

The exhi­bi­tion is at Clifton Leisure Cen­tre, Southchurch Dri­ve all day tomor­row (sat 9th). Why not email your com­ments on road­build­ing and cli­mate to A453Widening@highways.gsi.gov.uk as well.

climateactionnow@hotmail.co.uk

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Portugal G8 climate
In Por­tu­gal, the G8 Net­work has made accions in city of Lis­bon and Por­to at 8 of June, Inter­na­tion­al Day of Direct Accion for Cli­mate Accion. You can see fotos and videos in the blog www.geoito2007.blogspot.com

In Lis­bon we made, in Down Town (Augus­ta Street), a batlle for cli­mate jus­tice (“World isn´t a tar­get, from CO2 has to be saved”), in wich the peo­ple of the street tried to stop the 8 lead­ers of G8 to fill the world, speacil­ly south hem­is­fere, with pol­lu­tion: the world against the pol­i­tics of G8! In a world map the G8 throw black balls (the CO2) to the poor­est coun­tries while peo­ple throw green balls (“the good actions for cli­mate”) to pre­vent cli­mate dis­as­ter and social injus­tice: mean­ing that G8 are his­tor­i­cal respon­s­ables for cli­mate change and their pol­i­tics will not pre­vent seri­ous dis­as­ters that affect pri­mar­i­ly the poor­er, because they will con­tin­ue to polute the world mak­ing busi­ness of pol­lu­tion and explor­ing the poor­est coun­tries. We made also some games in the street, invit­ing peo­ple to step pol­lu­tion and save cli­mate (the G8 stepped the actions to save cli­mate and not pol­lu­tion…), and put ban­ners in one of the most pol­lut­ed avenues in city due to auto­mo­bile traf­fic say­ing: “400 thou­sand cars for day…is to much”, “less car, more pub­lic trans­ports, less polu­tion”, “free­dom to move, city to the peo­ple”.

In Por­to we sim­u­late, in Down Town (San­ta Cata­ri­na Street), a emis­sions trad­ing mar­ket. The G8 leader trad­ed emis­sions between them (black bal­lons) and then offered pol­lu­tion to the peo­ple on the street.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all!

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Sao Paulo G8 critical mass
A bad smell sur­round­ed Bicy­clist’s Square last fri­day morn­ing, Glob­al Direct Action Day against G8 and Cli­mate Change. All around the world, peo­ple rel­caimed the streets to say no to the letarghy of the 8 lead­ers that met in Ger­many behind fences and armys.

In Sao Paulo, Brasil, 25 human beings joined to cel­e­brate life, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the act of liv­ing togheter in a Crit­i­cal Mass ride for life. In Ger­many, there’re only 8 human beings decid­ing to keep war and preada­to­ry waste of resources that destroys the plan­et and kills lifes all around the globe.

A tree was plant­ed on Bicy­clist’s Square. It was in hon­or of a home­less man that was sleep­ing below the Square and was killed by a car on may 25th, a few hours before may Crit­i­cal Mass take the streets to cel­e­brate life.

First stop: Ital­ian Con­sulate. Fiats, Fer­raris, Masser­atis, Lam­borgh­i­nis and Berlus­co­nis kills thou­sands of human beings every year.

Sec­ond stop: Petro­brás build­ing, the brazil­ian fuel com­pa­ny. The plan to make Brazil become a huge cane brake is no ener­getic or eco­log­i­cal solu­tion, but only a way to fuel an obses­sion and keep the state of war, envi­ro­men­tal destruc­tion and irra­tional mobil­i­ty stan­darts.

Off the bikes on the cross­walk, going to the third stop: Japan Con­sulate. Hon­das, Toy­otas and Mit­subishis kills thou­sands of peo­ple every year all around the world.

Fourth stop: French Con­sulate. Renaults and Peu­geots pol­lute as much as the oth­ers. In Sao Paulo, air pol­lu­tion kills about 8 peo­ple a day. More than a half of the air pol­lu­tion comes from pri­vate cars.

Still We Ride

Fifth stop: Ger­man Con­sulate. Mer­cedes, BMWs and Aud­is spread indi­vid­u­al­ism and agres­siv­i­ty, con­tribut­ing to the plan­e­tary state of war.

Who makes prof­it on that?

In front of British Con­sulate, Earth on Dan­ger on the hands of war poo­dle Tony Blair.

They’re respon­si­ble for recy­cling in São Paulo.

Love against war.

Ethanol is a lie.

Mr. Puttin was’t there.

We’re traf­fic.

Crit­i­cal Mass at Daslu, the store where the rich­est peo­ple in Brazil shops. Our “G8-peo­ple” shop there and seems to feel nau­sea about their own land: eng­lish writ­ten phras­es, employ­ees dress­ing french but­ler clothes, just beside the pol­lut­ed Pin­heiros riv­er and sur­round­ed by third world fave­las.

Cana­di­an con­sulate on World Trade Cen­ter Sao Paulo: Earth in dan­ger (and it’s not because of Bin Laden).

U.S. Con­sulate. Out­side, it looks like Guan­tanamo.

Note to Mr. Bush: “Brazil isn’t a cane brake / G8: State Ter­ror”

66 years old, 22 years rid­ing.

A gift from Crit­i­cal Mass: one less car!

Bristol Protest against G8 and Climate Catastrophe, 8th June

Stop them dri­ving the plan­et to destruc­tion

CRITICAL MASS, Fri­day 8th June — 8am in the MORNING!
Assem­ble on St. Augustines Parade at 8am sharp to move off when crit­i­cal mass forms.

G8 Bristol CM '07Stop them dri­ving the plan­et to destruc­tion

CRITICAL MASS, Fri­day 8th June — 8am in the MORNING!
Assem­ble on St. Augustines Parade at 8am sharp to move off when crit­i­cal mass forms.

What are we doing?
As a start we are call­ing for a crit­i­cal mass on the morn­ing of Fri­day June 8th as the wake up call to a day of action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those protest­ing against the G8 meet­ing in Ger­many. We hope that this will act as a cat­a­lyst for oth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als in Bris­tol to mark the occa­sion how­ev­er they see fit.

Whether it be a pen­sion­ers mass march, a play­ground protest, or you and yer mates throw­ing a lit­er­al or sym­bol­ic wrench in the works, get off your arse and show ‘em you’re mad as hell and aren’t going to take it no more!

Why should you be angry?
CLIMATE CHAOS
We all know the ter­ri­fy­ing sta­tis­tics: a mil­lion species extinct by 2050, 19 of the 20 hottest years on record since 1980, Green­land and Antarc­ti­ca melt­ing, droughts, floods, famines. The G8 have had over 30 years to address cli­mate change and only suc­ceed­ed in pro­vid­ing tril­lions in sub­si­dies to the very indus­tries that are destroy­ing our plan­et and our future.

And while the G8 con­tin­ues to line their pock­ets, island states dis­ap­pear and hun­dreds of thou­sands die as a result of the freak weath­er con­di­tions caused by their irra­tional and uncon­trol­lable obses­sion with nev­er end­ing eco­nom­ic growth. We have a ten-year win­dow to act. As the mega­lo­ma­ni­ac G8 lead­ers meet in Ger­many, masked behind a bar­ri­er of fences and sol­diers, intent on lead­ing us fur­ther towards cat­a­stroph­ic and irre­versible cli­mate chaos, we must shout, scream and roar ˜no more”. Now is the time to take direct action and shut them down, them and their cli­mate crim­i­nal indus­try friends!

THE USUAL SUSPECTS
While cli­mate chaos effects us all, those on the front line are those already dev­as­tat­ed by the cru­el­ty of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism — the poor and dis­ad­van­taged. While the G8 looks to the mar­kets to solve the prob­lem by turn­ing emis­sions into a prod­uct that can be bought and sold, they pur­pose­ly ignore the only effec­tive solu­tion — an end to the con­sumerist mass-mar­ket soci­ety.

Iron­i­cal­ly con­sumerism is the way of life that the G8 is forc­ing poor­er coun­tries to adopt in order to have their pover­ty, debt and trade prob­lems alle­vi­at­ed. Soci­eties are manip­u­lat­ed into becom­ing pre­car­i­ous McCoun­tries: from export­ing cheap mass pro­duced goods from sweat­shops to feed west­ern appetites, to pro­vid­ing play­ground par­adis­es for the rich.

All this does is feed cli­mate chaos and cre­ate fur­ther car­bon emis­sions to be trad­ed as ‘cred­its’ between the rich­est coun­tries.

ANGRY YET?
So what are you going to do about it? Buy a wrist­band, go to a con­cert, sign a peti­tion, go on an organ­ised mass march?

Remem­ber Jubilee 2000? Third world debt is worse than ever.
Remem­ber Make Pover­ty His­to­ry? It didn’t.
Remem­ber Stop the War? We haven’t

The G8 lead­ers have car­ried on with their own agen­da and fan­cy foot­work. The only way that gov­ern­ments will lis­ten to us is if we force them to — this is the only effec­tive form of protest, which is why free­dom to protest effec­tive­ly is being erod­ed and out­lawed. We are sleep­walk­ing into a soci­ety where dis­sent will not be tol­er­at­ed, and it’s time to wake up!

Why June 8th?
The 8th of June Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against Cli­mate Change and the G8 has been called by the Inter­na­tion­al Ris­ing Tide Net­work. This is a call for autonomous, decen­tral­ized actions appro­pri­ate for your town, city, or local area.

We want to send a mes­sage to the pro­tes­tors on the streets and in the jails of Ger­many that we stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them and their actions.

Why a Crit­i­cal Mass?
Crit­i­cal Mass demon­stra­tions are not just about high­light­ing the prob­lems fac­ing cyclists, they are used effec­tive­ly across the world as an effec­tive way of protest­ing. The first one hap­pened in San Fran­cis­co in1992 and since then enthu­si­asts in many towns and cities world­wide have fol­lowed suit. It is dif­fi­cult to describe CM as opin­ions dif­fer wide­ly but they seem to range from a sim­ple cel­e­bra­tion of cycling to an anti-author­i­tar­i­an block­ade of traf­fic, par­tic­u­lar­ly cars, with many facets in between.

Cycling protests have already been hap­pen­ing as a part of the actions against the G8 sum­mit, and the heavy hand­ed response to them shows that the author­i­ties feel they are effec­tive and fear them.

On the 7th May in Utrecht (Hol­land), mount­ed police attacked, beat, arrest­ed and did sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to a peace­ful bicy­cle car­a­van on its way to Ger­many — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/369998.html for details.

On 25th May in Ham­burg (Ger­many), Over 250 peo­ple involved in the G8 mobi­liza­tion took to the streets of Ham­burg in a Crit­i­cal Mass. The police broke up the group of cyclists by dri­ving between them with vehi­cles and by run­ning and stand­ing in front of them. The cops fol­lowed the small­er groups of cyclists to get them to dis­perse. 12 peo­ple were arrest­ed and held for sev­er­al hours — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371656.html for details.

Also on the 25th, Bristol’s own Crit­i­cal Mass was sub­ject to a heavy-hand­ed police response. Although obvi­ous­ly not on the same scale, the rea­son behind it was the same — to smash the Crit­i­cal Mass as a form of protest because it is effec­tive. This forms part of a con­cert­ed effort by police across the UK to stop the protests, includ­ing attempts to crim­i­nalise the action and its par­tic­i­pants (that failed). See http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371358.html for details. And see http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=24359&search_text=Critical%20mass&results_offset=15 for details of 200 plus rid­ers on Bris­tol CM on 28/11/05 held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Lon­don CM after the cops threat­ened them. Who says CM isn’t polit­i­cal?

Why in the morn­ing?
The usu­al month­ly Crit­i­cal Mass in Bris­tol is a sep­a­rate enti­ty that focus­es on the rights of cyclists, while the inten­tion of the June 8th is to have a wider focus and so the change of time will dif­fer­en­ti­ate the two. Also there has been crit­i­cism that the month­ly Mass stops Bris­to­lians from get­ting home for the week­end, which can lead to a lack of wider sup­port.

This Crit­i­cal Mass is a present to the work­ing peo­ple of Bris­tol! If well attend­ed, the demon­stra­tion could mean big delays in get­ting to work on a Fri­day morn­ing, and a per­fect excuse for phon­ing in late — and who but the boss­es wouldn’t sup­port that! Spread the word to those you work with, but remem­ber we need the num­bers on the ride to make it hap­pen!

Remem­ber, the streets are ours, Crit­i­cal Mass is NOT ille­gal (yet!), and you have to get out of bed ear­ly in the morn­ing if you’re going to out­wit those who want to take away your free­dom to protest!

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide Web­site — http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

More info on the G8 protests in Ger­many -http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371754.html

For posters and fly­ers see http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=26367

Investigation leads to chicken rescue by Gloucestershire animal activists.

Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action press release — For imme­di­ate release
Sun­day, June 03, 2007

Five month inves­ti­ga­tion leads to chick­en res­cue by Glouces­ter­shire ani­mal activists.

Five months ago activists from Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action learned of a farm in Glouces­ter which had been vis­it­ed by DEFRA after the rot­ting car­cass­es of chick­ens and pigs were left caus­ing a stench which had affect­ed the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action press release — For imme­di­ate release
Sun­day, June 03, 2007

Five month inves­ti­ga­tion leads to chick­en res­cue by Glouces­ter­shire ani­mal activists.

Five months ago activists from Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action learned of a farm in Glouces­ter which had been vis­it­ed by DEFRA after the rot­ting car­cass­es of chick­ens and pigs were left caus­ing a stench which had affect­ed the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Local press cov­ered the inci­dent in which the farm own­er had claimed that around one hun­dred ani­mals die per week at the facil­i­ty. Activists vis­it­ed the farm at Lit­tle Wit­combe in Glouces­ter with the inten­tion of doc­u­ment­ing the con­di­tion in which the ani­mals were housed which have result­ed in the deaths of so many ani­mals.

With our inves­ti­ga­tion footage we hope to high­light the real­i­ty of mod­ern non caged “barn” egg busi­ness­es to show that free-range and barn eggs are in no way a guar­an­tee that your food is eth­i­cal­ly pro­duced in many cas­es barn egg sys­tems are worse than bat­tery cage sys­tems and if you wish to be a tru­ly eth­i­cal per­son you real­ly need to go veg­an. The gov­ern­ment has main­tained that veg­an­ism is a very healthy way to live, you can almost half your car­bon foot­print in most cas­es and you can live a cru­el­ty free lifestyle know­ing that no ani­mals or humans are being exploit­ed for your diet!

The fol­low­ing is the account from one activist involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion:

“We entered one of the long sheds which hadn’t been secured prop­er­ly late one evening, mak­ing sure to pro­tect the ani­mals inside we dis­in­fect­ed our feet and cloth­ing before enter­ing. To be hon­est I was expect­ing to have to search for ani­mals in a bad con­di­tion but the real­i­ty was it was more dif­fi­cult to find ani­mals that looked healthy, maybe one in fif­teen chick­ens weren’t in a bad con­di­tion. The air was acrid and filled with ammo­nia and dust par­ti­cles and the fans didn’t seem to be work­ing prop­er­ly. The work­er chart on the wall had said that 6 deaths had occurred in one day in a sin­gle shed and there are four­teen sheds on the farm. It would seem that this is the norm for a facil­i­ty that holds more than 70,000 chick­ens.”

Dur­ing the fol­low­ing months the activists returned to check the con­di­tions which didn’t seem to be improv­ing. After suf­fi­cient evi­dence had been gath­ered in order to high­light the plight of the hens inside a col­lec­tive deci­sion was made by those involved that we would attempt to res­cue and give vet­eri­nary care to a small amount of the chick­ens (Thir­teen in total).

The res­cue took place dur­ing the ear­ly hours of a warm night in May, three activists entered a barn with ani­mal car­ri­ers and record­ing equip­ment, footage was record­ed and pho­tos tak­en, the ani­mals were then care­ful­ly loaded into ani­mal car­ri­ers and into a con­vert­ed laun­dry bag, they were then trans­port­ed to a house for the night for food and water. The next morn­ing they were tak­en to live out their lives at a sanc­tu­ary. It should be remem­bered that these ani­mals have nev­er expe­ri­enced sun­light or fresh air and to see these intel­li­gent crea­tures being giv­en a chance to live with real food and fresh water in fan­tas­tic con­di­tions brought those involved to tears. We can only hope that the remain­ing thou­sands of ani­mals and bil­lions of ani­mals breed each year for our ani­mal diet expe­ri­ence the same lux­u­ry one day.

Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action are a peace­ful group of indi­vid­u­als, we con­sid­er our actions to be total­ly jus­ti­fied and are will­ing to accept any reper­cus­sions as a result of our actions. Dur­ing our vis­its we saw no signs which indi­cat­ed that the prop­er­ty was pri­vate. We are aware that we have caused dam­age to a lock on the farm dur­ing our last vis­it and we will be send­ing a pay­ment to cov­er the cost of replac­ing the lock how­ev­er we will not be pay­ing for the chick­ens tak­en. We how­ev­er wel­come dona­tions via our web­site towards trans­porta­tion costs and vet bills.

Note: The activists wear face cov­er­ings dur­ing the res­cue to pre­vent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion this is for per­son­al safe­ty and to pro­tect their free­dom, ani­mal activists have been impris­oned for years after res­cu­ing ani­mals from facil­i­ties such as this one.

For infor­ma­tion about Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action you can vis­it their web­site at www.stopanimalcruelty.co.uk or you can watch the full video of the res­cue online via YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=JllgcO0f_Gg

Critical Mass reports — London, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, Edinburgh, York

Lon­don:
The cycle police were pret­ty laid back and vast­ly out­num­bered, though they did still try to man­age the ride by block­ing the front so that the back could catch up. What does it mat­ter if a 1,000 rid­ers get split into two or more though? Towards the end of the ride the police seemed to give up doing any­thing, they did­n’t even try to stop a cou­ple of cars going the wrong way down a one way street, and they just blend­ed in and became a part of the Mass.

Lon­don:
London May 07 Critical Mass 3The cycle police were pret­ty laid back and vast­ly out­num­bered, though they did still try to man­age the ride by block­ing the front so that the back could catch up. What does it mat­ter if a 1,000 rid­ers get split into two or more though? Towards the end of the ride the police seemed to give up doing any­thing, they did­n’t even try to stop a cou­ple of cars going the wrong way down a one way street, and they just blend­ed in and became a part of the Mass.

The police inter­vened with an inci­dent with a young rid­er at King’s Cross. I could­n’t make out whether the rid­er had been involved in acci­dent and the police were just tak­ing par­tic­u­lars or if the rid­er was being rep­ri­mand­ed. Any­way this led to some boo­ing from the Mass.

Par­tic­i­pants did quite a lot of blockad­ing traf­fic and even a small sit
down in Par­lia­ment Square, though this was prob­a­bly cel­e­bra­to­ry and
defi­ant. Noth­ing was done to stop the sound sys­tems play­ing in the SOCPA zone this time. The impres­sion I got from oth­er rid­ers was that this was a very good Mass. I went expect­ing the worst and got almost the best.

http://criticalmasslondon.org.uk

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the inci­dent at kings cross involved a rid­er being caught steal­ing a light from the back of a cops bike. the police got pissed and tried to arrest her but a few oth­er rid­ers, and unfor­tu­nate­ly i mean a few, inter­vened and let it be known that it would be very dif­fi­cult for the police to arrest her — which they decid­ed would there­fore not be worth it. i per­son­al­ly think that those on the CM should not allow fel­low rid­ers to be arrest­ed — an easy thing to acheive when we vast­ly out­num­ber the cops.
respect to the few that helped out.

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The atmos­phere on the ride was real­ly friend­ly with a few small sound sys­tems and a vari­ety of pret­ty mad bikes and trail­ers adding to the mag­ic. There were loads of new faces and peo­ple of every age and back­ground.

There were also plen­ty of cops. They had talked to a few peo­ple as the ride met up at Water­loo Bridge and were seen hand­ing some kind of paper­work to the own­er of one of the sound sys­tems, but no sign of any sig­nif­i­cant attempt to cur­tail the ride. Far from being oppres­sive, they kept them­selves to them­selves on the whole.

I per­son­al­ly got a quite pissed off a few times by seem­ing­ly incon­sid­er­ate behav­ior from the ride itself — for exam­ple, not let­ting pedes­tri­ans cross the road. In anoth­er exam­ple, a bus com­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion was blocked by cyclists on the wrong side of the road and held up for at least ten min­utes as a result.
The cops did grab a few idiots and give them some stern words on sev­er­al occa­sions through­out the ride for cycling on the wrong side of the road into oncom­ing traf­fic.

The police made fools of them­selves at Par­lia­ment Square when they tried to block the rides third or forth rota­tion around the square and end­ed up stalling the ride there for a good half hour. The ride would have moved off much quick­er if left to it’s own devices as the ride likes to move and becomes impa­tient when peo­ple stop.

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Videos from Lon­don:

Quick­time video — video/mp4 9.3M
Win­dows video — video/x‑ms-wmv 13M

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Man­ches­ter video rough-cut

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Glasgow CM May '07 blessing
BIG BIKE BLESSING — Anoth­er great Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride in Glas­gow

About 80 cyclists came out to the Big Bike Bless­ing on this sun­ny evening in Glas­gow. The priest from the church of the Hol­ly Bikes were sent by St Cycle to help cyclists real­ize that by rid­ding their bikes they are actu­al­ly sav­ing the city dwellers and the plan­et at the same time. Every cyclists was praised as a hero, a sav­ior for they are the only ones that can help this oil dri­ven econ­o­my. They are the only ones that can bring fresh air to the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed city. They are the ones tak­ing action on a dai­ly bases no mat­ter where they are from, what their reli­gion might be, or what their pro­fes­sion is. The bike will save us. AMEN!

Hol­ly oil was used to bless about 20 bikes and every cyclist was thanked for their incred­i­ble achieve­ment, their hero­ic act of using their self pro­pelled vehi­cles. They were told that the Great St Cycles is look­ing over all of us and that we will be looked after dur­ing our ride around the city as long as we stick togeth­er.

The cer­e­mo­ni­ous aspect of this gath­er­ing actu­al­ly cre­at­ed some great inter­ac­tions and made peo­ple curi­ous to the point of want­i­ng to know more. There were some very inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about our reli­gious belief in bikes (which chal­lenged peo­ple in their own beliefs). This also brought all the cyclists togeth­er.

As for cul­tur­al diver­si­ty, and just to show that it’s not about the reli­gion but about bikes, there were a few peo­ple send­ing bless­ings dressed in a more Hin­du style as well. There was even some strange rep­tile that decid­ed to join the cer­e­monies of the day.

The Weird Bike Show brought out the ZEM (Zero Emis­sions Machine) once again, with it’s hop­ping sound sys­tem and pro­vid­ed the broth­ers and sis­ters from the church of the Hol­ly Bikes a bril­liant ride.

The promised Divine Inter­ven­tion did occur around Tron­gate where a pair of shoes belong­ing to no oth­er than St Cycles were care­ful­ly left on top of an elec­tric box before he him­self was tak­en to the sky.

As for the police charg­ing cyclists of block­ing traf­fic last month, there was a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent vibe this month. There were two police offi­cers on bikes that came along to the ride. They were very mel­low and there­for were giv­en quite a few bless­ings.

We also have some excel­lent footage that shows how fast bikes can get out of the way to let things like fire trucks and the police through. The only thing hold­ing these emer­gency vehi­cles up were the motors … not bikes.

The mass fin­ished in George Sq where every­one left was stamped with a ‘Bike Route’ Stamp ensur­ing a spe­cial dis­count to the gig at the Art School with Jum­ble Sales Sound Sys­tem and Bed­lam Boudoir fan­cy bur­lesque night.

For those that claimed Crit­i­cal Mass was dead … I’m pleased to inform you that our num­bers are still grow­ing and we’re lov­ing it.

Bless you Bike!!

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Bristol CM May 07 wheel trashed
Bristol CM May 07 arrestBristol CM May 07 arrest 2
Bris­tol: Crit­i­cal Mass yes­ter­day was phe­nom­e­nal. I think we had over 100 par­tic­i­pants and it was flow­ing beau­ti­ful­ly for about 40 min­utes… Then of course some dri­vers, three I think, all got a bit impa­tient all at once and a cou­ple of cyclists were knocked over, 14 police cars an ambu­lance and a riot van, two arrests lat­er, tail backs from the Foun­tains right up past Stokes Croft… all got a bit nasty. It will be inter­est­ing to see if the press have any­thing to say and what the police pres­ence is next time…

Just to be clear though, whilst there was quite a lot going on as far as I am aware at least one of those arrest­ed got stuck in to the fra­cas after the police arrived and had noth­ing to do with the ride itself, and nei­ther of the cyclists who were hit behaved inap­pro­pri­ate­ly at any point. No motorists were arrest­ed and the police let one hit and run dri­ver leave the scene with­out for­mal­ly record­ing an acci­dent, despite him hav­ing delib­er­ate­ly rammed a cyclist and ruined his bicy­cle.

So, peo­ple, I under­stand there will be anoth­er ride on the 29th of May. Meet 5.30pm at the Foun­tains, leave at 6pm. Those of you who aren’t at Glas­ton­bury that is. The more rea­son­able cyclists that attend the bet­ter we can cre­ate a good organ­ic flow and have a safe and effec­tive ride to cel­e­brate cycling.

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I was at the Edin­burgh Crit­i­cal Mass yes­ter­day, with about 15 or 20 of us there. It went along fair­ly peace­ful­ly, with the excep­tion of the police in the mid­dle of the mead­ows. The ban­ner that some­one had, had to be tak­en down, but apart from that there was no issue, apart from some tail­backs.

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York’s May Crit­i­cal Mass a suc­cess

Some­where between 35 and 40 rid­ers took part in this months ride includ­ing a num­ber of new faces. Flags dis­play­ing state­ments such as “One Less Car” and “I [bike] YRK” were attached to peo­ple’s bikes as they assem­bled at the Min­ster. The large amounts of flier­ing in the pre­vi­ous week seemed to have had a won­der­ful effect, though the weath­er could have been bet­ter. We met some inter­est­ing respons­es along the way. When we reached the sug­gest­ed end point of St Samp­sons Square, the ride end­ed up con­tin­u­ing to cir­cle the square for some time before final­ly stop­ping. It def­i­nite­ly looks like, hav­ing slipped to just 20 a month, the ride is head­ing back to high­er num­bers, and could make 100 by the end of the year.
At 6:05 the ride left, head­ing for Hol­gate Road and Pop­ple­ton Road. After cross­ing Clifton Bridge, the ride head­ed down Water End into Clifton, and after a messy turn, pro­ceed­ed along Kingsway North to the round­about, where the cus­tom­ary 2.5 rota­tions was achieved. The ride then fol­lowed Crighton Avenue to Bur­ton Stone Lane, where the away team coach for the evening’s City match was found com­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion. The ride turned towards town, in along Bootham, through Gilly­gate, through Lord May­ors walk and out along Monkgate, where the round­about pro­vid­ed yet more fun. Back in, through Bootham Bar, and round the Min­ster, then over to the Assem­bly Rooms and Dav­ey Gate. At this point, the ride approached the agreed fin­ish­ing point in St Samp­sons Square. Due to the cycle racks and phones, the ride went round the first side, where upon, instead of turn­ing into the square, it con­tin­ued onwards around and around. So imma­ture, but so much fun!

Brighton Radical Book and Zine Fair

Brighton Rad­i­cal Book and Zine Fair

This Sat­ur­day 26th May 10am — 5pm @ Cow­ley Club 12, Lon­don Rd. Brighton.

Books you won’t find in Bor­ders!

Allot­ments to Anar­chy, Pirates to Punk, Recipes to Riots and every­thing in between!

Brighton Rad­i­cal Book and Zine Fair

This Sat­ur­day 26th May 10am — 5pm @ Cow­ley Club 12, Lon­don Rd. Brighton.

Books you won’t find in Bor­ders!

Allot­ments to Anar­chy, Pirates to Punk, Recipes to Riots and every­thing in between!

cowleybooks@postmaster.co.uk
www.cowleyclub.org.uk

Activist Mediation Network — open for business

The Activist Medi­a­tion Net­work is now up and run­ning. If you know of any activist group or activist indi­vid­ual who has a con­flict which is affect­ing their abil­i­ty to change our world for the bet­ter, then get in touch and we may be able to help sort it out.

The Activist Medi­a­tion Net­work is now up and run­ning. If you know of any activist group or activist indi­vid­ual who has a con­flict which is affect­ing their abil­i­ty to change our world for the bet­ter, then get in touch and we may be able to help sort it out.

activistmediation@aktivix.org
www.activistmediation.org.uk

We are con­tin­u­ing to run train­ing days for peo­ple want­i­ng to learn con­flict res­o­lu­tion and medi­a­tion skills.

Upcom­ing dates
Mon­day June 18th in Nor­wich. Day 1 — How we deal with con­flict, Con­flict res­o­lu­tion tools, Basic medi­a­tion prac­tice. Lim­it­ed places avail­able.
Book asap by email­ing us.

We are prob­a­bly going to do a 2 day course at the Earth First gath­er­ing in Nor­folk, 18–22nd July. This is espe­cial­ly for those going to Cli­mate Camp. It will go like this:

Fri­day July 20th — Day 1 — How we deal with con­flict, Con­flict res­o­lu­tion tools, Basic medi­a­tion prac­tice.

Sat­ur­day July 21st — Day 2 — Prac­tis­ing medi­a­tion skills. Only avail­able to peo­ple who have com­plet­ed a Day 1 with us.

These days will only run if there is enough demand. There will be lim­ites places and we may decide peo­ple need to com­mit in advance. Get in touch if you are inter­est­ed.

Apolo­gies that all these dates are in Nor­folk. If you think there is a demand for a train­ing day in your area, do get in touch.