Category: Wales

Wales

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 86, February 2009

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

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

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

——————
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
——————

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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RECENT HAPPENINGS:
——————

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

———-

Please send any­thing you’d like includ­ed in this news sheet to:
newssheet@risingtide.org.uk

To view pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Ris­ing Tide News Sheet, vis­it the News Sheet Archive at http://risingtide.org.uk/newssheet

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

For more infor­ma­tion…
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Phone: +44 (0)845 458 8923 / +44 (0)7708 794665
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Upcoming action dates, activist gatherings, & the official meetings en route to the Copenhagen climate summit, 2009 — updated

‘Offi­cial’ meet­ings on the Road to Copen­hagen:

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

‘Offi­cial’ meet­ings on the Road to Copen­hagen:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old dates from this cal­en­dar:

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

21–22 Feb­ru­ary 2009
No Bor­ders UK gath­er­ing, Bris­tol

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

29 May‑1 June
Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp sum­mer gath­er­ing

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

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

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

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

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

3–5 July
For­est Cir­cus fes­ti­val, Lap­pers­fort, Bel­gium

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

12–20 Sep­tem­ber 2009
Bris­tol Co-Mutiny

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

10–11 Octo­ber
Work­ers’ Cli­mate Action con­fer­ence, Lon­don

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photographers turn out in solidarity against new “terror law”.

Repost­ed: 16.02.2009: every­one knows Indy­medi­a’s a cop­per’s favourite read, but after a cou­ple of hun­dred snap­pers turned up out­side the yard this morn­ing they’ll be queu­ing up today to see whose mug’s on the wire.

Photographing gun copsRepost­ed: 16.02.2009: every­one knows Indy­medi­a’s a cop­per’s favourite read, but after a cou­ple of hun­dred snap­pers turned up out­side the yard this morn­ing they’ll be queu­ing up today to see whose mug’s on the wire.

Because snuck in today under the usu­al cov­er of the war against ter­ror came Sec­tion 76 of the Counter-Ter­ror­ism Act 2008.

This crim­i­nalis­es any­one ‘elic­it­ing, pub­lish­ing or com­mu­ni­cat­ing infor­ma­tion on mem­bers of the armed forces, intel­li­gence ser­vices and police offi­cers which is “like­ly to be use­ful to a per­son com­mit­ting or prepar­ing an act of ter­ror­ism”.

But giv­en the police’s reg­u­lar and bla­tant mis­use of oth­er laws such as Sec­tion 44 of the exist­ing Ter­ror­ism Act and Sec­tion 1 of PACE, pho­tog­ra­phers feel it’s a rac­ing cer­tain­ty that it’ll get used to sup­press evi­dence the police don’t want used against them.

“I can see it now”, wrote pho­tog­ra­ph­er Marc Vallee in Thurs­day’s Guardian ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/11/police-terrorism-photography-liberty-central) “If you don’t stop tak­ing pic­tures of me hit­ting this pro­test­er on the head, I’m going to nick you under sec­tion 76 of the Counter-Ter­ror­ism Act 2008.”

At least three legal cas­es are cur­rent­ly pend­ing relat­ing to such police over-exu­ber­ance at last year’s Cli­mate Camp in Kingsnorth, Kent. Almost two thou­sand cops from 26 forces assem­bled at a cost of over 6 mil­lion quid and — hav­ing first harassed and delayed the press — chose to lay in on a reg­u­lar basis on campers with steel batons.

Sad­ly for them these attacks were nev­er­the­less filmed and pho­tographed and this evi­dence stands ready to dis­prove the lies they make in jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for that behav­iour. Imag­ine how much eas­i­er life will be for them in future if those news­gath­er­ers can be tak­en away from the scene under threat of a ten year stretch.

High up behind the mir­rored win­dows of New Scot­land Yard the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team will have been at work pho­tograph­ing the pho­tog­ra­phers for their records.

And they’ll have noticed some­thing new — as well as the usu­al twen­ty or so pho­tog­ra­phers they always tar­get for “report­ing the news the wrong way” there were a cou­ple of hun­dred new faces: work­ing news pho­tog­ra­phers who’ve had it up to the back teeth with being pushed around ille­gal­ly on threat (and some­times the real­i­ty) of arrest.

It’s no longer just an activist minor­i­ty that sees through this sham of repres­sion pre­sent­ed almost as a health and safe­ty issue (keep­ing us safe from the bad men). Polit­i­cal police intru­sion is becom­ing ever more inva­sive, is affect­ing all our lives and fuck­ing up the free­doms we’re sup­posed to believe are (were?) our right.

This new law is just one more sub­tle tool in the armoury of pub­lic repres­sion and this extra­or­di­nary turnout by what is nor­mal­ly an apa­thet­ic and polit­i­cal­ly care­less bunch of pho­tog­ra­phers sends a clear sig­nal that the worm is final­ly turn­ing.

Earth First! tree planting weekend in Pennines Fri 13th-Sun 15th March

The annu­al and occa­sion­al­ly hedo­nis­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to plant thou­sands of native trees on a eco­log­i­cal­ly degrad­ed hill­side is hap­pen­ing in March. Organ­ised by Earth First!

EF! fist tree 1The annu­al and occa­sion­al­ly hedo­nis­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to plant thou­sands of native trees on a eco­log­i­cal­ly degrad­ed hill­side is hap­pen­ing in March. Organ­ised by Earth First! activists in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Calderdale com­mu­ni­ty group Treespon­si­bil­i­ty we will be based in Heb­den Bridge in Calderdale. If you fan­cy a week­end of hard but sat­is­fy­ing work plant­i­ng native wood­land com­bined with good food and social­is­ing put the week­end of the 13–15th March in your diary.

Earth First! tree plant­i­ng week­end…

Date: Fri­day 13th — Sun­day 15th March

Venue: We will be stay­ing in a camp­ing barn with com­fy beds and heat­ing. Bring a sleep­ing bag.

Trans­port: Get your­self to Heb­den Bridge train sta­tion for a pick up at 6pm or 8pm on the 13th. Pick­ups are avail­able by arrange­ment at oth­er times if you e‑mail in advance.

Food: All food will be cooked col­lec­tive­ly and will be veg­an.

Cost: £25 for the week­end. This includes all food and acco­mo­da­tion. You’ll have to sup­ply you own beer. We will be vis­it­ing the famous Blue Pig pub­lic house on the Sat­ur­day night.

Need more info? Con­tact: treesponsibility@yahoo.co.uk or call 07983743894

Call out for solidarity anti-nuke actions on 26th April (Chernobyl Day)

A call out for com­mon actions against the con­struc­tion of a new nuclear pow­er sta­tion

A call out for com­mon actions against the con­struc­tion of a new nuclear pow­er sta­tion

Present-day Belarus is a post sovi­et coun­try, on which ter­ri­to­ry a regime, police state in form and neolib­er­al in essence, for­ti­fied its posi­tion. For already 14 years the coun­try is run by one and the same per­son Alexan­der Lukashenko, a pop­ulist at the begin­ning of his gov­ern­ing and open­ly pur­su­ing anti­so­cial reforms now. The free­dom of speech, free­dom of the press, free­dom of assem­bly is not about our coun­try. These basic val­ues as well as the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion are sup­pressed. Peace­ful gath­er­ings dis­per­sions, polit­i­cal tri­als, pre­ven­tive deten­tions all this has become a norm of polit­i­cal prac­tice in Belarus.

A few years ago the rul­ing top start­ed to con­sid­er anoth­er ven­ture­some project the con­struc­tion of a nuclear pow­er sta­tion (NPS). Lukashenko took a deci­sion regard­less of the pub­lic wish­es and com­mon sense. The deci­sion was made with the active sup­port of the inter­na­tion­al nuclear lob­by. The con­struc­tion is to be under­tak­en by a Russ­ian cor­po­ra­tion Rosatom. It is to be held in a seis­mi­cal­ly active zone, in a dozen kilo­me­ters away from Lake Naroch the largest lake in Belarus, which is eco­log­i­cal­ly unique for our coun­try and is a tourists and hol­i­day-mak­ers attrac­tion. On the con­struc­tion will be spent $4 bil­lion, which oth­er­wise could be out­laid for alter­na­tive ener­gy means devel­op­ment.

But the above-list­ed points pale before the fact that Belarus shared 70% of radioac­tive con­t­a­m­i­na­tion after Cher­nobyl nuclear acci­dent. But the gov­ern­ment and the pres­i­dent are absolute­ly not con­cerned about that. They want to cre­ate a delayed-action bomb in the coun­try, where one third of the ter­ri­to­ry is unfit for farm­ing and berries/mushrooms gath­er­ing.

We, Anti­nu­clear resis­tance, an anar­chy group, come out against nuclear pow­er engi­neer­ing on the whole and against the NPS con­struc­tion specif­i­cal­ly in Belarus. A part of polit­i­cal forces in Belarus, includ­ing oppo­si­tion, sup­port­ed the NPS con­struc­tion. Unlike them we do not believe in NPS safe­ty irre­spec­tive of the polit­i­cal regime, with­in which it is func­tion­ing and being con­struct­ed. Our activ­i­ty is based upon non-author­i­tar­i­an prin­ci­ples, we do not coop­er­ate with any polit­i­cal par­ties on a reg­u­lar base, but with eco­log­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions and grass­roots ini­tia­tives.

On 26 April, the anniver­sary of the Cher­nobyl nuclear acci­dent, an annu­al demon­stra­tion Charnobyl­s­ki Shlah (The Cher­nobyl Path) takes place in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the acci­dent and the peo­ple who fell the imme­di­ate and lin­ger­ing vic­tims of it. Start­ing with the year of 1996 anar­chists take part in the demo with eco­log­i­cal and anti­nu­clear slo­gans. But nowa­days the demon­stra­tion, instead of just mourn­ing and com­mem­o­ra­tive event, is
gain­ing a protest mood: in the coun­try, where dozens of thou­sands peo­ple have died as a result of the nuclear acci­dent after­maths and hun­dreds of thou­sands have acquired acci­dent-caused ill­ness­es or become hand­i­capped, a new NPS is to be con­struct­ed! And that is done accord­ing to the com­mon reg­u­la­tions of an author­i­tar­i­an police state not ask­ing the peo­ples opin­ion, but just con­fronting them with the fact.

On 26 April we will again take a most active part in the Charnobyl­s­ki Shlah (The Cher­nobyl Path), well try to pass along to every­one our clear anti­nu­clear posi­tion, will inform as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble of the approach­ing dan­ger. But now it is not enough! As an instru­ment of strug­gle against the state law­less­ness we rely on the inter­na­tion­al sup­port. We urge anar­chists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, anti­au­thor­i­tar­i­ans of the world to car­ry out sol­i­dar­i­ty actions on 26 April 2009. We call for a decen­tral­ized day of action of any form, which could help peo­ple learn some­thing about our prob­lem and stop the impu­dent author­i­ty and their spon­sors from IAEA.

If you already take actions on 26 April on your local prob­lems con­cern­ing nuclear pow­er engi­neer­ing, please put on your list the demand for abo­li­tion of the NSP con­struc­tion in Belarus. You are also wel­come to par­tic­i­pate in The Cher­nobyl Path in Min­sk and oth­er actions in Belarus.

Togeth­er we will be able to stand up for the right for life on a clean and eco­log­i­cal­ly safe plan­et!

If you have any inten­tion to make sol­i­dar­i­ty actions with the Belaruss­ian anti­nu­clear move­ment or par­tic­i­pate in the demon­stra­tion in Belarus please con­tact us:

antiatombel@riseup.net

Spread out the call out through any acces­si­ble for you infor­ma­tion chan­nels

belarus anar­chists
http://belarus.avtonom.org

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 85, December/January 2008/2009

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

1. Camp for Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing, 31.01.09–01.02.09
2. Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
3. Mobil­is­ing for the COP, 13–15.03.09
4. Do It Your­self! Course, 22–27.03.09
5. Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
6. Coal Car­a­van, April 2009

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

1. Camp for Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing, 31.01.09–01.02.09
2. Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
3. Mobil­is­ing for the COP, 13–15.03.09
4. Do It Your­self! Course, 22–27.03.09
5. Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
6. Coal Car­a­van, April 2009
7. Earth Activist Train­ing, 11–26.07.09
8. Non­vi­o­lence for a Change Train­ing, Jan-Dec 2009

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-
1. Case col­laps­es against E.On block­aders, 14.01.09
2. Heathrow’s third run­way gets the go-ahead and activists respond, Jan­u­ary 2009
3. Plane Stu­pid shut down Stanst­ed Air­port, 08–12.08
4. 48 hours of action against E.on and new coal, 28–29.11.08
5. Scot­tish coal rail ter­mi­nal shut down, 15.12.08
6. E.ON forced to aban­don recruit­ment tour, Novem­ber 2008
7. Kel­ster­back For­est Occu­pa­tion (Frank­furt Air­port), ongo­ing

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-

1) Camp for Cli­mate Action New Year Gath­er­ing, 31.01.09 – 01.02.09
2008 saw the biggest Cli­mate Camp to date and the most incred­i­ble array of direct action against cli­mate change on record. But what does 2009 hold in store? Regard­less of whether you’ve been to a cli­mate camp, all are wel­come to come along to this excit­ing week­end gath­er­ing. We will be ask­ing our­selves whether there should be anoth­er big sum­mer event and, if so, what it should be. Already there have been many pos­si­bil­i­ties raised, rang­ing from anoth­er rur­al camp to a sin­gu­lar day of action. Oth­er ideas include an urban con­ver­gence or a cli­mate car­a­van. The gath­er­ing will also pro­vide a forum to talk http://climatecamp.org.uk/?q=node/468

2) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
The Earth First! Win­ter Moot is a week­end to reflect on where we are as a rad­i­cal ecol­o­gist move­ment and on where we are going. The moot will be about dis­cussing strat­e­gy, strength­en­ing the EF! net­work, secu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and action plan­ning. A ses­sion is also reserved for dis­cussing a UK mobil­i­sa­tion for the UN cli­mate con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen late 2009. The moot will be held in Brighton (t.b.c.). Please check the web­site near­er to the time for fur­ther details and email any items you would like to add an item to the agen­da to moot2009 at earthfirst.org.uk.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21557

3) Mobil­is­ing for the COP, 13–15.03.09
The UN Cli­mate Con­fer­ence of Par­ties num­ber 15 is set to take place in Copen­hagen on the 30th of Novem­ber 2009, and it will be the biggest cli­mate sum­mit ever to have tak­en place. More than 12,000 del­e­gates — busi­ness lead­ers, politi­cians, diplo­mats and lob­by­ists — are going to be dis­cussing an inter­na­tion­al treaty to replace the failed Kyoto Pro­to­col.

Tens of thou­sands of activists and pro­test­ers will be mak­ing their way to Copen­hagen for this major event. In Sep­tem­ber 2008 peo­ple from more than 23 coun­tries met in Copen­hagen and agreed on a Call to Action, call­ing for peo­ple to start mobi­liz­ing and to car­ry out actions local­ly as well as com­ing to Copen­hagen for mass actions.
Anoth­er inter­na­tion­al plan­ning meet­ing will take place in March (13th-15th) 2009 where the con­cepts and strat­e­gy for action will be dis­cussed. http://climateaction09.org/

4) Do It Your­self! 22–27.03.09
A course explor­ing tools for empow­er­ment and grass­roots social change, at the Find­horn Foun­da­tion

Can we man­age our own lives and com­mu­ni­ties at the grass­roots rather than retreat­ing into fear, blame and stereo­types or look­ing to oth­ers to solve the prob­lems? Many peo­ple believe that the answers to the big ques­tions lie in com­mu­ni­ty empow­er­ment, bot­tom up organ­is­ing. This course pro­vides a chance to become con­fi­dent using a range of tech­niques designed to this end and to clar­i­fy our visions for the poten­tial of these approach­es. We will also put aside time to deal with the emo­tions and doubts raised and include a range of short films and con­tem­po­rary case stud­ies.

The main aims of the course are to share with par­tic­i­pants tools, knowl­edges, and ini­tia­tives which can be used to empow­er them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ties, and inspire pos­i­tive social change, based on co-oper­a­tion and sol­i­dar­i­ty. The course will draw on the book DO IT YOUSELF – A Hand­book for Chang­ing Our World edit­ed by TRAPESE (see handbookforchange.org) Email for more info: trapese@riseup.net

5) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
Just in case you missed the news – Fos­sil Fools Day is back! On April 1st, join the glob­al day of resis­tance and pull a prank that packs a punch. Call-out now avail­able on the web­site, so help spread the word. If you would like leaflets and/or posters send us an email and we’ll post you some – info@risingtide.org.uk
www.risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday2009

6) Coal Car­a­van, 17.04.09 – 04.05.09
The fab­u­lous cli­mate car­a­van lives on. This time we will be the COAL CARAVAN, walk­ing and cycling between the sites for pro­posed open cast mines and new pow­er sta­tions in the Mid­lands, York­shire and North East. On our route we’ll be talk­ing to local peo­ple, organ­is­ing bicy­cled pow­er films and events, hold­ing pub­lic dis­cus­sions and dis­plays, and link­ing groups from dif­fer­ent areas to help strength­en iso­lat­ed cam­paigns.

Pre­cise details of the route are to be con­firmed, but put the dates in your diary now! Meet up Fri­day 17th April (W. Mid­lands), to start our jour­ney on Sat­ur­day 18th. The Car­a­van will end two and a half weeks lat­er with a grand finale on Bank Hol­i­day Mon­day (4th May).
The car­a­van itself will not involve direct action (although we may offer train­ing, if local groups so request).
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21915
/caravan@climatecamp.org.uk.

7) Earth Activist Train­ing, 11–26.07.09
Learn the skills to trans­form a piece of land, a com­mu­ni­ty, and our polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tems. Spend two weeks in rur­al Devon learn­ing: Nature and wilder­ness aware­ness, Diver­si­ty in ecosys­tems and social move­ments, Solu­tions that exist: alter­na­tive ener­gy; organ­ic farm­ing; nat­ur­al build­ing; biore­me­di­a­tion & restora­tion, Soil and wood­land ecol­o­gy and much, much more …

On com­ple­tion par­tic­i­pants will receive a per­ma­cul­ture design cer­tifi­cate. The course will be held at Land­mat­ters Per­ma­cul­ture Coop­er­a­tive in Devon. Costs: £200 — £650 slid­ing scale accord­ing to income. http://www.landmatters.org.uk / earthactivisttraining@riseup.net

8) Non­vi­o­lence for a Change Train­ing, 2009
Turn­ing the Tide will offer month­ly work­shops in non­vi­o­lent meth­ods and strate­gies for social change. You can par­tic­i­pate as a mem­ber of the year-group (com­mit­ting to all eleven ses­sions) or only come to those work­shops which inter­est you.
http://www.turning-the-tide.org

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-

1) Case col­laps­es against E.On block­aders, 14.01.09
Two envi­ron­men­tal­ists, arrest­ed fol­low­ing a block­ade of E.On’s Not­ting­ham offices on Fos­sil Fools Day 2008, had the case against them dis­missed on Wednes­day 14th Jan­u­ary. The case col­lapsed after it emerged that the pros­e­cu­tion had offered no evi­dence to sup­port the charge of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass. The Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice (CPS) were found to have been neg­li­gent in their admin­is­tra­tion of the case and were ordered to pay the defence’s costs.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/419126.html

2) Heathrow’s third run­way gets the go-ahead and activists respond,
Jan­u­ary 2009
Both Heathrow and Man­ches­ter air­ports were tar­get­ed Mon­day 12th Jan­u­ary with the domes­tic depar­ture lounges of both air­ports simul­ta­ne­ous­ly occu­pied by pro­test­ers. In Lon­don over 500 peo­ple defied air­port bylaws by stag­ing a sit-down din­ner, forc­ing air­port oper­a­tor BAA to close 18 check-in desks. In Man­ches­ter police used pow­ers under Sec­tion 14 of the Pub­lic Order Act to con­tain up to 100 pro­test­ers on the ground floor of Ter­mi­nal 3, with one arrest.

Mean­while, Green­peace revealed that a plot of land with­in the pro­posed expan­sion site had been pur­chased in an attempt to delay the con­struc­tion.

When the announce­ment came on Thurs­day 15th, ‘cli­mate suf­fragettes’ smashed the win­dows of the Depart­ment of Trans­port (http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/418697.html) and on Sat­ur­day 17th Jan, 500 flash mobbed at Heathrows ter­mi­nal 5.

For all the details, pic­tures, videos and more vis­it -
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/418105.html

3) Plane Stu­pid shut down Stanst­ed Air­port, 08–12.08
50 activists from Plane Stu­pid shut down Stanst­ed Air­port by camp­ing on the run­way and sur­round­ing them­selves with for­ti­fied secu­ri­ty fenc­ing. Plane Stu­pid announced ‘We are gen­uine­ly grate­ful for the lev­el of sup­port from peo­ple who have agreed with us that des­per­ate times call for des­per­ate mea­sures. We have used this action to ask for every­one to ‘please, do some­thing’. We hope that all those that have expressed sup­port for today’s action will now think about what they are going to do to ensure the sur­vival of our plan­et and peo­ple on it’.
http://www.planestupid.com/?q=content/plane-stupid-shuts-stansted-airport

4) 48 hours of action against E.on and new coal, 28–29.11.08
The 48 hours of action was a great first shot across the bows. E.On were rat­tled, local and nation­al media took an inter­est, resources were gath­ered and are now ready to go, a new web­site is now up and run­ning (http://www.e‑onf-off.org.uk/), a list of tar­gets has been com­piled and E.on know that if they try to build a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth then they will face a bar­rage of direct action — both towards their dai­ly oper­a­tions and their sup­ply chain. E.on be warned. Actions took place in: Lon­don, Brighton, Bris­tol, Nor­wich, Coven­try, Not­ting­ham & Coven­try and at Kingsnorth itself. http://risingtide.org.uk/node/309

Plus, ‘Green Banksy’ invades Kingsnorth dur­ing the 48 hours: An
uniden­ti­fied group alleged­ly pen­e­trat­ed Kingsnorth secu­ri­ty and switched off almost 500 megawatts of gen­er­at­ing capac­i­ty, cut­ting almost 2% off the nation’s pow­er sup­ply for about four hours.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/12/414463.html

5) Scot­tish coal rail ter­mi­nal shut down, 15.12.08
30 cam­paign­ers from Coal Action Scot­land togeth­er with local res­i­dents peace­ful­ly block­ad­ed the entrance to the Scot­tish Coal-oper­at­ed Raven­struther coal rail ter­mi­nal in South Lanark­shire for 8 hours. The pro­tes­tors were act­ing to oppose the five open cast coal mines that deliv­er coal to the rail ter­mi­nal and in resis­tance to the thir­teen new open cast coal mines due to open in Scot­land. Pro­tes­tors erect­ed and scaled a 15ft scaf­fold­ing tri­pod, block­ing trucks from enter­ing the ter­mi­nal. Oth­ers locked them­selves by their necks to a con­vey­or belt and a bull­doz­er, pre­vent­ing coal stock­piles from being loaded onto trains. An
esti­mat­ed 6,380 tonnes of coal were stopped from being trans­port­ed from the coal mines to pow­er sta­tions, pre­vent­ing the equiv­a­lent to 11,675.4 tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmos­phere.
http://coalactionedinburgh.wordpress.com/

6) E.ON forced to aban­don recruit­ment tour, Novem­ber 2008
Anti-coal protests at grad­u­ate careers fairs around the UK forced E.ON to can­cel its recruit­ment tour. The ener­gy com­pa­ny, which is plan­ning to build a new coal pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth, Kent, saw sev­en­teen of its careers events dis­rupt­ed. This was a co-ordi­nat­ed nation­al effort from stu­dents involved in Peo­ple & Plan­et, the Coal Action Net­work, and the Camp for Cli­mate Action. Leaflets, ban­ners, fan­cy dress, con­ver­sa­tions with atten­dees and eye-catch­ing stunts were used to embar­rass E.ON and dis­suade grad­u­ates from join­ing the com­pa­ny. The Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, one of E.ON’s main finan­cial back­ers, were also tar­get­ed at the fairs over their role in pro­vid­ing loans to build the pro­posed new pow­er sta­tion.
http://leaveitintheground.org.uk/?p=185

7) Kel­ster­back For­est Occu­pa­tion (Frank­furt Air­port), ongo­ing Resist Frank­furt Air­port Expan­sion — defend the for­est camp. After Heathrow, Frank­furt is the largest air­port in Europe. Fra­port (the com­pa­ny run­ning the air­port) and the Ger­man gov­ern­ment are try­ing to build a new run­way, to mas­sive­ly increase flights. To build the new run­way, Fra­port need to clear 250,000 m² of pro­tect­ed for­est. For sev­en months, activists have been squat­ting the for­est, build­ing tree plat­forms and float­ing rafts to resist attempts to chop down the for­est. Jan­u­ary 2009 is bring­ing threat of evic­tion — and they need all the help they can get.
http://waldbesetzung.blogsport.de/english-information/ or
http://waldbesetzung.blogsport.de/photos/

—————–
Ris­ing Tide UK,
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street,
Lon­don E1 1ES
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk
www.fossilfoolsday.org
Tel: 07708 794665

See also the Camp for Cli­mate Action (www.climatecamp.org.uk), Net­work for
Cli­mate Action (www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk) and Cli­mate Indy­media
(www.climateimc.org)

———-

Please send any­thing you’d like includ­ed in this news sheet to:
newssheet@risingtide.org.uk

To view pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Ris­ing Tide News Sheet, vis­it the News
Sheet Archive at http://risingtide.org.uk/newssheet

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

For more infor­ma­tion…
email: info@risingtide.org.uk
Phone: +44 (0)845 458 8923 / +44 (0)7708 794665
Address: 62 Fieldgate St, Lon­don, E1 1ES
Web site: http://risingtide.org.uk

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and replace at with @).

protests against the roll-out of the ID card scheme & database

Against the impo­si­tion of ID cards on Non-EU stu­dents and mar­riage visa hold­ers.

Fingerprinted barbed wire fence graphicAgainst the impo­si­tion of ID cards on Non-EU stu­dents and mar­riage visa hold­ers.

This is not the first time for­eign nation­als or migrants have been used as guinea pigs to test a law or tech­nol­o­gy. Exam­ples include the Asy­lum Reg­is­tra­tion Cards (ARC), which is a sim­i­lar card that asy­lum seek­ers have been required to car­ry since 2002. Once migrants have been used as a ‘road test’ for the wide­ly opposed ID scheme, the gov­ern­ment will start on the rest of us. From 2010 on, the gov­ern­ment pre­dicts that one mil­lion cards will be hand­ed out every year.

For more back­ground infor­ma­tion on how this ‘drip drip’ approach to impos­ing bio­met­ric ID cards relates to migra­tion man­age­ment and the Home Office’s points sys­tem read:

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3147
http://nobordersmanchester.blogspot.com/2008/11/defy-id-cards-no-one-is-illegal.html

==========
No No No ID cardsNewcastle ID cards protest
27th Novem­ber 2008
This evening approx­i­mate­ly 13 activists from No Bor­ders North East hand­ed out 200 anti-ID card leaflets to shop­pers in Cen­tral New­cas­tle. Ban­ners and plac­ards were also held, and a very pos­i­tive response was giv­en from the pub­lic.

Tues­day saw the intro­duc­tion of Iden­ti­ty Cards for non-EU cit­i­zens. No Bor­ders views this as yet anoth­er attempt to vic­tim­ize an often voice­less group, and so has orches­trat­ed a series of protests this week through­out the coun­try.

http://www.noborders.org.uk

.….

This morn­ing, dur­ing the peak rush hour time of 7.30 — 9.00 am, 4 activists from No Bor­ders North East per­formed an anti‑i.d card ban­ner drop from a bridge over one of the city’s busiest inner motor­ways. The largest ban­ner read “No To ID Cards, Free­dom For All!” and was accom­pa­nied by a small­er No Bor­ders ban­ner.

The reac­tion from the dri­vers below was over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive, with many honk­ing horns, wav­ing and giv­ing thumbs up.

Today sees the start of the ID card scheme, with non-EU cit­i­zens apply­ing for, or renew­ing visas for study or mar­riage, being made to car­ry a card and have their details put on the Gov­ern­men­t’s data­base. Immi­gra­tion law already gives the Home Office pow­ers it would like to exert over every­body. Under a cloud of anti-immi­gra­tion hys­te­ria the gov­ern­ment is increas­ing it’s social con­trol and attempt­ing to ush­er in unprece­dent­ed pow­ers of sur­veil­lance over the whole pop­u­la­tion.

The police came along while we were doing it, but did­nt seem to have any prob­lem with it. Inter­est­ing­ly how­ev­er, they said that an anar­chist sym­bol can be deemed offen­sive and thus remov­able under a pub­lic order act (?!). We told them that our No Bor­ders ban­ner with a large anar­chist sym­bol was­n’t in fact anar­chist relat­ed, and they believed us for some rea­son.… 😉
—

York­shire Activists block­ade Sheffield Bor­der Agency Cen­tre

1.12.2008
At 8am this morn­ing a group of York­shire activists block­ad­ed the Sheffield Bor­der Agency Inter­ro­ga­tion Cen­tre at Vul­can House using bicy­cle locks and super­glue to attach them­selves to both entrances. The group are there in response to the intro­duc­tion of com­pul­so­ry ID cards for non-EU peo­ple on stu­dent or mar­riage visas. They are dis­play­ing two ban­ners, one reads “My iden­ti­ty is not your prop­er­ty” and the oth­er “Noth­ing to hide? Every­thing to fear! Defy ID!”

Some appli­cants have been turned away by the Bor­der Agency staff but many were sup­port­ive of the actions the group has tak­en. Speak­ing to a block­ad­er, one appli­cant said that by intro­duc­ing com­pul­so­ry ID cards, the gov­ern­ment have shown that “they just want to con­trol peo­ple”. Bor­der Agency staff have called the police to remove the pro­test­ers but at the time of send­ing (10:30am) the pro­test­ers are still in place.

An activist from Brad­ford (who is cur­rent­ly super­glued to two oth­ers in front of the main entrance) said “The gov­ern­ment are try­ing to intro­duce ID cards through the back door, tar­get­ing some of the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in the coun­try.” A Sheffield activist added “If we want to save the peo­ple of Great Britain from ID cards, we must act now!”

Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion has meant that, since 25^th Novem­ber, for­eign spous­es and non-EU stu­dents who apply for, or renew, visas will be forced to attend an inter­ro­ga­tion and be issued with an ID card that will hold their name, pho­to­graph, nation­al­i­ty and immi­gra­tion sta­tus, along with a bio­met­ric chip that will hold their fin­ger­prints and dig­i­tal image. The details will be held indef­i­nite­ly on the UK Iden­ti­ty Ser­vice data­base. Delays meant that the Sheffield Bor­der Agency Cen­tre only began inter­ro­ga­tions from today (1^st Decem­ber).

Update — 11 activists were arrest­ed (sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than were thought to be locked on) after hold­ing the block­ade for more than three hours. All released with with ver­bal cau­tions.

—
Lunar House ID poster
Iden­ti­ty Cards Protest, Lunar House, Croy­don

26.11.2008
On the cor­ner of George Street in Croy­don, Lon­don, a Novem­ber sun was warm­ing the shop­pers and office work­ers on their lunch breaks, but a few hun­dred metres north on Welles­ley Road a bit­ing Siber­ian wind seared the demon­stra­tors out­side Lunar House. It seemed appro­pri­ate that such a freez­ing blast should sur­round the UK head­quar­ters of the Bor­der and Immi­gra­tion Agency and indeed be gen­er­at­ed by its twen­ty sto­ries of the grim ear­ly 1970s office com­plex. After all its rai­son d’être is to give would-be immi­grants and asy­lum seeks an extreme­ly cold recep­tion.

Its bleak anonymi­ty is also a warn­ing of things to come for all of us in a Brave New Britain of state sur­veil­lance and con­trol whose infra­struc­ture is increas­ing­ly with us through secu­ri­ty cam­eras, the inter­cep­tion mobile phone sig­nals and elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions and the planned intro­duc­tion of uni­ver­sal ID cards.

The pick­et, called by Lon­don NoBor­ders http://london.noborders.org.uk and NO2ID http://www.no2id.net/, marked the start of Bio­met­ric ID cards, which are being issued from today, 25 Novem­ber 2008, to all non-EU stu­dents and spous­es apply­ing for, or renew­ing visas for study or mar­riage. The cards will have a pho­to­graph with name, date of birth, nation­al­i­ty, immi­gra­tion sta­tus and bio­met­ric details, includ­ing fin­ger­prints and dig­i­tal facial image will be stored on a chip on the card as well as being held indef­i­nite­ly on the UK Iden­ti­ty Ser­vice data­base.

Soon all for­eign nation­als in the UK will be required to have these cards, which will be rolled out to oth­er groups includ­ing stu­dents who want a stu­dent loan by 2010. And from 2011 you will need to get one – and have your details on that data­base — if you want to renew or get a pass­port.

What wor­ries many of us is not just the use to which our own gov­ern­ment and secu­ri­ty ser­vices might make of such data – link­ing to face recog­ni­tion soft­ware work­ing on images from secu­ri­ty cam­eras and mobile phone data would enable our every move to be tracked – but the cer­tain­ty that it will get into oth­er hands – such as those of our US friends in the CIA, as well as crim­i­nal and com­mer­cial organ­i­sa­tions who will have their own ideas about how such all-per­va­sive data might be used.

Among those at today’s demon­stra­tion was David Mery http://gizmonaut.net/bits/suspect.html a man who has achieved a small per­son­al vic­to­ry against the jug­ger­naut data­base state.

Mery was stopped by police enter­ing South­wark tube sta­tion on 28 July for being “calm on arrival, almost too calm” and hav­ing a lar­gish ruck­sack and a strong French accent. It was three weeks after the Lon­don bomb­ing – and — per­haps luck­i­ly for him, six days after the shoot­ing of Jean Charles de Menezes. This time at least the police didn’t shoot first and ask ques­tions lat­er, but his treat­ment in the months and years fol­low­ing the event can most favourably be described as Kafkaesque. He final­ly (or at least prob­a­bly) suc­ceed­ed in hav­ing both his fin­ger­prints and DNA record removed from the police data­bas­es, but it took over two years of fight­ing. His blog http://gizmonaut.net/ and arti­cles are essen­tial read­ing for any­one who won­ders why civ­il lib­er­ties are impor­tant.

—

Leeds NO2ID have burnt a mock ID card in protest at the intro­duc­tion of the ID card scheme for for­eign nation­als

Video — video/quicktime 13M

Around 20 activists braved the freez­ing tem­per­a­tures and rain to gath­er in Leeds last night on the eve of the intro­duc­tion of ID cards for for­eign nation­als.

The protest was made my burn­ing a mock ID card in pub­lic.

The Protest passed off peace­ful­ly with­out the pres­ence of West York­shire Police.

—

Liv­er­pool anti-ID pick­et: No One Is Ille­gal

20 stu­dents and No Bor­der­s/an­ti-ID cam­paign­ers from Man­ches­ter made their way to Liv­er­pool on 25th Novem­ber, the day that the gov­ern­ment intro­duced ID cards for non-EU nation­als liv­ing in the UK. There they joined a group of 30 Mersey­side activists out­side Reliance House to protest at the intro­duc­tion of com­pul­so­ry ID cards for inter­na­tion­al stu­dents and non-EU spous­es on that day.

Reliance House is where inter­view­ing, pho­tograph­ing and fin­ger­print­ing will take place from 4th Decem­ber before being issued with a bio­met­ric ID card. It is also Liverpool’s report­ing cen­tre where those seek­ing asy­lum have to ‘sign in’ on a reg­u­lar basis while their claims are being processed. If their claims fail they can be held, with­out pri­or notice, in the immi­gra­tion deten­tion facil­i­ty in the same build­ing for up to 7 days.

It is thus imper­a­tive to make the con­nec­tion between ID cards and the assault on the rights of non-EU nation­als want­i­ng to live, work and study in the UK. Peo­ple from Man­ches­ter No Bor­ders had brought along plac­ards and ban­ners pro­claim­ing that “no one is ille­gal”. Where the state rein­forces the divi­sion between legal and ‘ille­gal’ peo­ple our sol­i­dar­i­ty must extend to those most affect­ed by the scheme.

Some men­tion in the news:
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2008/11/25/protests-in-city-over-id-cards-100252–22330184/
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2470740.0.Protests_as_first_ID_card_scheme_launched_in_Britain.php
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2008/11/26/protesters-say-no-to-introduction-of-id-cards-for-foreign-students-64375–22341365/

(Dur­ing the pick­et of Reliance House, some first con­tact was made with indi­vid­ual No Bor­der activists from Liv­er­pool, Mersey­side and North Wales. If you are from this region and want to get active in a No Bor­ders group, please email us, so we can get you in touch)

manchesternoborders@riseup.net
http://www.manchesternoborders.org.uk

—
Cardiff No ID protest
Over 60 peo­ple attend­ed our protest against the intro­duc­tion of Bio­met­ric ID Cards for non-EU stu­dents and spous­es on Tues­day. The demon­stra­tion was held for a cou­ple of hours at mid­day out­side the Cardiff office of the UK Bor­der Agency at 31–33 New­port Road. Peo­ple the gov­ern­ment is forc­ing to car­ry ID cards will have to attend this cen­tre for inter­ro­ga­tion, pho­tograph­ing and fin­ger­print­ing.

We dis­played ban­ners, held plac­ards, waved giant mock ID cards and dis­trib­uted 600 copies of this leaflet — the reac­tion from passers by was com­plete­ly sup­port­ive. Many peo­ple used their lunch­break to join the protest for a short while before return­ing to work or study. This protest was part of a nation­wide day of action out­side UKBA cen­tres by No Bor­ders Net­work who, along with Defy ID, NO2ID and oth­er groups, held protests in Croy­don, Liv­er­pool, Glas­gow, Soli­hull, and New­cas­tle. Though many of these protests around the coun­try got into local news­pa­pers, Welsh media cov­er­age has been min­i­mal.

This protest appears to be just the start of resis­tance to ID Cards, the British Air­line Pilots’ Asso­ci­a­tion (BALPA) has threat­ened indus­tri­al action if the gov­ern­ment goes ahead with it’s plan to impose ID cards on air­port work­ers next year. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have signed up to NO2ID’s pledge not to reg­is­ter for a card, even if that means going to prison. No Bor­ders South Wales will be protest­ing out­side the Bor­der agency again, on Wednes­day 10th Decem­ber when the Cardiff office will start to reg­is­ter peo­ple, join us if you can.

“These new ID cards are not only a repres­sive mea­sure against non-EU stu­dents and spous­es, they are the first shot in an attack against everyone’s lib­er­ty. In tar­get­ing a large­ly voice­less migrant group, who have the least chance to com­plain and the most to lose, the gov­ern­ment is fol­low­ing a famil­iar path of repres­sive regimes through­out his­to­ry. Immi­gra­tion law already gives the Home Office pow­ers it would like to exert over every­body. By resist­ing the repres­sion of migrants, we defend the free­dom of every­one!“

For links to leaflet, video and oth­er stuff, see http://noborderswales.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/cardiff-protest-against-id-cards/
—

Soli­hull protest against the impo­si­tion of bio­met­ric ID cards on migrants

26.11.2008
Yes­ter­day Nobor­ders Birm­ing­ham protest­ed against the impo­si­tion of bio­met­ric ID cards at the UK Bor­der Agency Office in Soli­hull. They were met by a puz­zling dis­pro­por­tion­ate police response at Domin­ion Court, 41 Sta­tion Road, Soli­hull — around 12 police offi­cers, includ­ing 3 police vans and an evi­dence gath­er­er. This may have some­thing to do with the polic­ing of a pre­vi­ous protest around the cor­ner at Sand­ford House, the home office report­ing cen­tre, where hun­dreds of Con­golese demon­stra­tors fac­ing mass depor­ta­tion occu­pied the main road http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2007/04/368076.html

A ban­ner pro­claim­ing ‘Free­dom of Move­ment for All’ was held by the entrance of the UK Bor­ders Agency Office. The police offered to ‘facil­i­tate’ our protest by a seem­ing­ly polite offer to arrange for a met­al bar­ri­er to hang our ban­ner from. How­ev­er, we realised that the six foot high hedge in front of the build­ing would make our protest invis­i­ble to almost every­one, so instead we hung our ban­ner by the main road and dis­trib­uted around 600 leaflets to some very inter­est­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Fol­low­ing a con­cerned report from a ded­i­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ty police offi­cer ear­li­er in the day, two equal­ly com­mit­ted coun­cil work­ers from the envi­ron­men­tal and health depart­ment at Soli­hull Coun­cil turned up in their lunch hour to ensure that the lit­er­a­ture being dis­trib­uted was of a polit­i­cal, rather than com­mer­cial, nature and thus would not run afoul of local bye-laws on littering/flyering (no one seemed quite sure). This fol­lows sev­er­al oth­er inci­dents known to us in cen­tral Birm­ing­ham where coun­cil offi­cials have attempt­ed to apply sim­i­lar bye-laws (with accom­pa­ny­ing threats of fines and court appear­ances) to dis­suade peo­ple from hand­ing out polit­i­cal lit­er­a­ture. It has been not­ed before that the par­lia­men­tary leg­is­la­tion which serves as the basis of these bye-laws specif­i­cal­ly exempt­ed mate­ri­als of a polit­i­cal nature. The coun­cil work­ers also showed some inter­est in the ban­ner, rais­ing con­cern over the man­ner of its attach­ment to some local shrubs and some­thing else about pri­vate prop­er­ty, but in the end they seemed to decide that nei­ther the pub­lic nor the shrubs were at any risk (poten­tial, real, or oth­er­wise) and returned to what remained of their lunch hour.

Two stu­dents from Pak­istan informed us that they had to book an appoint­ment to begin the bio­met­ric ID card process and they could­n’t return home until this had been com­plet­ed. They claimed today they were told by staff that they would be required to give blood sam­ples and have iris scans for their bio­met­ric cards so if they com­mit­ted any ‘crimes’ in the UK they could be iden­ti­fied imme­di­ate­ly. It appears that the pri­vate com­pa­ny con­tract­ed to the tune of £5.6 bil­lion, and entrust­ed with sen­si­tive bio­met­ric data, are already doing their best to impress upon appli­cants that ID cards will be effec­tive at ‘fight­ing crime’. Lib­er­ty, the civ­il lib­er­ties and human rights organ­i­sa­tion, have already expressed con­cern about the Government’s abil­i­ty to safe­guard individual’s inti­mate details on the Nation­al Iden­ti­ty Reg­is­ter after Gov­ern­ment depart­ments last year lost 30 mil­lion pieces of per­son­al data, includ­ing those of 25 mil­lion child ben­e­fit claimants. ‘We have ID cards in our coun­try but they aren’t bio­met­ric’ said one of the stu­dents. ‘It feels very dis­crim­i­na­to­ry that we are being tar­get­ed first. Why aren’t they pro­cess­ing UK nation­als first?’ The inter­na­tion­al stu­dents also point­ed out that this was cost­ing them a great deal of mon­ey. Not only did they have to pay exor­bi­tant fees for their cours­es but on top of that they have to pay £300 for their visas and now they have to pay for their bio­met­ric ID cards and they are only per­mit­ted to work 20 hours a week. They also added that these mea­sures would serve to put over­seas stu­dents off study­ing here cit­ing Aus­tralia as a more wel­com­ing alter­na­tive.

The use of for­eign nation­als as guinea pigs for the more wide­spread intro­duc­tion of ID cards is a strat­e­gy to run a test­bed for the tech­nol­o­gy on peo­ple with­out a voice. It has become appar­ent that the gov­ern­ment is like­ly to pick off cer­tain sec­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty in Britain one at a time. This divide and rule strat­e­gy has been used through­out his­to­ry, most notably by the Nazi regime in Ger­many.

When the British gov­ern­ment came for the migrants,
I remained silent;
I was not a migrant.

When they came for the air­line work­ers,
I remained silent;
I was not an air­line work­er.

When they came for the con­victs,
I did not speak out;
I was not a con­vict.

When they came for the health work­ers,
I did not speak out;
I was not a health work­er.

When they came for the stu­dents,
I did not speak out;
I was not a stu­dent.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

nobor­ders-brum @ riseup.net

—

ID demo
http://glasgowanarchists.wordpress.com/

—

Also in the news:

ID ‘read­ing’ machines on Cana­da and Mex­i­co bor­ders
‘Smart’ CCTV in Portsmouth

Buy Nothing Day reports — London x2, Norwich, Wrexham, Liverpool & Manchester

“Take your clothes off!

Swap Shop 1Swap Shop 2“Take your clothes off! Swap them with your friends for FREE!” was the mes­sage from the Space Hijack­ers http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/welcome.html, who decid­ed to set up their clothes swap — “the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year” — on the low­er ground floor of TOPSHOP at Oxford Cir­cus (Lon­don). The idea was to demon­strate that “we don’t need to spend mon­ey we don’t have on things we don’t need.”

The action, designed as it was to sub­vert one of the icon­ic tem­ples of con­sumerism seemed to baf­fle police and did­n’t amuse the secu­ri­ty staff, who stopped me tak­ing pic­tures there. One oth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er was man­han­dled out of the store, but I was treat­ed very polite­ly, with sev­er­al secu­ri­ty men stand­ing between me and the action and telling me that pho­to­graph was not allowed. On of the store man­agers even offered to per­son­al­ly help me find any clothes I might wish to buy else­where in the store, a pos­si­bil­i­ty I found most unlike­ly.

I left the store (with a rather large escort until I left the premis­es) and walked around to the side exit where I expect­ed the clothes swap­pers to be eject­ed, arriv­ing just before they emerged, and was able to pho­to­graph them con­tin­u­ing to swap clothes on the pave­ment in Regent Street. Here one police­man did attempt to pre­vent me from tak­ing pic­tures, claim­ing I was caus­ing an obstruc­tion (which clear­ly I was­n’t) and as usu­al I moved back a cou­ple of feet before return­ing to take pic­tures when he moved away.

Things did threat­en to get out of hand when a rather elder­ly police offi­cer (at my age all police­men are sup­posed to look young), helped by a ‘Red Cap’ (rather sin­is­ter pri­vate secu­ri­ty war­dens employed by the ‘New West End Com­pa­ny’ to ensure shop­pers don’t step out of line) start­ed to push peo­ple around, but most­ly oth­er offi­cers took a more sen­si­ble approach, some even talk­ing and jok­ing with the swap­pers as they con­tin­ued to exchange items of cloth­ing on the pave­ment.

Some shop­pers pass­ing by stopped to watch, and a few took a leaflet, but there was no evi­dence of any Dam­a­scene con­ver­sions, most hur­ry­ing on clutch­ing their loaded shop­ping bags, des­per­ate to spend more mon­ey.

One of those tak­ing part was held by the police for a while as they had decid­ed he was the ring­leader. He got a big cheer when he was released, wav­ing his pink ‘Get out of TOPSHOP Jail Free’ Chance Card and the Anti-social Behav­iour Act Notice for the Dis­per­sal of Groups (see http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2003/ukpga_20030038_en_5 ) which the Met had issued. This required him to leave the Oxford St/Regent St area for the next 24 hours. For­tu­nate­ly the map pro­vid­ed did­n’t include the Red Lion, where he announced his inten­tion of going — and at this point I also left as I was already late for a meet­ing with friends in Streatham. Some of the oth­ers looked as if they were going to con­tin­ue their fun along Oxford Street.

========

All in all, I think it was a good action.

around 30–40 peo­ple turned up and swapped clothes, hun­dreds of leaflets were hand­ed out on oxford street before the action, and when it did hap­pen, Top­Shop had a shop full of Police, PCSO’s and secu­ri­ty, they closed the entrance to the shop and removed the ‘red phone box’ meet­ing point dis­play.

Lots of lit­er­a­ture was hand­ed out, and plen­ty of pret­ty activist flesh, (oh my).

two arrests hap­pened, one for refus­ing to give a name and address (sec­tion 50 of the Police Reform Act) appar­ent­ly it was anti-social behav­iour. On the con­trary I thought it was incred­i­bly social behav­iour show by the hijack­ers. Both arrests were released with­out charge fair­ly swift­ly. Although one was dri­ven to Trafal­gar square and dropped off there for no appar­ent rea­son?

Lat­er on the actions con­tin­ued with a street par­ty in King­ly Court shop­ping cen­tre, and then a road blo­cade at Sev­en Dials with plen­ty of danc­ing.

thanks to all of the non-shop swap­pers and to the love­ly peo­ple who swapped their clothes with mine for the great new out­fit I have.

========

Buy noth­ing day — brix­ton report

“Buy noth­ing day” is an inter­na­tion­al anti-con­sumerist day. Put sim­ply : peo­ple are encour­aged to stop shop­ing for one day. In Brix­ton, activist set up a stall to give away free food and oth­er free items.

Activists met at 11am at Library House to pick up veg­eta­bles and part of the con­tent of the Library House­’s freeshop. The items were brought to Brix­ton, and were giv­en out for free in front of the super­mar­ket next to the tube sta­tion.

——
Norwich rat race
To mark Buy Noth­ing Day, activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide held a Rat Race in the Nor­wich city cen­tre.

The busiest high street in Nor­wich was today full of rats. The rats were equipped with plac­ards read­ing Work Hard­er, Earn More Mon­ey, Buy More Things, Keep Going, and leaflets telling peo­ple to join the con­sump­tion Rat Race. The reverse of the leaflet, revealed the spoof and informed peo­ple that today was buy noth­ing day and per­haps they should con­sid­er the envi­ron­men­tal and social con­se­quences of exces­sive con­sump­tion.

600 leaflets were hand­ed out in total (see below), and many passers-by expressed their sup­port, although one by pass­er was heard to call “Get a job” to which one of the rat (a teacher) shout­ed back, “It’s a Sat­ur­day you toss­er!” – the crowd of shop­pers that had gath­ered around the rats all laughed.BND Norwich flier front
BND Norwich flier back

——–
Wrexham BND freeconomy leaflet
“Free Socks!” “Why? Who’s hold­ing him?”
29.11.2008
In Wrex­ham town cen­tre this morn­ing, the local Freecon­o­my group held a Sock (FREE) Shop — that’s socks for free, not a shop free of socks or even free­ing Sock. Hun­dreds of pairs of warm socks were dis­trib­uted in sub­ze­ro tem­per­a­tures to peo­ple with cold feet — and hands — along with leaflets explain­ing what Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham does and invit­ing peo­ple to get involved in the hap­py world of giv­ing and shar­ing.

There was a great deal of puz­zle­ment about a stall offer­ing free socks in the town cen­tre on a busy Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

One pass­ing shop­per came over to find out more about our cam­paign to free the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Socks’ from his cap­tor. More com­mon­ly, peo­ple just could­n’t seem to believe that the socks were for free:

Free? What’s the catch? You don’t get any­thing for free… do you?

But of course you do. Or, at least, some­one does.…

Loads of stuff hap­pens for free all the time. Cap­i­tal­ism has only sur­vived this long because of the free labour which is pro­vid­ed by any­one whose work helps some­one else to get rich­er. Marx had some­thing to say about this. Land and resources stolen from the peo­ple — our own Eagles Mead­ow includ­ed — are used by busi­ness­es to gen­er­ate prof­it, and trashed in the process. We nur­ture our chil­dren for free because we love them, but all that free care and atten­tion is what brings the next gen­er­a­tion of work­ers into being — a free gift to cap­i­tal­ism. Much of the free stuff we do as par­ents, car­ers, part­ners, friends, ‘good neigh­bours’ and so on is large­ly invis­i­ble to the econ­o­my, although with­out it the econ­o­my as it is could­n’t func­tion at all.

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is just doing a bit to raise the pro­file of free giv­ing and encour­age peo­ple to spread their free gifts around rather than trash­ing them, which is what hap­pens when good stuff ends up at the tip, for exam­ple. We hand­ed out socks and leaflets for about 3 hours, by which time even mul­ti­ple lay­ers of our free socks could­n’t keep our feet and hands from freez­ing, so we called it a day.

LEAFLET TEXT

FREECONOMY WREXHAM… Bring and Take… Free for All…

What’s it all about?

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is:
for every­one; envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly; shar­ing; giv­ing; fun!; re-using stuff; com­plete­ly free; sus­tain­able.

Turn over to find out more…

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is about gift and shar­ing, show­ing that it is pos­si­ble to make things work with­out pay­ment or finan­cial prof­it. In a world where every­thing seems to have a price — often more than we can afford — it can be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a com­plete­ly free event. But all the goods on our stalls and at our events are there for the tak­ing. Every­one is invit­ed to come and help them­selves.

Bring and Take is made pos­si­ble by every­one who gives their time and ener­gy to help out, who donates goods to be giv­en away, who loans a venue for free or lets us use a van or bakes a cake, and — most impor­tant­ly — every­one who takes away all the things that are donat­ed!

Re-use for the plan­et. Before you throw any­thing away, think about whether some­one else could use it. Nat­ur­al resources, time and skills were need­ed to make that item. If it’s binned, all those things are lost. By shar­ing and re-using, we can keep wealth in our com­mu­ni­ties, help each oth­er, cre­ate good­will and hap­pi­ness, and do a lit­tle bit to save the plan­et.

freeconomywrexham[at]yahoo.co.uk

——–
What, No Prices?
Liverpool Buy Nothing Day 08
More than 150 peo­ple came to Next To Nowhere’s Free Shop on Sat­ur­day in Liv­er­pool. This was a one-off event to mark Buy Noth­ing Day. The organ­is­ers encour­aged peo­ple to come in by offer­ing free tea and toast and free mistle­toe on the street out­side.

Real­ly, it’s free

Buy Noth­ing Day orig­i­nat­ed in the USA in 1992. It was intend­ed to make a state­ment about over-con­sump­tion and the amount of waste this gen­er­ates, and encour­age peo­ple to re-think their lifestyles. It gen­er­at­ed some con­tro­ver­sy, and still does, if the com­ments to the pre­vi­ous post­ing about Buy Noth­ing Day are any­thing to go by! Some peo­ple think con­sump­tion by itself is not the issue, oth­ers think the event is patro­n­is­ing to peo­ple who can’t afford to buy much any­way.
But none of the peo­ple who wan­dered into the free shop last Sat­ur­day seemed to feel patro­n­ised. Some, who had come to town to do Christ­mas shop­ping, looked in out of curi­ousi­ty, and found they pre­ferred doing some “non-shop­ping”, and get­ting some refresh­ments at the free cafe. Peo­ple with lit­tle mon­ey were hap­py to take away free items they need­ed, and for the peo­ple who had donat­ed things, it was sat­is­fy­ing to see goods they don’t need any more being tak­en for re-use. Not every­body who came had heard of Buy Noth­ing Day, and had to be reas­sured that every­thing real­ly was free!
What­ev­er the gen­er­al crit­i­cisms, this par­tic­u­lar free shop worked as a co-oper­a­tive event, it intro­duced peo­ple to the social cen­tre who had nev­er been there before, and it gave peo­ple a taste of how lib­er­at­ing it is to do with­out cur­ren­cy for once.

——–

Buy Noth­ing Day Man­ches­ter: Pri­mark Feels the Wrath of Santa’s Lit­tle Work­ers!

On Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber sev­en stu­dents braved Manchester’s heav­ing Mar­ket Street in sup­port of Buy Noth­ing Day 2008. In fes­tive dress and armed with some thought-pro­vok­ing cloth­ing labels of their own, the aim was to raise aware­ness about unnec­es­sary con­sumerism over Christ­mas, and to reveal the true cost of high street fash­ion to Sat­ur­day shop­pers.

The action began incog­ni­to, as the pro­tes­tors secret­ly deliv­ered mes­sages ques­tion­ing con­sumer greed and the uneth­i­cal sourc­ing of cheap fash­ion into the pock­ets, zips, and cuffs of cloth­ing in Pri­mark. Mes­sages such as “I won­der if the per­son who made this gar­ment is hap­py?”, and “Do you real­ly need anoth­er one of these?” were soon dot­ted around the bustling store and secu­ri­ty quick­ly react­ed, call­ing all clean­ers to the ground floor to remove the labels. The pro­test­ers escaped unscathed, mer­ry in the knowl­edge that the chances of hunt­ing out all the labels would be pret­ty slim.

After a quick change of clothes the pro­tes­tors took to the street, antlers and all. With a splen­did ban­ner and leaflets a‑plenty they approached the swarms of passers-by and announced that they need not spend mon­ey this Christ­mas to be hap­py. Some engag­ing debates ensued con­cern­ing con­sumerism and sweat­shops. It was felt by some that only the finan­cial­ly priv­i­leged could afford to have a con­science, and that out­lets such as Pri­mark offered those with a low­er income the chance to look (and there­fore feel) good. Oth­ers had been so far unaware of shops like Primark’s asso­ci­a­tion with fac­to­ries in India, and were gen­uine­ly shocked at some of the sto­ries the pro­tes­tors relayed about under­paid and mis­treat­ed work­ers. Whilst not every­body agreed, the val­ue of live­ly pub­lic debate can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. Talk­ing about some­thing is the first step to chang­ing it and per­haps now a few peo­ple will think twice before buy­ing some­thing just because it is cheap. It’s real cost is inhu­mane­ly high.

TopShop SwapShop (London), Buy Nothing Day action (+ Steal Something Day) + Leeds + Liverpool + Bristol

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!

TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!
Top Shop Swap Shop buy nothing day flier
TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

In the light of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis and the out­rage over the sweat­shop con­di­tions that most high street brands make their clothes in, the swap­shop is your chance to re-vamp your wardrobe with a free con­science! Leap­ing away from the drudgery of big cor­po­rate fash­ion with it’s dodgy busi­ness prac­tices and spend spend spend atti­tude, the Top­shop swap­shop takes fash­ion back to it’s roots.

Sim­ply turn up at TOPSHOP on Oxford Street wear­ing an out­fit you wish to upgrade, then on the stroke of 2, mar­vel as hun­dreds of fash­ion moguls offer to trade your clothes with you.

Fan­cy that girls jumper? Why not offer to swap your belt for it?
That boy’s hat is to die for, how about a trade for your jeans?
Nice skirt, fan­cy trad­ing my t‑shirt for it?

After a hec­tic re-work­ing of your look you can then walk proud­ly back onto the streets of Lon­don town with a new wardrobe and not hav­ing spent a sin­gle pen­ny.

You can buy lots of clothes but you can’t buy style.

Please spread far and wide…

DISCLAIMER:

The above event is in no way sup­port­ed or con­doned by Top­Shop. Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to any brand liv­ing or dead is mere­ly coin­ci­den­tal.

http://www.spacehijackers.org

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

Steal Something Day
Steal Some­thing Day, a shame­less 24-hour steal­ing spree! a cri­tique of BND and call to action, recy­cled from pre­vi­ous years for your enter­tain­ment

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

Buy Noth­ing Day Leeds

In Brig­gate this Sat­ur­day (29th of Nov) there will be a Buy Noth­ing extrav­a­gan­za. We will have Christ­mas car­ols telling peo­ple of the woes of shop­ping, there will be hot tea and cof­fee to help ex-shop­pers read­just to there new found hap­pi­ness, and ideas of presents that do not involve con­sumerism. From
11am — till dark we will be ask­ing peo­ple to ques­tion con­sumerism and join us in buy­ing noth­ing!

Last year was a major suc­cess and BND strikes again. Please bake cakes, bring food and any­thing you would like to give away. There will be a free shop, music and tables. Bring any­thing down to join in the par­ty!
Leeds BND

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

Liv­er­pool
Buy Nothing Day (Liverpool) flier
next to nowhere is proud to present an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all the liv­er­pool activists to join togeth­er in a spir­it of togeth­er­ness, open­ness & com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

i guess we can all agree that over-con­sump­tion is a very bad thing & i reck­on that most of us see cap­i­tal­ism as the root of the sick­ness that is infest­ing our soci­ety. yes?
any­one a racist? no? oh my, we seem to have some­thing in com­mon after all!

well, on sat­ur­day 29th novem­ber it’s time to put your mutu­al aid where your mouth is.

at 11am maybe meet & greet nick grif­fin (bnp) who could be plea­sur­ing our city with his pres­ence in his bid to become mep for the north west of eng­land. he’s called for the par­ty faith­ful to gath­er in protest at thear­rest of sev­er­al mem­bers last week. are we real­ly going to let this hap­pen?
meet at the top of church street at 10am.

after­wards, from 12pm, the social cen­tre shall be trans­formed into an oasis of anti-cap­i­tal­ism.

we’ll have:
a fab­u­lous free-shop full of qual­i­ty free good­ies,
free tea n’ cof­fee,
veg­an cafe (dona­tions only),
open mic, film, per­for­mance, spo­ken word…

now, i know that some peo­ple are a bit scared of actu­al­ly get­ting involved in next to nowhere, prefer­ing to dis­cuss the short­com­ings of the book­ing pol­i­cy from a safe dis­tance. just to be clear, and restate the bot­tom line of next to nowhere from its con­sti­tu­tion — every­one is wel­come to get involved at the social cen­tre pro­vid­ed that they are will­ing to work in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way through con­sen­sus.

‘actions speak loud­er than words’ — please can peo­ple work togeth­er in mutu­al sup­port to help make this world a bet­ter place and take on the evils which are fuck­ing up our world or say noth­ing and stop this on-going crit­i­cism from the side­lines, whilst doing noth­ing at nowhere.

who knows, the open-mic forum could even pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to express their feel­ings about the social cen­tre, in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way of course!
or, we could just have a good old-fash­ioned knees up…

togeth­er, let’s start to dance on the graves of mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions!

feistyfingers[at]yahoo.co.uk
http://www.liverpoolsocialcentre.org

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

Buy Noth­ing Day 2008 — Freeshop in Broad­mead, Bris­tol

Free shop, live music, cir­cus skills and face paint­ing? UWE stu­dents from the Peo­ple and Plan­et soci­ety are going to be tak­ing part in a ‘buy noth­ing day’ and will be run­ning a free shop on Sat­ur­day, bright­en­ing up the cold, grey, win­try streets of Bris­tol city cen­tre.

To recap­ture some of that lost Christ­mas Spir­it (the giv­ing that is, not the spend­ing!) we’ll be giv­ing away clothes, bric-a-brac and plen­ty more lit­tle gems for you to get your mitts on as well as bring­ing a lit­tle sun­shine to the often not-so-hap­py shop­pers of Bris­tol. If you have any­thing you want to get rid of, bring it along!

We’re look­ing for vol­un­teers to help inform and enter­tain (musi­cians, cir­cus enter­tain­ers, etc) so if your game bring your uni­cy­cle down and get involved! It kicks off at 11am and will be run­ning till 4pm, so Pop down to our mar­quee in-between the Gal­leries and Cabot Cir­cus (Just down from Ann Sum­mers!).

For more info e‑mail Lisa at lisatozer@hotmail.com

I’ll see you there!

A report from the No Borders network gathering

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

Sat­ur­day began with report backs from local groups, giv­ing us an impres­sion of the activ­i­ty of the No Bor­ders net­work. Oppo­si­tion against ID cards and the IOM, and actions against depor­ta­tion air­lines and immi­gra­tion snatch squads, are as much part of the No Bor­ders agen­da as is sol­i­dar­i­ty with detainees, depor­tees and migrant work­ers. It was obvi­ous that the vol­ume and vari­ety of actions is one of the strengths of the net­work which has helped it to con­tin­ue to devel­op and grow with­out los­ing momen­tum.

The inter­na­tion­al dimen­sion of the net­work was stressed when peo­ple told of large-scale block­ades of a deten­tion cen­tre in Bel­gium, of Ham­burg air­port to stop depor­ta­tions, and of the attempt to dis­man­tle a deten­tion cen­tre in Den­mark. Peo­ple felt it is increas­ing­ly impor­tant to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing info and action-shar­ing net­works with peo­ple across Europe and else­where. UK No Bor­ders activists are mak­ing con­nec­tions with cam­paign­ers in North­ern France to high­light the sit­u­a­tion of hun­dreds of refugees trapped in Calais.

Dis­cus­sions also devel­oped around the idea of orga­niz­ing a big­ger No Bor­ders event in the future that would include actions and info-shar­ing.

On Sun­day, the need to devel­op No Bor­ders pol­i­tics was stressed in a dis­cus­sion on ‘who are our allies’. At a local lev­el, whilst work­ing on some issues in coali­tion with groups and organ­i­sa­tions that dif­fer in char­ac­ter, No Bor­ders has a firm­ly anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an stance. Over all, the net­work reit­er­at­ed its explic­it anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an posi­tion, and a group formed to work on pub­lic­i­ty that offers an eas­i­ly acces­si­ble guide to No Bor­ders pol­i­tics. This could take the form of writ­ten pub­li­ca­tions and media projects such as the devel­op­ment of a film.

All in all, shar­ing infor­ma­tion and sto­ries was an inspir­ing expe­ri­ence and by strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and net­work-wide tac­tics, peo­ple across the UK will con­tin­ue to devel­op their ideas and inspire each oth­er to take action against bor­ders and to pro­mote free­dom of move­ment for all.

The next gath­er­ing is pro­posed for February/March 2009 in Bris­tol
www.noborders.org.uk