Category: Yorkshire & The Humber

York­shire & the Hum­ber

documentary: Reclaim Power — voices from the camp for climate action 2006

In the sum­mer of 2006, 600 peo­ple con­vinced that there is no time to waste set up a Camp for Cli­mate Action in the shad­ow of one of the biggest C02 emit­ters in Europe: Drax coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in York­shire / UK. Cine Rebelde pro­duced a doc­u­men­tary film about the camp.

Cli­mate change is now a real­i­ty. Lead­ing sci­en­tists across the world agree that in a ’busi­ness as usu­al sce­nario’ we have no longer than 10 years to pre­vent 2–3 degrees of addi­tion­al glob­al arm­ing that will lead to irre­versible cli­mat­ic changes with dra­mat­ic con­se­quences for our plan­et.

Climate camp view from gateIn the sum­mer of 2006, 600 peo­ple con­vinced that there is no time to waste set up a Camp for Cli­mate Action in the shad­ow of one of the biggest C02 emit­ters in Europe: Drax coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in York­shire / UK. Cine Rebelde pro­duced a doc­u­men­tary film about the camp.

Cli­mate change is now a real­i­ty. Lead­ing sci­en­tists across the world agree that in a ’busi­ness as usu­al sce­nario’ we have no longer than 10 years to pre­vent 2–3 degrees of addi­tion­al glob­al arm­ing that will lead to irre­versible cli­mat­ic changes with dra­mat­ic con­se­quences for our plan­et.

How­ev­er, in a world dri­ven by prof­it and com­mit­ted to unlim­it­ed eco­nom­ic growth, human­i­ty seems very unwill­ing to change the course of the fos­sil fuel econ­o­my.

In the sum­mer of 2006, the 5th hottest year ever record­ed in recent his­to­ry, 600 peo­ple con­vinced that there is no time to waste set up a Camp for Cli­mate Action in the shad­ow of one of the biggest C02 emit­ters in Europe: Drax coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in York­shire / UK.

With over one hun­dred work­shops on a wide range of top­ics, the 10 day camp was a space of col­lec­tive learn­ing, sus­tain­able liv­ing and tak­ing direct action on the root caus­es of cli­mate change. The gath­er­ing that showed prac­ti­cal low ener­gy solu­tions in action, cul­mi­nat­ed in a day of protest and mass direct action in an attempt to shut down Drax.

DVD 62min + extras
Eng­lish with sub­ti­tles in Eng­lish, French, Ger­man and Span­ish
reports on indy­media UK: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2006/climatecamp/

Trail­er down­load: 2:58 min
http://www.cinerebelde.org/site.php3?id_article=356〈=en

a cine rebelde pro­duc­tion in coop­er­a­tion with http://risingtide.org.uk and http://climatecamp.org.uk

indy­media reports of the Camp 2006:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2006/climatecamp/

Pic­tures, infor­ma­tion and film orders:
orders@cinerebelde.org
http://www.cinerebelde.org

DVDs will also soon be avail­able from ris­ing tide, cli­mate camp groups and at the meet­ing in Bris­tol.

* * * * * *
Prepa­ra­tions for the Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 are in full swing. The upcom­ing meet­ing will be in Bris­tol on March 17th /18th.

Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca is cur­rent­ly doing a Road Show. Check out:
http://risingtidenorthamerica.org

The Campaign Against Prison Slavery

The Cam­paign Against Prison Slav­ery is a group set up to try to expose the real­i­ty of prison labour, how lit­tle of it teach­es skills that can be used after release and which could help reduce the chances of re-offend­ing.

The Cam­paign Against Prison Slav­ery is a group set up to try to expose the real­i­ty of prison labour, how lit­tle of it teach­es skills that can be used after release and which could help reduce the chances of re-offend­ing.

We also seek to expose the pri­vate com­pa­nies that have con­tracts with pris­ons that are mak­ing huge prof­its using pris­on­er labour while the pris­on­ers are paid pen­nies an hour, any los­es incurred by the prison indus­tries con­tracts are cov­ered by the tax pay­er.

CAPS now has a new web­site www.againstprisonslavery.org and the con­tact details are:

Cam­paign Against Prison Slav­ery
P.O. Box 74
Brighton
BN1 4ZQ
E‑mail: againstprisonslavery@riseup.net

Bradford Climate Criminals flyposted

22.1.07
On Wednes­day evening, a num­ber of con­cerned Leeds and Brad­ford res­i­dents decid­ed to draw atten­tion to the activ­i­ties of a num­ber of cli­mate crim­i­nals in Brad­ford city cen­tre. Adver­tise­ments for dam­ag­ing air flights were mod­i­fied to tell the truth; that fly­ing is the fastest grow­ing cause of cli­mate change, the “sin­gle great­est threat to human-kind” accord­ing to the government’s chief sci­en­tist.

Bradford climate camp aviation flyposters22.1.07
On Wednes­day evening, a num­ber of con­cerned Leeds and Brad­ford res­i­dents decid­ed to draw atten­tion to the activ­i­ties of a num­ber of cli­mate crim­i­nals in Brad­ford city cen­tre. Adver­tise­ments for dam­ag­ing air flights were mod­i­fied to tell the truth; that fly­ing is the fastest grow­ing cause of cli­mate change, the “sin­gle great­est threat to human-kind” accord­ing to the government’s chief sci­en­tist.

Despite assur­ances that cli­mate change is being tak­en seri­ous­ly by any num­ber of politi­cians or busi­ness peo­ple, the fact is that new run­ways are planned, motor­ways are being expand­ed, and pipelines being built to increase our depen­dence on fos­sil fuels. In the face of this hypocrisy, it was clear that the time had come to make a direct state­ment that irre­spon­si­ble crim­i­nal­i­ty of this kind will not be tol­er­at­ed by sane and mod­er­ate peo­ple.

Sev­er­al trav­el agents, shame­less­ly plug­ging mas­sive­ly destruc­tive air flights for prof­it, had their mis­lead­ing win­dow dis­plays obscured by handy stick­ers which made plain the true cost of fly­ing. Those peo­ple tak­ing part in this vital ser­vice did so as a way of encour­ag­ing oth­ers to stand up against the cli­mate crim­i­nals and car­ry out sim­i­lar pub­lic-spir­it­ed actions in their areas. The stick­ers used are avail­able at a cost of 50p each to any­one who wants them – just email trees@riseup.net with your order. The stick­ers are just £10 for 20, post free!

There is still time to pre­vent run­away cli­mate change but we must act now.

Part of that action must be to expose the ongo­ing activites of those who wish to destroy the plan­et for prof­it. Clear­ly, we can’t leave it to busi­ness and gov­ern­ment to sort out the mess – they are the ones mak­ing it because of their bizarre obses­sion with an eco­nom­ic sys­tem based on con­tin­u­al growth and unsus­tain­able con­sump­tion.

The rich are plun­der­ing the Earth, and as always the poor will suf­fer the worst. We can all act in our lives, and join togeth­er to cre­ate a rad­i­cal, and ulti­mate­ly rea­son­able and mod­er­ate, move­ment for social change and cli­mate jus­tice.

This action was inspired by the Camp For Cli­mate Action, which seems to have been a new begin­ning for the fight-back by rea­son­able and mod­er­ate peo­ple against the cli­mate crim­i­nals and prof­it-ter­ror­ists who seek to kill us all.

M1 widening actions pigged

Police News Man­age­ment, Incom­pe­tence and Poor Atti­tude To Peace­ful Protest Exposed After They Pre­vent Peace­ful Cli­mate Camp Action With Mas­sive Over Reac­tion

Today, Mon­day 19th of Feb­ru­ary, peace­ful pro­test­ers from the Camp For Cli­mate Action had planned a series of events to high­light the envi­ron­men­tal cost of widen­ing the M1. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a mas­sive police pres­ence, total­ly out of pro­por­tion to the pro­posed protest, appears to have con­tributed to mas­sive tail-backs on the motor­way near Sheffield. The pro­test­ers decid­ed not to go ahead with their event after being offered a ridicu­lous­ly lim­it­ed space in which to make their point and no pro­test­er actions took place at any time. At no point did any of them approach close to the motor­way, and they could not have there­fore caused the tail­backs as the Police sug­gest­ed to local radio. In fact, there had been an acci­dent on that stretch, which com­bined with the road­works and the police pres­ence, was prob­a­bly the cause of the delays.

Police News Man­age­ment, Incom­pe­tence and Poor Atti­tude To Peace­ful Protest Exposed After They Pre­vent Peace­ful Cli­mate Camp Action With Mas­sive Over Reac­tion

Today, Mon­day 19th of Feb­ru­ary, peace­ful pro­test­ers from the Camp For Cli­mate Action had planned a series of events to high­light the envi­ron­men­tal cost of widen­ing the M1. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a mas­sive police pres­ence, total­ly out of pro­por­tion to the pro­posed protest, appears to have con­tributed to mas­sive tail-backs on the motor­way near Sheffield. The pro­test­ers decid­ed not to go ahead with their event after being offered a ridicu­lous­ly lim­it­ed space in which to make their point and no pro­test­er actions took place at any time. At no point did any of them approach close to the motor­way, and they could not have there­fore caused the tail­backs as the Police sug­gest­ed to local radio. In fact, there had been an acci­dent on that stretch, which com­bined with the road­works and the police pres­ence, was prob­a­bly the cause of the delays.

In a sec­ond embar­rass­ing mis­take, the Police seem to have believed that the action had been planned by the No M1 Widen­ing Cam­paign. In fact, the Camp For Cli­mate Action was sole­ly respon­si­ble. The police prob­a­bly don’t realise the link between traf­fic growth and wors­en­ing cli­mate change which threat­ens us all.

Sam Nex­ter said “Tony Blair has claimed that the gov­ern­ment is tak­ing cli­mate change seri­ous­ly but bil­lions of pounds of tax­pay­er’s mon­ey is now being wast­ed on a scheme that will do noth­ing to ease con­ges­tion but will increase emis­sions. There are much more effec­tive and eco­nom­ic ways to tack­le con­ges­tion such as improv­ing pub­lic trans­port and trans­fer­ring freight onto the rail­ways.”

“Its mad that, on top of pay­ing for dan­ger­ous motor­way build­ing, mon­ey is also wast­ed pay­ing large num­bers of police to sit around in vans.” he added.

The work to widen this stretch of M1 start­ed a month ago, and work on the sec­tion between junc­tion 6a-10 is already well under way. In total 115 miles of the M1 is due to be widened from the M25 to Mil­ton Keynes and from Leices­ter to Leeds, cost­ing a total of over £3.74 bil­lion. Many peo­ple believe the widen­ing will allow traf­fic to grow, caus­ing more CO2 emis­sions. Road trans­port already accounts for 21% of emis­sions in the UK and ris­es every year.

info@climatecamp.org.uk
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Next national climate camp organsing gathering Feb 17/18 in Leeds

The next nation­al organs­ing gath­er­ing will be in Leeds on Sat and Sun Feb 17th/18th. It will be at The Com­mon Place in Leeds city cen­tre and veg­an food, accom­mo­da­tio­nand creche will be pro­vid­ed (please con­tact us with accom­mo­da­tion, creche or any oth­er needs though so we can plan ahead).

Climate camp logo 2 The next nation­al organs­ing gath­er­ing will be in Leeds on Sat and Sun Feb 17th/18th. It will be at The Com­mon Place in Leeds city cen­tre and veg­an food, accom­mo­da­tio­nand creche will be pro­vid­ed (please con­tact us with accom­mo­da­tion, creche or any oth­er needs though so we can plan ahead).

Cli­mate campers are at it again! More than sev­en­ty peo­ple from around the UK met in Leeds in Jan­u­ary and decid­ed to organ­ise anoth­er Camp for Cli­mate Action this sum­mer from 14th to 21st August. As many of you know, for ten days last August hun­dreds of peo­ple gath­ered in the shad­ow of Drax coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in York­shire to share knowl­edge and inspi­ra­tion to tack­le the great­est threat to life on Earth, live an exam­ple of more just and sus­tain­able alter­na­tives, and con­front one of the UK’s biggest pol­luters in a day of mass direct action.

Fol­low­ing on from this suc­cess, Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 will take place near to a tar­get relat­ing to avi­a­tion or the coal or oil indus­tries. The loca­tion will be cho­sen over the com­ing months. Organ­is­ing out­reach,
fundrais­ing, site prac­ti­cal­i­ties and work­shops is under­way. Self man­aged camp­ing, eat­ing and liv­ing neigh­bour­hoods around themes and geo­graph­i­cal areas are also being planned, con­tact details are on the web­site.

There is loads to do, and every­one is invit­ed to get involved — no expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary! The next nation­al plan­ning meet­ings will be held in Leeds at the Com­mon Place, on the 17th and 18th Feb­ru­ary, and then in
Bris­tol on the 17th and 18th March.

See www.climatecamp.org.uk for more info. There are lots of ways to get involved with­out com­ing to nation­al gath­er­ings, but com­ing to them is a great way of real­ly feel­ing part of the whole process, we work with con­sen­sus deci­sion mak­ing and col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty, every­one gets their say in how the whole thing goes.

For a 20min film of last years camp get
V For Video Activist — SchMOVIES DVD Col­lec­tion 2006 OUT Jan­u­ary 2007
— £6 (includ­ing P&P). Con­tact the SchNEWS Office 01273 685913 or  schnews@brighton.co.uk

leeds@climatecamp.org.uk
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Early Feb Critical Masses

4.02.2007 — York:

Anoth­er month, anoth­er ride, and this time around we nar­row­ly exceed­ed the pre­vi­ous months atten­dance. How­ev­er, the police made anoth­er brief inter­ven­tion, as two cycle police and an offi­cer on foot joined the ride.

4.02.2007 — York:

Anoth­er month, anoth­er ride, and this time around we nar­row­ly exceed­ed the pre­vi­ous months atten­dance. How­ev­er, the police made anoth­er brief inter­ven­tion, as two cycle police and an offi­cer on foot joined the ride.

The women PC (on foot) was imme­di­ate­ly very hos­tile, demand­ing that cyclists pro­ceed sin­gle file, essen­tial­ly mak­ing the ride point­less. How­ev­er, they bizarrely van­ished, and the ride fin­ished off more or less in one piece. This did have the effect of encour­ag­ing a few rid­ers to leave ear­ly. There was a bizarre moment where an offi­cer announced into their radio that they’d found the organ­is­er. Iron­i­cal­ly, this was the one reg­u­lar rid­er who’d been much qui­eter than usu­al!

The ride head­ed out through Monkbar and along the last untouched sec­tion of the inner ring: Lord May­or’s Walk. The ride than head­ed past the hos­pi­tal, where the ride had to evac­u­ate the road to allow an ambu­lance through. Over the bridge into the Clifton area, and along Bur­ton Stone Lane, before head­ing out to Clifton Green. Here the ride crossed the riv­er, and head­ed through Lee­man Road, before rid­ing along Rougi­er Street and back across Ouse­bridge.

The next ride will be on 3rd March, when skies will just about still be light when we set off. And look­ing ahead, the first “sum­mer time” ride will be on 6th April, Good Fri­day, when the ride will be adver­tised as fam­i­ly friend­ly (and much eas­i­er to pho­to­graph!!). It’ll be inter­est­ing to see what the police decide to do next: it won’t be sur­pris­ing if they fail to show up until mid­way through yet again. Legal­ly, they have no right to pre­vent the ride, nor to inter­fere with it, oth­er than if the ride stops mid-road or mid-junc­tion. What­ev­er hap­pens, it should be fun non-the-less.

——————————————————————

Fri­day 2nd Feb­ru­ary – St Philip’s Cathe­dral, Birm­ing­ham City Cen­tre:

The sec­ond Crit­i­cal Mass cycle ride of 2007 was to cel­e­brate the legal appeal vic­to­ry of Daniel Cad­den who refused to cycle in the gut­ter.
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2007/01/361089.html

Crit­i­cal Mass has steadi­ly seen increas­ing num­bers of rid­ers tak­ing part. This month almost 30 Birm­ing­ham cyclists met up for a cycle ride around the city cen­tre to high­light the increas­ing pres­ence of cyclists on our streets. The rides are expect­ed to increase the con­scious­ness of oth­er road-users to the safe­ty needs of cyclists as well as demon­strat­ing that cycling is a fun, viable, healthy and envi­ron­men­tal­ly-benign alter­na­tive to infer­nal com­bus­tion pow­ered vehi­cles.

This month’s ride saw the arrival of Birm­ing­ham Crit­i­cal Mass’ first junior rid­er in the shape of a two-year-old trail­er pas­sen­ger. Through­out the ride she was able to lux­u­ri­ate in her car­riage and enjoy a range of pop­u­lar songs relat­ed to cycling. The ride was also pub­li­cised on the sound sys­tem using a sam­pled voice declar­ing ‘We are Crit­i­cal Mass, come ride with us’.

Next month’s Mass will also be accom­pa­nied by a musi­cal trail­er and it is hoped that peo­ple will sub­mit their favourite tunes before­hand for inclu­sion in a com­pi­la­tion to be played as the ride goes on. This will take place over the Brum Crit­i­cal Mass riseup.net group. Sign up now, sub­mit your tune ideas and come and hear them on 2nd March. The rise­up group has now exceed­ed 50 mem­bers and more are expect­ed fol­low­ing this month’s ride.
Future ride ideas include a ride of suits with bowler hat­ted cyclists Mass­ing through Birmingham’s rush hour and heavy fly­er­ing along busy city cycle routes.

http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/brumcriticalmass

Some Jan Critical Mass reports — London, Leeds, Manchester (& I Bike Mcr festival)

You nev­er know what the police are going to do next on the Lon­don ride. They clamp down on some things and relax on oth­ers from one month to the next and from one part of the ride to anoth­er. ‘Sham­bol­ic’ is per­haps the word that best describes their behav­iour. They seem at times to behave more like Anar­chists than the rid­ers. You would think with their radios they could at least arrive at some sort of a con­sen­sus. In addi­tion to our usu­al police overkill the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team were also in atten­dance at the South Bank, pok­ing their cam­eras in peo­ple’s faces. All this just because of a bike ride!

You nev­er know what the police are going to do next on the Lon­don ride. They clamp down on some things and relax on oth­ers from one month to the next and from one part of the ride to anoth­er. ‘Sham­bol­ic’ is per­haps the word that best describes their behav­iour. They seem at times to behave more like Anar­chists than the rid­ers. You would think with their radios they could at least arrive at some sort of a con­sen­sus. In addi­tion to our usu­al police overkill the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team were also in atten­dance at the South Bank, pok­ing their cam­eras in peo­ple’s faces. All this just because of a bike ride!

This time the cops decid­ed to get tough with rid­ers with­out lights and those who go through red lights and also with sound sys­tems in the SOCPA zone. Did you know, it is OK for some­one with a car to play their sound sys­tem in the vicin­i­ty or Par­lia­ment but not for a cyclist with a sound sys­tem? How dis­crim­i­na­to­ry is that? Any­way, the cops allowed an extra long ‘bikes high’ stop in Oxford Cir­cus but no stop what­so­ev­er in Pica­dil­ly Cir­cus. Those rid­ers who were pulled for going through red lights are now fac­ing a £30 fine, despite the fact that some cops were actu­al­ly ush­er­ing oth­er rid­ers through red lights!

One of the high­lights of the ride was storm­ing through the Ald­wych under­pass, some­thing the police nor­mal­ly pre­vent. We had a fun time with Bri­an Haw in Par­lia­ment Square, he led the “More bikes less cars!” chants on his mega­phone and seemed in a very good spir­its. The ride split up after that at around 9pm, going off in all direc­tions and leav­ing our yel­low coat­ed ret­inue behind, chin-wag­ging among them­selves.
http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk

Quick­time video ver­sion — video/mp4 8.3M
Win­dows video ver­sion — video/x‑ms-wmv 8.6M

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45 peo­ple rode around Leeds for just under an hour last night, with no police inter­ven­tions. The largest ride for some years, its hoped that this is the begin­ning of rever­sal in the down­ward trend of recent times.

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

crit­i­cal mass man­ches­ter last fri­day and the next one..

Crit­i­cal Mass on Fri­day was absolute­ly amaz­ing. We stood around chat­ting out­side the library for ages just chill­in and social­is­ing and meet­ing the many new­com­ers to the mass. Peo­ple mak­ing the I Bike MCR did some film­ing for part of the film and some­one tak­ing pho­tos for the bicy­cle exhi­bi­tion in March.

Then the 40 or so of us took to the streets, rid­ing around the city cen­tre and down past the sta­tion right down Grosvenor street and onto oxford road where mass­es of stu­dents wait­ing for some gig cheered us as we rode by the union. We rode through Rusholme and then up to With­ing­ton and back , hard­ly any neg­a­tiv­i­ty at all instead we were greet­ed with cheers and friend­ly beeps and waves from car dri­vers and pedes­tri­ans… woooo!
After the ride we all went for a nice cold beer..mmm

Join us on Fri­day 23rd Feb for the next one, which will end at the ram­pant lion on upper brook st/anson rd where we will have our very own cel­e­brate crit­i­cal mass par­ty with bands and dj’s play­ing reg­gae, ska and punk..

email us at: mcrcriticalmass@yahoo.co.uk
be our myspace friend: http://www.myspace.com/mcrcriticalmass
see our web­site: http://velorution.x21.org.uk

Man­ches­ter I bike Mcr fes­ti­val:

From 30th March to 20th April the I Bike MCR fes­ti­val takes place in
Man­ches­ter. It is a grass­roots fes­ti­val organ­ised by cyclists for cyclists
with diverse events that will entice any cyclist. From Bicy­cle Polo
class­es and match­es to All­ey­cat rac­ing to a Bicy­cle Art Exhi­bi­tion,
there’s some­thing for every­one.

Those involved in organ­is­ing the event are cyclists from dif­fer­ent walks
of life includ­ing cycling instruc­tors, dai­ly com­muters, bicy­cle
mes­sen­gers, Crit­i­cal Mass advo­ca­cy group mem­bers and bicy­cle mechan­ics.

Timetable

Fri­day 30th March
6pm Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride, meet at Cen­tral Library to cel­e­brate the
bicy­cle over car cul­ture.

8pm Exhi­bi­tion Open­ing at The Base­ment, 24 Lever St. The open­ing event
will be one to remem­ber and will fea­ture the pre­mier screen­ing of new
Man­ches­ter bicy­cle film “I bike MCR”. We shall also be show­ing oth­er
bicy­cle films and hav­ing a roller race (an indoor bicy­cle race- on
rollers) with lots of prizes to be won! Local acoustic bands will be
per­form­ing includ­ing the amaz­ing Coop­er Jones and Dr But­ler’s Hat­stand
Med­i­cine Band

Sat­ur­day 31st March
1pm Platt Fields Park Bicy­cle Polo class. Oxford bicy­cle polo team are
com­ing to teach us how to play the sport. Please email to reserve a place.
(they return 2 weeks lat­er to play a match: Man­ches­ter vs Oxford)

Sun­day 1st April
2pm Cen­tral Library April Fools Day Bicy­cle Trea­sure Hunt. A fun trea­sure
hunt around our city.

Wednes­day 4th April
Moon­light Pub Ride Start 7pm Sand­bar, Grosvenor St (off Oxford Road/opp.
All Saints Park. A night ride out and around the out­skirts of Man­ches­ter
stop­ping off at some love­ly pubs for a drink on the way.

Fri­day 13th April
Hell Of The North West All­ey­cat
Fix­ies and road­ragers ride the all­ey­cat for a fast race round our city. £5
entry, amaz­ing prizes to be won. with some donat­ed by the won­der­ous Twin
Six and Keirin Cul­ture
Email to reg­is­ter

Alleykit­ten
Shop­pers, bmx’s and sil­ly bikes ride alleykit­ten for a ran­dom race full of
games and non­sense round our city cen­tre. £5 entry, amaz­ing prizes to be
won. Email to reg­is­ter

Sat­ur­day 14th April
1pm Platt Fields Park Bicy­cle Polo Match: Man­ches­ter vs Oxford.

For more infor­ma­tion see the web­site: www.ibikemcr.org.uk or email
info@ibikemcr.org.uk

Critical Masses This Friday (& others)

This is the first crit­i­cal mass of 2007. Lets start as we mean to go on and make it a big one!

We cycle round the city to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle:
It’s for any­one that rides a bike;
Its a cel­e­bra­tion of get­ting round the city with­out pol­lut­ing it;

This is the first crit­i­cal mass of 2007. Lets start as we mean to go on and make it a big one!

We cycle round the city to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle:
It’s for any­one that rides a bike;
Its a cel­e­bra­tion of get­ting round the city with­out pol­lut­ing it;
Its about every jour­ney being an adven­ture instead of just sit­ting on a bor­ing bus or in a stress­ful car;
Its about cyclists rid­ing togeth­er to demand more respect from oth­er road users;
Its a way to meet oth­er cyclis­tas;
At rough­ly the same time on Fri­day hun­dreds of cities around the world do the same thing…all get togeth­er for crit­i­cal mass. its beau­ti­ful to know that as you ride with your mates through your own city that all around the world thou­sands of peo­ple are doing the same thing…

Rides in the UK this Fri­day include:
* Brighton — Gath­er 18:00 at the Lev­el (BN2 3FX)
* Cam­bridge — Maybe gath­er 18:30 Cam­bridge Mar­ket Square
* Leeds (This mon­th’s call­out) — Gath­er 17:30–18:00 Mil­le­ni­um Square
* Lon­don — Gath­er 18:30 Water­loo Bridge, by the Nation­al Film The­atre
* Man­ches­ter (videos of pre­vi­ous rides) — Gath­er 18:00 Cen­tral Library
* Not­ting­ham — Gath­er 17:30 Savoy cin­e­ma on Der­by Road in Lenton
* Oxford — Gath­er 17:45–18:00 Corn­mar­ket end of Broad Street out­side The Oxford Sto­ry
* Read­ing — Gath­er 17:30, Read­ing Town Hall

Please leave a com­ment if your ride has been left off (or is incor­rect).
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York Crit­i­cal Mass

In order not to clash with oth­er rides in the vicin­i­ty, York Crit­i­cal Mass is on the first Fri­day of every month mean­ing that the next ride is next Fri­day on 2nd Feb­ru­ary. Assem­ble at 5pm out­side Cost­cut­ters at the Uni­ver­si­ty or 5:30pm out­side York Min­ster. See you there!

Birm­ing­ham Crit­i­cal Mass: Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 2nd

Brum’s crit­i­cal mass is also on the first fri­day of the month, Fri­day 2nd Feb­ru­ary.
We meet up at Pigeon Park (St. Philip’s Cathe­dral) at 5:30pm and set off at 6pm.
The rides are get­ting more pop­u­lar and more cre­ative. There’s now a mobile soundsys­tem and for win­ter crit­i­cal mass’ rid­ers bring along fairy lights to illu­mi­nate the ride.
Sub­scribe to the list below if you want to get more involved!
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/brumcriticalmass

Glas­gow CM

This Fri­day at 5:30, George Square.
http://www.citystrolls.com/strolls/pages/critical.htm
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For list of UK rides & links, see also http://criticalmass.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Critical_Mass_rides#United_Kingdom

Activist Mediation Network Launched!!!!!

Want to learn medi­a­tion skills?
Inter­est­ed in help­ing sup­port activist groups engage with inter­nal dis­agree­ments and con­flict, to make them more effec­tive?
Want to tack­le con­flicts in your per­son­al life that inter­fere with your activism?

Want to learn medi­a­tion skills?
Inter­est­ed in help­ing sup­port activist groups engage with inter­nal dis­agree­ments and con­flict, to make them more effec­tive?
Want to tack­le con­flicts in your per­son­al life that inter­fere with your activism?

Our launch events will be train­ing days:

North­ern Launch -
Leeds on 10th March 2007, from 11am — 5pm

South­ern Launch
— Lon­don on 17 March 2007, from 11am — 5pm.

The aims of these days are:

To train peo­ple in con­flict res­o­lu­tion skills that they can use in their own lives and activist work
For peo­ple inter­est­ed in vol­un­teer­ing with us to receive train­ing and to meet with us to dis­cuss tak­ing it fur­ther.

If you have a spe­cif­ic con­flict or sit­u­a­tion that you would like to dis­cuss with us, then please get in con­tact and we’ll see if we can help.

Activist Medi­a­tion to the res­cue! (not real­ly!)

Details of the train­ing days:

Book­ing essen­tial: Please email activist­medi­a­tion [at] aktivix [dot] org
Cost: We are ask­ing for a £10 dona­tion to fund expens­es and help set up a trav­el fund to help with our medi­a­tion work. If mon­ey would pre­vent you from attend­ing, then get in touch.
Creche: We are not pro­vid­ing creche facil­i­ties, but if child­care issues are pre­vent­ing you attend­ing, please get in touch and we’ll try and sort some­thing out.
Access: Both venues are wheel­chair acces­si­ble, and have acces­si­ble toi­lets. For oth­er access needs, please con­tact us.
Lunch: Not pro­vid­ed. Please bring your own.
Trans­port and Accom­mo­da­tion: Get in touch if you have any issues or can offer a lift.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion have a look at our web­site www.activistmediation.org.uk
or tele­phone us on 0845 223 5254, and get in touch.

Back­ground

For the last few years we have both been involved in main­stream medi­a­tion, and using these skills at var­i­ous activist camps and sit­u­a­tions (Cli­mate Camp, Earth First!, Rad­i­cal Routes, Tri­dent Ploughshares). We have also been asked to work with oth­er activist groups to help them resolve inter­nal con­flicts. There is obvi­ous­ly a need for this work to be done on an ongo­ing basis, and so we have decid­ed to set up an activist medi­a­tion net­work. The aim is not for us to solve con­flicts, but to skill share and offer impar­tial medi­a­tors in order to help groups and indi­vid­u­als resolve their own con­flicts.

26th Jan — Leeds Critical Mass callout

At Novem­ber’s ride, two crit­i­cal mass rid­ers were arrest­ed and assault­ed by police. They were sub­se­quent­ly released with­out charges when the cops realised the rid­ers had­n’t actu­al­ly done any­thing wrong.

Leeds Critical Mass flierAt Novem­ber’s ride, two crit­i­cal mass rid­ers were arrest­ed and assault­ed by police. They were sub­se­quent­ly released with­out charges when the cops realised the rid­ers had­n’t actu­al­ly done any­thing wrong.

Crit­i­cal Mass in Leeds will con­tin­ue, and to show our deter­mi­na­tion let’s make the Jan­u­ary ride the biggest yet.

Crit­i­cal Mass gath­ers out­side Mil­len­ni­um Square every last Fri­day of the month at around 17:30. The next ride will be Jan­u­ary 26th.

http://www.leedscommunity.info/wiki/index.php?title=Critical_Mass

Your assis­tance in pub­li­cis­ing this ride would be appre­ci­at­ed. Fliers and posters are avail­able for down­load at http://www.sendspace.com/file/ot3h9v