Category: Uncategorized

Kitchen, kids space and kick ass workshops

Can you help run kids activ­i­ties at the sum­mer gath­er­ing? Or a wide game or craft activ­i­ty that every­one can get involved with?

Can you help in the kitchen? We need folks who are cre­ative and con­fi­dent in cater­ing for the mass­es, who can help make sure every­one gets fed!

Can you run a work­shop or offer some evening enter­tain­ment? Skill shares, wide games, a ceilidh even?!

If you can help fill one of these essen­tial roles dur­ing the gath­er­ing then drop us an email at earthfirst.uk@proton.me

Plans just announced by EWR to build a train maintenance depot and train sidings in the village of Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire.

Plans just announced by EWR to build a 24 hour train main­te­nance depot and train sid­ings in the vil­lage of Ful­bourn, as it has not been well adver­tised and the con­sul­ta­tion clos­es on 9th June.

It will involve a com­pul­so­ry pur­chase of Green Belt land and will be con­struct­ed adja­cent to the Ful­bourn chalk springs (the ‘Poor Well’) and streams and adja­cent to 3 sites of Spe­cial Sci­en­tif­ic Inter­est.

6 trains will be cleaned overnight between 10.30pm‑3.30am 7 days a week. Most­ly inter­nal clean­ing but some exter­nal clean­ing. There is no plan for where the water will come from for the exter­nal clean­ing. The area is severe­ly water deplet­ed with the vil­lage chalk streams dry­ing up for the last 3 sum­mers.

Each train will have 5 toi­lets which will be emp­tied into sep­tic tanks and the efflu­ent col­lect­ed by sludge trucks once a week. These sludge trucks will come via the Wilbra­hams (as will all the con­struc­tion traf­fic).

The chalk springs and streams that bor­der the planned Ful­bourn site risk being pol­lut­ed by leaks from the depot. The Envi­ron­men­tal Agency has doc­u­ment­ed many leaks from so-called ‘sealed’ clean­ing and toi­let man­age­ment sys­tems.

Ful­bourn is also one of the only loca­tions in the UK where swifts (a Red List species) nest) and the vil­lage has put huge efforts into putting up box­es and annu­al mon­i­tor­ing. They are like­ly to be dis­rupt­ed by this devel­op­ment as it will be oper­a­tional 10.30pm- 3.30pm and will have per­ma­nent night light­ing. The sid­ings will be raised to the light­ing will be very vis­i­ble for a wide dis­tance.

The site also bor­ders a des­ig­nat­ed ancient mon­u­ment and the vil­lage sits at the inter­sec­tion of Fleam Dyke and the Ick­nield Way mean­ing there are like­ly to be oth­er her­itage assets as yet undoc­u­ment­ed eg When the rail­way was built in mid-1840s a Roman vil­la was found but remains unex­ca­vat­ed.

The online web­site from EWR and the recent con­sul­ta­tion indi­cate that an alter­nate site out­side Fox­ton was also con­sid­ered and was acknowl­edged by EWR to be a less sen­si­tive site from a natural/heritage and social (few­er hous­es direct­ly affect­ed) per­spec­tive. It is also adja­cent to a sewage works which would mean no need for stor­age and trans­porta­tion of sewage.

The rea­son this alter­na­tive site was turned down was it would be fur­ther to roll emp­ty trains to and from Cam­bridge sta­tion.

Once Green Belt and chalk streams are gone, they can nev­er be restored. It’s time to mobi­lize our net­works and fight this!

See more info about EWR’s plans, and respond to the con­sul­ta­tion here: https://eastwestrail.co.uk/consultation/consultation2026

Sign the peti­tion and get involved with the local cam­paign here  https://save-fulbourn.netlify.app 

Drop an email to earthfirst.uk@proton.me to link up with EF!ers who care deeply about this issue and want to take at a stand against it!!

 

 

 

 

Rebel, rebel!

In recent years there has been an explo­sion of activ­i­ty in the cli­mate move­ment in the UK. It’s inspir­ing to see so many deter­mined to take action on cli­mate change and com­mit­ting them­selves to fierce­ly defend­ing nature. Extinc­tion Rebel­lion (XR) in par­tic­u­lar has brought in thou­sands of new peo­ple, shift­ed pub­lic opin­ion, and reignit­ed a move­ment. There has also been excit­ing move­ment with­in XR, increas­ing­ly tar­get­ing those in the cor­po­rate media and fos­sil indus­tries caus­ing the prob­lem rather than just creat­ing pub­lic dis­rup­tion.
But it seems that some impor­tant lessons from the past have been for­got­ten. We know some of you are think­ing and talk­ing about these things already and we hope what we’ve writ­ten is received as it is intend­ed, as some con­sid­ered reflec­tions from crit­i­cal friends:

We are not pawns for a personality cult

Cli­mate Change is urgent, and we need to take action now, but we also need to be in it for the long haul. Treat­ing peo­ple as dis­pos­able — get­ting arrest­ed for the sake of get­ting arrest­ed — and ignor­ing the threats of burnout means peo­ple will drop out and feel dis­card­ed. This is already hap­pen­ing. We want to build an inclu­sive, diverse, car­ing move­ment that treats every­one as valu­able, not for­got­ten once they have served their pur­pose in a strat­e­gy they have lit­tle say in. Non-hier­achi­cal organ­is­ing means mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion for all, not unac­count­able lead­ers and unad­dressed invis­i­ble hier­ar­chies.   

FTP!

Cops are not your friends. The police defend the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that are destroy­ing the plan­et’s life sup­port sys­tems. Pris­ons and police are part of the prob­lem, not the solu­tion. They enforce a sys­tem that is eco­ci­dal and vio­lent in nature; they defend the right to degrade, pol­lute, con­trol, and exploit humans and nature. They are inher­ent­ly racist and sex­ist. They need to be abol­ished. These aren’t impos­si­ble dreams. Black fem­i­nists have long led the fight for abo­li­tion, and when the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment erupt­ed around the world, sud­den­ly peo­ple were open­ly dis­cussing police and prison abo­li­tion in the main­stream media.

It’s ALL about politics

Pol­i­tics isn’t about politi­cians and par­lia­ment, it’s about peo­ple try­ing to cre­ate the soci­ety they believe in. Cli­mate change is not ‘beyond pol­i­tics’, tak­ing action on cli­mate change is fun­da­men­tal­ly polit­i­cal. Issues such as race and class aren’t annoy­ing obsta­cles to a big­ger move­ment, they are essen­tial to build­ing effec­tive, endur­ing change. The dom­i­na­tion of humans and the dom­i­na­tion of nature are intrin­si­cal­ly linked, and we can’t end one while the oth­er con­tin­ues. De-politi­cis­ng cli­mate change not only ignores cap­i­tal­ism and oth­er root caus­es, it also means XR will con­tin­ue to be dom­i­nat­ed by white mid­dle class ‘envi­ron­men­tal­ists’.

Diversity of tactics

Civ­il dis­obe­di­ence is just one of many tac­tics, and not the only way to take action. You don’t have to put your­selves in the hands of the state. Eco­log­i­cal direct action is about doing it your­self, attack­ing those destroy­ing nature and inspir­ing oth­ers to fol­low suit, not lob­by­ing gov­ern­ment to act on your behalf. Polit­i­cal vio­lence should nev­er be resort­ed to light­ly, but dog­mat­ic paci­fi­cism pro­tects the state, the rich and the pow­er­ful. His­tor­i­cal strug­gles against slav­ery, feu­dal­ism, colo­nial­ism, patri­archy and fas­cism all involved vio­lence. Riots, revolts and rebel­lion against oppres­sion have their place and should be cel­e­brat­ed not reviled. Preach­ing non-vio­lence also ignores how the very idea of ‘vio­lence’ is used to repress and paci­fy resis­tance, and leads to self-polic­ing and author­i­tar­i­an­ism with­in our move­ments. A diver­si­ty of tac­tics means dif­fer­ent approach­es to work­ing togeth­er and rein­forc­ing each oth­er. In this way we can build towards rev­o­lu­tion­ary change.

Love and rage

Self-reflec­tion and crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion isn’t infight­ing and fac­tion­al­ism, it’s how to build strong, pow­er­ful move­ments that can bring about the unprecedent­ed changes cli­mate change requires. We’re not writ­ing these words to show our­selves as ‘more rad­i­cal than thou’ and we know that every­one goes through their own polit­i­cal jour­ney in life. But if any of what we’ve writ­ten speaks to you, come and talk to us, lets work out where we go next.
We’re ready. Instead of griev­ing for a dying plan­et, it’s time to step up and fight, for peo­ple and nature, with love and rage.
Your friends from the Earth­First! gath­er­ing col­lec­tive

PDFs: Online version of Return Fire vol.4

Here’s the PDFs for the most recent ver­sion of Return Fire, vol.4, of autumn 2016 – addi­tion­al­ly with the sup­ple­ment that accom­pa­nies it. Once again, 100 pages of pas­sion, com­men­tary, pro­pos­als and inter­view mate­r­i­al.

Here’s the PDFs for the most recent ver­sion of Return Fire, vol.4, of autumn 2016 – addi­tion­al­ly with the sup­ple­ment that accom­pa­nies it. Once again, 100 pages of pas­sion, com­men­tary, pro­pos­als and inter­view mate­r­i­al. The sup­ple­ment, Caught in the Net, is a sur­vey of crit­i­cal per­spec­tives on what infor­ma­tion age tech­nol­o­gy is doing to our cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, our health more gen­er­al­ly, and our capac­i­ty to rebel. It comes as a sep­a­rate doc­u­ment, of anoth­er 28 pages. Both colour and greyscale cov­er options are avail­able, for fur­ther repro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion.

http://actforfree.nostate.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/return-fire-vol4-covers-COLOUR.pdf

http://actforfree.nostate.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/return-fire-vol4-covers-BW.pdf

http://actforfree.nostate.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/return-fire-vol4-contents.compressed.pdf

http://actforfree.nostate.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Caught-in-the-Net-Return-Fire-4-supplement.pdf

To give you an idea, a few of the fea­tured pieces are the Insti­tute for the Study of Insur­gent Warfare’s essay Panop­ti­cons Then & Now, argu­ing for a more sophis­ti­cat­ed under­stand­ing of the sur­veil­lance State; On the Cat­a­stro­phe of the Salmon Farms and Mar­time Dev­as­ta­tion in the Patag­on­ian Sea as recount­ed by mem­bers of Colec­ti­vo Crit­i­ca y Accion fol­low­ing the events of 2016; words on avoid­ing need­less­ly rep­e­ti­tious deeds and indeed aim­ing to ‘hit where it hurts’ as high­light­ed in Dis­so­nanz #34 by Tak­ing Apart Author­i­ty; and Sold Out to the Indus­try tells of U.K. union­ism cosy­ing up to the frack­ing prospec­tors, from The Acorn.

Oth­er arti­cles we have con­densed or syn­the­sised are those such as the ‘Antag­o­nis­tic Mar­gins’ of seduc­tion, con­ta­gion and queer­ing the ‘ter­ror­to­ry’, by The Exper­i­men­ta­tion Com­mit­tee; the pre­sen­ta­tion of “Anoth­er Fig­ure of the Migrant” as the­o­rised by Thomas Nail in con­ver­sa­tion with the Hostis jour­nal; or Ed Lord’s dis­cus­sion of moder­ni­ty and ques­tions of psy­cho­log­i­cal ‘dis­or­ders’, ‘A Pro­found Dis-ease’.

Plen­ty of direct attacks on struc­tures of our ene­mies found their way into our Glob­al Flash-Points list­ing, as usu­al, as did the low­down on var­i­ous tri­als and kid­nap­pings of those we feel an affin­i­ty to in Rebels Behind Bars. Our review for the issue is a reap­praisal of the John Zerzan essay, Ani­mal Dreams, by Bel­lamy Fitz­patrick, as To Love the Inhu­man, mind­ful of the recur­rent pit­falls of cer­tain aspects of anti-civil­i­sa­tion analy­sis. Vers­es of Hunter Hall, Gabriel Pom­bo da Sil­va, Robert Hass and more made it into this round of Poems for Love, Loss & War.

Delv­ing back to grasp Mem­o­ry as a Weapon, in this sec­tion we’ve got stuff from “An Out­ragous Spir­it of Tumult & Riot” dur­ing the Lud­dite rebel­lions against assim­i­la­tion into the fac­to­ry sys­tem of boom­ing British indus­tri­al­ism (res­ur­rect­ed from the archives of Do or Die mag­a­zine) to A Short­er His­to­ry of a North­west E.L.F. Cell (some­times exhil­a­rat­ing, some­times dis­may­ing) which was seri­alised in Tides of Flame, chart­ing the rise and fall of one par­tic­u­lar envi­ron­men­tal guer­ril­la fac­tion lead­ing into the ‘Green Scare’ of a decade gone by; and that’s just a part of it…

As for the rest, grab a copy and see what moves you.

Com­ments, sug­ges­tions and sub­mis­sions: returnfire@riseup.net

More soon.

R.F.

After­word: The time­stamp on this vol­ume means that some devel­op­ments are not up to date in the online release. We’d encour­age read­ers to research cas­es that inter­est them for updates, but for now we want­ed to at least pub­li­cise the prison address for one anar­chist who has since been sen­tenced to 7 years and 6 months for the Aachen case out­lined in vol.4 (the sec­ond defen­dant, also arrest­ed in Barcelona, was acquit­ted). She wel­comes cor­re­spon­dence in Eng­lish, Span­ish, Ital­ian or Ger­man; let’s not leave her alone. Inform your­self, arm your­self, reach out, make a fist.
Post to:
Lisa
Buch­num­mer: 2893/16/7
Jus­tizvol­lzu­ganstanlt (JVA) Köln
Rochusstrasse 350
50827 Köln – Ger­many

Return Fire vol 1: http://actforfree.nostate.net/?p=14689
Return Fire vol.2: http://actforfree.nostate.net/?p=18655
Return Fire vol.3: http://actforfree.nostate.net/?p=23837

Whirlwind, new Earth First! zine

Whirl­wind, Voic­es of Resis­tance and Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action from Earth First! A5 zine. The first issue!

Whirl­wind, Voic­es of Resis­tance and Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action from Earth First! A5 zine. The first issue!
A new Earth First pub­li­ca­tion includes reports, analy­sis and reviews from the eco­log­i­cal strug­gle to save this doomed plan­et. With colour illus­tra­tions this is a rather nice­ly put togeth­er bit of pro­pa­gan­da!

 

Ava­ial­ble from your local rad­i­cal book­shop, eco­log­i­cal direct action group or http://www.activedistributionshop.org/shop/zines/4209-whirlwind-earth-first-zine-winter-201617.html

Earth First! zine — we want your writing

We want your writ­ing!

We want your writ­ing!
For a semi-reg­u­lar zine of activist reflec­tions and actions.
This is an invi­ta­tion for arti­cles offer­ing a crit­i­cal analy­sis and reflec­tions on Earth First! and relat­ed envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice direct action move­ments, how we organ­ise and the actions we take. Con­tri­bu­tions can be about actions in the UK or inter­na­tion­al. We also wel­come book reviews, activist resources, short rants, illus­tra­tions, car­toons, poems and pho­tographs. We sug­gest 500 – 2000 words for arti­cles, but con­tact us if you want to do some­thing longer.
We aim to have a zine in print and online by the Earth First! win­ter moot 2017. All arti­cles will be copy­left and you can choose whether to write anony­mous­ly. Dead­line Novem­ber 30 2016.
Also con­tact us if you want to join our edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive or offer us fund­ing.
zine@earthfirst.org.uk or con­tact us if you want to send an arti­cle by snail mail.