Women and Trans DIY-SQUATTING Weekend in London, 28th-29th June

This is a call­out to all women and trans-folk that would like to be involved in a week­end of work­shops around diy-squat­ting

We plan to take advan­tage of all the usu­al chal­lenges that semi-derelict build­ings pose as a plat­form for shar­ing our knowl­edge, skills, and expe­ri­ence in all the tasks relat­ed to open­ing and main­tain­ing a healthy and hap­py squat!

This is a call­out to all women and trans-folk that would like to be involved in a week­end of work­shops around diy-squat­ting

We plan to take advan­tage of all the usu­al chal­lenges that semi-derelict build­ings pose as a plat­form for shar­ing our knowl­edge, skills, and expe­ri­ence in all the tasks relat­ed to open­ing and main­tain­ing a healthy and hap­py squat!

These are all the areas that we’ve thought of so far, but more ideas are always wel­come:

* Elec­tric­i­ty
* Plumb­ing
* Gas
* Secu­ri­ty- doors/locks etc
* Bar­ri­cad­ing
* Legal
* Deal­ing w/ cop­s/own­ers- talk about experience/share tac­tics
* Women/Trans squat­ting- open dis­cus­sion on expe­ri­ence of squat­ting from a wom­en/­trans-per­spec­tive.
* Sus­tain­able ener­gy

All lev­els of expe­ri­ence in any of the above areas are wel­come, and even if you have no expe­ri­ence in any of the prac­ti­cal, diy-relat­ed areas, we hope to have a plat­form to share
expe­ri­ences, sto­ries and advice relat­ed to all aspects of squat-liv­ing from a trans/woman’s per­spec­tive.

Please get in touch if you’d like to help out at all in organ­is­ing this week­end — We’ll need help find­ing a suit­able space and prepar­ing it for the week­end, pub­li­cis­ing the gath­er­ing, and then run­ning work­shops on the week­end itself, as well as col­lect­ing and prepar­ing food.
We also hope to pro­vide child­care (on a rota-basis), so please let us know if you can help with that.

This gath­er­ing will be held on the week­end of the 28th — 29th June.

You can e‑mail us at diy_squatting@riseup.net

Please spread the word!

**Let us know if you would like to be sent leaflets**

Action update Australia

In May, a per­son­al let­ter was hand deliv­ered to the $10 mil­lion man­sion of Mike Smith, the CEO of the ANZ bank in Mel­bourne’s most afflu­ent sub­urb of Toorak.

In May, a per­son­al let­ter was hand deliv­ered to the $10 mil­lion man­sion of Mike Smith, the CEO of the ANZ bank in Mel­bourne’s most afflu­ent sub­urb of Toorak. The let­ter, signed by the E.L.F., declared that his prop­er­ty, includ­ing his and his wife’s lux­u­ry cars, amongst a detailed list of oth­er per­son­al items, would not remain safe so long as ANZ con­tin­ued its financ­ing of the pro­posed Gunns Tamar Val­ley Pulp Mill in Tas­ma­nia.

The pro­posed pulp mill, run by Gunns- Tas­ma­ni­a’s forestry cor­po­ra­tion which holds a vir­tu­al monop­oly over the state, would con­tribute great­ly to glob­al warm­ing, it would spew 64,000 tonnes of efflu­ent into the Bass Straight every day, bring the Tas­man­ian wedge-tailed eagle, the spot­ted tail Quoll, and the giant fresh­wa­ter cray­fish to extinc­tion, and would turn the ancient old growth forests of the Great West­ern Tiers, the North East High­lands, and the Ben Lomond forests into pulp.

The same night, veg­an piz­zas from numer­ous mul­ti-nation­al chains were deliv­ered unsus­pect­ed­ly to the doorstep of Mike’s fam­i­ly home.

By strange coin­ci­dence, the fol­low­ing week ANZ with­drew its sup­port for financ­ing the $2 bil­lion Gunns Tamar Val­ley Pulp Mill project.

This effec­tive­ly puts the pulp mil­l’s future in a dire sit­u­a­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the state and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments of Aus­tralia still con­tin­ue their back­ing of the eco-cidal project.

9th June Noise Demo at UK Coal Head Office Protest — next one 14th July

UK Coal is about to dev­as­tate a beau­ti­ful part of the Der­byshire coun­try­side by start­ing an open cast mine. So ‘Leave it in the Ground’ and Earth First! decid­ed to make some noise over it with peo­ple from Der­by, Not­ting­ham Leeds, Sheffield, Man­ches­ter and Brighton as well as oth­er places, all trav­elled to UK Coals Head office in Don­cast­er to make some noise.

UK Coal 1st noise demo 1UK Coal 1st noise demo 2UK Coal is about to dev­as­tate a beau­ti­ful part of the Der­byshire coun­try­side by start­ing an open cast mine. So ‘Leave it in the Ground’ and Earth First! decid­ed to make some noise over it with peo­ple from Der­by, Not­ting­ham Leeds, Sheffield, Man­ches­ter and Brighton as well as oth­er places, all trav­elled to UK Coals Head office in Don­cast­er to make some noise.

On arrival the police were there as expect­ed, but did lit­tle to engage us and a lit­tle lat­er in the day a 2 police officer’s with a cam­era and a video did appear in a daft attempt to intim­i­date us. UK Coal had there own secu­ri­ty at the gate who just stood there more bored than the police.

The day was hot and very sun­ny at the bleak entrance of UK coals Head Office, a soul less place with noth­ing that said they were very proud of their com­pa­ny, no ornate plants, flow­ers or trees, just a big main­tained hedge for their pri­va­cy. It is no won­der they are hap­py to destroy beau­ti­ful coun­try­side for the dirty coal.

Every one was in high spir­its and chilled as we all made noise for the after­noon in the sun. The plod just looked bored and there faces were get­ting red­der by the hour under the fluro’ jack­ets and hel­mets.

We were fine of course, as we occu­pied the UK Coals sign for the only bit of shade while the plod kept roast­ing; we also sat around eat­ing cake, pasties and sausage roles all from Veg­gies in a take out form, while still mak­ing a din.

At times the noise sound­ed good and they delib­er­ate­ly had to try and play bad­ly just so it was annoy­ing, after all it was no pic­nic. Ban­ners were also hung and a police offi­cer told us we could tie them to a lamp post, not that we need­ed his per­mis­sion. Dri­vers com­ing in or out were also leaflet­ed and many motorists pass­ing the entrance beeped in sup­port (prob­a­bly ex min­ers who hate open cast­ing with a pas­sion)

It’s not just the local open cast, peo­ple are oppos­ing of course but also the UK pol­i­cy on coal that is now out­dat­ed as cli­mate change looms in front of our eyes. Burn­ing coal is threat­en­ing the glob­al envi­ron­ment and all our futures and UK coal are cash­ing in on cli­mate dev­as­ta­tion and destruc­tion. The Lodge House site in Der­byshire is just one of 7 sites and Lodge house will have 1 mil­lion tonnes of coal ripped out of a 122 hectare area in 5 years

Local media had turned out and radio inter­views were done over the phone and there is more stuff to fol­low check http://leaveitintheground.org.uk and http://leaveitintheground.wordpress.com for the lat­est infor­ma­tion

derby@earthfirst.org.uk

Next event: noise demo out­side UK Coal on Mon­day 14th July 2008 — meet 3:30 at Don­cast­er train sta­tion, or 4pm at UK Coal

Reclaim Hulme Park — every Friday — Manchester

Local res­i­dents reclaimed Hulme Park in Man­ches­ter on Fri­day for an hour by clos­ing down the road that runs through it.

Hulme Park reclaimed 1Hulme Park reclaimed 2Local res­i­dents reclaimed Hulme Park in Man­ches­ter on Fri­day for an hour by clos­ing down the road that runs through it. Leaflets had been dis­trib­uted and posters stuck around invit­ing peo­ple to reclaim the park — “one love, one park!!” Peo­ple played games, ate and drank, and gen­er­al­ly sat around in the street chat­ting to old friends and new. The police turned up in fair num­bers on time, but sen­si­bly — shock hor­ror — just left enough of them and PCSOs to help direct traf­fic away, and left us to it.

When the Cres­cents got knocked down in the 90s, to sani­tise the com­mu­ni­ty action and cre­ativ­i­ty that was rife through­out Hulme, these high-den­si­ty cres­cents of flats were replaced with a new park, and the land around sold to devel­op­ers for swanky hous­es and flats on new exclu­sive streets with (s)wanky names like The Sanc­tu­ary.

The prob­lem with old Hulme, as described by the coun­cil regen­er­a­tion stooges, was that peo­ple and cars did­n’t have to mix and were large­ly kept sep­a­rate. New Hulme — a mix of old coun­cil hous­ing (just sold off), hous­ing asso­ci­a­tion, a big hous­ing co-op, pri­vate rent­ed & pri­vate sold – would be safe for the city cen­tre to expand into the space left as com­mu­ni­ties were bro­ken up and shipped out to over­spill estates around Man­ches­ter.

So what this park need­ed, right, was a road right through the mid­dle of it (as well as on all sides), to keep the chil­dren safe because “the head­lights of cars would act as cat’s eyes and pre­vent dan­ger”.

Well, we’ve had enough.

Every Fri­day, 5–6pm, until we…Reclaim Hulme Park!

and

Close down the part of Royce Road that sep­a­rates the two halves of Hulme Park.

Bring fris­bees, balls, bikes.

Demonstrators tear down privatisation fencing bars (Thessaloniki, Greece, 7/6/2008)

What hap­pened is a demon­stra­tion of hun­dreds of res­i­dents of Kala­maria (a large sub­urb of Thes­sa­loni­ki by the sea) and Thes­sa­loni­ki on the seafront of Kala­maria.

What hap­pened is a demon­stra­tion of hun­dreds of res­i­dents of Kala­maria (a large sub­urb of Thes­sa­loni­ki by the sea) and Thes­sa­loni­ki on the seafront of Kala­maria. There, pri­va­ti­za­tion works fence the one open area after the oth­er, so, after a deci­sion of a res­i­dents assem­bly, the demon­stra­tors tore down the fenc­ing bars of the local mari­na that pre­vent free access to the sea­side. This action was wel­comed with applause from local peo­ple.

Texts in greek and a lot of pho­tos can be found here:
http://indy.gr/ or here http://athens.indymedia.org/ or there: http://diexodos.blogspot.com/.

$3.5 million luxury home torched in South Carolina

6.06.2008
Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, U.S. — 16 par­tial­ly or recent­ly con­struct­ed lux­u­ry homes have been inten­tion­al­ly burned down in south­east Char­lotte, west­ern Union Coun­ty, and Lan­cast­er Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na since 2001. Author­i­ties have yet to find who is respon­si­ble for the fires, but now believe that rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists may be behind the arsons. The most recent devel­op­ment to go up in smoke was a $3.5 mil­lion man­sion destroyed Mon­day evening, see pic­tures below.

Charlotte luxury house burning6.06.2008
Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, U.S. — 16 par­tial­ly or recent­ly con­struct­ed lux­u­ry homes have been inten­tion­al­ly burned down in south­east Char­lotte, west­ern Union Coun­ty, and Lan­cast­er Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na since 2001. Author­i­ties have yet to find who is respon­si­ble for the fires, but now believe that rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists may be behind the arsons. The most recent devel­op­ment to go up in smoke was a $3.5 mil­lion man­sion destroyed Mon­day evening, see pic­tures below.

More pic­tures: http://www.charlotte.com/multimedia/galleries/gallery/651704.html

The fire at 8407 Winged Bourne Dri­ve, south Char­lotte, start­ed about 7:30 p.m. in a sec­ond floor hall­way and spread quick­ly, shoot­ing flames hun­dreds of feet into the air. The three-sto­ry man­sion off Gle­nea­gles Road near Quail Hol­low Club had ply­wood floors and stud­ded walls and was about 60% com­plete. By Tues­day inves­ti­ga­tors had ruled out all pos­si­ble acci­den­tal caus­es.

“The only dif­fer­ence is this burned dur­ing day­light,” said Char­lot­te’s Chief Fire Inves­ti­ga­tor David Low­ery said, declin­ing to elab­o­rate.

See also:

ELF Burn Down Lux­u­ry Homes (March 3rd)
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20859

GroenFront! blocks E.ON Benelux HQ

June 3rd, Groen­Front! occu­pied the Benelux head­quar­ters of E.ON in Rot­ter­dam. The office was closed shut down from 6 AM — 1 PM, when police spe­cial­ists final­ly man­aged to remove some tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced lock-ons. Groen­Front! is demand­ing an imme­di­ate halt to the con­struc­tion of an E.ON coal pow­er plant on the Maasvlak­te, part of the port of Rot­ter­dam. The action is part of GroenFront!‘s “shrink or drown” cam­paign, which aims at bring­ing down the size of the Dutch econ­o­my to more man­age­able pro­por­tions. Sev­en pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed for refus­ing police orders or refus­ing to show an ID. They were released around mid­night.

EOn Rotterdam lock-onJune 3rd, Groen­Front! occu­pied the Benelux head­quar­ters of E.ON in Rot­ter­dam. The office was closed shut down from 6 AM — 1 PM, when police spe­cial­ists final­ly man­aged to remove some tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced lock-ons. Groen­Front! is demand­ing an imme­di­ate halt to the con­struc­tion of an E.ON coal pow­er plant on the Maasvlak­te, part of the port of Rot­ter­dam. The action is part of GroenFront!‘s “shrink or drown” cam­paign, which aims at bring­ing down the size of the Dutch econ­o­my to more man­age­able pro­por­tions. Sev­en pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed for refus­ing police orders or refus­ing to show an ID. They were released around mid­night.

The E.ON plant is said to be CO2 cap­ture-ready, but in a leaked email con­ver­sa­tion between E.ON man­agers at the British Dept. of Indus­try, it appears E.ON itself has no faith in this tech­nol­o­gy at all and is not expect­ing it to work. Groen­Front! and clown army activists had ear­li­er tried to put a lit­er­al ‘cork’ on an exist­ing E.ON plant in Hol­land to illus­trate this point.

July 19th a bicy­cle protest and pic­nic are being organ­ised by locals from the area and GroenFront!-ers.

Anoth­er coal pow­er plant is being planned only 1 km from E.ON’s con­struc­tion site, by the Bel­gian com­pa­ny Elec­tra­bel, and there are also plans by NUON and RWE for new coal pow­er plants that Groen­Front! says it will oppose by direct action.

Groen­Front! was start­ed in 1996 as the Dutch and Bel­gian branch of Earth­First.

More info: http://www.groenfront.nl

Video of the action

Cancellation of London Dongria Kondh tribe picket following targets disinvestment from Vendanta

The Sur­vival demon­stra­tion out­side Coutts Bank pre­vi­ous­ly adver­tised on this web­site planned for the 10th June has been can­celled. In reac­tion to the planned pick­et Coutts has just informed Sur­vival that they no longer hold shares in Vedan­ta, the British-based com­pa­ny whose planned baux­ite mine will dev­as­tate the lands of Indi­a’s Don­gria Kondh tribe.

The Sur­vival demon­stra­tion out­side Coutts Bank pre­vi­ous­ly adver­tised on this web­site planned for the 10th June has been can­celled. In reac­tion to the planned pick­et Coutts has just informed Sur­vival that they no longer hold shares in Vedan­ta, the British-based com­pa­ny whose planned baux­ite mine will dev­as­tate the lands of Indi­a’s Don­gria Kondh tribe.

Sur­vival is con­tin­u­ing to lob­by oth­er Vedan­ta share­hold­ers, as well as the com­pa­ny itself.

For more infor­ma­tion, please go to http://www.survival-international.org/tribes/dongria

Report fol­lows of pick­et last week.

Sur­vival protest — ‘Fins­bury prof­its from tribe’s destruc­tion’
28 May 2008

Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al this morn­ing held a demon­stra­tion out­side the Lon­don PR com­pa­ny FINSBURY, a sub­sidiary of glob­al adver­tis­ing com­pa­ny WPP. The protest high­light­ed Finsbury’s involve­ment with British min­ing giant Vedan­ta, which is set to destroy one of India’s most iso­lat­ed tribes – the Don­gria Kondh.

Car­ry­ing plac­ards that said ‘Fins­bury prof­its from tribe’s destruc­tion’, demon­stra­tors hand­ed leaflets to Fins­bury employ­ees as they arrived for work, urg­ing them to per­suade Fins­bury to resign their account with Vedan­ta.

Vedanta’s sub­sidiary, Ster­lite, plans to mine alu­mini­um ore from the Niyam­giri moun­tains in Oris­sa, India, where all of the 8,000 Don­gria Kondh live.

The Don­gria Kondh vehe­ment­ly oppose the mine. Jitu Jake­si­ka, a Don­gria spokesper­son, said, ‘We will become beg­gars if the com­pa­ny destroys our moun­tain and our for­est so that they can make mon­ey. We will give our lives for our moun­tain.’

The Don­gria Kondh have lived on the slopes of Niyam­giri since time immemo­r­i­al, and are total­ly depen­dent on its forests. They view the moun­tain as sacred, grow crops on the slopes, and gath­er wild fruit in the dense forests.

Timeline — SmashEDO Carnival Against the Arms Trade

The SmashE­DO Car­ni­val Against the Arms Trade was held in Brighton on Wednes­day 4th June. Over 500 peo­ple marched from The Lev­el to the EDO/ITT fac­to­ry in Moule­scombe [Pics] Police plans to con­tain every­one in a pen out­side a neigh­bour­ing unit were foiled, and pro­tes­tors man­aged to get to the fac­to­ry. The gates were opened to allow a police van into the EDO/ITT car park and pro­tes­tors seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to enter the car park and vent their rage against the arms com­pa­ny. A few arrests were report­ed [Press Release]

Smash EDO Carnival 1Smash EDO Carnival 2Smash EDO Carnival 3

The SmashE­DO Car­ni­val Against the Arms Trade was held in Brighton on Wednes­day 4th June. Over 500 peo­ple marched from The Lev­el to the EDO/ITT fac­to­ry in Moule­scombe [Pics] Police plans to con­tain every­one in a pen out­side a neigh­bour­ing unit were foiled, and pro­tes­tors man­aged to get to the fac­to­ry. The gates were opened to allow a police van into the EDO/ITT car park and pro­tes­tors seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to enter the car park and vent their rage against the arms com­pa­ny. A few arrests were report­ed [Press Release]

Time­line:

[15:50] Report of one vio­lent arrest of per­son leav­ing. His head was cov­ered in blood and he was com­plain­ing of a bro­ken arm.

[15:45] Reports of 4 arrests — 2 out­side fac­to­ry and two of peo­ple leav­ing. An attempt to arrest a legal observ­er seems not to have worked. Report of 10 peo­ple ket­tled on the Lewes Road.

[15:35] Pro­tes­tors are now mov­ing in small groups back towards town. One police motor­cy­cle out­rid­er seen cov­ered head to toe in gloss paint. A ran­dom arrest for no dis­cernible rea­son seen under the bridge.

[15:20] Crowd is now mov­ing away from main gate and down the hill. Police appear to be in dis­ar­ray. Lat­est report is that gates were opened to allow a police van in, and crowd (pos­si­ble 100 — 150) took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to force their way into the car park.

[15:03] Report that a pro­tes­tor de-arrest­ed him­self and man­aged to escape through 2 police lines.

[14:59] Police are now using dogs to force crowd back.

[14:56] 10 win­dows smashed. Build­ing graf­fi­tied with “smash capi­ta” and “F*ck EDO”. Report that 2 pro­tes­tors were pep­per sprayed. Police used batons to force peo­ple out of car park.

Fol­low the links above for arti­cles & more pho­tos from the Indy­media newswire.

http://smashedo.org.uk/

Whaling protester scales embassy — court update

4 June 2008 update (main sto­ry below):
Con­di­tion­al dis­charge of four months and ordered to pay £100 costs after being con­vict­ed of tres­pass.

Wyness told the court staff at the embassy had giv­en him per­mis­sion to protest out­side the build­ing.

4 June 2008 update (main sto­ry below):
Con­di­tion­al dis­charge of four months and ordered to pay £100 costs after being con­vict­ed of tres­pass.

Wyness told the court staff at the embassy had giv­en him per­mis­sion to protest out­side the build­ing.

He said they had giv­en him the invi­ta­tion when he had tied him­self to ban­is­ters inside the build­ing on a pre­vi­ous occa­sion on 25 Jan­u­ary.

The court was also shown footage which had been secret­ly filmed which showed a mem­ber of embassy staff sug­gest­ing it would be bet­ter to protest out­side the build­ing.

—

6 March 2008
A cam­paign­er protest­ing against whal­ing by the Japan­ese has been arrest­ed after chain­ing him­self to the front of the coun­try’s embassy in Lon­don.

Mar­tin Wyness, 50, of Here­ford, climbed the build­ing at about 0730 GMT and low­ered the Japan­ese flag to half-mast about 40ft (12m) from the ground.

He then unfurled a ban­ner say­ing “Japan stop your ille­gal whal­ing” before chain­ing him­self to the build­ing.

Police said Mr Wyness came down from the build­ing at 1047 GMT.

He was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of crim­i­nal tres­pass.

His protest was believed to be timed to coin­cide with a meet­ing of the Inter­na­tion­al Whal­ing Com­mis­sion which began on Thurs­day.

The three-day sum­mit, which is being held in Heathrow, will dis­cuss the future of whal­ing in Japan, Nor­way and Ice­land.

In Jan­u­ary, Mr Wyness and his 14-year-old daugh­ter Sophie were arrest­ed after tying them­selves to a stair­case with cable ties inside the embassy, in Pic­cadil­ly.

The charges against them were lat­er dropped.

Video of action