‘Not An Eviction Party’ at the secret social centre

21.02.2008

Today, the back­up venue for the ram­pART social cen­tre faced a court hear­ing as the own­ers sought an inter­im pos­ses­sion order which would have seen the occu­piers giv­en just 24 hours to back up and leave. How­ev­er, as luck would have it, only the squat­ters turned up to court so the case was adjourned. No evic­tion tomor­row and we guess not for at least anoth­er week…

21.02.2008

Today, the back­up venue for the ram­pART social cen­tre faced a court hear­ing as the own­ers sought an inter­im pos­ses­sion order which would have seen the occu­piers giv­en just 24 hours to back up and leave. How­ev­er, as luck would have it, only the squat­ters turned up to court so the case was adjourned. No evic­tion tomor­row and we guess not for at least anoth­er week…

It was intend­ed that we’d be hav­ing a day of resis­tance on Fri­day to see off the bailiffs, start­ing from 2pm with a veg­an cafe and trans­form­ing into an all night par­ty to get at least one big event out of the place we’ve put our blood, sweat and tears into since the new year. How­ev­er, now there is no evic­tion threat tomor­row we’ve decid­ed to par­ty any­way with the RAMpart2 ‘Not An Evic­tion Par­ty’

If you don’t already know the address, phone a friend. Any­one who reg­u­lar­ly attends the ram­pART should know the address by now but we’re not post­ing it here.

Wan­na per­form or DJ? give us a call (you’ll have to be very self suf­fi­cient in terms of equip­ment).

This won’t be the last event at RAMpart2, but almost.

Bikes against the bomb bikeride, London to Aldermaston, March 22–26

To mark the 50th anniver­sary of the Alder­mas­ton Peace March,a bike ride will be leav­ing Lon­don on 22 March arriv­ing at Alder­mas­ton on Mon­day 24 March to join ’ Sur­round the Base’ CND mass action planned for that day.

To mark the 50th anniver­sary of the Alder­mas­ton Peace March,a bike ride will be leav­ing Lon­don on 22 March arriv­ing at Alder­mas­ton on Mon­day 24 March to join ’ Sur­round the Base’ CND mass action planned for that day.

We intend to take an active stance against organ­i­sa­tions implic­it in the nuclear arms indus­tries.

Acco­mo­da­tion is organ­ised and we will be rid­ing about 30 miles per day.

Join us for part of the jour­ney or the whole ride.

More details at www.bikesnotbombs.org.uk

info@bikesnotbombs.org.uk

Earth First! Blockades Power Plant Construction Site, 27 Arrested

18th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Palm Beach Coun­ty — Ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing dozens of con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Palm Beach Coun­ty and all over the nation put their bod­ies on the line to halt con­struc­tion of FPL’s West Coun­ty Ener­gy Cen­ter (WCEC), demand­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, tru­ly clean, renew­able ener­gy and a mora­to­ri­um on devel­op­ment in south Flori­da. Ever­glades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a pro­posed mas­sive 3800 MW gas-fired pow­er plant that would emit 12 mil­lion tons of CO2, a lead­ing green­house gas, every year. The plant is cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion despite ongo­ing legal chal­lenges to the plant’s need­ed per­mits and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which have been spear­head­ed by the local Palm Beach Coun­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion.

West County gas power plant blockade 218th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Palm Beach Coun­ty — Ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing dozens of con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Palm Beach Coun­ty and all over the nation put their bod­ies on the line to halt con­struc­tion of FPL’s West Coun­ty Ener­gy Cen­ter (WCEC), demand­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, tru­ly clean, renew­able ener­gy and a mora­to­ri­um on devel­op­ment in south Flori­da. Ever­glades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a pro­posed mas­sive 3800 MW gas-fired pow­er plant that would emit 12 mil­lion tons of CO2, a lead­ing green­house gas, every year. The plant is cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion despite ongo­ing legal chal­lenges to the plant’s need­ed per­mits and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which have been spear­head­ed by the local Palm Beach Coun­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion.

A dozen activists locked them­selves togeth­er through met­al pipes as 200 sup­port­ers ral­lied around them. The block­ade stopped work on the con­struc­tion site for six hours before a total of 27 peo­ple were arrest­ed.

This con­fronta­tion­al action was tak­en to pro­tect the Lox­a­hatch­ee Nation­al Wildlife Refuge which sits 1000 ft from the pow­er plant site and to pro­tect the larg­er Ever­glades sys­tem. Restora­tion would be under­mined by new devel­op­ment that the pow­er plant is expect­ed to encour­age in the area. The civ­il dis­obe­di­ence action also aims to pro­tect the entire plan­et from the destruc­tive effects of cli­mate change caused by pow­er plant emis­sions.

“We just don’t need this plant,” said Lynne Purvis, an activist with Ever­glades Earth First! who was born and raised in the Lox­a­hatch­ee area. “I’m not will­ing to threat­en the integri­ty of the Lox­a­hatch­ee, one of the last large, intact pieces of north­ern Ever­glades, so that peo­ple can fuel their greedy ener­gy desires.”

Purvis says that the Ever­glades Earth First! group intends to con­tin­ue a sus­tained cam­paign of direct action against this pow­er plant and its adja­cent gas pipeline.
The protest was also attend­ed by grass­roots activists and group across the Unit­ed States who have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the annu­al Earth First! Win­ter Ren­dezvous. One such group, Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca, is part of an inter­na­tion­al move­ment for cli­mate jus­tice, which con­nects the social and envi­ron­men­tal issues relat­ed to the grow­ing
cli­mate cri­sis and calls for urgent and bold respons­es to the glob­al human-caused dilem­ma.

Bri­an Sloan, an orga­niz­er with Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca and par­tic­i­pant in Mon­day morning’s protest, said “FPL is doing what we call ‘green-wash­ing’. Gas-fired pow­er is not a clean or sus­tain­able ener­gy. It is a dirty and dwin­dling fos­sil fuel.” Sloan also states that Ris­ing Tide does not trust ener­gy com­pa­nies to solve the cli­mate cri­sis. “The solu­tions to cli­mate change will nev­er come from the peo­ple who cre­at­ed the prob­lem.”

Earth First! and the Ris­ing Tide move­ments rec­og­nize that the fight against fos­sil fuel pow­er is being used by the ener­gy indus­try to push a new wave of nuclear ener­gy. These grass­roots groups are com­mit­ted to extend­ing their fight against the dan­gers of nuclear pow­er with an eye on oth­er FPL pro­pos­als, such as Turkey Point and St. Lucie.

For info on local Earth First! efforts, vis­it: www.earthfirst2008oc.info

Con­tact: Ever­glades Earth First! (561) 588 — 9666
Pho­tos avail­able at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

Ever­glades Earth First! group intends to con­tin­ue a sus­tained cam­paign of direct action against this pow­er plant and its adja­cent gas pipeline.

WE NEED YOUR HELP with bond mon­ey & legal fees for the 27 who were arrest­ed. We need to raise $10,000 to cov­er the bond fees. Please vis­it the Palm Beach Coun­ty envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion’s web­site to donate online or email us for how to send a check!

Swedish climate action update

Cli­mate activists in deten­tion after try­ing to break into air­port

On Fri­day, groups of activists con­nect­ed to Kli­max, Sweden’s direct action move­ment against the root caus­es of cli­mate change, struck against the country’s domes­tic avi­a­tion indus­try. At Malmö Air­port, sev­en activists were appre­hend­ed when try­ing to brake into the run­way, some of them dressed as polar bears. They were trans­ferred to a deten­tion cen­tre in anoth­er city in south­ern Swe­den and kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than 60 hours. The sev­en activists were inter­ro­gat­ed through­out the days, charged with “intent to sab­o­tage air traf­fic” and threat­ened with four years in prison if con­vict­ed.

Cli­mate activists in deten­tion after try­ing to break into air­port

On Fri­day, groups of activists con­nect­ed to Kli­max, Sweden’s direct action move­ment against the root caus­es of cli­mate change, struck against the country’s domes­tic avi­a­tion indus­try. At Malmö Air­port, sev­en activists were appre­hend­ed when try­ing to brake into the run­way, some of them dressed as polar bears. They were trans­ferred to a deten­tion cen­tre in anoth­er city in south­ern Swe­den and kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than 60 hours. The sev­en activists were inter­ro­gat­ed through­out the days, charged with “intent to sab­o­tage air traf­fic” and threat­ened with four years in prison if con­vict­ed.

– It’s total­ly absurd to place peo­ple in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than two days when they’ve done noth­ing but attempt­ing to cross a fence, in a peace­ful, sym­bol­ic action. The activists did what every­one should do: they tried to stop cli­mate change from accel­er­at­ing. With their heavy-hand­ed repres­sion, the police are try­ing to deter us from fur­ther direct action, but we vow to step up our strug­gle. Since the police suc­ceed­ed in nab­bing the activists in Malmö this time, we will have to be more cre­ative when plan­ning our next actions, says Sho­ra Esmail­ian, media spokesper­son for Kli­max.

Also on Fri­day, scores of activists entered the ter­mi­nals at Brom­ma Air­port in Stock­holm and Land­vet­ter Air­port out­side of Gothen­burg. Many were dressed as polar bears and pen­guins. The demon­stra­tions were fol­lowed by die-ins in front of queu­ing pas­sen­gers. In Upp­sala, a city north of Stock­holm, yet anoth­er Kli­max group staged a protest against a planned local air­port. Pic­tures from the actions can be found at this web­site.

On Sat­ur­day, activists in Stock­holm broke into a police sta­tion to demand the imme­di­ate release of their com­rades in Malmö, and a sol­i­dar­i­ty man­i­fes­ta­tion was held in Gothen­burg. All in all, more than a hun­dred activists were involved in the coor­di­nat­ed activ­i­ties over the week­end.

On late Sun­day, the last remain­ing Malmö-activist was released from the deten­tion cen­tre. All sev­en activists will face tri­al, as will anoth­er group of activists who suc­cess­ful­ly seized the run­way at Brom­ma Air­port in April last year.

Kli­max is a rapid­ly grow­ing move­ment in Swe­den. In Stock­holm, the group has focused on an upcom­ing deci­sion to extend the premis­es of Brom­ma Air­port to the year 2038, allow­ing it to increase traf­fic with at least 20 per­cent. The con­tract, due for final approval in March, will be impos­si­ble to abro­gate if politi­cians elect­ed in Stock­holm in the com­ing decades wish to do so: it can only be annulled by the nation­al gov­ern­ment. This is con­sid­ered deeply unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic by Kli­max, but even worse, Brom­ma Air­port is now poised to con­tin­ue pro­pelling domes­tic flights to Gothen­burg, Malmö and oth­er des­ti­na­tions well cov­ered by rail­way con­nec­tions, thus increas­ing unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions at a time when they have to be slashed. Already at this date, the avi­a­tion indus­try accounts for at least 10 per­cent of Sweden’s car­bon emis­sions, accord­ing to esti­mates from the Roy­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, and the share is grow­ing. Kli­max is deter­mined to fight this whol­ly irra­tional devel­op­ment until Sweden’s domes­tic avi­a­tion is abol­ished in its entire­ty, as a first nec­es­sary step to a fos­sil-free soci­ety

Free Paper War — LONDON LITtEr

15.2.2008
Ten tonnes of waste per week is gen­er­at­ed by the free news­pa­pers in West­min­ster alone, which is not a prob­lem that can be solved just by recy­cling. The only solu­tion to the prob­lem is to remove it — stop print­ing the papers.

Recycling is not answer insert15.2.2008
Ten tonnes of waste per week is gen­er­at­ed by the free news­pa­pers in West­min­ster alone, which is not a prob­lem that can be solved just by recy­cling. The only solu­tion to the prob­lem is to remove it — stop print­ing the papers.

In an attempt to get this mes­sage out, a group of intre­pid paper boys and girls decid­ed to use the tac­tics of The Lon­don Paper and Lon­don Lite, putting their own pro-recy­cling anti-waste pro­pa­gan­da into copies of the papers then aggres­sive­ly and relent­less­ly forc­ing them on the pub­lic.

At approx­i­mate­ly 5pm sharp, paper dis­tri­b­u­tion began. The Lon­don Paper and Lon­don Lite teams com­pet­ed for the atten­tion of com­muters, point­ing out the numer­ous dif­fer­ences between the papers and the qual­i­ty of their con­tents. The teams, while obvi­ous­ly agree­ing that they were both giv­ing away high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed and intel­lec­tu­al­ly stim­u­lat­ing pub­li­ca­tions, did­n’t agree on which one was in fact supe­ri­or. Sar­casm aside, this is anoth­er issue with the free news­pa­pers — that they are filled with sec­ond rate celebri­ty gos­sip, inane half-sto­ries, and above all, adver­tis­ing. Real­ly, do these news­pa­pers con­tain any actu­al news? Is what they have to say so impor­tant that it’s worth 10 tonnes of waste paper a week?

As the com­pe­ti­tion grew more intense, war paint was smeared and the bat­tle began. Papers were giv­en and replaced and giv­en again, with dis­trib­u­tors from each team com­pet­ing over indi­vid­ual mem­bers of the pub­lic, lead­ing to vio­lent con­fronta­tions with each oth­er. The offi­cial employ­ees of both free papers seemed baf­fled but amused, tak­ing pho­tographs of the event. How­ev­er, an employ­ee of The Evening Stan­dard, dri­ving up in his van, seemed to be less than impressed, attempt­ing to take away some of the papers and gen­er­al­ly behav­ing in a rather ungentle­man­ly fash­ion.

Then, as two oppos­ing team mem­bers were locked in com­bat, a police­man on a horse appeared and polite­ly and calm­ly request­ed that all the stu­dents just stop that and come and speak to him right now. As only a cou­ple of the group were stu­dents, the action most­ly con­tin­ued until he got a bit upset. When all the paper boys and girls were gath­ered around the horse, they were told “You just can’t do that!” “Stop it!” “I’ll arrest you!” “Just stop it!” and “Calm down!”.

After agree­ing that it was indeed rude to force news­pa­pers on unsus­pect­ing pedes­tri­ans, but that they would calm down, the paper dis­trib­ut­ing con­tin­ued a lit­tle less vio­lent­ly. Passers-by were offered ‘The Lon­don Lit­ter’, ‘free rub­bish’, and ‘news’ (though unfor­tu­nate­ly there was no news avail­able), and were assured that they could throw it away when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they liked. In fact, the more they threw away the bet­ter. Some peo­ple seemed quite keen to get their free rub­bish, some were irri­tat­ed and a few were gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in what was being said.

Sad­ly, some more police­men (who did­n’t have hors­es) turned up and told the paper girls and boys that real­ly it was time to stop it now. Mod­er­ate­ly aggres­sive at first, they were won over by the charm of the paper­ers, report­ed­ly even tak­ing some (100% recy­cled!) leaflets for their col­leagues. By this point all the news­pa­pers had gone and it was at least half past beer o’clock, so after a lit­tle chat with the police (and pick­ing up any lit­ter that may have been left), it was declared a vic­to­ry and they head­ed off.

http://www.spacehijackers.org

Stop the Swedish “Triangle of Death” Seven polar bears held for attempted air travel

Cli­mate activist group Kli­max in Swe­den are tired of unnec­es­sary short haul and nation­al flights. Espe­cial­ly between the major cities of Gothen­burg, Stock­holm and Malmo/Copenhagen, all direct­ly cou­pled by the near­est thing Swe­den has to a high speed train. That’s why that on Fri­day the 15th of Feb­ru­ary strange things start­ed hap­pen­ing at air­ports around Swe­den.

Gothenburg airport action 1
Stockholm airport action 2
Cli­mate activist group Kli­max in Swe­den are tired of unnec­es­sary short haul and nation­al flights. Espe­cial­ly between the major cities of Gothen­burg, Stock­holm and Malmo/Copenhagen, all direct­ly cou­pled by the near­est thing Swe­den has to a high speed train. That’s why that on Fri­day the 15th of Feb­ru­ary strange things start­ed hap­pen­ing at air­ports around Swe­den.

Time might be mon­ey but how much cli­mate change is ten min­utes worth? If you don’t have any lug­gage and check in on-line that’s about how much time you can save by fly­ing between Swe­den’s major cities. Con­sid­er­ing that the Swedish trains run on renew­able elec­tric ener­gy, that’s a hell of a lot of cli­mate change for ten min­utes. Ok, it’s not that sim­ple. Why would any sane per­son with­out a cli­mate con­science or a fat wal­let take the train when it’s cheap­er to fly? A rail­way sys­tem that makes the UK’s look mod­ern could also help weigh the bal­ance when it comes to choos­ing how to get there.

Here’s a round up of the dif­fer­ent actions around the coun­try:

Mal­mo http://svt.se/svt/play/video.jsp?a=1057410
At the time of writ­ing sev­en activists are being held in cus­tody. It seems that the crime of run­ning about the coun­try­side dressed as a polar bear is frowned upon in the south of Swe­den. The sev­en were arrest­ed run­ning towards the perime­ter fence of Stu­rup air­port out­side of Mal­mo by the large police pres­ence. It seems that the boys in blue were out on a mass train­ing exer­cise at the time. The police should be hap­py to get a bit of real life train­ing. Attempt­ing to get onto run­ways whilst dressed as a polar bear is def­i­nite­ly one of the fastest going crimes of our time. An inter­est­ing high pub­lic­i­ty court case seems to be in the pipe line. At least one sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tion (Gothen­burg 2pm Gustaf Adolfs Torg) is planned on Sat­ur­day in Swe­den to demand the release of the Mal­mo sev­en.
Stockholm airport action
Stock­holm
The polar bears of Stock­holm were treat­ed to ice cream by the air­port author­i­ties at Brom­ma. A pleas­ant ges­ture but hard­ly mak­ing up for help­ing to destroy the bears norther­ly habi­tat. Sor­ry you fam­i­ly drowned but here’s a rasp­ber­ry rip­ple to make up for it,sort of thing. A die in was staged as oth­er peace­ful pro­test­ers with ban­ners and fly­ers roamed the ter­mi­nal rais­ing aware­ness of the envi­ron­men­tal harm caused by air trav­el. There are present­ly plans to enlarge Brom­ma air­port in Stock­holm. The ques­tion is what are the politi­cians and plan­ners think­ing. In a time and a coun­try where every nine year old knows about glob­al warm­ing and its caus­es, the author­i­ties get the idea of expand­ing air­ports. It might be time to let the kids take over the pow­er. They could hard­ly do a worse job than the cli­mate crim­i­nals doing the job now. But then the kids are self­ish­ly more wor­ried about their future than in the hon­est busi­ness of mak­ing short term finan­cial gains.

Gothen­burg
A die in was staged in front of the secu­ri­ty gate at Land­vet­ter air­port out­side of Gothen­burg. Twen­ty activists arrived at the air­port to stage the protest on Fri­day evening. The die in was for the ben­e­fit of pas­sen­gers on their way to emit the largest pos­si­ble amount of green­house gas­es whilst cov­er­ing the 300 or so miles to Stock­holm. After mirac­u­lous­ly reviv­ing them­selves the activists formed a ban­ner wall to wel­come three plane loads of arrivals from the cap­i­tal. The whole thing went down peace­ful­ly with the mas­sive police pres­ence (at least three cop­pers for every cli­mate cru­sad­er) stand­ing around look­ing bored.
Uppsala airport action
Upp­sala
The uni­ver­si­ty town of Upp­sala north of Stock­holm does­n’t have a nice warm pas­sen­ger air­port to stage an action in. The com­pa­ny Upp­sala Air is doing its best to change this. They want to pro­vide a pleas­ant pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal so that local cli­mate activists would have some­where warm to stage protests. In the best “make do with what you’ve got spir­it“, the Upp­sala activist cre­at­ed their own run­way in the city cen­ter to illus­trate how pleas­ant­ly an air­port can con­vert a bor­ing piece of coun­try­side into noisy pol­lut­ing cli­mate chal­leng­ing strip of asfalt.

This is just the start of the Swedish resis­tance against cli­mate crim­i­nal­i­ty. Watch this space for the next move. We think cars are also plane stu­pid. Hon­est!

http://klimatet.org/

Charges dropped against 14-year old & dad who tied themselves to Japanese Embassy

A 14-year-old anti-whal­ing cam­paign­er arrest­ed at the Japan­ese embassy has con­demned a deci­sion to drop charges.

A 14-year-old anti-whal­ing cam­paign­er arrest­ed at the Japan­ese embassy has con­demned a deci­sion to drop charges.

Sophie Wyness was arrest­ed with her father Mar­tin, 50, after tying them­selves to a stair­case inside the Lon­don build­ing on 24 Jan­u­ary.

Crim­i­nal tres­pass charges against the pair, from Here­ford, were dropped for “evi­den­tial rea­sons”.

How­ev­er, the school­girl claimed the case was dropped to avoid dam­ag­ing com­mer­cial ties with Japan.

Sophie said: “If they have resources to spend on triv­ial pros­e­cu­tions like this, they should real­ly be putting them into the fight against Japan’s bar­bar­ic whal­ing indus­try, which is ille­gal under inter­na­tion­al law.”

A spokesman for the CPS said it had dropped the charges for “evi­den­tial rea­sons”.

He said: “After fur­ther review it was decid­ed there was no longer a real­is­tic prospect of con­vic­tion.”

But Mr Wyness, a shop work­er, said he and his daugh­ter were guilty and had gone to court expect­ing to be sen­tenced.

“This is clear­ly a trav­es­ty and is bring­ing British law into dis­re­pute.

“They’re say­ing lack of evi­dence and yet we were guilty. They have all the evi­dence they want for a con­vic­tion.”

Dis­trict Judge Quentin Pur­dy lift­ed an order at the City of West­min­ster Mag­is­trates Court ban­ning the pub­li­ca­tion of Sophie’s name, after legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the BBC.

After the court hear­ing Sophie and her father deliv­ered a let­ter to the Japan­ese embassy ask­ing the ambas­sador to put pres­sure on his gov­ern­ment to end whal­ing.

Secu­ri­ty staff at the embassy stopped the pair enter­ing the build­ing, but agreed to pass the let­ter on.

Hackney Social Centre Opens!

15.02.2008
Lon­don’s newest autonomous zone opened last night with a free cafe, music, and a series of short films.

15.02.2008
Lon­don’s newest autonomous zone opened last night with a free cafe, music, and a series of short films.

After three weeks of resist­ing ille­gal forcible evic­tions, the Hack­ney Social Cen­tre opened last night for an evening of food, music, films — includ­ing one, Train­squat­ting, about squat­ters and resis­tance to evic­tions in Slove­nia.

The social cen­tre grew out of meet­ings through the North­east Squat­ters Net­work, which seeks to strength­en sol­i­dar­i­ty and skill-shar­ing local­ly between the squats in north-east Lon­don. It is a non-com­mer­cial social space and plans to be home to activ­i­ties such as free lan­guage lessons, a dona­tions-only cafe, a free shop, meet­ings of local groups, skill-share ses­sions and a bike work­shop.

Gen­er­al Meet­ings for the social cen­tre are open to the pub­lic, and begin this Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 17th, at 3pm. Any­one inter­est­ed in get­ting involved, or learn­ing more, is wel­come. The social cen­tre is locat­ed at 231 Low­er Clap­ton Road, in Hack­ney.

Here you can down­load TRAINSQUATTING and its sub­ti­tles >
Enjoy

http://www.kiberpipa.org/video/Frontline/TrainSquatting/

Latest details: Earth First! Winter Moot 2008 — February 22nd – 24th 2008 — Nottingham

Join us for
Activist skill share
Plan­ning rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change,
Shar­ing ideas for the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Oppo­si­tion to the UK genet­ic crop tri­als and mega-dams in Ice­land
a chance to share info on your own cam­paign

Arrive from 5pm, Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 22nd 2008, with din­ner at 7 o’clock.
Open to all those who have been involved in rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action and to those who just want to find out more.

EF! fist tree 1Join us for
Activist skill share
Plan­ning rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change,
Shar­ing ideas for the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Oppo­si­tion to the UK genet­ic crop tri­als and mega-dams in Ice­land
a chance to share info on your own cam­paign

Arrive from 5pm, Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 22nd 2008, with din­ner at 7 o’clock.
Open to all those who have been involved in rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action and to those who just want to find out more.

Cost: £15 (to include accom­mo­da­tion and food)
Crèche and dis­abled access both avail­able,
but please call to let us know if you need either or if you have oth­er needs.

At The Sumac Cen­tre, Glad­stone Street Not­ting­ham, www.veggies.org.uk/sumac
For more info call 01508 531636 (num­ber not avail­able dur­ing the event)

Fri­day late after­noon and evening will be a chance to arrive, and for intro­duc­tions, plus a G8 talk & film, and an Intro­duc­tion to EF!

We’ll be kick­ing off ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing (9am break­fast) — start­ing with all shar­ing the most impor­tant rea­sons why we’ve come to Not­ting­ham, we’ll get on with some prac­ti­cal dis­cus­sions around the EF! Action Update, the web­site, and the sum­mer gath­er­ing.
From what we’ve all said, we’ll be able in the after­noon to move on to ‘where next?’, plus shar­ing cam­paigns we’re involved with & see­ing what they need, and get­ting togeth­er local­ly and region­al­ly with oth­er folk who are there.

On Sun­day we’ll move into groups to con­crete­ly take the ideas for­wards from the Sat­ur­day, from the cam­paigns we’re already work­ing on and what we want to do togeth­er. We’ll fin­ish at 4pm, after hav­ing shared what we’ve come up with. Hoorah.

Earth First! is not an organ­i­sa­tion, but a way of using non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­i­sa­tion and the use of direct action to con­front, stop and even­tu­al­ly reverse the forces that are respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the Earth and its inhab­i­tants. For fur­ther info check out www.earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/

Plus
All day Fri­day 22nd Feb­ru­ary, Sav­ing Ice­land UK meet­ing, also at the Sumac Cen­tre. Open to those inter­est­ed in trav­el­ling to Ice­land or tak­ing part in sol­i­dar­i­ty actions against the con­struc­tion of large, wilder­ness wreck­ing dams in Ice­land.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion and essen­tial book­ing con­tact 01508 531636 or savingiceland@riseup.org

Tara campaign update: lock-ons and digger-diving, plus protest camp contact

I’m turn­coat ACS archae­ol­o­gist. I’m involved in Tara Cam­paign since June 2006 and thats my sto­ry about clamp­ing to a lor­ry at 31st of Jan­u­ary.

Wednes­day evening at Rath Lugh Ressis­tance Camp was quite nor­mal like every oth­er day. Few pro­test­ers were sit­ing in the Round­hause around burn­er, hav­ing tea and good con­ver­sa­tion about how bad multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions real­ly are. Approx­i­mate­ly about one o’clock when we were sit­ting in silence con­tem­plat­ing the idea of mega­lith­ic rock art being influ­enced by cymat­ic pat­terns caused by drum singing, six more pro­test­ers showed up. They bring with them idea of lock on to tar machine at Sol­diers Hill, which was enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly embraced by all of us. Soon we formed think tank and brain­stormed through idea of that kind of Direct Action. After an hour we were ready and went to our beds to have a good rest.

I’m turn­coat ACS archae­ol­o­gist. I’m involved in Tara Cam­paign since June 2006 and thats my sto­ry about clamp­ing to a lor­ry at 31st of Jan­u­ary.

Wednes­day evening at Rath Lugh Ressis­tance Camp was quite nor­mal like every oth­er day. Few pro­test­ers were sit­ing in the Round­hause around burn­er, hav­ing tea and good con­ver­sa­tion about how bad multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions real­ly are. Approx­i­mate­ly about one o’clock when we were sit­ting in silence con­tem­plat­ing the idea of mega­lith­ic rock art being influ­enced by cymat­ic pat­terns caused by drum singing, six more pro­test­ers showed up. They bring with them idea of lock on to tar machine at Sol­diers Hill, which was enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly embraced by all of us. Soon we formed think tank and brain­stormed through idea of that kind of Direct Action. After an hour we were ready and went to our beds to have a good rest.

I waked up ear­ly in the morn­ing and moved myself to the Round­haus. Some pro­test­ers were on quick sup­ply run, oth­er prepar­ing nec­es­sary equip­ment for action. Two of us were decid­ed to lock on to machin­ery, oth­ers were mak­ing sup­port for us. At 1020 GMT we depart­ed to cars. Morale was high, peo­ple smil­ing and jok­ing all over the road to Sol­diers Hill. At 1032 GMT we arrived at sites main gate and jumped out of car. Main objec­tive was tar machine so we moved quick­ly towards it, pass­ing by two work­ers with angle grinder rip­ping off tar­mac from the day before (they prob­a­bly had some flaws in it and need­ed to lay it again).

For­tu­nate­ly for us next to tar machine was lor­ry with tar trans­port so I chose that one as I knew that oth­er pro­test­er is aim­ing tar machine. When we approached them, there was a lit­tle bit chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion with work­ers run­ning around, obvi­ous­ly they had no idea about true nature of our action. I found­ed good spot under­neath the lor­ry and using work­ers igno­rance locked myself on. When they real­ized whats real­ly going on it was already to late. I placed my self com­fort­ably, make a rol­ly and attempt­ed to read Archae­ol­o­gy and Soci­ety by G. Clark. I was inter­rupt­ed by secu­ri­ty, Fer­rovial Span­ish work­ers and my favourite health and safe­ty offi­cer Mark Kleary.

Oth­er pro­test­ers left and were sup­port­ing two of us from out­side of con­struc­tion site. When fer­rovial or Kleary were not around I had nice chat with work­ers, they were quite sat­is­fied to have a break in their job. It was quite cold and one of them gave me gloves to warm my hands.

Then Gar­dai came in and start­ed usu­al drill (whats your name, would you live the site bla bla bla). We were ded­i­cat­ed to stay and make them cut us of from machin­ery. Mark Kleary him­self, was the man who cut my d‑lock. Before doing that he was say­ing some­thing about cut­ting dif­fer­ent parts of my body so he exposed him­self clear­ly as a psy­chopath. To be hon­est I’m lit­tle bit afraid of that man and I men­tioned that to Gar­dai. They did not com­ment­ed that.

It take three dif­fer­ent scis­sors and 2,5 hours to cut us off. After that we were hand­cuffed and tak­en to Gar­da Sta­tion at Navan. We were searched, sep­a­rat­ed and placed in dif­fer­ent cells. Oth­er pro­test­ers gath­er around Gar­da Sta­tion build­ing and were blow­ing whis­tles and shout­ing encour­ag­ing words. After some time we were tak­en to Dublin. There we expe­ri­enced very quick, fast food like court case.

We were col­lect­ed from court by fel­low pro­test­er. Now we are under bail con­di­tion until next court case which will be Feb­ru­ary the sixth, but keep work­ing for the cam­paign. In next hour I’m going to Sol­dier Hill to sup­port Dig­ger Divers by mean of ban­ner protest­ing. So that’s my sto­ry.

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Help is need­ed imme­di­ate­ly on site with cam­eras bat­ter­ies and gen­er­al sup­port. Please pur­chase phone cred­it for the vig­il phone 086 1758557 If you can’t come to the hill con­tact us at tarapark@sacredireland.org maybe there is some­thing you can do from your com­put­er or land­line.
Today, Feb 6th. Ash wednes­day.…. a dig­ger is on the arche­o­log­i­cal site less than 30 feet from Lis­mullen Henge but has been pre­vent­ed from work­ing. 12 activists have stopped con­struc­tion work­ers from unload­ing 3 dumper loads of hard core on the Lis­mullin arche­o­log­i­cal site. Gar­dai have been on site and tak­en names and threat­ened arrest. This work has been deemed ille­gal by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. It is also against pub­lic opin­ion, see full results of recent sur­vey on www.sacredireland.
A cer­e­mo­ny took place on the henge at Lis­mullin, Imbolg Feb 3rd. 2008. There will be anoth­er cer­e­mo­ny this Sun­day Feb 10th at 3pm
All wel­come.

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Demon­stra­tion at Lis­mullin morn­ing of 7th Feb — 8 AM

Time to get real. Time for hocus-pocus over.

Demo­li­tion works con­tin­ued today at the Lis­mullin nation­al mon­u­ment, which lies in the mid­dle of the M3 motor­way route, near the Hill of Tara, despite the fil­ing of High Court action yes­ter­day by Gor­don Lucas.

A large protest is planned for 8.00 AM tomor­row morn­ing, beside the Lis­mullin site. Demon­stra­tors are trav­el­ling from dif­fer­ent parts of Ire­land to object to the demo­li­tion works pro­ceed­ing, while the mat­ter is before the courts.

Small­er demon­stra­tions have been tak­ing place on a week­ly basis, and today two more demon­stra­tors appeared before Judge Bro­phy in Navan Dis­trict Court, charged with tres­pass, after being arrest­ed last week.

Rhi­an­non Cur­tis from the UK had her case dis­missed, because it was a first offence. Marcin Saw­ic­ki, from Poland, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked as an archae­ol­o­gist on the M3, had his case adjourned until next week, when an inter­preter was ordered to be present.

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Mass action at Tara, Mon­day 11 Feb, 12 noon

Just back from a very inter­est­ing day at Tara. Pho­tos are to fol­low that show the dev­as­ta­tion afoot up there, espe­cial­ly at Sol­dier Hill where con­struc­tion work­ers are rush­ing to build the 50 acre Blun­del­stown Inter­change. Lis­mullin and Rath Lugh are also very vul­ner­a­ble right now.

A day of mass protest at Tara is now planned for Mon­day, 11 Feb, at 12 noon. We are aim­ing to get var­i­ous groups and indi­vid­u­als to take part, as the sit­u­a­tion is crit­i­cal. If we all pull togeth­er for this, then we can have a strong impact, on the ground and in the media.

So make a date in your diaries, spread the word, and hope­ful­ly we’ll see some of you on Mon­day.

For any­one who wants to stay around up there for a while, the camp in Rath Lugh is in real­ly good shape, with warm, dry accom­mo­da­tion avail­able for activists. The guys up there are doing a great job, and it’s now time for every­one who cares about Tara to act.

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11th feb —

The sit­u­a­tion is esca­lat­ing at Lis­mullin. Dig­gers are try­ing to cross the pro­tect­ed area of the Nation­al Mon­u­ment. There is no Gar­da pres­ence. More machin­ery is arriv­ing and pro­test­ers are attempt­ing a block­ade. Please sup­port in any way you can, con­tact all media, bring sup­plies, video and pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment. Join the peace­ful protest and spread the word. Urgent Call Out Now!
Dig­ger

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It has been con­firmed that a dig­ger did indeed suc­ceed today in dri­ving right across the front of the Esker of Rath Lugh. This area is clear­ly marked and fenced as the Exclu­sion Zone/Preservation Area. Pro­test­ers also report oth­er machin­ery includ­ing huge earth movers com­ing right up as far as the fences.

There is ample room for dig­gers to manoeu­vre with­out going near the exclu­sion area. WHY WASNT THIS DRIVER ARRESTED ?

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The Rath Lugh Protest Camp needs your sup­port: The Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp is sit­u­at­ed two and a half kilo­me­tres from the Hill of Tara, on the Front Line of the pro­posed M3 between Lis­mullen and Baron­stown.

Rath Lugh is the out­er base camp for the Hill of Tara, enabling activists to keep a per­ma­nent vig­il on the move­ment of vehi­cles and per­son­nel work­ing on var­i­ous con­struc­tion sites through­out the val­ley. Activists also main­tain a con­stant pres­ence on the Rath Lugh Nation­al Mon­u­ment, which is cur­rent­ly under a tem­po­rary preser­va­tion order. The aim is to see this sig­nif­i­cant mon­u­ment per­ma­nent­ly pre­served in-line with the rest of the Tara Com­plex.

“We need peo­ple urgent­ly to halt the Val­ley’s destruc­tion. Every­one has a skill or tal­ent they can lend to this protest. Bring wellies, raingear, sleep­ing bags, torch, lighter, plen­ty of warm cloth­ing, and good spir­its. The protest is only going to get stronger, we will con­tin­ue to oppose the motor­way until it is moved, so come to Rath Lugh as quick­ly as you can. WE NEED YOU ALL NOW BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. Tara is call­ing, don’t ignore the call.”

Rath Lugh Camp Num­ber: +353 86 1537 146