Rossport Day of Action: September 14th & daily blockades

There is a nation­al day of action at the Shell site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land. For those who cant make the demo- sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are also being called for…

Gener­ic media action leaflet — application/pdf 384K

Fri­day 14th Sep­tem­ber : Day of action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ross­port com­mu­ni­ty resist­ing Shell.

On the 14th of Sep­tem­ber a mass blockad­ing action has been called for at Shell’s pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land. Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are also called for. (To make life super easy a leaflet that can be adapt­ed and used is attached)

Over the past five years the rur­al com­mu­ni­ty around Ross­port have been resist­ing Shell’s attempts to build a gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline. If the devel­op­ment goes ahead it will have dev­as­tat­ing social and envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences for the region (for detailed info see www.corribs2s.org). Recent­ly, state repres­sion against the com­mu­ni­ty has been stepped up. The lat­est tac­tic to try and silence oppo­si­tion is an attempt to cre­ate a cul­ture of fear through the use of mali­cious pros­e­cu­tions. Key cam­paign­ers, includ­ing the head of the Fish­er­men (a strong lob­by group against the devel­op­ment) and the local cam­paign spokesper­son, have been tar­get­ed and false­ly charged with assaults on Gar­dai (see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/actions/2006/mayo/). There are sev­er­al cas­es com­ing up over the next few months and the defen­dants are almost cer­tain­ly look­ing at serv­ing time. In 2005, when the ‘Ross­port 5’ were jailed for refus­ing to allow Shell access to their land, the strug­gle here became a nation­al issue and sup­port was wide­spread nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Across Ire­land there were dai­ly pick­ets of Shell garages and oth­er sol­i­dar­i­ty actions, the boost this gave to the com­mu­ni­ty was huge. Over the past year, although resis­tance here con­tin­ues as before, out­side sup­port has become less obvi­ous. The region is remote, with­out overt exter­nal sup­port its easy for peo­ple to feel iso­lat­ed and that their strug­gle has been for­got­ten. The strength of resis­tance here is a mas­sive inspi­ra­tion and the com­mu­ni­ty deserve sup­port, espe­cial­ly at time when a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of cam­paign­ers are fac­ing los­ing their lib­er­ty.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions could involve going to the Irish Embassy, vis­it­ing a Shell office or sim­ply blockad­ing or leaflet­ing a Shell garage. The major pur­pose for tak­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty action is to boost the cam­paign here by mak­ing the com­mu­ni­ty aware that they haven’t been for­got­ten. So, while it’d be great if peo­ple got togeth­er a huge spec­tac­u­lar action, if you’ve not much time, spend­ing an hour with a ban­ner and leaflets at a Shell garage is super easy and total­ly valu­able. For exam­ple, last Autumn, peo­ple orga­nized a Ross­port sol­i­dar­i­ty action in Brighton that took fuck-all organ­i­sa­tion and went real­ly well. Peo­ple were rung the night before, there was a meet­ing at lunchtime, a ban­ner quick­ly paint­ed, some leaflets made and then about 20 peo­ple shut down the garage for the after­noon. The fuel was turned off and peo­ple got on the roof with the ban­ner. It was prop­er old-skool fun, no one got nicked, and it was real­ly cool to get a bunch of peo­ple togeth­er so quick­ly and take action togeth­er.

So, if you can find a spare hour or two next Fri­day, it‘d be great if u could do a quick (or long!) anti-shell action, and post it on Indy­media after… It’d prob­a­bly even be fun. Also, if any­one fan­cies a vis­it to Ire­land, there’s stuff hap­pen­ing reg­u­lar­ly over here and places to stay and its beau­ti­ful…

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Dai­ly block­ades again at Bel­lan­aboy

Direct action stepped up in resis­tance to Shel­l’s project in Bel­lan­aboy

Gar­dai pres­ence has mas­sive­ly reduced at Bel­lan­aboy and the dai­ly pick­ets are once again stop­ping vehi­cles enter­ing the site. Block­ades are gen­er­al­ly held for between 10 and 40 min­utes before the cops arrive and are repeat­ed at reg­u­lar inter­vals throught the day. For footage of one of the block­ades check out…

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YfSFrtv9XcA

Mass action on Fri­day 14th Setem­ber at Bel­lan­aboy. Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions also called for..