germinate 2009 summer

The Australian Student Environment Network recognise and pay respect to the Indigenous nations and traditional caretakers of the land.

More than 500 Indigenous nations shared this land for over 40,000 years before invasion. We express solidarity and continued commitment to work-

ing with Indig- e nous peoples, both in Australia and around the world, in ongoing struggles for land

rights, self determination, sovereignty and the recognition of past injustices.

This magazine was printed on the land of the Gadigal people of the

Eora Nation.

Sovereignty was never ceded. If you are reading this you are standing on

Aboriginal land.

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contentsIn the 2009 O-Week Edition of Germinate, we explore ‘direct action’ - its meaning,

forms & guises; effectiveness & repercussions; joys & challenges; & how direct action is creating greater environmental justice in our communities and across the globe.

News from the ASEN network - 4

News from the other places - 6Countdown to Copenhagen - 8

A billion for the aluminium industry - Rudd’s small change - 10Citizen malfunction and sabotage - 15

Fences - 16Cranking Up Action at Climate Camp - 17

On direct action at Climate Camp - 18From here - a poem from a coal community in Queensland - 19

Direct action is and isn’t - 20Is ‘Taking It To The Streets’ worth the bruises, tear gas and arrests? - 22

Prescribed Area Peoples’ Alliance - 26On Sovereignty - 28

Peoples’ Climate Action in Ladakh, India - 31 Gettin’ Ziggy with it - an anti-nuclear rap - 32

Open letter on green capitalism and climate justice movements - 33Environmental Direct Actions and Rebellions - 34

creating unprecedented, unpredictible political consequences - 382009 events and activist contacts - 39

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news from the ASEN networkConveney BitesRoll up, roll up and welcome to our fabulous and newly endorsed ASEN Convenors for 2009. Lian from Perth and Kristy from Brisvegas will step into their roles from February, and Dany from Newcas-tle will take on the role of Environment Officer for the National Union of Students. Hooray, we love you and good luck!

InterwebsThe ASEN website is back – beautiful, bewitching, bovine, bedazzling, bigger and better than ever. Check it out – www.asen.org.au

Coalture JamASEN Climate Pirates have been stepping up at-tacks on the mighty (and rising) seas this last few months. A series of coordinated cannon-like bangs went off in the first week of November, when there were direct actions on nasty, polluting coal-fired power stations. Brave and wonderful climateers around the continent locked onto four power sta-tions in one week. WA crew even got to share their day of glory with Obamarama Mania (ie, the death of G.W.B.).

But the fearsome attacks didn’t stop there - Queenslanders braved solid ground and hit the road for a Coal Communities Listening Tour. They spent two weeks listening and engaging with locals who, quite literally, live at Queensland’s coal-face. The listening tour was initiated to bridge the gap between communities, government, business and climate campaigners by listening to and document-ing the concerns of community stakeholders, with-out judgment or debate.

The icing on the action cake was served in Decem-ber. ASEN crew coal-laborated with outstanding community climate action groups to ‘step it up’ on climate change when the Krudd Government deliv-ered a suicidal 5% emissions reduction target as part of a reprehensible Carbon Pollution Reduction Or Orwellian Sounding 95% Emission Capping Scheme. We sailed into police barricades at MPs offices across the country, sandbagging ahoy and dancing sorrowfully to the last tunes of the Great Barrier Reef. R.I.P.

Now we’re full [green] steam ahead into 2009. In 2009 the world will see the biggest, most powerful movement of millions of people standing up for cli-mate justice. And we will start with a bang in Febru-ary at Australia’s Climate Action Summit. Be there or sandbag your house.

RadioactivityIn September, nukes activists in Sydney told Peter Garrett to keep the toxic trash in the 90s. Dressed as characters from appalling TV series ‘Beverley Hills 90210’ (which is threatening to make a ghast-ly comeback), activists converged at his electoral office to say 9021[NO!] to his approval to expand Beverley Uranium Mine from 8km2 to 100km2! A far cry from headlining a gig at the famous Jabi-luka blockade, Peter has clearly changed his tune. Approval papers for more mines and mine expan-sions, for projects that will still be radioactive in 90210 years, are oozing like oil onto his desk.

Further on in November, twelve people attended the senate inquiry into whether the Common-

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news from the ASEN networkwealth Radioactive Waste Management (CRWM) Bill should be repealed, as was promised by the Rudd Governmentt pre-election. After an inspiring session in Alice Springs, Mparntwe, where opposi-tion to the dump and the draconian legislation was clear, this session in Canberra was mainly attend-ed by pro-nuclear groups such as ANSTO (Aus-tralian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisa-tion) and FAST (Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological societies). While representa-tives from FAST were presenting, activists in the audience covered their mouths with black bands proclaiming ‘repeal CRWM’. This was to represent the exclusion of many Traditional Owners from the process of deciding to build a nuclear waste dump on their lands.

ConvergingThe organising crew for the Students of Sustain-ability Conference made great links with local sovereign owners in Newcastle this year, starting conversations at the same time as organising was started and continuing communication throughout and beyond SoS. Organising together with local Indigenous people meant learning about protocol and collaboration and led to a great conference with lots of meaningful and inspiring content.

The strengthening of local links with Indigenous

people around Australia was identified as one of the priorities of the Indigenous Solidarity working group, and different states are engaging in local campaigns as well as national initiatives such as the convergence in Alice Springs, Mparntwe, in October. Activists from across Australia converged on Mount Nancy town camp to hear from people suffering under the continuing draconian racist in-tervention. We visited town camps and communi-ties, listened, talked, made friends, and learnt - and went back to our states with new inspiration in the continuing struggle against the NT intervention.

In Darwin people have been working with local Ylongu people, learning the language and getting to know people from communities, finding people who wanted their voices heard and helping that to happen. Students organised a community review of the Intervention in Darwin with people coming from Arnhem Land and Darwin town camps.

Land Ahoy!And that’s all for ASEN news in this stinking hot summer’s day, which is a whole lot stinkier in a room full of activists. Except stinky like roses in the springtime of grassroots revolution. Happy 08/09. Checkout the busy bee ASEN calendar and get involved in your mind-blowingly amazing campus collective!

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news from the other placesJoin the Dots. It’s fun! Grab a connector pen and weave some common threads through these eclectic snippets of direct action and protest from across the globe in 2008.

Dam Protesters Ordain Forest & Cast Curses

July ‘08 in Tambon Sa-iab, Thailand: Villagers have revived their protest against the Kaeng Sua Ten dam by holding a black magic ritual to curse

Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, who has revived the controversial project. More than 500 villagers joined the ritual, held by the Yom river

in Song district, on which the dam is to be erected. A villager put monks’ robes around teak trees in a ceremony to `ordain’ the forest at Tambon Sa-iab of Phrae’s Song district. The activity was an attempt to block a

government plan to build the Kaeng Sua Ten dam, which could flood the forest. The Tambon Sa-iab villagers are known for their fierce protests

against the project, as they have managed to thwart it for 19 years. ‘’We will not cooperate with any campaigns for the dam and will not guarantee the safety of officials who work for the project,’’ villagers’ representative

Sudarat Chaimongkon said in a statement.bangkokpost.com

Indonesian Farmers Block MineAugust ‘08 in Java, Indonesia: Farmers and residents are fighting an iron sand mine proposed by the Perth-based company PT In-domine. They would be forced to abandon their homes and farms if the mine went ahead. Their campaign has targeted all levels of Indonesian government, and the Australian embassy, and has de-layed the mine’s development. There are concerns that mining the sand could expose the region to greater damage from tsunamis, threaten groundwater supplies, and decrease the availability and

affordability of food in the region.

Direct Action Stops Bauxite Transport in GuineaNovember ‘08 in Guinea, West Africa: Activists stopped trains from Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee (CBG) that move

bauxite from mines to the harbours. Bauxite is the major raw material for energy-intensive aluminium production, and Guin-

ea is the world’s biggest bauxite exporter. Protesters have been seeking out Alcoa and Rio Tinto Alcan officials’ houses, robbed them and set fire to many. Guinean people say that

mine owners have been cutting off water pipes and monopo-lizing energy resources.savingiceland.puscii.nl

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news from the other placesBanahaw Protesters Close Mine Site

May ‘08 in Tayabas City, Philippines: More than 1,500 local officials, religious members, mountaineers and environmentalists trekked to the mystic mountain and sealed off hurriedly abandoned mine tunnels and excavation sites. “The collective action of Tayabasin was their strongest

manifestation in their condemnation of illegal treasure-hunting activities in Mt. Banahaw,” said environmentalist lawyer Sheila de Leon, director of

the Tanggol Kalikasan-Southern Tagalog. When they arrived at the exca-vation site, they hauled stones from a nearby river to close the entrance of the lone tunnel and three other holes. “The local officials plan to seal

off the tunnel and holes with concrete in the coming days,” De Leon said. Citing statements from the villagers, she said illegal treasure hunters had been digging for three weeks, escorted by six heavily armed policemen.

newsinfo.inquirer.net

Plane Stupid Shuts Down Stansted AirportDecember ‘08 in London, UK: 57 young protesters from the climate ac-

tion group Plane Stupid shut down Stansted Airport for five hours, camp-ing on the runway and surrounding themselves with fortified security

fencing. The action coincided with climate negotiations in Poland and aimed to highlight the difference between climate talk and climate action. Stansted is one of the busiest airports

in the world, emitting 4 tonnes of CO2 per minute, and protesters were responsible for the can-cellation of 56 flights! Their website has

been temporarily closed owing to an anonymous defama- tion order.

planestupid.com

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Countdown to CopenhagenThe first international planning meeting was held last September for a large climate mobilisation for direct action against root causes of climate change at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009.

Towards climate action in Copenhagen

We stand at a crossroads in history. The facts are undeniable. Global climate change, caused by human activities, is happening. We all know that, world over, we’re facing a manifold and deepening crisis: of the climate, energy, food, livelihoods, and of political and human rights. Scientific, environ-mental, social and civil society movements from all over the world are calling for action against climate change.

Massive consumption of fossil fuel is one of the major causes of global warming, a problem that threatens the lives of hundreds of millions of peo-ple around the world. Instead of leading the way, governments are prioritising economic growth and corporate interests while ignoring the speeding train of climate change hurtling towards the abyss. The corporate exploitation of the planet’s resources cannot be allowed to continue any longer. We have precious little time to react to this threat. We need action NOW to stop climate change, and if the so-called ‘leaders’ won’t lead the way, we must.

On the 30th November 2009, world leaders will come to Copenhagen for the UN Climate Confer-ence (COP15). This will be the most important sum-mit on climate change ever to have taken place, and it will determine how the countries of the world are going to respond to the climate threat. The de-cisions taken there will define the future for all the people of the world. The previous meetings give no indication that this meeting will produce anything more than empty rhetoric and a green washed blueprint for business-as-usual.

There is an alternative to the current course and it’s not some far-off dream. If we put reason before

profit, we can live amazing lives without destroy-ing our planet. But this will not happen by itself. We have to take direct action, both against the root causes of climate change and to help create a new, just and joyous world in the shell of the old. And so, we call on all responsible people of the planet to take direct action against the root causes of climate change during the COP15 summit in Copenhagen 2009.

The exact plans for our mobilisation are not yet fi-nalised. We have time to collectively decide what our best course of action may be. We encourage everyone to start mobilising in your own countries. It is time to take the power back from the leaders not responsible enough to hold it. The power is in our hands!

In solidarity, Climate Network 09The Copenhagen Activist Network for International Mobilization towards the COP15 Climate Summit 2009. www.klimax2009.org/

Proposals for political per-spective for Copenhagen:

1) Attempt to close down summit, not lobby it.2) Attempt to delegitimise Kyoto process rather than appeal to reform or improve it just so that it can continue in a new form.3) Best solution to climate change is rapid transi-tion to 100% renewable energy 4) Access to energy is a human right, not a privi-lege. As such it should be free or low cost.5) Energy resources, infrastructures and tech-nologies should be based on common/public own-ership as a not-for-profit sector that is outside of the world market, regardless of which energy sources.6) A rapid transition away from fossil fuels (and nuclear) will require common ownership of fossil fuels and nuclear energy themselves, and associ-ated infrastructures and technologies. (Note: I am currently writing an article on this theme).7) Workers within the fossil fuel and nuclear energy sectors can play an important part in as-

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Countdown to Copenhagensuring a “just transition” away from these energy sources.8) Capital has to pay the cost of rising petrol prices, not ordinary people.9) “Peak Oil” will not be allowed to become an excuse for imposed austerity in the face of high profits from oil (and other energy) multinationals.10) Similarly, climate change must not become a justification for coercive policies that limit freedom of movement and association.11) Support for the initiative to create an Interna-tional Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), (http://irena.org/ ;) and view it as the most progressive item on the “established” international agenda, but are also highly skeptical of its potential, since it is being established within the framework of the world market and capitalist relations.12) A long term solution to the current energy and climate crisis is not possible within the framework of capitalist social relations.

Goals of mobilisation process:1) Block the summit from happening.

2) Decentralised actions world wide during the event.

3) Generate world-wide debate and autono-mous alliances based around the above political perspectives, especially amongst the following so-cial sectors:• The close to 2 billion people, mainly in ru-ral areas, who lack access to electricity and other “modern” energy sources in their daily lives. This especially includes peasant and indigenous com-munities and their organisations, especially those involved in the Via Campesina network. This is im-portant for a number of reasons: a solution to the energy crisis should seek to solve huge inequalities of access and this will only happen if these commu-nities are able to appropriate the relevant technolo-gies, trainings and capital to make this possible; these communities bear the brunt of the push for agro-fuels for the world market; the majority of re-

newable energy resources exist in rural areas, and this opens up possibilities for both autonomous non-commercial social relations, but also very ugly new forms of control over their territories (as is happening with agrofuels in particular,but also wind energy and others).

• The more than 20 million (waged) workers world-wide within the conventional energy sector, some of who are in labour unions with “just transi-tion” policies, including the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM), which represents 379 industrial trade unions in 123 countries. This is also impor-tant for a number of reasons: their experience and knowledge; fossil fuels will only be able to come under common/public ownership if the workers in these sectors are playing an important role; and, unless they are actively involved in a transition to renewable energy they are in great danger of los-ing their livelihoods.

• The renewable energy sector itself. Discussion aimed at differentiation between those who want renewable energy to be a market driven source of profit and capitalist accumulation and those who want it to be a non-profit common good for social needs. Forcing the sector to take a political stand and escape from the “technology” discourse that technology will solve what are fun- da-mentally social, political and eco-nomic problems

Those who are for the market are likely to be increasingly part of the problem. Those who are against it, it will be increasingly neces-sary for movements to benefit from their skills, technologies and infrastructures....

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A billion for the aluminium industry, Rudd’s small change.Aluminium giant Alcoa has spent the last year manoeuvring for the release of the Federal Gov-ernment’s climate White Paper in December. Planned expansions were canned, dozens of work-ers laid off, and Alcoa’s constant refrains warned of moving operations offshore if they did not get their way in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

It is a role Alcoa have been playing for decades: undermining efforts to regulate and reduce pollu-tion, flooding Canberra with lobbyists, and putting the brakes on political change.

Aluminium is Australia’s most emissions intensive industry, using 13% of all electricity and polluting 6.1% of national emissions. The industry’s pro-cesses in Australia - from bauxite mining to alu-mina refining to aluminium smelting – rely on oil, gas and vast amounts of coal-fired power. The industry is set to receive over a billion dollars in free permits under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), to be announced in next week’s White Paper.

Drew Fryer, of sustainability and finance advisors Innovest, says the Federal Government is propos-ing to give the aluminium industry 90% of their per-mits to pollute under the scheme for free. “We see over $825 million going to aluminium smelting and $227 million to aluminium refining. On the face of it, it looks like a fairly good deal for aluminium.”

With at least 20% of permits under the scheme to be dished out free, Innovest expect half of all free permits to be handed to the aluminium industry. Al-coa is set to receive over $151 million, and parent company Alumina Ltd $101 million.

Polluting industries have been begging for CPRS exemptions and hefty handouts all year, threaten-

ing plant closures, job losses and economic ruin. But Fryer says if a carbon price of $20 per tonne were set, and it could be as low as five dollars, Al-coa’s cost of emissions would be merely 3.8% of their earnings if they received no assistance. With the 90% of free permits promised by the Govern-ment, Alcoa will only bear a cost of 0.4% of their earnings under the CPRS.

Damien Lawson of Friends of the Earth Australia says, “Effectively, for the first few years of the emis-sions trading scheme, the aluminium industry won’t bear any cost; and the carbon price will have very little impact in terms of driving a change agenda within the industry.“Free permits come with no strings attached. They don’t require industry to engage in any restructur-ing of their industry towards a low carbon opera-tion.”

Lawson says the aluminium industry has long been a strident voice against regulation and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. “A decade ago, the aluminium industry furiously lobbied the Federal Government to defer the introduction of a 2% re-newables policy. They were successful and have been at it ever since on climate change.”

Whilst Alcoa claims they are serious about reduc-ing greenhouse pollution, their track record shows breaches of environmental standards, lax monitor-ing and increasing pollution. There have been high profile spills of caustic residue slurry at their Wa-gerup refinery in Western Australia, emissions of double permitted amounts at their Portland smelter in Victoria, and numerous fines for breaches re-corded by Environmental Protection Authorities.

West Australian Parliament Upper House Greens member Paul Llewelyn says, “Alcoa has become

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A billion for the aluminium industry, Rudd’s small change.very entrenched in the WA economy and way of doing business. Environmental accidents are seen as a natural part of doing business and an expect-ed risk people are prepared to have. Alcoa might get a slap on the wrist, but it’s peanuts to what they make. They just pay the fine and manage to convince us it’s all fine because there isn’t another wealth model in WA. We’ve become so dependent in that income stream that it has reduced the ability to regulate.”

John Harris lives on the doorstep of Alcoa’s Wagerup alumina refinery in south-western WA. He’s 61, he coughs, splutters and collapses some forty times a year, which he attributes to breathing emissions from the plant. He has been diagnosed with Reactive Airways Dysfunction Syndrome. “If I’m outside, I can just drop to the ground and re-ally be in trouble. When I get into [an emissions] plume coming from Alcoa, my lung capacity disap-pears. I have to use Ventolin to get my airways open again.”

He says it began in 2002, “[Alcoa] upped their production and put in taller stacks to disperse the plume. That’s when we started to get hit.” Com-munity members in towns around the Wagerup re-finery in Yarloop, Hamel, and Cookernup have felt and recorded adverse health effects for more than a decade.

With some 300 residents, John Harris is initiating proceedings for a class action against the Ameri-can-owned company, and they have enlisted US anti-pollution activist Erin Brockovich to spearhead the litigation.

Vince Puccio of local residents’ group Community Alliance for Positive Solutions says, “Most people tend to suffer multiple health symptoms: bloody

noses, nausea and skin rashes. We have unex-plained cancers at the moment; there’s a lot of stress.”

His partner suffered industrial asthma and bloody noses, and like many in the town, was forced to leave. “Now the whole town is basically collapsed; infrastructure is almost all gone. The town is nearly a ghost town,” he says.

With a dearth of pollution and health monitoring, residents have battled for recognition from Alcoa and the WA State Government for years. Forced to fund and collect of air samples themselves, they have sent the samples to a laboratory in the United States.

Resident pressure led to a 2004 CSIRO study of air quality, followed by a 2006 study into particular pol-lutants of the refinery. Ian Galbally, Chief Research Scientist with CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric re-search says, “[Alumina refineries] have always reported the traditional air pollutants such as sul-phur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon mon-oxide. But it had not been previously recognised they are also important sources of volatile organic compounds and probably dusts.” Many pollutants from the refinery can cause skin and respiratory ir-ritation with low exposure, and with higher expo-sures could be hazardous and carcinogenic. Alcoa continues to deny any link between their emissions and community health complaints.

An October 2008 WA Department of Environment and Conservation report tracks emissions plumes from the Wagerup refinery to towns where residents have health complaints. A November 2008 WA De-partment of Health phone study found residents have a “significantly higher likelihood” of reporting symptoms of headache, breathing difficulties, sore

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or irritated eyes, skin irritation, cough, sore throat, fatigue after sleep and nosebleeds than other West Australians, “potentially related to chemical expo-sure”. Vince Puccio says residents felt vindicated, “The study proved the causal link is Alcoa. Up until this point Alcoa has been denying the link between the community’s complaints and the refinery.”

Residents criticised the study as weak for failing to acknowledge migration from the area, data on lo-cal cancer deaths, and flawed data collection. “But even as a weak study, it still proves Alcoa has im-pacted on people’s health in the community. We have asthma double that of the state average. Can-cer rates are higher and more so in men. There’s a higher cancer rate in Cookernup above the normal state level,” says Vince Puccio.

Alcoa’s take on these reports differs to residents. Executive Director of Human Resources, Envi-ronment, Health and Safety Kim Horne says, “We know the refinery has got the world’s best technol-ogy, the CSIRO study concludes that the air qual-ity in that area is at the better end of rural [areas]. We’ve got air monitoring data that says sometimes you will get odour because of this strange weather. We’ve got the Health Department report that says people down there have no chronic illness. In fact, they’re pretty much the same as everyone else.”

The emissions sometimes produce a distinctive odour, a term Alcoa has enthusiastically adopted to describe their toxic pollutants. Horne says, “Under some quite rare weather conditions some of the odour from the plant behaves in a strange way and what is called ‘touches down’ so it lands in a partic-ular area for a short period of time and in that time you can smell it, at other times in exactly the same location you wouldn’t smell it at all.” The first rec-ommendation in the 2004 WA Government Inquiry

into the Wagerup refinery urged the use of the term “emissions” rather than “odours” to describe Alcoa’s pollution, but Alcoa is staying on message.

While the company holds the line on ‘odours’ and ‘strange weather’, the WA Government forced Al-coa to offer to buy properties in particular zones around the refinery, which, alarmingly, Alcoa then rents to new tenants. Some residents, like John Harris, have refused the buy back offer. “I’ve got five acres and the prices they were offering were fairly low. The thought of getting enough cash to move into a quarter acre block in town really didn’t appeal. I wanted to really replace what I’ve got here, and there was no way I could do it with the money they were offering. I would like to move away re-ally, but I want what I’ve got here replaced... the only option for me is to join the legal action and go through the American courts.”

West Australian Greens member Paul Llewelyn says, “[Alcoa are] saying ‘we don’t pollute, but if you want to leave we’ll buy your property, but we don’t believe we’re polluting anything or causing any damage.’ That’s a contradiction.” He believes the scheme was designed by Alcoa and the West Australia Government to limit Alcoa’s liability to pay compensation for the health impacts of their opera-tions.

Llewelyn says the compensation packages have been flawed. “Alcoa will buy back a property from somebody and on sell it. They have to sign a con-fidentiality agreement and an agreement they will never bring a complaint against Alcoa. They know the area has been polluted and poisoned by Alcoa, and Alcoa’s tying up people in contracts to prevent any further complaints.”

Llewellyn has seen copies, but Executive Director Kim Horne denies any contract clauses or confi-dentiality agreements exist: “That’s not true.”

The buy back scheme has divided the community, with some leaving, some remaining, some ineligi-ble and significant differences in the prices offered.

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Vince Puccio says, “It was an ad hoc policy made on the run, no one can really understand it. There are different formulas for different people. There’s a lot of unhappy people involved in this. I think they expected probably about a dozen people to put their hand; I think they got something like over 200, way beyond what they thought. It’s become a nightmare the way they’ve handled this.”

The property buy back scheme was a condition en-forced by the WA Government in approving a huge expansion of the Wagerup refinery - an expansion Alcoa shelved last November.

Kim Horne says, “[It was for] a combination of rea-sons, most predominantly the current financial situ-ation globally. There’s also the unknown of what the emissions trading scheme will look like and how that would effect our industry. There’s some questions about gas supply which we hadn’t cured yet, so all of those combined has had us delay the project.”

Last December, Alcoa confirmed they had also “curtailed” a long-planned expansion of their Portland aluminium smelter in Victoria, citing concerns around energy security.

Damien Lawson of Friends of the Earth Australia believes, “Alcoa is using the decision to not pro-ceed with those investments, decisions driven by the global financial crisis, as a stick or a form of bribery to leverage the worst possible outcome for the climate in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

“Fluctuation in commodity price is far more signifi-cant in terms of a company’s bottom line than a car-bon price, which is actually very small compared to their overall turnover and profits. The decision not to go ahead with those investments probably has a lot more to do with the availability of credit on an international financial market, caused by the global financial crisis rather than the emissions trading scheme.

“Alcoa are trying to get a silver lining out of their de-cision not to go ahead with the investments. That must be clear to the Government, but the Govern-ment wants still to go down the path of favourable

conditions for big polluting industries,” says Law-son.

The silver lining for Alcoa was delivered in the Fed-eral Government’s White Paper, lining up a billion dollars worth of free permits for aluminium com-panies. Alcoa already receives hundreds of mil-lions of dollars in publicly subsidised electricity and shared infrastructure costs. Greens member Paul Llewellyn says, “It’s extremely difficult to get a hold of the price Alcoa is paying for any of the energy that comes down the line. We know they would be paying a quarter of the price of any other indus-trial operations, but there’s no published data at all on Alcoa’s energy consumption and the price they pay.”

It is the same story at Alcoa’s Portland aluminium smelter: 30 year contracts to provide huge amounts of brown coal-fired power from some of the dirtiest power stations in the world, heavily subsidised by the State Government. Victorian Greens MP Greg Barber says, “We know Alcoa are getting an ex-traordinarily cheap price for their electricity, but we don’t know how much they are paying. A carbon price will exacerbate the existing subsidy. It means that Alcoa pay less, and other consumers and the public pay more. It is not a level playing field.”

With years left in lucrative electricity contracts and billions in promised permits in the emis-sions trading scheme, Alcoa still warns of mov-ing offshore if there is any hint of unwanted regulation. Managing Director Alan Cransberg says, “Obviously the purpose of an emissions trading scheme is to reduce greenhouse emis-sions. But it would completely defeat the purpose of emissions trading if important industries in Aus-tralia were forced offshore. If industry here was not internationally competitive anymore, because of emissions trading, they would then close and the gap in the market would be picked up by overseas operations - including those with lesser environ-mental standards.

“The emissions would simply move overseas in car-bon leakage. Ultimately, this could mean increased greenhouse emissions and worse outcomes for the environment. The problem will just be shifted to an-other part of the world, and possibly with increased environmental impact,” Cransberg says.

But Senior Lecturer at the University of NSW In-stitute of Environmental Studies Dr Mark Diesend-orf says if Alcoa follows through with their threat to 13

move offshore it might actually reduce global emis-sions, as the aluminium industry elsewhere in the world uses cleaner sources of power, particularly hydroelectricity.

Damien Lawson believes, “There’s a lot of shadow-boxing going on by the aluminium industry: big am-bit claims and panic being deliberately driven about so-called ‘carbon leakage’. If you look back through history at other attempts at regulation, industry has done exactly the same thing. With regulation of other types of pollution or increases in corporate taxation, industry constantly played the capital flow card as a way of pressuring governments to water down their proposals. It’s exactly the same thing with climate change.”

Diesendorf says, “It is a clear winner to go with re-newable energy, energy efficiency and public trans-port. There would be no significant loss of jobs. In terms of export revenue, there would be a modest loss if the industry went offshore. If we gave the stimulus to renewable energy, we could be man-ufacturing wind turbines, expand solar hot water, bioenergy production, energy efficiency measures and public transport. There are huge job opportu-nities in renewable energy and energy efficiency.”

Julius Roe, National President of the Australian Manufacuturing Workers Union argues, “New green jobs won’t materialise or will only materialise as precarious jobs for our members. With restruc-turing, the new jobs aren’t created in the same lo-

cation as the old jobs. The new jobs don’t require the same skills as the old jobs. So those who are displaced are unlikely to be the ones who get the new jobs if you have a free market situation.

“We need a just transition where the Government actually intervenes to ensure new investments are made in the right places and are able to employ the right people. Without such interventions, it will be the same old story.”

“[The AMWU] believe there should be no free per-mits [in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme], but rather assistance provided to those companies in return for making necessary investments in more environmentally sustainable production, and mak-ing sure they do those things in conjunction with their workforce,” says Roe.

In the wake of the climate White Paper and ten months until the important United Nations cli-mate meeting in Copenhagen, Dr Diesendorf challenges governments to call the bluff of the alu-minium industry and start serious investment in re-newable energy. “Aluminium smelters seem to be a big political symbol for governments. And so, to phase them out, or make them pay for their electric-ity and pollution, governments would take a beat-ing from the opposition. But if governments had in place a transition strategy to a renewable energy manufacturing industry and a means to transition jobs, they could weather that opposition.”- Jess and Holly, UTS Environment Collective

John Harris lives on the doorstep of Al-coa’s Wagerup alumi-na refinery in south-western WA.

14

Citizen Malfunction and Sabotage When the coal industry in Queensland is expand-ing at an unprecedented rate; when our govern-ment is firmly under the thumb of the coal lobby, pledging $5.4 billion to coal transport infrastructure this year alone; when vested interests are driving our state in this suicidal direction; when meetings with our Ministers end in despair; when four groups of ‘upstanding citizens’ across the country plan to lock on to coal power stations, maybe it’s time for direct action.

The five turbines at Tarong Power Station, 250 km North West of Brisbane together emit 12.9 mil-lion tonnes of CO2 each year. That’s about the same as 3 million cars. The icing is that Tarong, a Queensland Government owned corporation, is developing a new coal mine to feed the power sta-tion, displacing farmers and wildlife and introduc-ing the towns of Nanango and Kingaroy to the joys of living within 10 km of an open-cut coal mine. A few ASENers and some Friends of the Earth have started forming a relationship with this area, and it started getting radical at 4am one Thursday morn-ing in a quiet patch of bush...

Sometimes I like to dream of us as the climate death-commandoes, stealthing through the bush in the pre-dawn on our way to shut down the arch-enemy of our climate; the climate that we will pro-tect or die trying. Then I get nerdy and smile at the almost continuous stream of consensus decisions we made in the 2.5 hours it may or may not have taken to get to the coal conveyor. Then we’re head-lining the front page of the local rag as “a bunch of whale-riding hippies”. Then I feel the need to ex-plain what would cause such an upstanding group of citizens to malfunction so seriously that they need some corrective services.

After the coal dust has settled: big smiles, elation and empowerment. A ton of media coverage, and hopefully a lot of people at home frowning or smil-ing at their coal-powered Televisions. Court pro-ceedings are going well, and the travel involved is giving us a chance to make connections with locals who are affected by coal.

What worked: Involving new people, lots of support roles, talking to family beforehand about the poten-tial of arrest, making friends in the media, pushing the ‘community group’ message (we only got called Greenpeace once :-)

What’ll work better next time: More clarity of roles, more check-ins with each other on the

go, more stills cameras, more banners, more magic!

In the end we all agreed that the ac-tion was AWESOME AND AMAZ-ING!!!

Are you concerned about climate change? Grab some friends and go lock on to a coal power station,

it’ll make you feel better, and it might even save the planet.

by brad.15

fences by sarah

Fences are the contours of dominance, power, con-trol, oppression. Whether they are keeping people in or people out.

Baxter 05We stood outside the fences and sent balloons up into the air. So that in their isolation the political prisoners could see that there was humanity. That there were people that deeply believed they should be free. We threw tennis balls over the fence with messages of support in English and Farsi. We threw a grappling hook over the perimeter fence. For which people were arrested and threatened with incarceration within prison walls. More fences. The further fences of prison walls.

G20, APEC, FTAA...raging against fences. I feel hot. I feel suffocated. I feel all the injustice of the world raging through my body. And I feel terrified. The police remind me of the second assault, of the police inquiry into ‘ag-gravated sexual assault’. They remind me of that disempowerment. And their bodies pressing to-wards us, masked and faceless in their riot gear remind me of the faceless person fucking me. Feel-ing powerless. Feeling like they will always win in the end no matter how much you lash your body against them.

I sit now in Cipanas, a small village in West Java. It is past 7pm and I am locked in. But I am here out of choice. Working in a fundamental religious organi-

sation. As a most passionate atheist I thought this would be selling out. But when I think about what is the most direct action I’ve done I think of here.

In jargon my position here would probably be best described as ‘consultant’ and I am accountable to no-one but myself. Which means being account-able to the community I’m working for. The place is a mental health and drug use rehab centre. In a country which views people as ‘setengah orang’ (half a person), this primarily means locking people up. My counselling and community development practice is based in a radical/anarchist perspective founded on ideas of empowerment, self-determina-tion, resisting the pathologisations of people, and seeing well-being as a function of true freedom.

I have sat with people holding hands through the bars of the isolation cells. I have woken up every morning and spoken and laughed with people I love through the barbed wire fence which marks off the small yard connected to their dorms. And I re-gret not bringing my bolt cutters. But after a couple of months here, we have forged a relationship, a willingness, an understanding of ‘recovery’. And by hand, piece by piece, the fence comes down and the isolation cells become a store room for dusty cans of paint. This is only one drop in the ocean. But it is the first fence I have torn down. And it’s staying down. And we’ve planted vegie gardens where it used to stand. And inside I feel the deep secret warmth of solidarity with all those raging against fences with Molotov cocktails.

16

cRanKing Up ActiOn at cLiMatE CamP by raff

When one thousand people took action against the coal industry’s role in dangerous climate change, they perhaps inadvertently elucidated an interest-ing debate about the realms of private and pub-lic property. In the ensuing weeks, whilst we were all recovering from ten long days of intense and anxious activism, debates raged online between activists and hecklers about the validity of such a demonstration. When I decided to attend Cli-mate Camp, I had come to the conclusion that in order to solve the climate crisis it would take or-dinary people doing extraordinary things to make the politicians do anything. Indeed, if you take a straw poll of many Australians most of them will tell you that politicians are usually reactionary; that is, they respond to crises, disturbances and blips that disrupt their pragmatic politics that allow them to straddle interest groups for decades whilst making little progress on the really difficult questions.

It was such that the Climate Camp project captured my imagination. It was a perfect juxtaposition, a group of committed members of the community po-tentially breaking the law and putting themselves in the firing line to protect something that is ours: the climate and our environment. In a rational world, police would have been instructed by the state to lock down the railway tracks so that the trains could not deliver another damaging load of coal - how dare they, the coal companies, show such disre-

spect for our property. Yet it couldn’t have been further from the truth. In reality, police were given the usual large powers that successive anti-riot laws have allowed them to aggregate. However, even to some police the whole exercise seemed irrational. When our affinity group of three students made it onto the tracks, most of the police were clearly frustrated that they were spending their en-tire Sunday in their huge riot suits as lackeys for corporations who continue to bleed the state of po-licing and economic resources to defend the inde-fensible. My arresting officer even admitted to me that he was uncomfortable doing this job. It had smashed the idealism that he had once had about being a police officer and serving the community, when in fact his labour was an accessory to the debasing of community property. Who made the value judgement that private prop-erty eclipses social property? Economics students might argue it is a simple case of market failure, a case of not assigning property ‘rights’ to the air, but my contention is that even after we do this, won’t it be the same companies, the same rent seekers, the same interest groups causing the same politi-cal failures that predated this market failure? The only solution to this market failure is to fix the politi-cal failure that caused it. People power can beat climate change, but we have to be ready to non-violently break the law if that is what it takes to re-store order in the biosphere.

17

the night before we locked ourselves onto a coal loader i lay with a sleeping bag over my head, angry and tired to the point of muteness. sick of meetings, of planning and car troubles and people, scared and almost over it. we sleep all together on the floor and I try not to think too much in case I change my mind.

early early in the morning we pile in cars, with large metal tubes and small chains around our ready wrists. we drive to kooragang coal port as dawn threatens pale at the edges of the sky. at the en-try to the port a streetlight reveals a car with police prop-legged around it, their feet in it’s open doors. i’m so scared our plans are about to stretch too thin and break. we get confused and drive past the site three times, u-turning in front of the police. i want to not be here now, i want to wake up when its over.

finally we pull up beside the fence and tumble out of the car. we go over the fence one by one. scrab-bling with no foothold. an almost laugh. a hand scraped on barbed wire. we pass the heavy bits of pipe through the fence and walk quick across the bitumen together. no one comes to grab us, no one drags us down from the fence like i kept seeing in my head. we climb yellow metal steps, onto the ma-chine that loads coal into ships, coal for burning in places distant. press with a flat hand all the big red emergency stop buttons, the conveyor belt winds slowly still and the sirens start. we keep frantically locking ourselves to bits of conveyor belt, changing our minds, changing place, and repeating. every-one else is calm now but i’m not. finally we are set-tled, feet dangling, knees brushing conveyor-belt rubber. we are locked with bits of pipe and now its easy, and i’m not scared anymore.

the machine is almost beautiful. draped w i t h yellow lights in the almost fog and the sea sitting blackly close. the sun ris-es over the harbour and the cold air doesn’t sting. lib and m e are

wearing bike helmets. libby’s helmet is back to front. we are the hottest people ever. probably.

finally they find us. it’s a little awkard. some of them are condescending, tell us all the lies they said they’d tell. “this machine has been turned off for months. you’re not stopping anything.”

“we know it was on when we came,” i say. “what-evs,” i add. sort of undermybreath, sort of byacci-dent. lib laughs.

Dwayne comes and chats with us. he’s quiet and friendly and curious, it’s his first time with protest-ers. he tells us to be careful, follow the ritual and we’ll be okay.

the police are grumpy and not impressed. we smile politely, thank them, and refuse to do anything they ask. we wont lock off, thank you. we understand your concern, thankyou. good morning. etc. etc. they search libby haphazardly. out of her overall pockets come fifteen dirty tissues. meanwhile we stuff our faces quietly with chocolate. they lock off our friends. then they take apart the conveyor belt we are attached to. we apologise to the worker. he says its fine, smiling, he has nothing better to do.

we are no longer attached to anything, but the po-liceman is confused, and asks us to unlock our-selves. we point out we aren’t actually attached to anything. they make us walk down the steps. we stay locked together, yelling at oli that we love him, in case the police are being mean. finally they ask us to please unlock ourselves from the pipe. ok. then we take our helmets off. they tell us to put them back on.

they forget to search me, and put me in the paddy-wagon with a bag full of chocolate and an epi-pen. they recognise my novocastrian school jumper and chat with me about uni. i am lucky, processed by the nice cop, an ex youth worker. he makes sure we are ok, and never leaves us on our own. lib and sally dance in the back of the paddy wagon while they process me. they ask tony to put his number in front of his face so he does. the police man calls him a dickhead.

finally they are done and we get to ride home in an APEC bus. just the five of us, giggling up the back. it looks like my old school bus plus bars. it probably is. they take us back to camp, like school children, excited and back from a school excursion. a day well spent, and finally over. by kathryn ticehurst.

18

Our dreams, our hopes, our plans,The past, our present, the future,

Destroyed by a dragline,

Neighbours and friends scattered,Upheaval and uncertainty,

Our life altered beyond recognition.

Lost - the blaze of Wattle on a bare hill,Singing She-Oaks along the creek,

Flood water across the flats;

Marks on the wall of kids grown tall,Pretty pink bulbs with memories of a friend,

The trees that shade the cattle yards;

Land we fought for,Through the generations,

Worked, preserved, cherished,

Replaced by black coal dust,For the sake of export-dollars,

And plastic knick-knacks from China

Mardi SandsWandoan

Wandoan is about to play host to the biggest open-cut coal mine in the southern hemisphere,

courtesy of Xstrata.

19

Is ‘Taking It to the Streets’ Worth the Bruises, Tear Gas and Arrests?Nine years after the World Trade Organization came to Seattle, a new feature film sets out to dramatize the historic protests that the institution’s meetings provoked. The issue that Battle in Seattle filmmak-er Stuart Townsend seeks to raise, as he recently stated, is “[what it takes] to create real and mean-ingful change.” The question is notoriously difficult. In the film, characters like Martin Henderson’s Jay, a veteran environmental campaigner driven by a tragedy experienced on a past logging campaign, and Michelle Rodriguez’s Lou, a hard-bitten animal rights activist, debate the effectiveness of protest. Even as they take to Seattle’s streets, staring down armour-clad cops (Woody Harrelson, Channing Ta-tum) commanded by a tormented and indecisive mayor (Ray Liotta), they wonder whether their ac-tions can have an impact.

Generally speaking, the response of many Ameri-cans is to dismiss protests out of hand, arguing that demonstrators are just blowing off steam and won’t make a difference. But if any case can be held as a counter-example, Seattle is it. The 1999 mobili-

sation against the World Trade Organization has never been free from criticism. While the demon-strations were still playing out and police were busy arresting some 600 people, New York Times col-umnist Thomas Friedman issued his now-famous edict stating that deluded activists were just “looking for their 1960s fix.” While cynicism comes cheap, those concerned about global poverty, sweatshop labour, outsourced jobs and threats to the environ-ment can witness remarkable changes on the inter-national scene. Today, trade talks at the WTO are in shambles, sister institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are now shrivelled versions of their once-imposing selves, and the ideology of neoliberal corporate globalisa-tion is under intense fire, with mainstream econo-mists defecting from its ranks and entire regions such as Latin America in outright revolt. As global justice advocates have long argued, the forces that created these changes “did not start in Seattle.” Yet few trade observers would deny that the week of protest late in the last millennium marked a critical turning point.22

What Happened in Seattle?

Battle in Seattle accurately depicts the mainstream media as being overwhelmingly focused on the smashed windows of Starbucks and Niketown -- property destruction carried out by a small minority of protesters. Yet remarkably, acknowledgement of the WTO protests’ impact on globalization politics could be found even in their coverage. Shortly af-ter the event, the Los Angeles Times wrote, “On the teargas-shrouded streets of Seattle, the unruly forces of democracy collided with the elite world of trade policy. And when the meeting ended in failure ... the elitists had lost and the debate had changed forever.”

Seattle was supposed to be a moment of crowning achievement for corporate globalization. Big-busi-ness sponsors of the Seattle Ministerial (donors of $75,000 or more included Procter & Gamble, Mi-crosoft, Weyerhaeuser, Boeing and GM) invested millions to make it a showcase of “New Economy” grandeur. Any student of public relations could see that the debacle they experienced instead could hardly be less desirable for advancing their agen-da. Rarely do protesters have the satisfaction of achieving their immediate goals, especially when their stated aims are as grandiose as shutting down a major trade meeting. Yet the direct action in Seattle did just that on its first day, with activists chained around the conference centre forcing the WTO to cancel its opening ceremonies.

By the end of the week, negotiations had col-lapsed altogether. Trade representatives from the global South, emboldened by the push from civil society, launched their own revolt from within the conference. Jumping between scenes of street protest and depictions of the ministers’ trade de-bate, Townsend’s film illustrates this inside-outside dynamic. The ministers railed against “being mar-ginalised and generally excluded on issues of vital

importance for our peoples and their future.”

The demands of the developing countries’ govern-ments were not always the same as those of the outside protesters. However, the diverse forces agreed on some key points. Expressing his disgust for how the WTO negotiations had been conducted, Sir Shridath Ramphal, the chief Caribbean negotia-tor, argued, “This should not be a game about en-hancing corporate profits. This should not be a time when big countries, strong countries, the world’s wealthiest countries, are setting about a process designed to enrich themselves.”

Given that less powerful countries had typically been bullied into compliance at trade ministerials, this was highly unusual stuff. Yet it would become increasingly normal. Seattle launched a series of setbacks for the WTO and, to this day, the institu-tion has yet to recover. Efforts to expand the reach of the WTO have repeatedly failed, and the overtly unilateralist Bush White House has been even less effective than the “cooperative” Clinton administra-tion at getting its way in negotiations.

This past summer, analyst Walden Bello dubbed the current round of WTO talks the “Dracula Round” because it lives in an undead state. No matter how many times elites try to revive the round, it seems destined to suffer a new death -- as it did most re-cently in late July. Other agreements, such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which aimed to extend NAFTA throughout the hemisphere and which drew protests in places like Quebec City and Miami, have since been abandoned altogether.

“We Care Too”

The altered fate of the WTO is itself very signifi-cant. The Seattle protests launched thousands of conversations about what type of global society we want to live in. While they have often been depict-

23

ed as mindless rioters, activists were able to push their message through. A poll published in Busi-ness Week in late December 1999 showed that 52 percent of respondents were sympathetic with the protesters, compared with 39 percent who were not. Seventy-two percent agreed that the United States should “strengthen labor, environmental and endangered species protection standards” in inter-national treaties, while only 21 percent disagreed.

A wave of increased sympathy and awareness dra-matically changed the climate for long-time cam-paigners. People who had been quietly labouring in obscurity for years suddenly found themselves amid a huge surge of popular energy, resources and legitimacy. Obviously, the majority of Americans did not drop everything to become trade experts. But an impressive number, especially on college campuses and in union halls, did take time to learn more -- about sweatshops and corporate power, about global access to water and the need for local food systems, about the connection between job loss at home and exploitation abroad. With the pro-tests that took place in the wake of Seattle, finance ministers who had grown accustomed to meeting in secretive sessions behind closed doors were suddenly forced to defend their positions before the public.

Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist of the World Bank who was purged after he outspokenly criticised the IMF, perhaps most clearly described the remarkable shift in elite discussion that has tak-en place since global justice protests first captured the media spotlight. In a 2006 book, he wrote: “I have been going to the annual meetings (in Davos, Switzerland) for many years and had always heard globalisation spoken of with great enthusiasm. What was fascinating... was the speed at which views had shifted (by 2004). .... In the 1990s, the discussion at Davos had been about the virtues of opening international markets. By the early years

of the millennium, it centred on poverty reduction, human rights and the need for fairer trade arrange-ments.”

Changing Policy

Of course, much of the shift at Davos is just talk. But the wider political changes go far beyond rhet-oric. As Stiglitz noted, “Even the IMF now agrees that capital market liberalization has contributed neither to growth nor to stability.” Grassroots activi-ty has translated into concrete change on other lev-els as well. Even some critics of the global justice movement have noted that activists have scored a number of significant policy victories. In a Septem-ber 2000 editorial titled “Angry and Effective,” the Economist reported that the movement: “... already has changed things -- and not just the cocktail schedule for the upcoming meetings. Protests suc-ceeded in scuttling the (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s) planned Multilat-eral Agreement on Investment in 1998; then came the greater victory in Seattle, where the hoped-for launch of global trade talks was aborted.

This has dramatically increased the influence of mainstream NGOs, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature and Oxfam. ... Assaulted by unruly pro-testers, firms and governments are suddenly ea-ger to do business with the respectable face of dis-sent.” “They won the verbal and policy battle,” said Gary Hufbauer, a “pro-globalization” economist at the Institute for International Economics in 2002, speaking of the groups that have organized ma-jor globalization protests. “They did shift policy. Are they happy that they shifted it enough? No, they’re not ever going to be totally happy, because they’re always pushing.”

A Crisis of Legitimacy

Privatisation, deregulation and corporate market ac-

24

cess have failed to reduce inequality or create sus-tained growth in developing countries. This has led an increasing number of mainstream economists, Stiglitz most prominent among them, to question some of the most cherished tenets of neoliberal “free trade” economics. Not only are the intellectu-al foundations of neoliberal doctrine under assault, the supposed beneficiaries of these economic pre-scriptions are now walking away. Throughout Latin America, waves of popular opposition to Washing-ton Consensus policies have forced conservative governments from power. In election after election since the turn of the millennium, the people have put left-of-centre leaders in office.

The result has been swift and decisive. In 2004, the IMF’s loan portfolio was roughly $100 billion. Today it has fallen to around $10 billion, render-ing the institution almost impotent. As economist Mark Weisbrot noted, “the IMF’s loss of influence is probably the most important change in the interna-tional financial system in more than half a century.” Currently, the United States is experiencing its own crisis of deregulation and financial gambling. We are now afforded the rare sight of Sen. John Mc-Cain blasting “Wall Street greed” and accusing fi-nanciers of “(treating) the American economy like a casino.” Meanwhile, Barack Obama decries the removal of government oversight on markets and the doctrine of trickle-down prosperity as “an eco-

nomic philosophy that has completely failed.” In each case, their words might have been plucked from Seattle’s teach-ins and protest signs.

Townsend’s film ends with the admonition that “the battle continues.” The struggle in the coming years will be to compel those in power to transform campaign-trail rhetoric into a real rejection of cor-porate globalization. The White House would still like to pass ever-newer “free trade” agreements. And the WTO, while bruised and battered, has not been eliminated entirely. Because its original man-date is still intact, the institution has considerable power in dictating the terms of economic develop-ment in much of the world. Opposing this will re-quire continued grassroots pressure. On a broader level, huge challenges of global poverty, inequality, militarism and environmental degradation remain. Few, if any, participants in the 1999 mobilization believed that a single demonstration would elimi-nate these problems in one tidy swoop, and I very much doubt that anyone involved with the Battle in Seattle thinks a single film will solve them, either. But the coming fight will be easier if the spirit that drove those protests animates a new surge of citi-zen activism in the post-Bush era.

By Mark Engler. First published on AlterNet on September 29, 2008. This has been edited for length.

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25

The Prescribed Area Peoples’ AllianceThe Prescribed Area People’s Alliance is a group of Aboriginal people from communities affected by the NT Intervention. More than 130 people have joined Alliance over two meetings in Mparntwe - Al-ice Springs on September 29 and November 7.

Today, Friday November 7, the Prescribed Area People’s Alliance held its second meeting. We have issued the following statement:

We are outraged that today Lex Wotton, an Indig-enous man from Palm Island, was sentenced for 6 years for protesting the murder of another In-digenous man by a white policeman. That police-man has since been promoted and given $100,000 compensation. Police brutality and harassment of Indigenous people continues throughout Austra-lia, including here in Central Australia in our town camps and communities. It has gotten worse since the Intervention with new powers and military style raids.

The NTER* must be immediately repealed. The $1 billion that has been spent on rolling out this legis-lation has been wasted, and could have been spent

supporting our communities, the services and pro-grams that we have in our communities, that are owned and controlled by us. No one wants it.

We are tired of people who aren’t living this Inter-vention saying it is good for our people. They don’t have to line up for store cards, have police come through their house or fight to keep their homes or blocks of land.

Income management is not good for us. It’s too hard to access our money. Kids are crying all round for money for drink, for school, but nothing in our pocket. Kids are suffering under the Intervention. Income Management has to be voluntary. People can manage their own money.

The Intervention is racist. If this was about alco-hol and children, why is it just Aboriginal people that have this legislation, and not everyone else? Problems exist everywhere. We are not all alcohol-ics and child abusers, we are strong First Nations people and we should not be treated like this.

The Intervention has demonised Aboriginal men.

The government always says that all the women are for the Intervention and men are against it. But the majority of people in the Prescribed Area People’s Alliance are women and strong men are standing up behind them in support.

The Racial Discrimination Act must be immediately reinstated. It must never be suspended again to push through another government policy. Every time it has been suspended, it has been so the government can do something to hurt Aboriginal people. The Federal Government must also sign and ratify the Declaration for the Rights of Indig-enous Peoples.

These assimilation policies destroy our culture and our lives. It is the Stolen Generation all over again. The government just said sorry to us, but at the same time they are doing this Intervention. They will have to say sorry again.

The government is refusing to build us any hous-ing unless we sign over control of our land for 40 years or more. We say NO LEASES. We will not sign. Why couldn’t they help us out with money for our housing and services? It is our right for these things. Since they took the 5-year leases with the Intervention, they have done nothing. Why do they need 40, 80 years more? The government having this control is no good. Our lives depend on our land. It is connected to our songlines, our culture and our dreaming.

We are angry they are threatening to close down outstations. People choose to live out on their land

on outstations. It is their home, their country. The government must provide funding for outstations, not take it away so people have to move into town. Many people don’t want to live in town, they want to live on their land. In town, there is already a lot of over-crowding and problems. We had to fight hard for outstations, but now we are going to have to fight hard to keep them.

We are angry the NT government is trying to stop teaching of language in schools. We need to fight for our culture and our language. Schools must be Aboriginal way - we need bilingual schools, with two way learning. Our kids need to learn in our own languages. Culture must be kept strong.

Us mob from outstations, town-camps and commu-nities are all subjected to this racist legislation. So we, the prescribed area people are going to stick on our decision to keep fighting. We are not going to give up until the government stops this Interven-tion, listens to us and starts working with us prop-erly.

We call on other communities to take action, in their communities. We call for rallies here in Alice Springs and around the country to mark Human Rights Day on December 13, 60 years since the UN human rights charter was signed. We call for everyone who supports Aboriginal rights to con-verge on Canberra for the opening of Parliament in 2009.

For more information contact: Barbara Shaw 0401291166 or Valerie Martin 0429891861

26

The Prescribed Area Peoples’ AllianceThe Prescribed Area People’s Alliance is a group of Aboriginal people from communities affected by the NT Intervention. More than 130 people have joined Alliance over two meetings in Mparntwe - Al-ice Springs on September 29 and November 7.

Today, Friday November 7, the Prescribed Area People’s Alliance held its second meeting. We have issued the following statement:

We are outraged that today Lex Wotton, an Indig-enous man from Palm Island, was sentenced for 6 years for protesting the murder of another In-digenous man by a white policeman. That police-man has since been promoted and given $100,000 compensation. Police brutality and harassment of Indigenous people continues throughout Austra-lia, including here in Central Australia in our town camps and communities. It has gotten worse since the Intervention with new powers and military style raids.

The NTER* must be immediately repealed. The $1 billion that has been spent on rolling out this legis-lation has been wasted, and could have been spent

supporting our communities, the services and pro-grams that we have in our communities, that are owned and controlled by us. No one wants it.

We are tired of people who aren’t living this Inter-vention saying it is good for our people. They don’t have to line up for store cards, have police come through their house or fight to keep their homes or blocks of land.

Income management is not good for us. It’s too hard to access our money. Kids are crying all round for money for drink, for school, but nothing in our pocket. Kids are suffering under the Intervention. Income Management has to be voluntary. People can manage their own money.

The Intervention is racist. If this was about alco-hol and children, why is it just Aboriginal people that have this legislation, and not everyone else? Problems exist everywhere. We are not all alcohol-ics and child abusers, we are strong First Nations people and we should not be treated like this.

The Intervention has demonised Aboriginal men.

The government always says that all the women are for the Intervention and men are against it. But the majority of people in the Prescribed Area People’s Alliance are women and strong men are standing up behind them in support.

The Racial Discrimination Act must be immediately reinstated. It must never be suspended again to push through another government policy. Every time it has been suspended, it has been so the government can do something to hurt Aboriginal people. The Federal Government must also sign and ratify the Declaration for the Rights of Indig-enous Peoples.

These assimilation policies destroy our culture and our lives. It is the Stolen Generation all over again. The government just said sorry to us, but at the same time they are doing this Intervention. They will have to say sorry again.

The government is refusing to build us any hous-ing unless we sign over control of our land for 40 years or more. We say NO LEASES. We will not sign. Why couldn’t they help us out with money for our housing and services? It is our right for these things. Since they took the 5-year leases with the Intervention, they have done nothing. Why do they need 40, 80 years more? The government having this control is no good. Our lives depend on our land. It is connected to our songlines, our culture and our dreaming.

We are angry they are threatening to close down outstations. People choose to live out on their land

on outstations. It is their home, their country. The government must provide funding for outstations, not take it away so people have to move into town. Many people don’t want to live in town, they want to live on their land. In town, there is already a lot of over-crowding and problems. We had to fight hard for outstations, but now we are going to have to fight hard to keep them.

We are angry the NT government is trying to stop teaching of language in schools. We need to fight for our culture and our language. Schools must be Aboriginal way - we need bilingual schools, with two way learning. Our kids need to learn in our own languages. Culture must be kept strong.

Us mob from outstations, town-camps and commu-nities are all subjected to this racist legislation. So we, the prescribed area people are going to stick on our decision to keep fighting. We are not going to give up until the government stops this Interven-tion, listens to us and starts working with us prop-erly.

We call on other communities to take action, in their communities. We call for rallies here in Alice Springs and around the country to mark Human Rights Day on December 13, 60 years since the UN human rights charter was signed. We call for everyone who supports Aboriginal rights to con-verge on Canberra for the opening of Parliament in 2009.

For more information contact: Barbara Shaw 0401291166 or Valerie Martin 0429891861

27

on sovereigntyan interview with aunty peta

What does sovereignty mean to you?

Burangidigol, it means freedom, it means ances-tors, it means sovereignty in our own language. We come from a society of freedom. That’s what our society’s based on; not just free for all and do what you like, but freedom.

So in being a sovereign and standing as a sover-eign and walking as a sovereign and breathing as a sovereign I am living my culture. It’s not an append-age, I am it – that’s how important it is to me. The word sovereignty, being an English word, that’s a fantastic one, Burangidigol is sovereignty as well in our language and it’s our birth right, it’s not some-thing that we should just reclaim, it’s about who we are. It means walking who we are, walking our cul-ture, not culture as a physical act, like making a basket, but this is our culture too, quite frankly.

What actions do you take that are informed by your sovereignty?

For a start, I don’t acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Australian government over my life, because it has none. That’s the basis and the foundation of my walk, and my fight is to not just actively reject their jurisdiction but to put it right, that’s justice to me.

So that’s the root of our movement, it’s not just protecting our natural rights, that’s an international law; we’re sovereigns. It’s about accepting our law and walking as we are meant to be walking in this day and age, and as we’ve always walked. It’s not new. It’s something that’s new to a lot of people, yes, because we’ve been enslaved for so long. There’s people in the world who’ve been enslaved for much longer, it’s only been 200 years for us but it’s about just freeing ourselves from the bondage of this society.

We’re not eligible to be bound, that’s the whole point. The whole foundation of our standing up is that the government, they’re foreign powers, they do not have any legal jurisdiction over us at all, so our walk is about educating and rejecting that.

Would you take actions of civil disobedience in the course of your sovereignty?

I wouldn’t call it civil disobedience, I call it just our birth right. I don’t call it war or terror. We’re under duress here in our own country living the way that we do. What they do are acts of terror, they are the terrorists, they are the ones enacting war upon us.

So, it’s a long walk, of course, and our fight is an 28

endless fight, probably until I close my eyes on life, but I hope, when I’m an old girl, I’m gunna have a peaceful existence one day, so I gotta get all this straightened out now as a young person. It’s my right as an older person, to be able to sit down com-fortably in my lands somewhere, not be invaded by any foreign forces, and to teach my grandchildren, great grandchildren, whoever’s about, about who they are, and to never forget that, and teach them about how to use the environment, and be one with the environment, that’s what I’m meant to be fuckin’ doing. I’m meant to be doing that now as well, that’s what I’m meant to be doing every day of my life. I got six children, they’re my responsibility, to teach about this stuff, about culture, about how to live.

We live in a culture today, it’s a funny thing to call this lifestyle, but it is a culture, this culture’s about slavery. It’s go get a job, okay, but what’s a job? A job is walking for someone else’s dream. I don’t want their jobs, I don’t want to be enslaved or bound to anyone else’s dream but my own, or people who have like-minded dreams.

I just don’t agree with what they want me to do, and there’s so many people, no matter where your ancestors have come from, in this day and age we have the same problem, and that’s all there is to it. They want us to voluntarily give up our freedom, so we can help someone else, and who is this some-one else? Someone who’s been ripping our lives apart, and I won’t contribute to that, sorry, I never will.

Sovereignty’s about governance – it’s not about an action, it’s not about a protest. It’s about gover-nance in our lives, which will build into governance of clans, which will build into governance of nations, which is I guess that catchphrase of self-determi-nation and self-sufficiency as well. It’s about being self-sufficient in a legal sense of the word, to be able to hold our own court legally. If we don’t know our natural rights, if we don’t know our own legal ju-risdiction within our realm, and our legal jurisdiction in their realm, and all the other realms that affect us, well then we’re shot ducks, were just bound to be slaves.

Every single human being on the face of the earth has sovereignty. Every single person, not just us. It’s a natural right, that’s an international legal term, natural rights, which means that we don’t have to bow down to a monarch or a government. That’s how it is for everybody.

You have the right to be a sovereign if you choose, and everybody has that right and choice. The term is called a freeman, and their rights are, like I said, the same as ours. They always fight against, or deflect any governing body or foreign power over them, it’s just about learning how to do that.

The Australian government is a corporation. A cor-poration is not a governing power, it’s like Ronald McDonald saying, “Here’s a licence, drive with it.” All these people [freemen] know the truth under common law, no governing power can do those things to us, so they don’t use licenses, they get pulled up, but if they know all of their shit, they’re free. You gotta know the right things to say, the right questions to ask the police when they come, but that’s how it works.

How would you like to see other people engage in and respect sovereignty?

Well, definitely learn about their own type of sover-eignty that they’re entitled to. Us having jurisdiction means that freemen can come into our jurisdiction by invitation and sit inside of our realm, so they’re protected that way. The sovereignty movement is an endless fight. I just hope by the time I’m an old person that I’m not at the same point that we’re at today. If I sat in their jurisdiction I can guarantee that I would be going to the grave fighting tooth and nail, every minute, for any given thing, that’s what they do to us. They’ll make a fight there, there, there, there and there, and we go around fighting them all and we’re fucked by the end of the day. They make lots of spot fires for us, but what I see with sovereignty, going on the route that we are, all those spot fires can be fought with one spear. That’s what I’m seeing as a practical measure as well because everything is to do with sovereignty. Every single fight is to do with sovereignty.

People learn about their rights and then come and learn about our jurisdiction. I don’t see any sense in people who come from this jurisdiction know-ing nothing, cause in anything they do, they’ll get fucked by the system, and we don’t want that to happen to people. Sovereignty is about taking total responsibility for your life. We can’t carry everybody on our head. Sovereignty is about self-determina-tion and self-sufficiency. We’re not there yet, but that’s what were moving towards. It’s about living our birthright, our own law.

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Peoples climate action in Ladakh, India

By Conor Ashleigh

In December 2008, over 1500 members of the local community of the North-East region of Ladakh con-verged on the capital city of Leh, to join in events aimed at raising awareness regarding climate change. The event was organised by the Ladakh Young Bud-dhist Association in collaboration with the US based NGO 350.org. “It was a success,” said Will Wickham the 350.org organiser of the festival.

Vice President of the well renowned Ladakh Buddhist Association. Thupten Phuljung, spoke to the crowd. 97 year old Tashi Angchuck from the village of Skur-buchn charismatically shared with the attendees his experience of changing weather patterns in the re-gion, such as unprecedented cold spells in the spring and autumn months in addition to the increasing rain-fall in recent years. The intense rain destroyed over 20 houses and washed away local Nepali labourers in the village of Phyang in 2006.

Throughout the day there were drama performanc-es from local school groups, music from the Ladakh Scout Band, a movie showing of Al Gores ‘An Incon-venient Truth’ in Hindi, a human sign in the shape of 350, as well as a poster competition. Rigzen Namg-yal from Landon Model School in Shey village was awarded first prize for his poster that most creatively conveyed climate change.

The day’s speeches were connected by the theme of empowering community to take action and address the impending climate disaster, with particular atten-tion towards lowering the earth’s carbon ratio to a sustainable level of 350 parts per million in the at-mosphere. Starting climate action groups, planting a tree on one’s birthday and using less non-renewable energy sources were suggested as small steps to be taken in the direct future.

All images and text copyright Conor Ashleigh 2008www.conorashleigh.com / [email protected]

31

Gettin’ Ziggy With ItA Rap, By Scarlet And Maria

Yo Ziggy, think ya pretty Cool,think ya got the answersBut you’re really a fool

Nuclear will pave the way you say and save us from the climate change

Well, let’s take a lookRead some books

Get the factsWe’ll tell you what we know,

Just sit back relax First but not last,And not too fast

Renewables: the way to goTo nuclear, the people say no

No waste dumps, weapons, thrills and spillsNo Leaks, no pollution, and cancer that kills.

Kicking Ziggy with it (The facts!)Na na na na na nanaNa na na na na na x 3 Mark Diesendorf once said to me,

Wind energy, yes sireeIts cheap, and ready and good to go

He says to Nuclear, ‘Hell No’Yeah, wind my friend is clean and green,

None of this waste shitSo put that in ya pipe and ...Smoke it!

And what about Solar?It’s good to go,

Fun from the sunThat’ll get emissions low

But nuclear would only make emissions grow, & grow

And its just too slowToo little, too late,

And just too dangerous, mate!

Outdated, ill-fated,Overstated MUCH HATED

Nuclear No Way We don’t want no Chernobyl

We don’t want Mr BurnsWe just want real solutions

Ziggy you just gots to learns

Kicking Ziggy with it (The facts!)Na na na na na nanaNa na na na na na x 3

Gettin’ Ziggy With ItGettin’ Ziggy With ItGA

ettin’ Ziggy With ItA

ettin’ Ziggy With ItRap,


ettin’ Ziggy With ItA Rap,A




ettin’ Ziggy With It By Scarlet And Maria

ettin’ Ziggy With It Scarlet And Maria

ettin’ Ziggy With ItYo Ziggy, think ya pretty Cool,

think ya got the answersBut you’re really a fool

Nuclear will pave the way you say and save us from the climate change

Well, let’s take a lookRead some books

Get the factsWe’ll tell you what we know,

Just sit back relax First but not last,And not too fast

Renewables: the way to goTo nuclear, the people say no

No waste dumps, weapons, thrills and spillsNo Leaks, no pollution, and cancer that kills.

Kicking Ziggy with it (The facts!)Na na na na na nanaNa na na na na na x 3 Mark Diesendorf once said to me,

Wind energy, yes sireeIts cheap, and ready and good to go

He says to Nuclear, ‘Hell No’Yeah, wind my friend is clean and green,

None of this waste shitSo put that in ya pipe and ...Smoke it!

And what about Solar?It’s good to go,

Fun from the sunThat’ll get emissions low

But nuclear would only make emissions grow, & grow

And its just too slowToo little, too late,

And just too dangerous, mate!

Outdated, ill-fated,Overstated MUCH HATED

Nuclear No Way We don’t want no Chernobyl

We don’t want Mr BurnsWe just want real solutions

Ziggy you just gots to learns

Kicking Ziggy with it (The facts!)Na na na na na nanaNa na na na na na x 3

32

Open Letter on Green Capitalism & CLIMATE JUSTICE MOVEMENTS

It has been argued that climate change will be solved not by ‘politics’ but instead by ‘swift global co-operation’. It’s implied that this means prioritis-ing big international climate summits like Poznan recently and Copenhagen next year and seeing them as decision-making forums of the utmost im-portance. Rather than struggling against them, we have to influence them.

To me this logic means ignoring huge class divi-sions: somehow attempting to foster ‘co-operation’ between us and the rich, privileged climate del-egates who’ll be staying in Copenhagen’s exclu-sive hotels next December. In terms of the Austra-lian representatives, it means trying to influence a bunch of people whose idea of ‘emergency state intervention’ is almost certainly a lot closer to the NT Intervention than to legislation that will drasti-cally reduce emissions. It also ignores our own his-tory of struggle: since when has the state granted us favors because we asked nicely.

Rather than relying on the state or on elite del-egates it’s in co-operation between ‘us’-amongst social movements and oppressed people acting & self-organising from below- that hope lies.

When I’ve talked with some of the many wonderful environmental justice activists around the country it has previously always been very clear which side we were on. Against corporations who destroyed forests & set up poisonous mines on Aboriginal land. Creatively resisting environmental criminals at economic summits & organising strongly in soli-darity against the police repression that often fol-lowed. Arguing passionately against Kevin Rudd & Labor as well, and their grand plans for non-exis-tent ‘clean’ coal and for carbon trading mechanisms that will hurt the poor.

For a world that wasn’t only a continuation of this

fucking rotten system, but one organised in a de-centralised way & without hierarchies and leaders. This wasn’t just about creating new, directly demo-cratic ways of living for a small number of activists - but was a practice essential to helping make a world that could be ecologically sustainable.

Is this all forgotten & is it just ‘politics and ideology’ now? I hope not.

When people write about green capitalism it isn’t something that’s completely abstract and removed from our lives. I saw a small example of it when I got my morning news from the Australian today: they have a shiny new ad putting forward the de-lights of ‘green business’: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/industrysectors/greenbusi-ness/

My personal favourite is the bit from the notorious polluters at the Australian Coal Association - appar-ently they’re ‘working to reduce CO2 emissions’. Good on them!

Green capitalism can already be seen much more sharply in the Global South. It works, for instance, through ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ projects, imposed as a requirement of the Kyoto Protocol. These have devastated local communities and have been met with resistance. A waste landfill site in the Clare Estate township in South Africa is a classic example. Extolled by the World Bank as ‘environmentally progressive’; due to the extraction of some methane (one of the most potent green-house gases), the site produces toxins that have caused leukemia, tumours and cancer.

Capital is part of the earth we live in, part of the air we breathe: of course a movement for climate jus-tice should critique it.

- Tim.

This letter was written in response to an e-mail arguing that we should not criticize the emergence of

‘green capitalism’ & that doing so was giving far too much weight too ‘politics and ideology’. Rather we

should focus our activism on encouraging ‘swift global co-operation’ to solve the climate crisis.

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Environmental Direct Actions & Rebellions

Anti-Nuclear Struggle in Comiso, Italy

In the early 1980s there was a key struggle against a U.S military base in Comiso, Sicily that was to house 112 nuclear missiles. The agreementbetween the Italian and the U.S government was made in secret in 1979, but in spring 1981, the news began to leak out.

Immediately, there was anger over this obvious in-trusion into the lives of the people in the area.

Large numbers of anarchists, students, workers and the unemployed organised into self-managed leagues. These leagues adopted a principle of‘permanent conflict’ regarding the construction of the base, meaning that they would remain in oppo-sition with it until the project was defeated, without thought of compromising.

High school students in Vittoria carried out strikes, using the time to discuss plans for action. The ef-fects of the base became clearer as local peas-ants were evicted from their land to make room for missile test ranges. American and NATO officers reserved use of various hotels and other services and the Mafia (profiting from the concurrent expan-sion of prostitution and drugs) used intimidation and terror to frighten those opposed to the base.

The opposition culminated in a number of explosive situations and a huge demonstration to the outskirts of the base, where the cops made several violent attacks and pursued demonstrators for hours. The missile base eventually went in to operation in the mid-1980s, but was closed down in 1992.

See the Cosimo Dossier: www.omnipresence.ma-host.org/comiso.htm

The occupations of Seabrook - 1976 & 1977

This began when, in 1974, some veteran peace-niks-turned-organic-farmers in New England suc-cessfully blocked construction of a proposed nu-clear power plant in Montague, Massachusetts. In 1976, inspired by the success of a year-long plant occupation in Germany, they joined with other New Englanders to create the Clamshell Alliance. Clam-shell’s immediate goal was to stop construction of a proposed nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire.

Following a 24-hour occupation at the site of two proposed nuclear power plants in Seabrook, New Hampshire, 1414 people were arrested. Such civildisobedience, organised by the New England-based Clamshell Alliance, became a model for anti-nuclear direct actions across the country.

Similar coalitions began springing up across Amer-ica: the Palmetto alliance in South Carolina, Oys-tershell in Maryland, Sunflower in Kansas, and most famous of all, the Abalone Alliance in Califor-nia, reacting originally to a completely insane plan to build a nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon, almost directly on top of a major geographic fault line.

Those plants already approved eventually went on-line, including Seabrook Unit I, but Seabrook Unit II was never built.

Importantly though, the actions did succeed in delegitimising the idea of nuclear power. When the Three Mile Island plant melted down in 1979, ithugely weakened the industry. While plans for Sea-brook and Diablo Canyon weren’t cancelled, just about every other then-pending plan to build anuclear reactor was, and no new ones were pro-posed in the US for a quarter century. See www.marcuse.org/harold/pages/seabrook.htm34

’90s Anti-Roads Protests in the UK - the M11 Link Road

The anti-roads movement in the 1990s in Britain, incorporating critiques of gentrification, car culture and the criminal justice bill, brought together people from varying backgrounds to defeat 400 out of 500 proposed roads projects. It included the defence of wild and urban areas, the merging of party and pro-test and large-scale occupations and blockades.

An important component of this struggle was the opposition to plans to build the M11 link road with east London. For a number of years, a smallnumber of locals had produced newsletters, held meetings, attempted to lobby MPs and engaged in a series of ultimately ineffectives methods to stop the road’s construction.

However a collective campaign began in earnest in September 1993 when the developers’ bulldozers first appeared. Most of the people who were sitting in front of bulldozers, occupying sites and trees and locking themselves on to JCBs with bicycle D-locks in September and October comprised experienced activists who had moved to the area a few weeks previously.

The main priority at this stage was less ‘trees’ and ‘green areas’ but housing. The proposed link road would go through about 350 houses. The Depart-ment of Transport bought all these houses a long time ago and had been throwing people out of them for years.

Once people were evicted, firms were brought in to make the houses uninhabitable: toilets were blocked and smashed, floorboards removed,stair cases demolished, doors and windows breeze-blocked etc. to deter squatters. From the beginning of the campaign, then, the defense and restoration of these houses as dwelling places was important. The empty houses in the area were treated not only as a general living resource to be defended but also as tools and weapons.

The houses could be used not only as ‘permanent’ homes but also as places to crash for people com-ing up occasionally to join in the struggle and asbases for information and communication, meet-ings and coordination.

Although most local residents didn’t want the road, they were not yet prepared to get directly involved

in action against it. There seemed to be a feeling that, since the decision to build the road had gone ahead, and since the bulldozers had already ar-rived, there was nothing they could doabout it. Things began to change when the devel-opers fenced off George Green, Wanstead, to be-gin work in that area.

After a successful mass action, those involved quickly saw the need to act on their power and go further in reclaiming the land. So they pushed thefence down.

Once the first bit went down, more people joined in. People acted fast and in unison, and eventually very little of the fence was left standing. The police intervened very late and by then most of the nec-essary work had been done. The ‘site’ had been transformed into de facto common land! Earth re-moval and flower planting by locals went of all over the weekend.

On Monday, security men were told by their bosses to get everyone off the ‘site’. But this simply wasn’t practical. By dismantling the fence the boundar-ies of the site had been destroyed. For a time, it couldn’t operate as a site any more.

Although the specific campaign was ultimately un-successful and the road was built, it was a crucial factor in increasing the road’s overall cost. Togeth-er with other campaigns in the UK at that time, the movement played a major role in the large-scale cutbacks in the road building programs that fol-lowed in subsequent years. From www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_3_roads.html#B

San Salvador Atenco Airport Stoppage

“We will not give up our land, even if it means giv-ing up our lives.”

On October 21, 2001, church bells rang throughout towns in Mexico to announce terrible news: a large part of lands in Atenco and nearby had passed into government hands. This was through an ‘eminent domain decree’ that had, as its goal, the construc-tion of a new International Airport in Mexico.

The $2.3 billion airport, which government lead-ers had been planning for more than two decades, would be the largest single public works project ofVicente Fox’s presidency. Plans included building the enormous infrastructure for the airport on 5400

35

hectares straddling three towns: Atenco, Texcoco and Chimalhuacán. Atenco was the most affected in terms of the percent of land expropriated (70-percent). Some of its inhabitants would lose almost all of their crops as well as many of their houses.

Locals were aware that the seizure of 5400 hect-ares would be only the first phase of a larger num-ber of land-takings and the spreading of urban de-velopment and infrastructure to connect the new International Airport with the industrial corridors. This would be part of the larger “Plan Puebla Pan-amá,” strongly pushed by President Vicente Fox. The inhabitants saw themselves being sucked up by a ‘hurricane of development’ and later ‘expelled like garbage on the side of the highway’, surround-ed by ‘cyclone fences’. In Atenco, the project would take eighty percent of its terrain and almost the en-tire town of Ixapan.

They saw that their communities would be shat-tered, the inevitable increase in alcohol and drug addiction, and that they would be forced to live in apartments, rising up in Mexico’s massive metrop-olises. “We don’t want it, we would drown there” they said

Huge demonstrations began, often held daily. There were important marches on November 14, 2001. These caused an international stir due to the beatings that dozens of men, women and children received from the police as they entered Mexico City. In spite of that, more than a thousand farm-ers arrived at the Zócalo (Mexico City’s huge public square), with machetes in hand, where thousands of members of civil organisations that supported them awaited. Those who had remained in the towns affected by the airport went out, indignantly, to block the highway in protest of the police aggres-sions and to ask for the liberation of those arrested, who were freed some hours later.

After months of struggle, a new wave of action be-gan. The affected peoples demonstrated that they remained united. Thousands of neighbours angrily

blockaded roads and highways. They burned vehi-cles, they took over soft-drink trucks (the contents were used as part of a ‘Popular Kitchen’ that fed all the invitees), they rioted with whatever they couldfind or make (including some improvised Molotov cocktails). In the offices of the state attorney gen-eral, they took various police officers and workers hostage with the goal of trading them for compa-ñeros who had been arrested. The movement was clearly getting stronger and more powerful.

A few weeks later President Vicente Fox canceled the plans. Info taken from http://www.narconews.com/Issue38/article1395.html

Minnehaha Free State

Minnehaha Free State, in Minnesota, USA was a 15 month anti-road occupation and encampment of sacred indigenous lands between two waterfalls, the St. Anthony (what the Dakota called the Mini-rara (curling water) and Owahmenah (falling water) and Minnehaha beginning on August 10,1998.

On December 20, 1998, 800 cops in “Operation Coldsnap” sought to dislodge the protesters by force in the largest police action in Minnesota histo-ry. They arrested many protesters and demolished their homes in the encampment. Accompanying the police were members of state and citygovernment, Governor Anne Carlson, and a press team described by protestorJim Anderson as “the police’s handpicked lap dogs.”

The site was reoccupied until November1999. www.culturechange.org/issue15/i-55.html

36

Like you Ilove love, life, the sweet smellof things, the sky-bluelandscape of January days.And my blood boils upand I laugh through eyesthat have known the buds of tears.I believe the world is beautifuland that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.And that my veins don’t end in mebut in the unanimous bloodof those who struggle for life,love,little things,landscape and bread,the poetry of everyone.

Roque DaltonRevolutionary Salvadoran poet and journalist

Her heart in her throat she tries to speak trueThe only words that escape are those she does not know

She wants them to understand, why it must beBut not words yet tears are what they do see

For it is he state of the world they don’t understandNot only this one girl right here, right at hand

It is something they never know that irks me so muchWhy they say no, to exploring outside the status quo

For this she strives today + will continue untilEven just one thinks a little,

A little more with freewill.b-k-girl.

Inside our ears are the many wailing cries of misery,Inside our bodies, the internalbleeding of stifled volcanoes.Inside our heads, the erupting

thoughts of rebellion.How can there be calm when the

storm is yet to come?’

Linton Kewsi JohnsonTwo Kinds of Silence

Johnson is an anti-racist British poet and musician.

37

Twenty years ago, my mother had a letter pub-lished in the Sydney Morning Herald. I found the page yesterday: yellowed, tattered, and almost as old as me. The Editorial criticised the Hawke Labor Government’s statement on environmental policy for failing to set targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But, it said, “Australian Governments will not be walking away from the greenhouse is-sue. The electorate will not let them.”

Twenty years later – almost my entire lifetime – this Labor Government has finally set targets, but tar-gets that scarcely aim to reduce Australia’s green-house pollution to the day of that Editorial. Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong have walked away from a safe climate future. The question is whether we will let them.

What we hear and learn about climate change is truly alarming – that soon there will be no summer ice in the Arctic; that already, people have been dis-placed from their lands; and that our greenhouse gas emissions, incredibly, are still rising. But these predictions of doom and gloom tell us that every-thing we do from now matters – and possibly, more so than any other time in recent history.

Even conservatives something else is necessary. Dr. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA said recently, “It seems to me that people should be doing whatever is necessary to block construction of dirty coal-fired power plants.”

Even Al Gore said, “I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to pre-vent the construction of new coal plants.”

These are bold statements, and they are spot on.

Climate change direct action – such as stopping, blockading, disrupting, occupying, or preventing the mining, burning and exporting of coal – challenges the legitimacy of the coal industry. It challenges the license of the industry to operate in ways that are killing the planet and people for profit. Direct action puts a spotlight on coal: it says ‘enough!’ It

creating unprecedented, unpredictible political consequences

allows us space to begin to break our dependency from this fossilised industry. Direct action hastens our efforts for a new, sustainable, decentralised economy. It drives the creation of thousands of safe, long-term, unionised green-collar jobs. Im-portantly, when we take direct action together, we create greater political power for ourselves.

Last December, the Federal Government’s White Paper handed huge compensation payouts and free permits to major polluting infrastructure like coal-fired power stations – polluting industries that already receive tens of billions of dollars of public money every year. They set a measly emissions reductions target of 5% on 2000 levels – or a 13% increase on 1990 levels, the benchmark of the rest of the world.

We cannot let them get away with it. We can make what is “politically possible” to be not what Profes-sor Garnaut and Penny Wong judges it to be, but the political situation we ourselves create. For we deserve more than a public subsidisation of dan-gerous climate change. We need to create a move-ment that can force this government to commit to making 2010 the last year Australia’s greenhouse

gas emissions rise, and begin to decline – and do much more.

When this government goes to the United Nations climate change meeting in Copenha-gen next year, they must go knowing the stakes are high – for the planet and for politics.

They must go to Copenhagen knowing there will be political consequences if they fail to act with the urgency required.

And we must raise that pressure. We must raise the stakes. We must create unprecedented, unpre-dictable political consequences. We must build a movement that turns the tide of history and pushes government, industry, and the globe toward a safe and just climate future. We must build a movement that says ‘another world is possible’ – and we will be part of creating it.

Everything we do from now matters. Please, talk to the your friends, people in your classes and communities; ask yourself what you can commit to building this movement across the next few years. Let’s ask ourselves: If not us, who? If not here, where? If not now, when?

38

The Australian Student Environment Network is the national network of students active on environmental justice issues. We are made up of the state environment networks,

which are made of campus environment collectives. You can get involved in campaigns to stop climate change or uranium mining, work alongside Indigenous peoples in strug-

gles for sovereignty or campaign to end logging of old growth forests.

Students of Sustainability ‘09It’s everyone’s favourite annual environment event! There’s absolutely no time to be bored. Even the trip there will be more fun than anything you’ve ever done. Never

been? SOS will be held in the mid-year break in early July. It will bring together environ-ment activists from universities and communities around Australia. The days are chock full of workshops, skill-shares, plenaries, forums and field trips, and the nights feature

film screenings, live music and amazing performances.

There will be a DIY theme, and a focus on open-spaces, which are workshop slots set aside for the glorious ideas and collaborations that spontaneously appear when hun-

dreds of environment activists come together. SOS ‘09 will be held in the sunny climes of Melbourne, at the Clayton campus of Monash University. Want to get involved? Let

someone know! [email protected]

GerminateGerminate is the bi-annual magazine of the Australian Student Environment Network. We love submissions from student and youth activists on wicked actions, skills, cam-paigns; as well as photos, poems, recipes, comics, artistic misrepresentations, stra-

tegic campaign reflections, radical revelations and anythin’ else. Articles should be around 1000 words. The deadline for our next issue is May

30th, 2009. For copies and to send your submissions, contact [email protected]

Big thanks to Tim, Holly, Kathryn, Clare, Chris, Tessa, Jeni, Libby, Maia, Ness and all the sweet people who contributed to Germinate.

Layout by Holly.

ASEN National Convenorsemail: [email protected]: [email protected] / 0421 132 044Kristy: [email protected] / 0423 478 757

www.asen.org.au

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germinate 2009 summer

Documents

peoples climate action

action cake

coal community

coal communities

asen crew coal

climate campaigners

environmental direct

climate justice movements