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ACTIVISTS TO SET UP ECO-VILLAGE IN STIRLING

Convergence 2005 | 17.06.2005 15:44 | G8 2005

A broad network of Activist groups today announced that they are to set up an Eco-Village to coincide with the G8 summit at Gleneagles. 5000 people will gather outside Stirling to build the camp as an example of sustainable ways of living and non-hierarchical methods of organizing in direct response to the G8s poverty making, undemocratic and ecologically devastating policies.

Casey Vayn-Todos today said, “the increasingly undemocratic nature of the monetary system the G8 represents is becoming more and more apparent. So-called “apathy” is growing with every election held by the western democracies. But it is not by appealing to the leaders that we can solve the problems the world faces, the solution to the worlds problems lies in our own hands.”



“The Eco–Village will show that through self organisation the people of the world can solve their own problems, scraps from the rich mans table will not and in fact can not solve anything. The G8’s paltry debt consolidation deal offered to the various African governments is fittingly similar to the type of deal offered by loan sharks throughout the country.”



Many of the people in the eco village will focus on peace issues. Robin Francis commented; “Only by reclaiming the power stolen using the threat, and often use, of violence by governments can the problems of poverty, hunger, war and environmental armageddon be halted.



The Eco-Village will be a microcosm of a world that is not only possible and desirable but necessary. From West Wales to West Papua, From Stirling to Soweto the new world is growing. Let’s leave the G8 and all it’s institutions of misery, death and destruction behind and move towards a beautiful, free future. Let the example and deeds of the Eco-Villagers spread beyond Stirling and cre8 a world where none live in poverty and all are liberated."



The activists will show that people are more than capable of making the decisions that affect their lives. Organizing horizontally, rather than hierarchically, the Activists will show that the rigid authority of the state, and therefore the G8, is not only unnecessary but is extremely harmful. Harmful to human beings and our communities, harmful to our environment and harmful to all life on earth.

“Where the G8 leaders offer up the dead end of Nuclear power as a solution to climate change, on this twenty five acres we will be using low impact sustainable technologies such as wind and solar power generation to demonstrate that it is practical and possible to break away from the insane use of deadly fossil fuels and a radioactive future for our children.” Said Amy Marie
Activist Andrew Rhys was quoted today saying “The planet is rapidly being destroyed by the un-sustainable policies of the G8, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization. At the Eco-Village we will, unlike the G8 governments, deal with all our own needs and our own waste. From composting toilets to re-using and re-cycling waste products we will show that it is easy to take responsibility for our selves and our environment. Without immediate radical change Poverty will never be history but the future for all mankind except the very richest and most powerful, the G8 leaders for example. As the runaway train of industrialization and economic globalisation hurtles towards ecological meltdown the G8 leaders will play golf and make deals that make all our futures even more precarious.”

A press conference will be held on Monday 20th June.

Convergence 2005
- e-mail: press@g8convergence2005.org
- Homepage: http://www.g8convergence2005.org

Comments

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Great News

18.06.2005 10:59

Great news, the word is spreading among the Traveller Community about this site and we are all looking forward to joining you. The last I heard (Friday) about 40 Traveller families were on their way with more comng from Ireland later next week.

See you there

Traveller


Full of shit

18.06.2005 12:23

'Traveller' is full of shit, a worthless and tedious troll. Nether-the-less, the idea that this rural convergence site will be an 'eco village', or a microcosam of the world we would like to live in, is quite simply rediculus. A space set up for a tempoary event in a hhurry and with limit resources and no long term plans is simply not able to fulfil the concept of an eco-village. Contrary to being free and independent of scraps from the rich mans table, that is exactly how the gathering will exist, utilising the waste of consumerism to put together a shanty town built from thrown out tat and feeding itself off of the same industrialised agriculture as the rest of the country.

Eco-villages are a long term comitment.

This is a camp site.

i


It wont be a microcosm of the future, but...

18.06.2005 16:56

Of course it won't be a microcosm of a future society that is genuinely free of capitalism, states and hierachies.

This will only begin to be really possible after the power of capital is broken on a global scale.

But it can be a step towards this...

I'm impressed at the level of organisation going into this convergence space by many hundreds of activists - all without some rigid party hierarchy, etc. It could be an impressive experience.

But it will still exhibit many features of capitalist society. We can not produce the future society in the capitalist here and now. We can not even imagine the features of this society from our current cramped capitalist horizons. It can only demoralise people to claim that the aim is to build a model of the future society.

As the old saying went:' You can't have an island of socialism in a sea of capitalism' The Russian Revolution failed to produce a new, free and classless society because it remained isolated in one country, surrounded by a hostile, global and militarised capitalism. It quickly succumbed to the power of global capitalist culture, economics and geopolitics, and reproduced capital, class, militarism and hierarchy. What chance will we have, a few thousand in a field, surrounded by police!

Anyway, I'm still gonna be there, and support to all those getting the whole thing together. Nice one. See ya'll there!

Barry Kade


eco

20.06.2005 01:56

Well I support the space but don't believe in living in eco-villages. And yes, something set up in a hurry is unlikely to be ecological. But then lots of people moving the countryside to live permanently there in so-called eco-houses sounds like disaster. Why the appeal to 'the past', the 'idylic' days of the untainted human? Villages have their place but cities can be ecological too.

Krop