USA climate camps - reports, actions & messages to the UK
Convergences for Climate Action | 15.08.2007 14:23 | Climate Camp 2007 | Climate Chaos | World
USA climate camps - reports, actions & messages to the UK
Links to action reports, a 10 min film of video messages & actions images from the USA and a few messages sent in by email from The East Coast USA climate camp, Save Happy Valley - New Zealand, The Yes Men, The Earth First! Journal, Rising Tide Newcastle - Australia, Huon Valley Environment Centre -Tasmania & Everglades Earth First! - Florida.
Links to action reports, a 10 min film of video messages & actions images from the USA and a few messages sent in by email from The East Coast USA climate camp, Save Happy Valley - New Zealand, The Yes Men, The Earth First! Journal, Rising Tide Newcastle - Australia, Huon Valley Environment Centre -Tasmania & Everglades Earth First! - Florida.
USA climate camps - reports, actions & messages to the UK
US 'Convergences for Climate Action':
http://www.climateconvergence.org/
US actions:
Activists Blockade Bank of America in Downtown Asheville
http://www.asheville.indymedia.org/article/236
Protesters Lockdown at PacifiCorp, Demanding Energy Justice
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/08/363444.shtml
Messages to climate camp UK from the US climate camps and around people the world fighting fossil fuels... 12 min video:
Part1: 8 mins messages from the camp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeqBu-1tWiE 8 mins
Part2: 4 mins A few more messages and pics from the USA climate camp actions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJMPPW590hc
Also, to add to the video messages... a few messages sent in by email from The East Coast USA climate camp, Save Happy Valley - New Zealand, The Yes Men, The Earth First! Journal, Rising Tide Newcastle - Australia, Huon Valley Environment Centre -Tasmania & Everglades Earth First! - Florida.
---------
Greetings from the Southeast Convergence for ClimateAction!
We just wrapped up an incredible week of workshops, strategizing, and direct action for climate justice and want to send our solidarity to all of you at the UK Climate Camp. For a week we brought together over 100 amazing activists in one of the most conservative regions of our country to confront the root causes of climate change and take collective action. During the convergence amazing networks were made, plans were hatched, and new strategies were developed to tear down the fossil fuel empire.
Of course the state was not going to let us have so much fun without them, and feeling left out, managed to put on quite a show for us. From the beginning of the camp we had daily visits from a police helicopter to which we responded with middle fingers and dropped trousers. On the morning of our action we found ourselves surrounded by a massive security operation involving the FBI, state, and local police who had deployed an unprecedented dragnet across 3 different counties to try to stop us. In addition they set up checkpoints around the local coal-fired power plant and even had a police boat patrolling the lake adjacent to it.
Despite the enormous police presence we managed to circumvent their net around us and shut down the regional headquarters of Bank of America for two hours. Bank of America was targeted for investing billions of dollars in the coal industry, including companies involved in mountaintop removal coal mining that is currently devastating our life giving mountains here in Appalachia. Activists dressed as polar bears and canaries descended onto downtown Asheville, North Carolina carrying banners reading “Climate Justice Now” and “Stop Banking on Climate Change” as others entered the bank and delivered coal to tellers. Two activists locked themselves to each other in the lobby and refused to leave. The police responded with about 20 cop cars, effectively shutting down the main road through downtown for us. In addition, we had the distinct honor to be the first event to ever have the Asheville police deploy in their new riot gear! In the end 5 people were arrested and we already have gotten them all out of jail.
All in all it was a great action and it keeps us strong to know that there are others like us fighting across the Atlantic. It was last year’s UK Climate Camp that inspired us to put on one here in the Southeast US and we want to thank you for being out there resisting this system of domination that is destroying all life on this planet. Stay strong and keep up the fight – kill capitalism before it kills us!
Solidarity,
The Southeast Convergence for Climate Action
PS. We are having a national day of action against Bank of America and its coal investments on August 31st. We invite you to make it an International day of action.
PPS. Action photos (with video coming soon) are at www.asheville.indymedia.org, and press releases at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org.
-----------
Hi crew!
Sending mountains and valleys of solidarity from here in Aotearoa. We too work to challenge the root causes of climate change - in the case of our campaign, coal. We have been fighting to stop a proposed state coal mine since April 2004 - so far successfully. We were stoked to hear of climate camp flourishing last year and hope this year is even more successful!
Kia kaha, go hard
Save Happy Valley Christchurch
http://www.savehappyvalley.org.nz
-------
The Yes Men send a message of solidarity to everyone at the camp!
We wish we could be there but we blew our travel budget on this stupid stunt: http://www.theyesmen.org/agribusiness/vivoleum/event/
Keep up the good work everyone, see you in hell!
------------
The Earth First! Journal is waiting with anticipation to see how this
year's Climate Camp unfolds. It all sounds really exciting! Y'all have
our total support and appreciation for your crucial work against climate
change. Definitely let us know how it turns out afterwards!
love and solidarity,
the Earth First! Journal collective
www.earthfirstjournal.org.
------------------
"Hi climate campers. You know you must be doing something effective when an airline corporation takes you to the high court! You've inspired us so much over here in Australia that we're putting together our own climate camp in 2008 - to shut down the world's biggest coal port. We think you're great, and we wish you the best at Heathrow."
Rising Tide Newcastle, Australia
http://www.risingtide.org.au/
---------
Dear Climate Action Campers,
Much respect and support to all of you struggling for a change in the way we live on this beautiful planet. Here at the 'bottom of the world' in Southern Tasmania we have an amazing little crew of dedicated people working to highlight the devastation of one of the world's most effective carbon sinks, Tasmania's ancient old-growth forests. At the moment they are being clearfelled, firebombed and laid out with poison, by the government agency Forestry Tasmania and Australia's biggest woodchipping company Gunns Ltd. Tasmania currently produces more woodchips than all other Australian states combined, and the government now wants to build a toxic pulp mill!
We are trying to show that these beautiful forests are worth so much more to the Earth as they are, storing many tonnes of carbon in the soil, and providing habitat for some of the world's most unusual, beautiful and rare animals.
There have been so many amazing activists visit us from the UK, and *hello* and *much love* if you've been to Tassie and are reading this now...and hello, and much love, to those that will come and visit us in the future! These are your forests too, they are a global treasure. Please get in touch if you're interested in helping in any way, or if we can help your cause.
You are all very inspiring, keep strong, and fight that third runway!
With love the Huon Valley Environment Centre.
www.huon.org
centre@huon.org
--------------------------
hey to all y'all climate campers out there across the rising ocean, greetings from Everglades Earth First! in South Florida--a deep and dank
corner of the beast's belly—the global ‘Gateway to the Americas’—where wetlands world-renown for their vastness are now gasping desperate, possibly, dying breaths and the last living old-growth coral reefs are being smothered to death by human-induced algal blooms. All this BEFORE the impact of climate change kicks in…
And that is to say nothing of the millions of people that will be impacted, hundreds of thousands who are literally political and economic refugees from the global economy, or modern agricultural slaves within it - mainly low-income Black, Indigenous and Latino communities.
Never, that any of us can see, has what you do this month at Heathrow in the UK, and anywhere else on the planet,
mattered to our bioregion’s future so much…
There is an irony here, or perhaps an interesting metaphor: as South Florida business interests push the creation of a global economic stronghold here with their Free Trade headquarters and proposed biotech clusters the waters are literally threatening to rise around this shallow land mass and swallow them (and all of us) whole, as they blindly continue forward.
Our response, you may wondering? Well, like you all, and with your inspiration, we are working on it. Really. Many heard of the battles with the FTAA in the streets of Miami, where activist exposed the reality of a corporate police state (unfortunately doing so by getting our asses kicked by it); some may have heard of the victory over Scripps Biotech Research Park in Palm Beach ounty; a couple of you might have even heard about the fight against our local global energy giant FPL (Florida Power & Light),
which now includes a victory over a huge 2000 megawatt (MW) coal plant in the western Everglades…
And we continue to hammer away at FPL’s presence in the Everglades, fighting construction of a massive 3300 MW gas/oil plant—in the top 5 largest fossil fuel plants in the country—which is illegally under construction, and it’s adjacent new pipeline.
So, shut down that damn airport expansion, we’ll stop this nasty power plant, then you can sail off into the sunset, we’ll aim for the
sunrise, and perhaps we can meet somewhere in the Azores for a short celebration before getting back to work.
check us out www.riverofgas.info
US 'Convergences for Climate Action':
http://www.climateconvergence.org/ US actions:
Activists Blockade Bank of America in Downtown Asheville
http://www.asheville.indymedia.org/article/236 Protesters Lockdown at PacifiCorp, Demanding Energy Justice
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/08/363444.shtml Messages to climate camp UK from the US climate camps and around people the world fighting fossil fuels... 12 min video:
Part1: 8 mins messages from the camp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeqBu-1tWiE 8 mins Part2: 4 mins A few more messages and pics from the USA climate camp actions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJMPPW590hc Also, to add to the video messages... a few messages sent in by email from The East Coast USA climate camp, Save Happy Valley - New Zealand, The Yes Men, The Earth First! Journal, Rising Tide Newcastle - Australia, Huon Valley Environment Centre -Tasmania & Everglades Earth First! - Florida.
---------
Greetings from the Southeast Convergence for ClimateAction!
We just wrapped up an incredible week of workshops, strategizing, and direct action for climate justice and want to send our solidarity to all of you at the UK Climate Camp. For a week we brought together over 100 amazing activists in one of the most conservative regions of our country to confront the root causes of climate change and take collective action. During the convergence amazing networks were made, plans were hatched, and new strategies were developed to tear down the fossil fuel empire.
Of course the state was not going to let us have so much fun without them, and feeling left out, managed to put on quite a show for us. From the beginning of the camp we had daily visits from a police helicopter to which we responded with middle fingers and dropped trousers. On the morning of our action we found ourselves surrounded by a massive security operation involving the FBI, state, and local police who had deployed an unprecedented dragnet across 3 different counties to try to stop us. In addition they set up checkpoints around the local coal-fired power plant and even had a police boat patrolling the lake adjacent to it.
Despite the enormous police presence we managed to circumvent their net around us and shut down the regional headquarters of Bank of America for two hours. Bank of America was targeted for investing billions of dollars in the coal industry, including companies involved in mountaintop removal coal mining that is currently devastating our life giving mountains here in Appalachia. Activists dressed as polar bears and canaries descended onto downtown Asheville, North Carolina carrying banners reading “Climate Justice Now” and “Stop Banking on Climate Change” as others entered the bank and delivered coal to tellers. Two activists locked themselves to each other in the lobby and refused to leave. The police responded with about 20 cop cars, effectively shutting down the main road through downtown for us. In addition, we had the distinct honor to be the first event to ever have the Asheville police deploy in their new riot gear! In the end 5 people were arrested and we already have gotten them all out of jail.
All in all it was a great action and it keeps us strong to know that there are others like us fighting across the Atlantic. It was last year’s UK Climate Camp that inspired us to put on one here in the Southeast US and we want to thank you for being out there resisting this system of domination that is destroying all life on this planet. Stay strong and keep up the fight – kill capitalism before it kills us!
Solidarity,
The Southeast Convergence for Climate Action
PS. We are having a national day of action against Bank of America and its coal investments on August 31st. We invite you to make it an International day of action.
PPS. Action photos (with video coming soon) are at www.asheville.indymedia.org, and press releases at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org.
-----------
Hi crew!
Sending mountains and valleys of solidarity from here in Aotearoa. We too work to challenge the root causes of climate change - in the case of our campaign, coal. We have been fighting to stop a proposed state coal mine since April 2004 - so far successfully. We were stoked to hear of climate camp flourishing last year and hope this year is even more successful!
Kia kaha, go hard
Save Happy Valley Christchurch
http://www.savehappyvalley.org.nz -------
The Yes Men send a message of solidarity to everyone at the camp!
We wish we could be there but we blew our travel budget on this stupid stunt:
http://www.theyesmen.org/agribusiness/vivoleum/event/ Keep up the good work everyone, see you in hell!
------------
The Earth First! Journal is waiting with anticipation to see how this
year's Climate Camp unfolds. It all sounds really exciting! Y'all have
our total support and appreciation for your crucial work against climate
change. Definitely let us know how it turns out afterwards!
love and solidarity,
the Earth First! Journal collective
www.earthfirstjournal.org.
------------------
"Hi climate campers. You know you must be doing something effective when an airline corporation takes you to the high court! You've inspired us so much over here in Australia that we're putting together our own climate camp in 2008 - to shut down the world's biggest coal port. We think you're great, and we wish you the best at Heathrow."
Rising Tide Newcastle, Australia
http://www.risingtide.org.au/ ---------
Dear Climate Action Campers,
Much respect and support to all of you struggling for a change in the way we live on this beautiful planet. Here at the 'bottom of the world' in Southern Tasmania we have an amazing little crew of dedicated people working to highlight the devastation of one of the world's most effective carbon sinks, Tasmania's ancient old-growth forests. At the moment they are being clearfelled, firebombed and laid out with poison, by the government agency Forestry Tasmania and Australia's biggest woodchipping company Gunns Ltd. Tasmania currently produces more woodchips than all other Australian states combined, and the government now wants to build a toxic pulp mill!
We are trying to show that these beautiful forests are worth so much more to the Earth as they are, storing many tonnes of carbon in the soil, and providing habitat for some of the world's most unusual, beautiful and rare animals.
There have been so many amazing activists visit us from the UK, and *hello* and *much love* if you've been to Tassie and are reading this now...and hello, and much love, to those that will come and visit us in the future! These are your forests too, they are a global treasure. Please get in touch if you're interested in helping in any way, or if we can help your cause.
You are all very inspiring, keep strong, and fight that third runway!
With love the Huon Valley Environment Centre.
www.huon.org
centre@huon.org --------------------------
hey to all y'all climate campers out there across the rising ocean, greetings from Everglades Earth First! in South Florida--a deep and dank
corner of the beast's belly—the global ‘Gateway to the Americas’—where wetlands world-renown for their vastness are now gasping desperate, possibly, dying breaths and the last living old-growth coral reefs are being smothered to death by human-induced algal blooms. All this BEFORE the impact of climate change kicks in…
And that is to say nothing of the millions of people that will be impacted, hundreds of thousands who are literally political and economic refugees from the global economy, or modern agricultural slaves within it - mainly low-income Black, Indigenous and Latino communities.
Never, that any of us can see, has what you do this month at Heathrow in the UK, and anywhere else on the planet,
mattered to our bioregion’s future so much…
There is an irony here, or perhaps an interesting metaphor: as South Florida business interests push the creation of a global economic stronghold here with their Free Trade headquarters and proposed biotech clusters the waters are literally threatening to rise around this shallow land mass and swallow them (and all of us) whole, as they blindly continue forward.
Our response, you may wondering? Well, like you all, and with your inspiration, we are working on it. Really. Many heard of the battles with the FTAA in the streets of Miami, where activist exposed the reality of a corporate police state (unfortunately doing so by getting our asses kicked by it); some may have heard of the victory over Scripps Biotech Research Park in Palm Beach ounty; a couple of you might have even heard about the fight against our local global energy giant FPL (Florida Power & Light),
which now includes a victory over a huge 2000 megawatt (MW) coal plant in the western Everglades…
And we continue to hammer away at FPL’s presence in the Everglades, fighting construction of a massive 3300 MW gas/oil plant—in the top 5 largest fossil fuel plants in the country—which is illegally under construction, and it’s adjacent new pipeline.
So, shut down that damn airport expansion, we’ll stop this nasty power plant, then you can sail off into the sunset, we’ll aim for the
sunrise, and perhaps we can meet somewhere in the Azores for a short celebration before getting back to work.
check us out www.riverofgas.info
Convergences for Climate Action
Homepage:
http://www.climateconvergence.org
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
Racist Action?
15.08.2007 23:30
Billy
re: racist action?
16.08.2007 14:14
In my experience the US camps are maiking big moves to fight internal racisim.. and making this a priority at the camps I have learnt much I hope to bring back to the UK.. obviously we all have a long way to go.. but just saying we should hang fire on labelling the camp racist until we know more details..
Climate camper (US & UK)
USA camp pics
16.08.2007 14:15
xx
Rising TIder..
from the camp re racism..
17.08.2007 14:53
These are two emails that got sent to the
southeast convergence, a letter and a rebuttal, that I think folks
should at least be aware of if anyone brings it up. I'm sure there's a
lot more that isn't included in these emails.
Dear Sir or Madam:
At the recent event that your organization cosponsored, the Southeast
Convergence for Climate Action, held in Asheville, NC, my colleague and
friend Mr. Norris McDonald, President of the African American
Environmentalist Association, an invited participant, was told to leave the
Southeast Convergence for Climate Action on the third day of the gathering
because, as one of your organizers stated, "We do not share the same beliefs
and goals." I find it outrageous that Mr. McDonald, an African American,
environmental activist for over twenty years (an extremely rare find,
believe me), was treated in such a demeaning way for simply having a
difference of opinion in what is supposed to be an enlightened discussion
forum. It's bad enough that minorities have been, and still are, grossly
ignored by the environmental movement in the community it is supposed to
serve and in hiring practices, but to be shut out that manner is
disgraceful. You and many others in your elitist circle need to take a good
look at yourselves in a mirror, reevaluate what your priorities are and
decide what and who you really stand for.
George Jackson
Editor
BICEP
Blog for Innovation in Community & Environmental Planning
www.bicepbulletin.blogspot.com
AND:
Norris McDonald and his "African American Environmentalist Association"
(and other front groups) are NOT friends of the environment. McDonald
has promoted many things that are vigorously opposed by the
environmental community, primarily nuclear power, but also oil and gas.
More recently, he's also been supporting coal
gasification, ethanol, biotechnology and nanotechnology.
He runs some sham "environmental" groups that have legitimate-sounding
names, but are mostly just him. This includes the "Environmental
Justice Coalition" and the "African American Environmentalist
Association." He also runs some front-groups that sound like industry
trade associations and think tanks, like the "Center for Environment,
Commerce & Energy" and the "Nuclear Fuels Reprocessing Coalition."
McDonald's primary function -- as far as I can tell -- has been as a
front group for the nuclear industry, though he seems to be branching
out to promote other (mostly anti-environmental) agendas as well. See
for plenty of evidence of his love of nukes (more details below).
McDonald is considered a "fraud" and a "wacko" by respectable national
anti-nuclear groups. McDonald provides much needed public relations for
an industry notorious for its racism. McDonald's main justification for
being pro-nuke is that he and his son have asthma.
On his older website, about half of the issues topics on the side bar
were on nuclear issues (all of which are in support of nuclear
development). As an anti-nuclear activist, I can tell based on his
writings that he's obviously well tied into the nuclear industry. You
can look at older versions of his website in archive.org
(
the main thrust of his "group" has been to promote nuclear power
-- the most racist of energy industries.
Norris McDonald's position on nuclear power is here:
On his "President's Corner" page
(
as one of his main goals for 2003: "Promote Electric Vehicle and Nuclear
Power Plant Construction, Uranium Enrichment, Spent Fuel
Reprocessing & Mixed Oxide (MOX) Reprocessing."
On the same page at the time, you could see that most of his activities
in 2002 were pro-nuclear activities, such as promoting the Yucca
Mountain nuclear waste dump (on Native American lands in Nevada),
promoting specific nuclear reactors and supporting nuclear
reprocessing. He lies and calls the Indian Point nuclear power plant
"emission-free" (no nuclear reactors are emission-free). On other pages
(like his announcements page), he called nuclear reactors a
"reliable source of green power."
On his "history of collaboration" page, he admits working with the
Nuclear Energy Institute in 2002 to promote Yucca Mountain. One of the
links to AAEA's website is from the Nuclear Energy Institute's website.
African American Environmentalist Association is a member of the new
nuclear industry PR group that former EPA administrator Christine
Whitman now works for, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. See:
McDonald's "Nuclear Fuels Reprocessing Coalition"
(
number as one of the two contact phone numbers and says the following
to describe the group:
"The Nuclear Fuels Reprocessing (NFR) Coalition has been established to
promote the construction and operation of nuclear fuels reprocessing
facilities. NFR promotes reprocessing commercial spent nuclear fuel
that is generated by commercial nuclear power plants. Reprocessing
dramatically reduces the amount of high-level radioactive waste that
would have to be stored in a geologic repository. We also support
reprocessing plutonium and highly enriched uranium from
nuclear warheads into fuel for use in commercial nuclear power plants."
Reprocessing and MOX (using plutonium in commercial reactors) are
among the dirtiest nuclear processes ever.
Not only is he pro-nuclear, but he's not even opposed to fossil fuels
and the exploitation of African oil regions.
On his announcements page
(
up there promoting the exploitation of African oil and even went as far
as promoting ExxonMobil's highly controversial Chad-Cameroon pipeline.
On his support of IGCC (coal gasification power plants), see:
On natural gas...
You can find Norris McDonald promoting Liquefied Natural Gas terminals
on several sites here:
"The African American Environmentalist Association supports LNG
terminals because of the need for additional natural gas for
electricity generation."
I hope this is more than enough to lay to rest any legitimacy that
McDonald is seen to have. No legitimate environmentalist could support
all of these terrible things. There IS a legitimate national
environmental justice organization for African Americans. It's called
the National Black Environmental Justice Network
(
but I think the only mistake made was that McDonald was invited in the
first place. The last thing we need in any grassroots environmental
movement meetings are people who are serving as eyes and
ears (and often, as a mouth) for the nuclear industry.
We've done a lot of principled work fighting environmental racism, and I
know that some of the other sponsors of the recent conference have as
well. The only racism involved here is not that a black nuclear
industry flak was kicked out of the event, but that Norris McDonald is a
long-time supporter of the very industries responsible for the
environmental racism he pretends to be fighting.
Mike Ewall
Energy Justice Network
215-743-4884
convergance