Action:Other actions

*Call for “system change not climate change” unites global movement
*Corrupt Copenhagen ‘accord’ exposes gulf between peoples demands
and elite interests

Copenhagen, December 2009

The highly anticipated UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen
ended with a fraudulent agreement, engineered by the United States
and dropped into the conference at the last moment. The
"agreement" was not adopted. Instead, it was "noted" in an absurd
parliamentary invention designed to accommodate the United States
and permit Ban Ki-moon to utter the ridiculous pronouncement "We
have a deal."

On Tuesday 4th August, protesters (including Bristol Rising Tide) descended on the Bristol Headquarters of the Environment Agency in Aztec West carrying windmills and banners to support the action of Vestas workers who have occupied the St Cross wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight for the last two weeks because of plans to close the site with the immediate loss of 600 jobs. A further two solidarity demos took place on Friday 7th August. A couple of Bristol RT'ers also visted the Isle of Wight."

At the end of May, Bristol Rising Tiders joined others from around the UK and the Republic of Ireland for a weekend gathering at the Rossport Solidarity Camp at Glengad in County Mayo. The gathering had been called to support the local community in their fight to stop Shell and Statoil from wrecking their environment and destroying their livelihoods of farming and fishing. Shell and Statoil (the Norwegian State oil and gas company) are extracting gas off the coast of Co. Mayo and are now planning to lay a gas pipeline to connect the drilling rig to the gas refinery they are building on seized land at nearby Ballanaboy. The 150 people who came to the gathering took part in direct action workshops led by the Tripod collective from Scotland and learnt from local activists about the massive oil and gas developments planned for the Atlantic seaboard of Ireland. A workshop run by an activist from Platform also showed that the struggle at Rossport was just one of many being waged by small communities around the world against Shell - the multinational oil company. The hallmarks of Shell’s operations are disregard for the environment, destruction of livelihoods, coercion and violence against local activists and gaining favourable terms by giving backhanders to politicians.

"You may well ask: 'why direct action? Isn't negotiation a better path?' You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored"

Rising Tide NA, with a lot of support from other groups, have just set up a new website with information from the grassroots, for the grassroots radical and progressive response to Hurricane Gustav and those that have followed. They are currently receiving and collating information from a dozen or so groups in the area.

Today, on one of the busiest shopping days of the year, activists in both London and Norwich dressed up as Santas Against Excessive Consumption and hit the high streets to sing a different tune to the usual buy, buy, buy madness of the holiday season.

In Norwich, bearing a festive banner reading Lapland is Melting and singing subverted Christmas carols (Welcome to Consumer Wonderland, Oh Little Town of Chapelfield, etc.), the Santas set up outside the temple to consumption that is Chapelfield Mall.

To mark Buy Nothing Day, 12 people from Norwich Rising Tide held a Rat Race in the city centre.

Activists created a mobile rat race that stopped off at the city’s busiest malls and high streets.

People in rat costumes hurried hither and thither between the edges of the rat race maze, built out of placards reading Work Harder, Earn More Money, Buy More Things, Keep Going, while Fat Cats advised that happiness was just around the corner if the rats would only keep shopping!

Santas Against Excessive Consumption (SAEC) went out to play for the second year running on Saturday December 16th 2006, dropping in on the Shell-sponsored Natural History Museum (NHM) on the way to the consumer hell that is Oxford Street.