Action: Other action

On the 5th and 6th of November 2021, aviation protest actions across the globe coordinated by Stay Grounded, called for an end to aviation’s greenwashing and an effective reduction of air traffic. The diverse protests were part of a Global Day of Action called by the https://cop26coalition.org/gda/  a UK-based civil society grouping, mobilising around climate justice during COP26, the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow. In addition to the 18 events for 12 UK expanding airports, protests also took place in Mexico, Nepal, Germany and France.

Aviation is the most climate-damaging form of transport and one of the worst examples of climate injustice, so nobody should be fooled by attempts to greenwash aviation. New technologies and so-called ‘sustainable’ fuels will take decades to be used on commercial, long haul flights – and it is these flights that cause the vast majority of aviation’s climate wrecking emissions. (Check out 5 Greenwashing Factsheets here:- https://stay-grounded.org/greenwashing ). Research shows that relying on techno-fixes will not decarbonise the aviation sector rapidly enough to stay below the globally agreed 1.5 degrees C limit; and the UK government’s advisory body, the Climate Change Committee, recommends NO net expansion of UK airports and has repeatedly warned the government that technological solutions alone will be insufficient to make the aviation sector even net zero by 2050. Yet, every UK airport has plans to expand. 

In this context we took to the fields and streets to counter greenwashing and aviation expansion. In what rapidly became a full Week of Action, Rising Tide UK co-ordinated the Stay Grounded activities in the UK for airports at:  Bristol, Doncaster-Sheffield, Gatwick, Glasgow, Heathrow, Leeds-Bradford, London-City, Luton, Liverpool, Manchester, Southampton and Stanstead. Our press spokesperson Ray Stewart said:-
  "We warn that trusting yet-to-be-developed technology to reduce climate-wrecking emissions is an extreme risk we cannot afford to take. Instead, we demand immediate action be taken to prevent aviation growth to cut associated emissions, for us to stand any chance of remaining within 1.5C.”

18 events for 12 UK airports showed what happens when we get together and co-ordinate united action around common themes under the Stay Grounded UK Chapter umbrella. So well done to those groups that took part and thanks to those who acted as group spokespeople, took photo's and did techy stuff. Lets have more groups covering more airports next time! We encourage those groups to visit https://stay-grounded.org/how-to-become-a-member/ .

Here's a round-up of what happened and where, with media links of which we're aware.

Given our work has so many overlapping priorities we've agreed to work together with RtP in London (& Bristol) and hold joint meetings. One of the reasons we have got together is to support this camp to highlight a future of connected communities and a climate justice movement that recognises the rights of everyone - a mass action camp for migrant and climate justice, taking direct action against new gas infrastructure built by Drax, shutting it down and also training-up and learning how to support resistance to the UK's Hostile Environment for migrants to take action later this year. https://www.facebook.com/events/584658665344782/

"My home has melted!" mourned Santa from the streets of Horley!
Having been forced to abandon his waterlogged Lapland home due to climate breakdown caused by the burning of Fossil Fuels, Santa and his elves ironically stowed away in the lifeboats of a Liquid Natural Gas tanker to escape his now flooded former snowbound winter wonderland. Sleigh's were not an option as Rudolph and comrades are now merely starved carcass, after the recent 50% catastrophic decline in reindeer/caribou numbers due to the warmer climate in the arctic eradicating their food supply. Last Saturday, upon UK landfall the former seasonal folk made their way to Horley to find the Fossil Fool culprits who were responsible for his loss - UK Oil&Gas (UKOG),the lead company of HorseHillDevelopments Ltd, who are acid-fracking the nearby Horse Hill site. It was tragic to see Santa & his elves flaunting the Vagrancy Act and especially Santa who seemed to have turned to the drink.

UPDATE:-
The Stansted 15 are a group of anti-deportation protesters who blocked a UK government deportation flight at Stanstead Airport last year to make the links clearer between climate change, colonialism, homophobia and the border regime. In a world of the IPCC's current forecast of 3 degrees C plus, innocent climate breakdown refugees will face the power of the state to maintain borders. In the UK and many other countries, that "hostile environment" has already begun. They were sentenced on 6th Feb'19 by a Crown Court judge. They avoided immediate prison sentences, with 3 given suspended sentences and 12 given Community Service Orders. The jury found all fifteen defendants guilty of "intentional disruption of services and endangerment at an aerodrome" under the 1990 Aviation and Maritime Security Act – a controversial use of terror-related law. This outrageous verdict attempts to suggest there is a link between non-violent protest and terrorism.There seems to be no doubt that it is the UK goverment's Home Office that is guilty of terrorising.
In a statement, the Stansted 15 said:
“These terror convictions and the ten-week trial that led to them are an injustice that has profound implications for our lives. The convictions will drastically limit our ability to work, travel and take part in everyday life. Yet, people seeking asylum in this country face worse than this: they are placed in destitution and their lives in limbo, by the Home Office’s vicious system every single day. When a country uses draconian terror legislation against people for peaceful protest, snatches others from their homes in dawn raids, incarcerates them without time limit and forces them onto planes in the middle of the night, due to take them to places where their lives might be at risk, something is very seriously wrong. Every single one of us should be very worried about our democracy and our future. We demand that these convictions are quashed, and that the Government dismantles the vicious, barely legal, immigration system that destroys so many people’s lives.”
Please defend the right to protest and sign this petition:- https://www.change.org/p/home-office-end-the-hostile-environment-and-de…

On 10th December the 15 were found guilty of a terrorism "aviation offence", namely that they "placed the safety of an airport in a likelihood of danger". This outrageous verdict attempts to suggest there is a link between non-violent protest and terrorism. They will be sentenced on Wednesday February 6th, 2019 between 8:30 am - 4pm at Chelmsford Court, New Street, Chelmsford, Essex, UK and many people will gather outside in solidarity. There seems to be no doubt that it is the UK goverment's Home Office that is guilty of terrorising. https://www.facebook.com/events/735004523524622/
Many Solidarity Rallies have been held in the UK since the verdict https://www.facebook.com/EDeportations/
Last year those 15 people grounded a deportation charter flight for 10 hours to prevent it taking off. The action was taken by our comrades at End Deportations, Plane Stupid and Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants (LGSMigrants) and aimed to show links between climate change, colonialism, homophobia and the border regime. The individuals responsible for this non-violent direct action were charged with terrrorism-related offences that could result in life imprisonment. There seems to be no doubt that it is the goverment's Home Office that is guilty of terrorising.
In November we issued this Statement to say we stand with them in Solidarity .
"In line with our Rising Tide International Political Statement and also as Members of Stay Grounded, Rising Tide UK stands in solidarity with the Stansted 15. The 15 are nearing the end of a gruelling 8-week trial in Chelmsford, having taken nonviolent direct action to stop a deportation charter flight to Nigeria from taking off in March 2017. For this action, which highlighted a brutal and little-known aspect of the UK's border regime, they are facing charges of terrorism which could result in life imprisonment.
Deportation charter flights are a particularly horrific aspect of the UK's hostile environment for migrants, which also includes immigration detention centres, raids, signing at the police station and keeping people in a limbo of uncertainty over their future – often for years. People deported on these flights are snatched from their communities and families - without due process and without time to challenge the deportation through legal means. According to Corporate Watch:
"Up to 2,000 people a year are loaded onto these secretive night flights, often shackled in “waist restraint belts” or “leg restraints”. Deportees are manhandled by private security “escorts” (working for Mitie) onto aircraft hired from charter companies.".
The Home Office wants to get its money's worth out of each charter flight, so people are racially targetted to fill a flight; and more people are booked onto a flight than can fit, in case anyone manages to secure a last-minute injunction on their deportation, adding to the uncertainty and trauma people are already experiencing at the hands of the UK border regime.
The Stansted 15 were acting to prevent this form of state terrorism. Their Action has brought much-needed attention to the border regime and has resulted in at least one person who was on that flight receiving "leave to remain" in the UK. Eleven more people are still here and waiting for their claims to be processed – a chance that would have been taken away from them had this Action not happened. Some of the people on this flight were facing persecution and death if deported, some were victims of trafficking and many had ongoing asylum claims in the UK.
We see the impacts of the UK's hostile environment in our communities every day and it is only when people come together to challenge it that we feel the cracks opening in this unjust system. The Stansted 15's action was incredibly important, not only for the people on the 'plane, who were able continue with their asylum claims but also for what it represented and the ideas and conversations that have come out of it. People can stop charter flights from taking off; we can dismantle the hostile environment and treat refugees and asylum seekers with the respect and dignity they deserve. This wasn't terrorism, it was a practical display of solidarity with people going through the immigration process and a reminder to us all that we can and should be building a fairer world.".

They are still short in their crowdfunder appeal : https://chuffed.org/project/end-deportations-charter-flight-action-tria…
https://www.facebook.com/events/1818956471520835/?notif_t=plan_user_ass…
https://www.facebook.com/EDeportations/

Over 70 cyclists completed 3 seperate "tours" of the Acidification Fracking sites at Brockham, Leith Hill, Balcombe and Horse Hill, all starting at Meadowbank Park, Dorking at 10.30am, joined by friends and supporters in a highly organised event with food and speaker stops culminating in an after-party at the Leith Hill Protectors Camp.
A film of the day is now available at https://www.facebook.com/SoapboxEN/videos/1618086074984087/ . As you know RisingTideUK do not advocate the use of Facebook so get off as soon as you've watched it! ;-p. RisingTide's contingent were joined by among others our friends from Biofuelwatch who also took some footage which you can find here:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRxT39Y6aZY - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3A49nhkaQA - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3YG81y4cY . Rumours of a return Tour next year are surfacing.

Invitation to the Climate vs Capitalism action planning meeting, London, Sat 13th February. Organised by Corporate Watch, Rising Tide UK and others.

This meeting is intended to be a follow up to the workshops Corporate Watch organised in 2015. The workshops aimed to bring people together to discuss capitalism and climate change and consider 'where next' for the movement in the UK.

This meeting will move on from more theoretical discussions to organising and action, focusing on 3 specific projects aimed at re-vitalising the grassroots, anti-capitalist climate movement in the UK. A draft agenda is at https://network23.org/climatevscapitalism .

Ahead of the meeting we said we would chose the themes in advance and tell everyone attending before the meeting. This way people will know if there are areas they are interested in and we get on with organising instead of spending the meeting deciding what we are going to discuss(!). There will be a chance in the wrap-up session to report on other campaigns/actions/projects that do not fall under these three themes:-

Oil and Gas:-
The Trans-National Oil and Gas Industry is ubiquitous and runs our world together with the Banks that finance their projects. Their products affect our everyday lives; dictate our energy supply; and their profits play a major role in pension funds. Anti-capitalist critique is rarely these days, transformed into action against these behemoths. We want to explore ways of addressing this, illustrating alternatives, whilst showing we can target not only those companies themselves but the Banks and service companies which facilitate their destructive projects around our world.

Aviation:-
There's growing resistance in local communities around expanding airports but an anti-capitalist critique which links these campaigns together is wholly absent. Vociferous campaigns like the one against Heathrow focus on noise and air pollution, whilst there has been little action to curb carbon emissions. So-called International Emissions fall outside any UN-COP CO2 reduction targets, so the Government looks like giving the go-ahead to expansion at BOTH Heathrow and Gatwick, despite UK climate legislation which should rule this out. It's time for us to halt all expansion and make binge-flying socially unacceptable.

Mobilisations
To plan for participating in climate mobilisations on an anti-capitalist basis, including getting people from the UK to the ZAD mobilisation in France on 27 Feb (http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2016/01/22/notre-dame-des-landes-… ) and the Ende Gelande open cast coal mobilisation in Germany on 13–15 May (https://www.ende-gelaende.org/en/). We will also discuss other possible mobilisations.

We emphasise again strongly that we think there's a gap in UK anti-capitalist climate organising. We know that issues around being explicitly anti-capitalist, reformist politics etc. were discussed at some of the previous workshops, and we know there are some differences of opinion over this. We are also aware that others are organising 'post-Paris' strategy meetings and while we see the need for a diverse movement, we want to use this space for those who want to focus on the more explicitly anti-capitalist side of the movement.

London Rising Tide blockaded and shut down the Old Street Shell garage on the night of 14th March in memory of Shell activist and sambaista Val Dazzle, who lost her battle with Motor Neurone Disease in early 2010. They were joined by friends from Rhythms of Resistance samba band and other Shell2Sea friends in London. Val "Dazzle"- due to her winning smile - was a prominent member of London Rising Tide and the Band, with whom Val played for many years, even in a wheelchair just a few months before she passed away.

This April our friends at Biofuelwatch are organising two events in London which shine the spotlight on the destructive big biomass industry and we invite you to join us helping them!

 Wednesday 9th April7pm Biomess Awards @ Gibson Hall, 13 Bishopsgate, EC2N 3BA

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 The Art Not Oil Coalition got underway with several spectacular Actions. A large turnout of London Rising Tiders helped our friends of Liberate Tate with theirs, organised at Tate Britain.

 Fifty veiled figures dressed in black carried out a performance art installation entitled ‘Parts Per Million’ throughout a series of rooms in the so-called ‘BP Walk Through British Art’ at Tate Britain during the art gallery’s official re-opening (Saturday 23 November 2013). The piece critiqued the role that Tate is playing in exacerbating climate change by bolstering the public perception of BP through its long-standing sponsorship relationship.