These community statements are from locals who share their experiences, knowledge, and concerns, for the Global Minga week of action. Most of the speakers draw from international backgrounds (including family abroad) -
Bikes Not Oil! Rapping at the pumps (audio) -
A few of us made this recording in a park after the rally that it was prepared for. I’m one of the backup guys.
A Minga is a community mobilization, and the 2010 Minga had major connections with calls for climate justice. Here is a version of the global action call-out. Some action reposts are posted here.
We called our local gas station protest as a “party at the pumps,” and we called our combined rallies an “alternative Thanksgiving.”
On this page there are links to a local protest video, to photos, and to other rally material.
I recorded and edited the audio statements, and the photos also are from me.
The statements that I made before and during our October 12th mobilizing aren’t posted anywhere. (I wasn’t about to record a statement from myself, after the fact, and I don’t know what happened with the press interviews I did over the phone.)
The closest thing to a typed statement from me is these words, which I quoted myself saying, for our press release -
“Today’s events are held on ‘Columbus’ Day to call for an end to centuries of devastating injustices in the Americas, and across the world, where indigenous peoples are on the front-lines of climate change impacts, fossil fuel industries, and mining operations. We will not stand for these injustices, and we are asking everyone to join us as we try to make or preserve liveable environments, for all people. Our local event is part of a much wider call for that positive change.”
“Detroit is a window into the future. Through this window we see an inspiring site of deeply grassroots and living visions of a just and democratic community. Community resistance to corporate polluters in Detroit, including oil refineries, coal power plants and the world’s largest waste incinerator, continue to hold the frontline against the destruction of the planet. Meanwhile resistance to such corporatization strategies such as predatory lending, water privatization, prisons and police brutality are matched with equally powerful models of resilience; such as community gardens, cooperative economics, freedom schools and transformative justice. Detroit can be a model of the Just Transition to sustainable communities that we require; one in which exploitive jobs that cause ecological devastation and compromised health are replaced with meaningful work in our own interests; restoring our labor and our resources to the web of life.”
An activist and hip hop artist from Detroit talked about some of those community self-help and poverty issues in an audio interview with Kota Kimura and myself. Here’s that interview — with the summary that we’ve posted with it -
Our bank re-branding actions were carried out in solidarity with climate camp activists in Montreal who were confronting representatives of dirty industries at a World Energy Congress. Here in Ontario we targetted RBC, the leading financier of tar sands operations in Alberta — the most destructive and unsustainable project on earth. Other major Canadian banks have much the same blood on their hands, so making an example of RBC is just a strategic way of pressing for wider changes among the big banks. Activists also have targetted RBC in other parts of the country, and that common target has helped with getting together a little solidarity between our groups.
Here in London (Ontario), our messages about RBC and climate justice were up on RBC’s street signs for at least a day. Our “global warming crime scene” tape didn’t hold out for nearly as long, but we were able to recover most of it after it was torn down.
The climatejustice.tk web address we taped onto RBC’s signs and ATM pointed people to our web site, where there is information about how RBC “KILLS”. A quick street message can’t give much information in itself, but a web address can offer some background.
Absentee managers and owners leave easy corporate property targets for us.
The skull image that we taped to RBC’s sign is a symbol of mining industry piracy. This skull is a variation on part of a pirate Canadian flag that mining campaigners had brought to the Quebec climate camp in August. They made their pirate flag to point out how companies based in Canada are world leaders in mining operations (with loads of foreign investments). Here in Ontario, our pirate image was used to re-brand the local RBC headquarters. Since the tar sands are a mining operation, RBC has a major hand in mining industry looting and pillaging.
The French button also is from the August climate camp in Dunham, Quebec. The button reads ‘Change the system! Not the climate!’.
Here is a video of our re-branding of the local headquarters.
I would have taken at least a couple more photos if I didn’t have camera battery problems.
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This ride was linked with a climate justice day of action — which you can read about at the end of this Ecojustice Declaration.
(Here are ways those links were made locally.)
The main campaign around the climate camp is a way of blocking tar sands expansion, while helping out local victims, at the same time. The pipeline project cuts across Maine, Quebec, Ontario, Michigan, Illinois, and other surrounding areas — so there are plenty of points of intervention, and plenty of grounds for solidarity.
These photo sets are from the “convergence days” between August 18th and August 22nd.
In the first photo there are signs that say ‘No dirty oil in our territory’ and ‘climate action camp’ (in French). The banners in other photos say ‘Change the system, not the climate’ (in French), ’stop the wave of destruction’ (in French), “CO2lonialism”, and ‘Change the system! Not the climate!’ “Trailbreaker = Tar sands”.
Since the G20 Summit in Toronto, activists here in London, Ontario (Canada) have organized a series of protests against the Summit policing regime. Below I’ll offer some photos, video links, and written background about our protests. First, here are some points about other campaigning and organizing here in London (Ont.) -
More than anything, activists here have been demanding civil liberties that were attacked at the Summit.
Civil liberties petition signatures have been collected, and a flyer about civil liberties has been distributed here. We have brought copies with us as we have used a projector to display video footage of G20 police brutality on walls for crowds at public events. Here is a post about the first of those projection protests, at a Canada Day fireworks show.
Members of our group took to the streets around the G20 Summit in Toronto with concerns about climate change, the Alberta tar sands, assaults on native sovereignty, and other environmental injustices. The Summit police in Toronto threatened, searched, arrested, and detained Climate Justice London activists, while other local climate justice activists stayed away from Toronto to avoid the G20 police regime. Our dissent was not permitted at the Summit. In fact, anyone who was outdoors in downtown Toronto was a potential target for the snatch squads, the riot cops, the mounted horse brigades, and thousands of other police at the Summit. Our allies and our friends were pulled into this ‘security’ sweep, and all of us are left wondering which of the local police officers we encounter have brought their G20 summit training and hostility back to our cities.
Because we condemn this trampling of civil liberties, and because we always will call for democracy and social justice, members of our group have taken on leading roles in preparing a statement about police conduct and detention conditions at the G20 summit in Toronto. People for Peace (London) activists helped to develop that London-specific version of the original statement from Toronto. We hope that more Londoners will sign on to communicate their support.
Threats to our civil liberties will make it even more difficult to continue campaigning against environmental injustices — in a non-violent manner, without destructive sabotage tactics.
Here in London, Ontario a few of us have produced a local version of a statement from Toronto which was, above all, about G20 police conduct and detention conditions in Toronto during the recent Summit of ‘world leaders’ there. The local statement was prepared by Climate Justice London and People for Peace London. And the following pre-amble (which I’m just re-posting verbatim) explains how this statement is connected with the original one from Toronto -
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[The preamble]
Local activists have prepared this London, Ontario version of the Toronto statement about police tactics at the G20 Summit there. We believe it is important for Londoners to present a unified voice to demand the civil liberties that were attacked in Toronto.
We invite signatures from anyone living, campaigning, or working in London, Ontario, or elsewhere in the nearby region.
Our statement is an abbreviated version of the original Toronto call – with added points about links between London activists, London police, and the Toronto summit. (These added points are in paragraph three, and demands 6 and 7, at the end of the statement.) The original Toronto statement basically offers a more detailed summary of events in Toronto in late June.
We also have made one addition to the text from the Toronto call. In the following sentence, we have changed the words “harassment by police” to “harassment and sexual violence from police” -
“The reports of those released from detention reveal a pervasive pattern of sexual, gender, trans, homophobic and racist harassment and sexual violence from police.”
If you want to SIGN ON to the London, Ontario statement, PLEASE WRITE TO theLondoncall@gmail.com and include your name and affiliation (as you would want it in the final version), and the category you prefer to be placed in (trade unionists, activists, arrested and detained, legal workers, teachers, cultural workers, students, etc). We ask you to sign on as soon as possible. We will be collecting signatures from individuals, and from groups and organizations.
Most of the photos are from me. (The ones that I posted are here and here)
There were a various actions against the tar sands that day. People out in London, England even joined the action. Here in Canada, RBC (the Royal Bank of Canada) was the main Fossil Fool target. That bank is the leading financier behind the tar sands.
Compared with other local campaigning against RBC tar sands financing here, there was a lot more tension at the protest at the first RBC bank building we went to on the Fossil Fools day of action. Just leafletting inside an RBC building has been enough to get us into a confrontation (of sorts) with police though. Security staff and police officers always are at hand to defend corporations like RBC by preventing people from voicing concerns on company property.
That said, I still don’t appreciate conflicts (or potential conflicts) with police and security staff. That sort of excitement doesn’t work for me, and I’m generally not hostile towards police officers and security workers. There are a lot of problems police/security systems — given how they are bound up with a much wider status quo — but I don’t find targetting police and security workers to be a productive way of confronting those problems. We’ve got to find ways to change and replace the mainstream systems that employ those people. If there are no dirty banks (for instance), then the police and security forces can’t defend them.
That statement is a response to an e-mail (quoted at the bottom of that page) from a ‘Free’ Press organization.
Here’s a bit more background -
The ‘Free’ Press Society (which was backing the Ann Coulter in Canada events) had sent out hundreds of event RSVP e-mails by mistake. The Countering Coulter blog then was set up to take advantage of that opportunity to reach people who had RSVPed for the event here in London, Ontario, Canada. Someone out here sent those people a message (much like this post) to ask them whether they would want to use the blog to communicate their concerns about the Coulter in Canada event in London, Ontario. After a guy from the ‘Free’ Press organization sent out an insulting and confusing rant about that e-mail and that Countering Coulter blog — in a message to the same e-mail addresses — I put together the reply on the blog page that I’ve linked to above.
In that writing I tried to hint at the limited effectiveness of blogging and e-mailing in general. Online activism and dialogue (via Twitter, and Facebook, and so on) are very overrated, and I didn’t mean to reinforce the rhetoric and false hopes about ‘digital revolution’ and ‘digital democracy’ (Here are some relevant posts.)
To put this another way -
Free speech only can happen when there already is equality and justice in our everyday lives (with or without digital technologies).
On that Countering Coulter blog, it also should be clear that I wasn’t approaching free speech as a vicious barking contest — in which ridiculous and blatantly false claims are fine and good.
When we respond to ‘libertarians’ and blunter neo-conservatives, it’s also important to distinguish hate speech from tolerable free speech. I didn’t try to draw any such lines in the writing on that blog page, but I have put some time into those sorts of conflicts, in the past. (Comments which I bothered to post here and here come to mind. I also put myself in the middle of a nasty hate speech conflict in a former Indymedia group here in London, Ontario; the Indymedia project went down in flames during that battle — which also was a matter of milder sexism, and other problems.)
In some cases, tensions and gaps in understanding are too far gone to warrant the time and effort required to take sides in a conflict. And those counterproductive spats happen a lot more on the Internet. The remarks on the “Other viewpoints” section of the Countering Coulter blog are cases in point.
