Christian Ecology Link Update: AGM, Dirty Coal, Climate March, Climate Rush

1. Event: Operation Noah AGM this Saturday 16th May, 11am - 3-30pm, St Mary's,
Putney Bridge, London SW15 1SN. Guest speaker: Tasmin Omond. RSVP:
campaigns[at]operationnoah.org
www.operationnoah.org/blog/jayjo/board-nominations

2. News: The Stop Climate Chaos Coalition has handed in 85,450 messages to
Ed Miliband to quit dirty coal and say yes to clean, green renewable energy.
Thanking the coalition, Mr. Miliband assured SCC that the Government is
doing the best that it can. We reminded him that the 85,450 messages are to
support the government to make good on its promise to reduce carbon
emissions by 80 by 2050 by rejecting dirty new coal and embracing a
renewable energy future. A big well done everyone - and let's keep going to
March in December
www.stopclimatechaos.org/09/apr/85480-signatures-delivered-ed-miliband

3. Action: The Stop Climate Chaos Coalition has a new resource to help you
engage supporters in your Copenhagen Campaigns and get ready for the big
march on December 5th. www.stopclimatechaos.org/action-pack

4. Direct Action: A message from Climate Rush: BEGIN THE SUMMER OF PROTEST
IN STYLE!

On Monday 1st June the UK Parliament returns from recess for the summer
sitting. Climate Rush want to give them a warm welcome and remind them of
the heat they can expect if they continue to ignore climate change. Ed
Miliband (Secretary of State Energy and Climate Change) is in Bonn that
evening, discussing with other 'world leaders' the agenda for the UN Climate
Summit in Copenhagen. Let's give our 'leaders' a taste of the civil
disobedience they can expect if real climate justice fails to materialise.
It is also the first evening of a coal conference at the illustrious
'Chatham House'. Everyone who's anyone, at least in the coal world, will be
there.

We'll begin our bike-ride outside their conference before winding our way
through town. Meet us from 5pm on St James Square, SW1Y 4LE. We'll then move
off at 6pm and take our bikes for a relaxed tour through London. Labour
might think that investing in electric cars is the solution to climate
change but we know that cars using electricity from coal-fired power
stations is yet another red-herring.

Have you ever needed more reason to leave the house, embrace the sunshine
and join the pedal-powered as they move about town? Come along and make your
impact felt.

www.climaterush.co.uk
Best Wishes

Ruth Jarman
Member of CEL Steering Committee
www.christian-ecology.org.uk

Home del.icio.us Digg This!

Response to Policing of Climate Camp

A few interesting pieces of writing about the the way the police dealt with the climate camp:

1. A letter to The Times

Sir, Last week a parliamentary report recognised that police tactics against dissent have become “heavy-handed in recent years”. This week the police provide another example of an approach towards protest that is primarily about repression and not about public order (report, April 3).

The Joint Committee on Human Rights suggests that “the deployment of riot police can unnecessarily raise the temperature at protests”. On Wednesday riot police were sent into peaceful crowds, hitting people with truncheons and riot shields. Aggressive dogs were used to intimidate. The report is concerned about the “improper use” of Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008 to prevent photographing or filming police. When the police broke up the climate camp, people were forced to delete images and film that showed the police in action.

The report states that “inconvenience or disruption alone are not sufficient reasons for preventing a protest from taking place”, and that the police need more human rights training. Claiming that indiscriminate tactics, such as “kettles” to contain and break up protests, were employed in order to deal with “a small number of people” is an admission that the rights of others to protest can go to the wall. Parliamentarians have yet to address the legality of the police database in which information on thousands of protestors is held. On April 1 climate campers were unable to leave unless they gave names and addresses and had their photos taken. The database has just got much bigger.

Emma Sangster

London E5

2. A piece in the Independant

The (very) heavy hand of the law

It was clear from early on, in the City of London on Wednesday, that two very different protests were being staged. One, centred on the Bank of England, sheltered masked agents provocateurs, who were intent on clashing with the police. They succeeded in their aims.

But the other, the Climate Camp on Bishopsgate, harboured no such elements, and continued peacefully all day. Yet the 800 people at this street party were still attacked by riot police very suddenly in the evening. Footage has been posted on the internet showing officers repeatedly hitting unarmed civilians

The attack on the camp by the police is being described as "unprovoked" by protesters. This is not, strictly speaking, the case. It is provocative, of course, to block a road without permission, and the aim of the protest was to block that section of Bishopsgate for 24 hours.

What is downright sinister, however, is that all those who were visiting the Climate Camp at that time were violently attacked and then trapped for many hours by the police. They were not allowed to leave between 7pm and midnight, even if they had been injured. Even a woman in a wheelchair was held.

If the concern of the police was to clear the road for traffic, then their action was certainly counterproductive. They succeeded, after all, in blocking the road to pedestrians as well as vehicles for five hours. The tactics of the police smack of collective punishment for everyone.

It is possible that had a warning of an impending shutdown been given to the campers, the news may have attracted more aggressive visitors. It's true also that had the police put in place a policy whereby people were allowed to leave but not to enter, there was no guarantee that those leaving would quietly disperse.

Yet these factors only make it difficult to understand why the police became so confrontational so early. Why could the police not just keep the protest under observation, while they concentrated on quelling the violent skirmishes in other parts of town?

Their claim is that they corral groups of protesters so that they can isolate the anti-social elements. But by the time they mounted their attacks, the police had had nearly seven hours to assess whether any such element had ever been present. The fact that the Climate Camp protesters mounted no violence in response to that meted out to them suggests that their intentions of mounting a peaceful protest had been successful.

Most worrying of all, when legal observers advised people who had been hit by the police, or who had been witnesses to it, to take down the numbers of their assailants, the line of police all covered their badges. It is much more terrifying that the police are hiding their identities as they take part in violence, than that the self-styled "anarchists" we have heard so much about are doing so.

Home del.icio.us Digg This!

States create the violence used to justify there existance.

It seems that that old Anarchist saying still holds true.

Quote from David Howarth MP (LD) who attended Climate Camp in the City:

"How did the police end up in a situation where they used the same degree of force on the most peaceful demonstration as they did for a violent protest at the Bank of England? They seem to only have one trick."

The Guardian has this quote in a story called "Baton charges and kettling: police's G20 crowd control tactics under fire". It's somewhat ironic that the Guardian is reporting on this now, when it had absolutely no issue with talking up planned protests as some sort of mass riot in the run-up to the g20. I think they should take a close look at there role in allowing this to happen. it's easy to police asif there is a riot if all the public are expecting one!

Nasty policing in action after people have already been kettled (illigally?) for hours.


Climate Camp in the City from Tina Tunning on Vimeo.

UPDATE: WHITNESSES MAKE STATEMENTS IMPLICATING POLICE IN DEATH OF BYSTANDER (STORY)

Home del.icio.us Digg This!

The g20 police scare, issues and the reality so far.

The world is suffering from a bad case of neo-liberalism. People are up in arms at the failure of this ideology. Not surprisingly the police are being used by the state to marginalise the protesters and confuse the issues. Just as unsurprisingly the media are eating up the propaganda despite a coalition of formidable diversity; religious, development, environmental, labour and other groups all standing together for a better way of doing things.

Home del.icio.us Digg This!

Police 'over the top' at climate camp.

More than 2,000 'potentially harmful' items were confiscated from protesters by officers - including balloons, crayons and a clown's outfit

Tracy McVeigh

The Observer, Sunday 1 March 2009 (link)

Police have been accused of setting a "dangerous precedent" when they confiscated hundreds of items of property - including children's crayons, a clown's outfit and a pensioner's walking stick - from people attending an environmental protest camp at Kingsnorth power station.

A list of more than 2,000 possessions taken from protesters, who were repeatedly searched going to and from the camp last August, has been obtained through a freedom of information request by Liberal Democrat justice spokesman David Howarth.

It shows that officers took packets of balloon, tents, a clown's outfit, camping equipment, cycle helmets and bike locks, plastic buckets, bin bags, blankets, soap, banners and leaflets, books, party poppers and nail clippers. A toy plastic gun, life-jackets, inflatable dinghies, paddles and foot pumps were also confiscated, police say, to stop protesters taking to the river around the Hoo peninsula in Kent. Much of the property has yet to be returned.

It is the latest attack on what has been criticised as over-the-top policing of the Climate Camp near the site where the government is planning to allow the construction of a £1bn coal-fired power station by the energy firm E.on. The project is seen by activists as damaging to the environment and a key obstacle to the UK achieving carbon reduction targets.

Kent police were embarrassed over the event last year when, after ministers had justified what they called the "proportionate" £5.9m cost of the security operation by pointing out that 70 officers had been injured at the event, they then had to admit that the injuries reported by officers included heat exhaustion, toothache, insect bites and headaches.

Howarth said:

"It is not the police's job to confiscate protesters' banners, pensioners'
walking sticks and children's crayons.

"The police admit that almost all the items seized had a legitimate purpose. The
idea that it is appropriate to seize ordinary people's property on the
off-chance that it might be used to commit a crime is a dangerous precedent.

"Almost anything can be invested with sinister intent with enough
imagination. I even heard of one case where police confiscated a camper's soap
on the basis that it could be used to make them slippery and evade capture by
police. This is simply farcical.

"This kind of pre-emptive policing is
out of all proportion to the threat posed by environmental direct action and
should not be acceptable in a democratic society."

Sarah Perkins, a member of the Climate Camp's legal team, said their main concern was that they believed police misused "stop and search" legislation.

"It certainly was disproportionate policing and a real sea change in the
way police are using their powers. Absolutely everyone was searched, many people
several times over, and then police raided the camp and searched yet again."

Green party MEP Caroline Lucas, who attended the week-long event, said at the time that she had witnessed police confiscating disabled access ramps, board games and fire safety equipment.
Kent's assistant chief constable, Allyn Thomas, defended the actions, saying the aim was always to enable a lawful and peaceful protest to take place. "This included our objective to prevent unlawful incursion of the power station," he said. "Had the station been shut down, there would have been a possible loss of power to over 300,000 homes.

"There was also the need to protect protesters who trespassed on the site as Kingsnorth is very hazardous for people without the appropriate training and safety equipment.

"While the majority of people were law abiding," he added, "it was clear from the first day of the camp setting up that a number of people were intent on causing trouble.

"By seizing items which could be used to commit a crime, we were able to ensure criminal acts were not carried out and more importantly no one was injured by some of the items which potentially could have been used to harm others. Arrests were prevented and many of the items have now been returned.

"We hope that anyone who attends a similar event in future accepts their responsibility to do so lawfully and in a legal manner."

Home del.icio.us Digg This!