5 days exchange between London and Bavaria

By Joe on 05/03/2012
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“The Saturday Congress, run by JBN (Young Bavarian Friends of the Earth) was sensational. It filled all who attended it, from Munich, Freising and Attaching, with a new courage and confidence. We now all believe that Munich can and will be the German Heathrow. It is now clear: we can stop the third runway at Munich.” Report by a German activist who caught up with activists from Plane Stupid this week in Germany who are there visiting to build networks with those involved in stopping a 3rd runway at Munich Airport.

Perhaps it is best to report chronologically everything that happened at the initiative of the JBN in recent days: press conference on Friday, climate conference on Saturday, meetings with local residents in Freising on Sunday followed by a candle-lit march and short church service, attended by hundreds of people, and on Monday a meeting with the key councilors in Freising.

But more than that – and critical to the success of the visit – were the evenings socializing between the resistance in Bavaria and our visitors from London: Dan Glass (Plane Stupid), Tamsin Omond (Climate Rush) and John Stewart, who chaired the coalition which stopped the third runway at London Heathrow. It has created friendships that go far beyond national borders. None of us who saw 62 year-old John Stewart dance the night away with our young JBN volunteers will ever forget how beautiful and how true it is that we all fight together with a lot of fun and commitment to combat climate change - worldwide! 

On Friday morning our London guests met Dr. Christian Magerl (Chairman of the BN KG Freising - the local group opposed to the runway - a Green Party member of the Bavarian Parliament and an early opponent of the third runway) and Martin Geilhufe (who chairs Young Bavarian Friends of the Earth). They also met with the press on the site of the proposed new runway on land the local group has acquired and on which it has built a cross. By now it was clear the situation in London in 2002 and the present situation in Bavaria are absolutely comparable: a new runway which would devastate the local community, increased noise and climate emissions and a runway for which there was no economic justification.

The JBN Climate Congress on Saturday became a great success thanks to the papers by Christine Margraf (BN Reginalreferentin and runway expert) and John Stewart; the workshops by Dan Glass, Tamsin Omond and Helga Stiegl Meier (representative of the residents’ umbrella organisation). All participants were excellent. The conference ended with videos of the 3rd runway campaign at Heathrow.

After a hard Saturday, a quiet Sunday was planned. But it turned out to be as busy as Saturday’s climate convention. The site visit to Attaching, the community where homes will be demolished and which will find itself on the edge of the new runway, was something else again. We had lunch with the local residents who told us horror stories of the measures that would need to be taken to secure the tiles on the roofs if the new runway was built and of how regulations would prevent children from the local kindergarten playing outside because the noise from the planes will be so harmful.

In the afternoon we returned to nearby Freising to have tea with some more residents before going to a local, packed Protestant church where our guests were welcomed by thunderous applause which lasted for several minutes. Our guests then joined 400 citizens of this small town on a candle-lit march to protest against the third runway (the residents do this every week!). The local people felt that the three people from London had brought them hope. We all then marched with torches and candles to Marienplatz, the main square of Freising where a short service was held. John, Dan and Tamsin then brought greetings from London and sang along with everyone: It was the most spine-tingling moment of the entire weekend.

Plane Stupid head for Germany

By Anonymous on 23/02/2012
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Plane Stupid are building in Germany. The campaign against the third runway at Munich could become the German Heathrow - where community action successfully brought the government to it's knees.

Determined local residents are coming together with climate change activists to stop an unnecessary runway. Together with the protests at Frankfurt and Berlin it could bring about a big change in German aviation policy.                                                      

Tour Diary:

25th February - Munich - After a match between Bayern and United Kingdom, countless phone calls and Skype conferencing - all topics are concerned about the protest against the third runway. Here we go! The main question to be explored is what Munich can learn from the Londoners.

26th - 27th February - Frankfurt - Meeting, sharing and organising with the brilliant Frankfurt anti-airport expansion group.

29th February – Berlin – Event Launch: ‘Strategies of Protest from London to Berlin’ what creative tools can we share to put a spanner in the works of injustice? Plane Stupid meets Eclectic Electric Collective  

Venue address: New Yorck im Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin www.yorck59.net 

Programme in Berlin (Entrance Free):

14h Book Presentation “The El Martillo Project” with members of the Eclectic Electric Collective, www.eclectic-electric-collective.blogspot.com

15h Presentation 'Creative Activism & Aviation Justice' by UK activists Tilly Gifford and Dan Glass, aviationjustice.org 

16h – 19h Direct Action Workshop
“What creative tools can we share to put a spanner in the works of injustice?” with Plane Stupid 

20h Soup – Book Launch of “The El Martillo Project” from the Eclectic Electric Collective, published by Minor Compositions + Video screening + performance of the Collective

Boris’s idea will never fly

By Joe on 20/01/2012
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Wednesdays announcement that the government will consider building a new airport in the Thames Estuary, dubbed 'Boris Island' sparked a long day of media hysteria.

Boris Johnson's voice echoed out over our TVs, Radios and newspapers the next day and Plane Stupid came under pressure to get a representative to appear on Sky News and Newsnight in response. 

We are totally baffled by it all. 'Boris Island' airport is to be built on an artificial island and would result in 150 million more passengers a year which is serious bad news for the climate. We can't allow airport expansion on this scale and meet our climate change reduction targets at the same time – the two government policies are mutually incompatible and cannot both succeed.

The other little problem is the fact that the Thames Estuary is basically a bird sanctuary. Birds and planes don't match – simple as that.

Here are some other useful facts that need to be included in the debate:

  • The UK fly on average twice as much than any other country in the world already.
  • The most popular destination out of Heathrow is Paris and 3rd is Manchester. If we reduced these unnecessary flights there would be plenty of capacity at Heathrow Airport  
  • Aviation is the fasting growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.
  • If aviation grows at its projected annual rates then aviation will take up 100% or more of our national carbon budget some time between 2030 and 2050.
  • Between Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, London City and Luton; London already has 6 runways and 10 terminals.

Only Boris could come up with an idea as daft as this, building an airport in a tidal estuary when we are facing a future of rising sea levels due in part to emissions from aviation.

For now we will just be keeping a close eye on it but if given the go ahead the Thames Estuary Airport could represent an activists dream. Building an airport on an artificial island is such an enormous logistical project that it would be child's play to disrupt it!

Aviation Justice Tour videos launch

By Anonymous on 09/01/2012
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In collaboration with some different groups the Aviation Justice Tour have launched a series of videos in response to the arrest of the UK's 'most effective environmentalist' John Stewart to the FBI's fascination with the use of superglue as a 'dangerous' tool in a climate activists weaponry.

Global climate campaigns have vowed to challenge the 'green scare' political suppression of environmental groups through mass superglue trainings. A new US-wide activist network is to be set up to oppose the soaring growth of aviation in North America. The decision was taken after Americans heard from British campaigners John Stewart and Dan Glass about the success of similar networks in the UK.  Stewart and Glass had been skyped into over a dozen events across the US on tour after they were refused entry to America to speak about the successful campaign to stop a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport.

In controversial circumstances on 29th September, Stewart, voted the UK’s ‘most effective’ environmentalist, had been escorted off the plane at New York’s JFK Airport by armed police before being sent back to Britain.  Glass, his visa challenged due to speculation of his 'superglue addiction' based himself in Canada where he worked with the communities around Toronto Island Airport.

2. The Peace Arch - Organising Against The Odds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9Le-8ewT180

The FBI, Secret Service and CIA tried and failed to stop the Aviation Justice Express. Due to the FBI’s over the top treatment, the tour proudly went on and their suppression backfired.

But steely determination, commitment to free speech, witty resolve and a little bit of mask-making is all we need to organise across the world to bring the aviation industry back down to Earth.

3. Tar Sands and Aviation Movements Unite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6B4Ge1kmB8c

Aviation expansion and tar sands have been two of the key climate campaign issues in recent years.

The untold story is that the tar sands and aviation industries are fuelling each other’s expansion. New bounties of fuel from the tar sands are propping up the expansion of aviation across the globe, while aviation is providing a valuable market for aviation and jet fuels refined from tar sands crude. As a result at least 15% of tar sands crude ends up in commercial jets and the revolving corporate door continues to spin between Tar Sands and the Aviation industry execs. There are fuel pipelines to Vancouver, Denver and Chicago airports from Athabasca bitumen mining operations and the notorious keystone pipeline – all which must be challenged. .

All too often, we reinvent the wheel by not connecting the dots between our movements and building off of one another’s momentum, tactics and shared opponents. All along the fossil fuel production line, from Indian mining activists, to Canadian tar sands campaigners and British anti-aviation organizers, we must see find ways to bring our efforts together and support each other to have a hope of tackling this global climatic catastrophe.

4. The Transatlantic Anti Airport Expansion Rolls On – The case of Toronto City Airport Campaign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wjPDwk_jgSc

The UK, US and Canada, per capita are among the most flying nations in the world with some of the weakest train alternatives. With aviation being the fastest growing cause of global CO2 emissions, Aviation Justice Express are proud to launch our global network of grassroots campaigns to challenge this.

Brian Iler, of CommunityAIR campaign in Toronto, says:

"Superglue’s a useful tool in the array of climate campaign tactics.  It’s been used to great effect in protests against some of the biggest polluters in the world, from the Royal Bank of Scotland to airports to UK Government departments. If superglue helps stick it to politicians who let us down, then bring on the superglue revolution!"

5. Occupy Toronto 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dDWg6ZlF-Cw

The Occupy Movement worldwide has been groundbreaking with nowhere more so that in it’s home continent North America. The well-crafted image of Canada as a sweet, caring and obedient nation has taken a much needed blow as no fewer than 20 Canadian cities have seen occupations. It's “We are the 99%” mantra casts a spotlight on global disparities in wealth and power between the ever-shrinking haves and widening have- nots. Occupy’s critique of today’s corporate buy out of democracy is especially redolent here in Canada, where the aviation industry and the fossil fuel industry at large, are the loudest voice in the Canadian government. 

Campaigners video by the SMK Foundation

By Joe on 07/01/2012
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This brings back some warm memories. This five minute film, produced by the Media Trust for UK-based charity the Sheila McKechnie Foundation (SMK), aims to inspire people to get involved in campaigning.

Every day, ordinary people campaign to right wrongs. Anyone can campaign.

A fine example of people Power against economic polluting giants. The video includes old footage of Plane Stupid, NOTRAG, HACAN, Transition Heathrow and all who organised the ceilidh (2nd half of the video).

SMK is the only registered charity in the UK dedicated to connecting, informing and supporting campaigners. For more information visit smk.org.uk.

Occupy COP17

By Joe on 19/12/2011
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How is it that after 17 years of negotiations the UN climate change conferences have utterly failed to adequately address the issues at hand and have instead overseen decades of rising carbon emissions and worsening climate injustice?

Most people are now well aware of the vested financial interests that have engineered and perpetuated a global system that’s predicated on widening social injustice, impoverishment and indebtedness of the masses. The same financial, corporate and government bodies responsible for the global financial crisis have also seized control of the environment, commodifying the atmosphere, land and waterways to trade and profit from. It’s no surprise that emissions continue to rise when you know that carbon is a commodity with a tradable value, with dedicated carbon markets and accompanying corrupt schemes such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). Without climate change continuing to worsen the markets created around it wouldn’t exist, hence nothing proactive is done by the architects and gatekeepers of the system who have taken power. Realising this, people all over the world are claiming back the legitimate and urgent concerns around climate change from the corporate clowns and Occupy COP17 was part of that reclamation of power.

Although small in number, we were strong in spirit. Every day during the conference we sat and talked under the trees, the way millions of people meet and work out problems all over the world. We had no air conditioned conference halls or PA systems, instead we had the hum of traffic going round our small island of grass (directly outside the fortified UN compound) and the human microphone to amplify our voices. Our rallying cry was Climate Justice, Not Carbon Markets. We had poetry from Nigerian activist Nnimmo Bassey. Live art from South African performer Ewok (who also provided us with a soundtrack). Guerrilla gardening from AmBush. Actions to get the World Bank out of climate finance and Canada out of the tar sands. Five hundred women from throughout Africa forming the Rural Women’s Assembly joined with us and hundreds of civil society delegates from the Democratic Left for a spirited march which was full of song and dance, power and passion, things that were curiously curtailed in the officially designed march the next day.

There were many who came out of the conference to join and speak with us, including Bolivian activist Pablo Salon, South African Commissioner for Gender Equality Yvette Abrahams and the UN Ambassadors from the small island states of Seychelles, Grenada and Nauru. Our aim was to create a safe space where everyone could come and speak, using non-hierarchical organising and consensus decision-making. Most of those who came were not invited to attend COP17, yet they were the people who needed to be heard most, those who are at the front line of climate change and crying out for Climate Justice.

We connected with a group of people who had faced repeated evictions from their dwellings in nearby KwaMashu, deemed unsightly reminders of the government’s failure to meet the needs of ordinary people. They had been evicted ahead of the World Cup a few years previously, and now had been evicted ahead of COP17. This time not only were their shacks demolished but, to make sure they stayed away, all their belongings, including food and clothes, were taken from them. Still they fought back, taking over a community hall and becoming Occupy KwaMashu. Their plight exemplified the enormous gulf between what many of the insulated negotiators on the inside were discussing and the real problems that were being laid bare by those outside.

So what are the solutions? As with many problems of this nature they are not easy to summarise or solve. But we do have a roadmap to work with and a popular mandate from the people, and that is the People’s Agreement of Cochabamba. It lays out a just and fair plan to avert catastrophic climate change and create a more equitable and harmonious world. It’s our job to make sure this is the route followed, rather than the suicidal path that is currently being pursued by those calling themselves leaders.