Direct Action

Polar Bear Blocks Coal Train, Greenpeace Unloads It

September 24, 2014 BBC, www.bbc.com Resist! Direct Action, Energy, Environment, Protest

Greenpeace activists halted a freight train carrying 1,500 tonnes of coal to a power station. The freight train was heading to Cottam power station in north Nottinghamshire when 50 people flagged it down. A large polar bear model was later placed on tracks to block them, cutting off the main supply route to the power station, the group said. British Transport Police said it was talking to campaigners and "facilitating a peaceful protest". The activists said they had enough food and water to occupy the train for the one-day UN climate summit in New York.

Climate Protesters Block Oil Train Terminal Tracks

September 23, 2014 Rob Davis, www.oregonlive.com Resist! Direct Action, Energy, Environment, Oil & Gas

More than 20 demonstrators have blocked the tracks leading to an oil train terminal near Clatskanie to protest the shipment of crude oil to the facility on the Columbia River. Protesters with the group Portland Rising Tide provided photos showing a 27-year-old activist, Sunny Glover, sitting in a tripod of 20-foot-high metal poles erected over the tracks Thursday afternoon. No arrests have been made. A Columbia County Sheriff's Office receptionist said the sheriff and deputies were en route. It's the second oil train protest on tracks in Oregon since June, when the same group blockaded an oil train terminal run by Arc Logistics on the Willamette River near Portland. Five climate protesters were also arrested in early September outside an Everett, Wash., rail terminal.

The Economics Of ‘Flood Wall Street’

September 23, 2014 Bryce Covert, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! Direct Action, Flood Wall Street

It may sound like it’ll cost a lot to fight climate change. But it may cost more to stay on our current course of taking little action. The cost of failing to adapt could be a staggering $1,240 trillion, compared to $890 trillion if we make changes. The U.S. director of the Office of Management and Budget has estimated that it will cost the United States billions of dollars if we fail to act, given the cost of increasingly intense damage from storms, wildfires, and drought. Climate change will also hamper important pieces of our economic system. If greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current path, we’ll experience a 50 percent drop in labor productivity by the end of the century thanks to heat stress. The cost of such a decrease could be more than that of all other climate change costs combined. A changing climate will also devastate an important sector of the economy: agriculture. With increasing droughts, heat waves, and changing precipitation patterns, it’s likely that we’ll see a 40 percent crop reduction by 2100 if things continue as they are.

The Wheel Turns, The Boat Rocks, The Sea Rises

September 20, 2014 Rebecca Solnit, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Climate Change, Direct Action, Energy, Environment

To make personal changes is to do too little. Only great movements, only collective action can save us now. Only is a scary word, but when the ship is sinking, it can be an encouraging one as well. It can hold out hope. The world has changed again and again in ways that, until they happened, would have been considered improbable by just about everyone on the planet. It is changing now and the direction is up to us. There will be another story to be told about what we did a quarter century after civil society toppled the East Bloc regimes, what we did in the pivotal years of 2014 and 2015. All we know now is that it is not yet written, and that we who live at this very moment have the power to write it with our lives and acts.

Why Protest?

September 15, 2014 Mike Wendling, www.bbc.co.uk Resist! Direct Action, Protest

To protest is to make a statement that challenges a particular way to do things. To challenge the hegemonic power of the state. Elite culture in England has been challenged through creative direct action. The Vietnam War was met with hostility in universities throughout the United States. The stereotype of protesting is wrong. People that protest are most likely, compared to non-protestors, to speak to political representatives. They are also more likely to use protest as an extension of their engagement with the political system, not the only way to engage. Protesting is one way to practice democracy and, in our time, perhaps the only way to maintain the process towards democratization. And anyone can protest. What gets you to protest?

All Charges Dropped Against MI CATS Tar Sands Protestors!

September 12, 2014 Jake McGraw, www.michigancats.org Resist! Arrest, Direct Action, Energy, Environment, Law

On July 24th in memory of the 2010 Tar Sands disaster in the Kalamazoo River, over 20 protesters gathered for an afternoon of speeches, music, and, resistance to the controversial Enbridge line 6B. During the protest Al Smith and Jake McGraw were wrongfully arrested on the Polly Ann Trail outside of a Precision Pipeline staging area in Oxford, adjacent to Lakeville Elementary School. They were taken into custody and charged with failure to obey a police command and mass picketing. This morning both charges were dismissed in Rochester Hills District Court. “It is a clear conflict of interest for a corporation such as Enbridge to contract local police forces as their private security guards. The dismissal of our charges is evidence of this conflict. We were acting within our first amendment rights to peacefully protest. We were wrongfully arrested in violation of our civil rights. I was assaulted by a security guard that day. Today, we were vindicated thanks to the commitment to justice by our National Lawyers’ Guild attorney Denise Heberle.” Jake McGraw, from Hartland Michigan.

The #InternetSlowdown Was Epic

September 12, 2014 Candace Clement, www.freepress.net Organize! Direct Action, FCC, Net Neutrality

The Internet Slowdown surpassed all of our (already high) expectations. It drove more than 2 million emails and nearly 300,000 calls (averaging 1,000 per minute) to Congress. On top of that so many pro-Net Neutrality comments were filed (722,364 to be exact) that the FCC's site broke (again). Politicians in both the House and Senate got in on the action, major websites spread the word, and by midday it was impossible to keep up with the #NetNeutrality traffic on Twitter. As huge as the slowdown was, it was just the beginning. Here's a sneak peek at what's up next: ▪ Final deadline for comments to the FCC. It's coming up on Monday ... so submit your comment if you haven't already and tell all your friends to do the same. ▪ Save the Internet lunchtime rallies in New York City and Philly. Live nearby? Join us this Monday at 12:30 p.m. ▪ Net Neutrality Action at the FCC. Thousands across the country have called for public hearings on Net Neutrality. On Sept. 16, we'll bring that message right to the FCC's doorstep.

TraumaCenterNow Activists Disrupt Luxury UofC Fundraiser

September 11, 2014 www.pastebin.com Resist! Direct Action

Antioch, IL 9/10 -– Members of the Trauma Care Coalition including South Side youth, University of Chicago students, members of National Nurses United and clergy, disrupted the Chicago Hunters Derby, luxury equestrian fundraiser in protest over the organizers’ support for the University of Chicago Medicine Cancer Research Center. After approaching the tent where guests paid up to $10,000 for a table chanting slogans, the protesters were stopped by event organizers who yelled racially charged slurs, threatened violence and attempted to illegally detain protesters on the property. Youth leader Veronica Morris-Moore, who helped lead the protest, explained the decision to disrupt the event: “We wanted to send the message that supporting the UofC comes with a cost. Until the Chicago Hunters Derby decides to stop giving money to the UofC hospital, we consider them complicit in the university’s neglect of black lives on the South Side.” During the protest, attendees and derby organizers tore signs out of protesters’ hands and yelled racially charged insults at black protesters such as “I bet you’re on welfare – get off your ass and get a job.” The protesters made clear that they were leaving when derby organizers threatened to call the police. However, derby organizers barricaded the gate to the area in which protesters had parked using golf carts, illegally entrapping them. The derby organizers also made violent threats against protesters, including “I wish I had a gun,” and “if you come back, we’ll shoot you.”

An Arresting Experience At BNSF Delta Yard

September 11, 2014 Patrick Mazza, www.cascadiaplanet.blogspot.com Resist! Direct Action, Energy, Environment

Following is the story of why I and four others engaged in an act of civil resistance at BNSF Delta Yard in Everett, Washington September 2. The act was intended to draw attention to a Petition for Redress of Grievances Inflicted by Fossil Fuels. Please sign our petition here. I am a veteran climate activist. I have written about the climate crisis for over 25 years and for most of the last 15 worked full-time to advance climate solutions. I have spent a lot of time trying to stop global warming sitting in front of a computer. On September 2, 2014 it was time to sit in front of a train. Five of us attached ourselves to a tripod made of three 18-foot steel poles erected across a train track at Delta Junction, the north end of BNSF’s Everett Delta staging yard. I locked myself at the foot of one of the poles. School teachers Liz Spoerri and Jackie Minshew and coffee shop owner Mike Lapointe fastened themselves to the others. Abby Brockway, a house painter and artist, ascended to perch at the top. Police and firefighters explore extraction strategies. Our banner, “Cut Oil Trains, Not Conductors,” expressed solidarity with railroad workers fighting against dangerous, single-person train crews. During the day the action drew numerous supporting honks from truckers driving across the bridge above. Around 150 yards to the south an orange BNSF engine was linked at the head of a black mile-long snake of tanker cars filled with North Dakota Bakken shale oil. This is the same extraordinarily unstable crude that on July 6, 2013 leveled several city blocks and incinerated 47 people at Lac-Megantic on the Quebec-Maine border.

Ferguson Protesters Shut Down Adams-Morgan

September 8, 2014 DC Direct Action News, www.archive.org Resist! Direct Action, Ferguson, Protest, Washington DC

Saturday night, the 6th of September was the third Saturday night in a row that Ferguson/Michael Brown protesters marched into and shut down one or more gentrified parts of the city. Two weeks earlier it was Chinatown, last week it was H st where all the new money is flowing into NE, this time around it was U Street and later Adams-Morgan and Columbia heights. A huge thunderstorm seemed to strike DC a glancing blow, appearing to be almost instantly arriving as the march set out, yet the skies did not open until the march was finishing up at the first target, the intersection of 14th and U streets. By the time 16th and U was reached the rain was drenching but marchers kept going. One speaker remarked ""Police shoot and kill in the rain too so we're marching in the rain too." From 16th st marchers returned to 14th and U, then 14th and U as the rain ended. Everyone then decided to march on Adams-Morgan. The final intersections shut down for extended periods were 18th and Columbia, and 14th and Irving.

How Oakland Organized The Block The Boat Action

August 30, 2014 Hyphenated Republic, www.hyphenatedrepublic.wordpress.com Resist! BDS, Block the Boat, Direct Action, Oakland, Palestine, Solidarity

In August, 2014, an ad hoc coalition and ever-changing group of autonomous activists prevented the Zim Piraeus from offloading for four days and caused subsequent entanglements that prevented the vast majority of its cargo from touching dry Oakland land. Much has already been said about the relationship between labor and the BTB coaltion that was necessary for such a monumental win. I would like to speak of another hand in hand relationship that received less attention or press, but was just as important, and perhaps even more so, to the final impact of the Block the Boat coalition’s unprecedented victory in Oakland. That relationship between organizations in the Bay Area organizing scene that comprised the Block the Boat coalition and action taken through existing solidarity networks and individuals, acting autonomously. To understand the remarkable victory of Block the Boat, Oakland, one has to first trace the line of this uneasy partnership, and the incredible feedback loop it unintentionally unleashed, amping the Block the Boat signal higher and higher towards success*.

Resistance To Fracking Escalates In UK With Action Camp

August 19, 2014 No Dash For Gas, www.nodashforgas.org.uk Resist! Direct Action, Fracking, United Kingdom (UK)

Today campaigners from across the UK occupied DEFRA, blockaded IGas, superglued themselves in front of a live fracking site in Hull, shut down a Swansea University campus, took over Cuadrilla’s Northern HQ, dropped banners in Salford and at Blackpool college, visited Lancashire councillors houses and Total Environmental Technology, dropped Radium balls in Lytham, shut down PPS (Cuadrilla’s PR firm) and staged a die-in at HSBC in an unprecedented stand against the fracking industry. They also staged some spoof actions posing as the estate agency ‘Frackstons’ and Cuadrilla’s communications manager in a lively and creative day of direct action. Some details of the actions are below – photos are available here and for more details of all the actions listed below as well as other actions which took place today, head here. Why did we do this? Campaigners are working together to protect their homes and the environment after the Conservative Government announced that over 50% of the UK would be opened up to fracking. The action has today been taken to put a stop to an industry which would further tie the UK into an unsusatinable and unjust energy system which will propel us into catastrophic climate change and allowed over 30,000 people to die from fuel poverty last year. It also aims to highlight the need to create a democratic, community controlled energy system as an alternative to the Big Six’s corporate power.

Apply Non-Violent Direct Action To MIC

August 4, 2014 Sherwood Ross, www.opednews.com Strategize! Direct Action, Nonviolence, Wars and Militarism

Why is there no non-violent outcry against America's military-industrial complex?(MIC) A Congress that is complicit in its wars, surely will not reign it in. While the MIC contractors during the U.S. invasions of the Middle East and Africa have reaped billions in profit, the fact is probably a majority of Americans are war-weary and want out of President Obama's ongoing foreign entanglements, replete with drone warfare and other crimes against humanity. Yet their elected representatives in Congress continue voting $700 billion annual budgets to wage wars and to create hideous new weapons of mass destruction ranging from more lethal (if that is possible) atomic bombs to germ warfare, both illegal by treaty. Americans have been gulled into believing that the 2,000 military bases they operate around the world are "defensive", and can prevent a terrorist attack---the folly of which was proved on 9/11. In fact, they are springboards for military control of every part of the globe. The Pentagon, says The Washington Post, also has a Special Operations Command that operates in at least 65 nations that is largely unknown to Americans.

The Political Objective And Strategic Goal Of Nonviolent Actions

July 24, 2014 Robert J Burrowes, www.dkeenan.com Strategize! Activism, Direct Action, Nonviolence

All nonviolent struggles are conducted simultaneously in the political and strategic spheres, and these spheres, which are distinct, interact throughout. I have discussed this at length elsewhere.1 Despite this, only rarely have nonviolent struggles been conducted with a conscious awareness of this vitally important relationship. Gandhi's campaigns were very effective partly because he understood the distinction and relationship between politics and strategy in nonviolent struggle. And the failure of many campaigns can be attributed, in part, to the fact that most activists do not. To illustrate the distinction and the relationship between these two spheres, and to highlight their vital importance, this article discusses them within the simpler context of nonviolent actions.

Village Where People Come Before Profit

July 17, 2014 Jen Wilton, www.roarmag.org Educate! Cooperatives, Direct Action, Mutual Aid, Spain

In the south of Spain, the street is the collective living room. Vibrant sidewalk cafes are interspersed between configurations of two to five lawn chairs where neighbors come together to chat over the day’s events late into the night. In mid-June the weather peaks well over 40 degrees Celsius and the smells of fresh seafood waft from kitchens and restaurants as the seasonably-late dining hour begins to approach. The scene is archetypally Spanish, particularly for the Andalusian region to the country’s south, where life is lived more in public than in private, when given half a chance. Specifically, this imagery above describes Marinaleda. Initially indistinguishable from several of its local counterparts in the Sierra Sur southern mountain range, were it not for a few tell-tale signs. Maybe it’s the street names (Ernesto Che Guevara, Solidarity and Salvador Allende Plaza, to name a few); maybe it’s the graffiti (hand drawn hammers-and-sickles sit happily alongside encircled A’s, oblivious to the differences the two ideologies have shared, even in the country’s recent past); maybe it’s the two-story Che head which emblazons the outer wall of the local sports stadium. Marinaleda has been called Spain’s ‘communist utopia,’ though the local variation bears little resemblance to the Soviet model most associate with the phrase. Classifications aside, this is a town whose social fabric has been woven from very different economic threads to the rest of the country since the fall of the Franco dictatorship in the mid 1970s.

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