Direct Action

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.

Stop Fracked Gas Exports Action At FERC HQ

July 2, 2014 Stop Fracked Gas Exports, www.sites.google.com Resist! Direct Action, Fracking, Gas, Protest

The gas industry's rush to build 20 or more industrial facilities along our nation's coastline to export fracked gas to countries overseas would bring all of these impacts upon U.S. communities. It would move us in exactly the wrong direction when we urgently need to move forward in tackling the climate crisis. On July 13th in Washington, DC, we'll come together to send a decisive message to President Obama and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission: Say “No!” to fracked gas exports at Cove Point and nationwide! It will be a critical time to act. This summer, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will be nearing a decision on one of the worst examples of the gas export rush: Dominion Resources' proposed fracked gas export facility at Cove Point – just 50 miles from the White House on the Chesapeake Bay in southern Maryland. For far too long, President Obama has allowed FERC to rubber stamp project after project, putting the interests of the oil and gas industry above our health, safety, and climate.

Women Of Action Against Violent Extraction Shuts Down Tar Sands Mine Construction

June 23, 2014 Peaceful Uprising, www.youtube.com Resist! Direct Action, Environment, Extraction, Tar Sands

Women of Action Against Violent Extraction joined the fight against tar sands development on the Colorado Plateau. The group used direct action June 16 to stop the lone bulldozer beginning construction on the US Oil Sands project. Deliveries of more and larger construction equipment are imminent. U.S. Oil Sands has leased and intends to destroy 32,000 acres of the East Tavaputs Plateau starting at PR Springs where a permanent protest vigil has been established by Peaceful Uprising, Utah Tar Sands Resistance and Canyon Country Rising Tide. WAAVE released the following statement regarding their action: "Development of tar sands and oil shale on the Colorado Plateau is a violent and dangerous act requiring a bold defense. The Colorado River system, which provides water to 40 million people in the US, Mexico and many indigenous nations, is already over-tapped and tainted by numerous industrial poisons. Dirty energy kills millions world over at the site of mines, refineries, and in downstream communities. Moreover, extreme extraction like tar sands strip mining threatens our hope for a livable planet."

Monkey Wrenching The Frackers

June 12, 2014 Cole Stangler, www.inthesetimes.com Strategize! Activism, Direct Action, Fracking, Gas

“All right, motherfuckers! This is an unlawful assembly!” A group of five “police” charge at a mob of milling “protesters,” throwing several to the ground and playfully beating them with rolled-up pieces of old newspaper—the “batons.” “Fucking hippies!” someone shouts from the tussle. The make-believe cops have been supplied with blaze orange construction vests, plastic badges and faux police caps, which combine with their many tattoos and piercings to make them look like a punk version of the Village People. This mock police ambush was part of a three-hour crash course in “Responsible Direct Action” held at last week’s Energy Exports Action Camp in Maryland’s Jug Bay Natural Area, a county park some 25 miles southeast of Washington, D.C. The week-long camp was designed to train, connect and energize activists gearing up to take direct action to stop Dominion Energy’s Cove Point project, a natural gas export terminal planned in Lusby, Md. Opponents say the plant will encourage more fracking, spur Maryland to drop its state-wide moratorium on the practice, and exacerbate global climate change.

At Age 92, Arrested For Protesting Mining

April 4, 2014 Bill Ryan, www.theguardian.com Resist! Direct Action, Mining, Protesters Arrested

The coal industry gets enormous subsidies from the government. We need to take them away from the mining industry, with their lobbyists galore in Canberra, and use that money to assist in the development of our renewable energies. Otherwise, what is the future for my children? I’ve only got a few years left, but I feel in my conscience that I have to take this stand. I’m happy to say that I’ve been here on four occasions, and each time, the numbers are increasing. This sort of direct action is the way of the future. The people have got to take action because the governments have been completely ignoring them and listening only to the big end of town. So I’ll continue to protest. The next oldest person in this camp is 84 years old. And when I talk to him, he too says he’s concerned about the future for his children. Something is wrong. We’re faced with a catastrophe. I owe it to my grandchildren, and I owe it to all children. I was willing to put my life on the line in the second world war, so putting my body on the line here is a small inconvenience.

Anti-austerity Protesters Occupy Revenue Office In Dublin

April 1, 2014 Patsy McGarry, www.irishtimes.com Resist! Austerity, Direct Action, Ireland

A group of six anti-austerity activists are occupying the Revenue Commissioners’ offices in Dublin’s Cathedral Street, off O’Connell Street. The occupation began at about 11.15am today when the five men and one woman began a sit-down protest in the Revenue offices as people dealt with their tax affairs - some making their Local Property Tax payments ahead of the deadline. Gardaí were called to the scene and the offices were closed to the public at about 12.10pm. A spokesman for the group, Ciarán Carr, told The Irish Times the six were “all independent and not members of a political party”. Their “anti-austerity sit-in” was “on behalf of those who can’t pay the property tax”, he said. “We won’t give up the fight no matter how small,” he said.

Thunderclap! Help Amplify 99 Banner Drops in NY for Fair Elections

March 18, 2014 MOP Democracy, www.thunderclap.com Organize! Activism, Direct Action, Elections

Elections are supposed to give ordinary people a voice, but once money gets involved, all bets are off. New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo campaigned on a promise of “fair elections” and campaign finance reform. But so far all we’ve seen is talk. That’s why activists are traveling all over the state of NY right now dropping 99 banners -- at least one in every county -- to keep the heat on Governor Cuomo and demand that he keep his promise to fund fair elections.

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