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Protesters blockade mock runway outside Parliament to oppose airport expansion

By staff - Plane Stupid and Reclaim the Power, October 25, 2016

Activists have blockaded a mock runway outside Parliament to oppose airport expansion and highlight  the inequality of catastrophic climate impacts on the day a government announcement is expected.

This morning, 40 Activists locked together using ‘arm tubes’ on a mock runway outside Parliament to signal their intent to continue fighting airport expansion. Air traffic controllers with “STOP” paddles lined the runway highlighting the need to stop climate change as well as noise and air pollution. Other campaigners and local residents held a banner reading “Climate Change Kills, No New Runways.”

Shona Kealey spokesperson for Plane Stupid, said,

“Two weeks ago, enough countries agreed to ratify the Paris Agreement for it to come into force. Last week, the government’s climate advisers issued a report saying reducing aviation emissions should be a priority if we’re going to honour the Climate Change Act. And now, with today’s announcement, our government proclaims to the world that we’re a dishonest and unreliable nation who can’t be trusted to keep to our international agreements or even follow our own laws, just as we’re about to renegotiate trade agreements with the whole world.

“Obedience to this government is suicide. If they think we’re going to quietly follow them over the cliff, they’re dreaming.

Speaking for Reclaim the Power, Stephanie Nicholls said,

“We can honour our commitments to tackle climate change, or we can build new runways – we can’t do both. Aviation expansion anywhere is irresponsible, and globally will impact the most on the people who’ve done least to cause the problem. Climate change is already hitting poorer communities in the global south, who are the least likely to ever set foot on a plane.

“When the government won’t follow its own rules, it’s time for normal people to step up and take action. Following today’s announcement climate activists, council leaders and local residents will be standing together to make any new runways undeliverable. If the government thinks they can override local opinion, climate science and their own commitments they’ve got another thing coming.”

Throughout the day, local residents and environmental campaigners will be in the Five Bells Pub in Harmondsworth (Harmondsworth High Street, UB7 0AQ) to demonstrate continuing opposition to airport expansion and will be available for interview. Contact: Rob Barnstone, 07806 947050.

Local residents from Gatwick CAGNE (Communities Against Gatwick Noise Emissions) will be meeting at the Plough Inn, Ifield from midday to watch the decision. Contact: Sally Pavey, cagnegatwick@gmail.com, 07831 632537.

We are expecting new direct action network Rising Up to announce escalating direct action against airport expansion following the government announcement. Contact: Simon Bramwell, 07760 556177, lawgoch2008@hotmail.co.uk.

The Power Behind the Pipeline

By Krystal Two Bulls, Red Warrior Camp, Scott Parkin, and Patrick Young - CounterPunch, October 13, 2016

The “Dakota Access” Pipeline (DAPL) is a $3.8 billion, 1,100 mile fracked-oil pipeline that is currently under construction running from the Bakken shale fields of North Dakota to Peoria, Illinois. DAPL is slated to cross Lakota Treaty Territory at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation where it would be laid underneath the Missouri River, the longest river on the continent.

Construction of the DAPL would impact many sites that are sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux and numerous other indigenous nations. DAPL would also, engender a renewed fracking-frenzy in the Bakken shale region, as well as endanger a source of fresh water for the Standing Rock Sioux and 8 million people living downstream.

This massive infrastructure project is being built and financed by a complex network of dozens of shady oil companies and banks with presences all over the world. Research into the pipeline’s ownership shows us that virtually every major bank in the world is financially connected to the companies involved in the project and numerous oil and gas companies will have ownership interests in the project. But who is driving the construction of the pipeline, and more importantly who has the power to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline?

For the second time today, concerned citizens shut down Dakota Access Pipeline construction in Keokuk

By Aaron Murphy, Ruby Montoya, and Jim Arenz - Mississippi Stand Camp, October 10, 2016

Keokuk, IA - For the second time today concerned citizens stopped construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline. Jessica Garraway of Minneapolis, Minn., locked down to a construction vehicle blocking access to the Dakota Access boring site under the Mississippi River.

At approximately 7:30pm, citizens who had gathered around the entrance advised the truck driver that a human being was underneath the truck. It took several minutes for the truck driver to shut the vehicle off. Approximately 15 minutes passed until the truck was secure from rolling over her body.

During this time, pipeline security officers did not provide chocks for the truck’s wheels. Citizens at the construction site entrance placed rocks behind the wheels, securing the vehicle.

After police arrived, roads were blocked and views were obstructed. Witnesses sang and chanted in support of Garraway’s actions. Pipeline construction workers dismantled the truck’s axle and Garraway was arrested 45 minutes later.

Earlier today, several people locked arms and blocked construction access for at least one hour. One woman remained seated and the police appeared to use stress positions in an attempt to force compliance.

For weeks citizens have held an encampment on Mississippi River road in Keokuk, Iowa, called “Mississippi Stand” (http://www.mississippistand.com). Hundreds of people from the tri-state area have come to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience against the pipeline. Supporters continue to mobilize from across the country and more arrive each day.

Footage of this evening’s occurrence was livestreamed on Mississippi Stand’s Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/MississippiStandCamp/

Hundreds at Heathrow ‘die-in’ protest against airport expansion

By staff - Reclaim the Power, October 1, 2016

Hundreds of activists stage ‘die-in’ and disruptive ‘critical mass’ bike ride at Heathrow to protest aviation expansion and highlight injustice of climate change impacts.

ecology.iww.org editor's note: IWW members particopated in organizing this action.

This afternoon, over 100 people took part in a ‘die-in’ flashmob inside Heathrow terminal 2. Protesters wearing gas masks lay on the floor, as testimonies from communities already affected by climate change were read [1].

Simultaneously, a ‘critical mass’ bike ride with 150 riders wearing red [2] circled the area, visiting Harmondsworth Detention Centre to highlight the link between climate impacts and migration, and obstructing traffic by circling the main roundabout on Bath Road and dropping banners.

The action was part of a global wave of actions opposing airport expansion (including Austria, France, Mexico, Turkey), timed to coincide with a major UN conference aiming to address the emissions impact of aviation. The process has received criticism for not attempting to reduce emissions, instead focussing on controversial ‘carbon offsets’.

A ‘flash-mob’ picnic protest also happened at Gatwick this morning.

The decision on airport expansion is expected on the 11th or 18th October; with recent reports suggesting there is parliamentary support for Heathrow.

Movements, Not Presidents: The Nationwide Fight Against Neoliberalism

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, Spetember 29, 2016

Just months after becoming president of the United States, Barack Obama met with some of the world's most powerful executives.

It was a time of crisis: The economy was wavering dangerously in the aftermath of the housing bubble's great burst, and many of the nation's largest financial institutions had just been yanked from the brink of collapse.

Though the effects of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression were disastrous for countless Americans, the executives with whom the president spoke on that day in March of 2009 were doing just fine. In fact, many were doing better than ever.

While millions faced the prospect of losing their homes, their jobs, and their life savings, the same CEOs that helped spark the crash were paying themselves and their employees lavish bonuses.

The executives reportedly "offered several explanations" for their salaries, but the president quickly reminded them, "The public isn't buying that."

"My administration," Obama famously added, "is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

It was a striking, even prescient, remark. Having ascended to the White House on a wave of grassroots support, the president was expected to take a stand for the public—it was expected that those guilty of wrongdoing would be held to account, that those harmed by Wall Street's rampant fraud would receive the full support of the administration.

But such high hopes were quickly dashed.

Or perhaps they were, from the start, misplaced. While President Obama did indeed ride a wave of grassroots support into the White House, that wave, it must be remembered, was generously bolstered by Wall Street cash.

And while the hopes of the millions who voted for change they could believe in may have, in the last analysis, been ill-advised, Wall Street certainly got its money's worth.

"Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street," Matt Taibbi noted in 2009. "What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place."

The Obama administration quickly downplayed such concerns, attempting to foster a genial relationship between the winners and losers of the crisis.

"The President emphasized that Wall Street needs Main Street, and Main Street needs Wall Street," Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary, said after the high-profile meeting.

Thankfully, the public didn't buy that either.

'Lockdown' Tactic Spreads to Iowa #NoDAPL Resistance

By David Goodner - Common Dreams, September 26, 2016

Montrose, Iowa—As dozens of protesters looked on, twelve activists were arrested Saturday, September 24, for civil disobedience at a Dakota Access construction site along the Mississippi River, between Sandusky and Montrose, Iowa, where they ultimately shut down construction for nearly six hours.

Of the twelve arrested, three sneaked onto Dakota Access property in the early morning hours Saturday and chained themselves to equipment before the pipeline workers arrived for the day to turn on the drill boring underneath the river.

All twelve were arrested for criminal trespass, a simple misdemeanor, and processed at the Lee County jail, according to county officials.

“We need more front line water protectors now,” said Alex Cohen, of St. Louis, one of the demonstrators taken into custody Saturday. “They are moving quick, we need to move faster.”

The protest was organized by the grassroots collective Mississippi Stand and their solidarity network across Eastern Iowa. Mississippi Stand is an intentional community of everyday people occupying a camp across from the Mississippi River construction site. It was started by a Des Moines woman who blockaded the entrance with over a dozen tires Dakota Access had stacked nearby.

On September 24, 44 people were arrested at the same location while over a hundred and fifty others picketed on the highway shoulder. Half of those arrested walked through neighboring farmland and hopped a security fence to get onto the construction site.

At least 116 people have been arrested in Iowa at anti-pipeline protests since August 31, when 30 were arrested for blockading a company staging area in Boone, halfway across the state from Montrose. Eighteen more were arrested on September 10 during a similar blockade. Last week, 11 Iowa CCI members were cited for using their cars to block entrance and exit points in the same area, during a demonstration attended by nearly two hundred people.

The mass arrests in two separate hotspots across the Iowa portion of the pipeline route are now a flashpoint in the pipeline fight, and have attracted significant attention while becoming a real headache for county, state, and company officials alike.

Lee County has begun racking up overtime costs, while Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who has several personal ties to the project, has authorized the Iowa State Patrol to assist county law enforcement in protest containment. Dakota Access responded to the lockdown at the Mississippi River drilling location Saturday by installing floodlights and organizing around the clock security. A restraining order filed in court by Dakota Access against Central Iowa organizational leaders Bold Iowa and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement was delayed and then voluntarily withdrawn.

The lockdowns last Saturday by Iowa water protectors, who sneaked onto company property and chained themselves to the equipment, rather than choosing to symbolically cross a line and immediately take an arrest, disrupted construction for over half the day. They mark an important tactical escalation in the Iowa-based movement against the Dakota Access Bakken oil pipeline, and one that was copied directly from some of the most successful indigenous protests in North Dakota.

Iowa protest leaders might also look to the First Nation people for another successful direct action protest tactic. On several occasions in North Dakota, mass assemblies of American Indians have broken through police and company lines and shut down construction for the day simply by having hundreds of people collectively walk forward together without stopping, rather than artificially dividing their power into smaller groups of those willing to risk arrest and those who are not.

This form of nonviolent protest, if deployed in Iowa, could cause a legitimate crisis for state law enforcement, who may be cornered into choosing between either accepting periodic shutdowns without causing an even bigger scene, or dispersing the peaceful crowds with tear gas or some other kind of excessive force. Either reaction will heighten the sense of civil unrest, increase public sympathy for the movement cause, increase the financial costs for Dakota Access, and put additional pressure on President Obama to step in and kill the project once and for all.

President Obama has already halted construction in some areas of North Dakota indefinitely.

Without any further delays, most of the Iowa portion of the Dakota Access Bakken oil pipeline is scheduled to be completed by October 31, according to company sources.

Dakota Access spokesperson Vicki Granado declined to comment on this story.

EcoUnionist News #122

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 20, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Whistle Blowers:

EcoUnionist News #122 - #NoDAPL Update

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 20, 2016

The following unions have issued statements in solidarity with those opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline; we will add additional unions to this list as we become aware of their having taken a similar stand:

  1. New York State Nurses Association - September 1, 2016
  2. IWW - September 3, 2016
  3. Border Agricultural Workers - September 7, 2016
  4. Amalgamated Transport Union - September 9, 2016
  5. Communications Workers of America - September 9, 2016
  6. National Nurses United - September 9, 2016
  7. ILWU Local 19 - September 12, 2016
  8. Oregon Public Employees Union (SEIU Local 503) - September 12, 2016
  9. United Electrical Workers - September 12, 2016
  10. ILWU Pacific Coast Pensioners Association - September 13, 2016
  11. National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981) - September 16, 2016
  12. California Faculty Association - ca. September 17, 2016
  13. AFL-CIO Labor Coalition for Community Action, (includes the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Pride at Work) - September 19, 2016

(This may not be a complete list, but we will endeavor to correct any oversights as we find them. If you know of additional unions who have joined this list, please contact us at euc@iww.org.)

On the other hand, some unions insist on staying on the wrong side of history:

In Response, union members are encouraged to sign this appeal (instructions included within).

Dakota Access Pipeline Halted Again!:

Direct Actions against the Pipeline Construction Continue:

And Solidarity Actions Take Place All Over:

The Climate Crisis is a racist crisis!

By Staff - Plane Stupid, September 9, 2016

Plane Stupid supports the Black Lives Matter UK invention at City Airport earlier this week.  Developing a dialogue with, and demonstrating solidarity with communities impacted by aviation and climate change locally and internationally, has been part of the work of Plane Stupid for some time. Globally, climate change disproportionately affects people of colour.

In addition, in the case of City Airport, it is the predominantly non-white and low income community of Newham who will suffer the worst local environmental impacts from airport expansion – including noise and air pollution, leading to health problems such as heart disease, sleep disturbance, asthma, and depression - all of which can lead to early death, and compound existing health problems. By contrast, the people flying from City Airport are predominantly white, and typically have an annual salary of over £90,000.

City Airport has recently been granted permission to expand, despite the obvious contribution of this expansion to climate change, and the aggravating impact expansion will have on existing inequalities in the Newham area.

Plane Stupid believes in a just and sustainable transition to a peaceful, low carbon future. Plane Stupid is against all airport expansion, and will continue to take direct action in pursuit of this aim. Plane Stupid supports all other actions targeted against aviation where these are not inconsistent with our ethos.

EcoUnionist News #121 - #NoDAPL Update

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 13, 2016

The following unions have issued statements in solidarity with those opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline; we will add additional unions to this list as we become aware of their having taken a similar stand:

  1. IWW - September 3, 2016
  2. Border Agricultural Workers - September 7, 2016
  3. Amalgamated Transport Union - September 9, 2016
  4. Communications Workers of America - September 9, 2016
  5. National Nurses United - September 9, 2016
  6. ILWU Local 19 - September 12, 2016
  7. United Electrical Workers - September 12, 2016

(This may not be a complete list, but we will endeavor to correct any oversights as we find them. If you know of additional unions who have joined this list, please contact us at euc@iww.org.)

On the other hand, some unions insist on staying on the wrong side of history:

Dakota Access Pipeline Halted (or was it?):

Amy Goodman Targeted:

Jill Stein Arrested:

Tin Soldiers and Nixon's Comin'...

Men Behind the Curtain:

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