The main campaign around the climate camp is a way of blocking tar sands expansion, while helping out local victims, at the same time. The pipeline project cuts across Maine, Quebec, Ontario, Michigan, Illinois, and other surrounding areas — so there are plenty of points of intervention, and plenty of grounds for solidarity.
These photo sets are from the “convergence days” between August 18th and August 22nd.
In the first photo there are signs that say ‘No dirty oil in our territory’ and ‘climate action camp’ (in French). The banners in other photos say ‘Change the system, not the climate’ (in French), ’stop the wave of destruction’ (in French), “CO2lonialism”, and ‘Change the system! Not the climate!’ “Trailbreaker = Tar sands”.
Members of our group took to the streets around the G20 Summit in Toronto with concerns about climate change, the Alberta tar sands, assaults on native sovereignty, and other environmental injustices. The Summit police in Toronto threatened, searched, arrested, and detained Climate Justice London activists, while other local climate justice activists stayed away from Toronto to avoid the G20 police regime. Our dissent was not permitted at the Summit. In fact, anyone who was outdoors in downtown Toronto was a potential target for the snatch squads, the riot cops, the mounted horse brigades, and thousands of other police at the Summit. Our allies and our friends were pulled into this ‘security’ sweep, and all of us are left wondering which of the local police officers we encounter have brought their G20 summit training and hostility back to our cities.
Because we condemn this trampling of civil liberties, and because we always will call for democracy and social justice, members of our group have taken on leading roles in preparing a statement about police conduct and detention conditions at the G20 summit in Toronto. People for Peace (London) activists helped to develop that London-specific version of the original statement from Toronto. We hope that more Londoners will sign on to communicate their support.
Threats to our civil liberties will make it even more difficult to continue campaigning against environmental injustices — in a non-violent manner, without destructive sabotage tactics.
Most of the photos are from me. (The ones that I posted are here and here)
There were a various actions against the tar sands that day. People out in London, England even joined the action. Here in Canada, RBC (the Royal Bank of Canada) was the main Fossil Fool target. That bank is the leading financier behind the tar sands.
Compared with other local campaigning against RBC tar sands financing here, there was a lot more tension at the protest at the first RBC bank building we went to on the Fossil Fools day of action. Just leafletting inside an RBC building has been enough to get us into a confrontation (of sorts) with police though. Security staff and police officers always are at hand to defend corporations like RBC by preventing people from voicing concerns on company property.
That said, I still don’t appreciate conflicts (or potential conflicts) with police and security staff. That sort of excitement doesn’t work for me, and I’m generally not hostile towards police officers and security workers. There are a lot of problems police/security systems — given how they are bound up with a much wider status quo — but I don’t find targetting police and security workers to be a productive way of confronting those problems. We’ve got to find ways to change and replace the mainstream systems that employ those people. If there are no dirty banks (for instance), then the police and security forces can’t defend them.
March 3rd was a day of action against tar sands financing from RBC (the Royal Bank of Canada).
Here are various photos, video, and writing about the actions that day — in several Canadian cities.
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In Toronto
4 of us went out to Toronto to join the protesting there. We brought a banner and signs. Here are remarks about other contributions that our London delegation made that day.
Basically, I compare Olympics marketing imagery and rhetoric with the living conditions and activism of indigenous peoples here in Canada. (The post is about a Canada-wide context, more so than it’s about Vancouver and the VAN Organizing Committee per se.)
I invite you to skip the blurb about me, at the start of the post.
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Lisa helped to edit the writing, and Gwen fixed formatting problems that I had left in there.
I also appreciate other help from Laura, Annick, and Steve.
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The post stems from a relatively brief e-mail that I had sent in to Sociological Images back on May 24th, 2009. After writing some thoughts on Flickr posts here and here, I had sent the e-mail to the web site editors to connect the same sorts of native issues to Olympics marketing that already was circulated around here in Canada.
Then, after May, I published a piece about some native activism in Ontario, and I became very involved in pro-native campaigning against the tar sands — for the sake of wider climate justice. (I have posted about climate justice issues here.) (So far, I mainly have been a climate justice activist in a local Mobilization for Climate Justice group; but I also have started to form collaborative connections with people in other areas of the U.S. and Canada.) And, over the past two weeks, I was very involved in anti-Olympic protest organizing, which I mainly joined because of how the day of action was connected with tar sands issues.
In a “Feminism and Race” Women’s Studies grad course that I was in last term, I also worked through some indigenous and climate justice issues. That course helped a lot with the writing that I did for the Sociological Images post.
“If you walk instead of drive, you use more calories.
Walking and cycling is healthier for people than driving. Walking and cycling is also healthier for the planet than driving. Use cars less and you get to reduce global warming and be less fat. What an amazingly wonderful synergy.”
That image was cropped out of a photo from a page on mudstencils.com. This statement is posted on the same page -
“Wild food is plants and animals that are not farmed, grown, or raised for human consumption. Wild food is nutritious, and finding it makes you more aware of your environment. Wild food is all around us, even in urban environments, most just overlook it and disregard it as weeds and nuisances. The dandelion is the prime example of that mentality. Dandelion greens can be eaten before the plant blooms and becomes bitter, the bright yellow flowers can also be eaten or fermented into dandelion wine. Dandelion roots can be roasted and ground into a tasty coffee substitute. Instead of gathering these plants many people poison them with dangerous herbicides to maintain their monoculture lawn. Incorporating wild food into your diet will broaden your pallet and lead to exciting adventures. When gathering, it is important to know exactly what you have before you eat it, and the proper way to prepare it. One part of a plant may be delicious while another part is poisonous. Field guides are great, an expert you can personally learn from is better.”
“All of a sudden, you can see things — food — where there wasn’t any before. The weed you might be stepping over of the sidewalk with out even noticing — that’s purslane, and its stems and leaves are great in salad or you can cook it up. It’s packed with iron, beta carotene, Vitamin C and other healthy stuff. It’s also a secret source of omega-3 fatty acids.”
That image…
is a metaphor for the divisions that separate the ‘First’ ‘World’ from the ‘Third’ ‘World’ and
it captures the ultimate dream of people who seek to profit without accountability for the consequences of their enterprises
Surbordination and exploitation are the lowest common denominators there.
