Toban Black

Here is a small set of photos from a recent critical mass bike rally here in London -

Mike also took this video as he arrived at the end of the ride.

Jim also has sent more photos.

I would have taken at least a couple more photos if I didn’t have camera battery problems.

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This ride was linked with a climate justice day of action — which you can read about at the end of this Ecojustice Declaration.
(Here are ways those links were made locally.)

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Here are some photos from an August climate camp gathering and protest in Dunham, Quebec — just north of Vermont. A tar sands pipeline and pumping station project (”Trailbreaker”) was our main target at the camp.

For more information, see this invitation, and this camp publication.

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.

Our climate camp was one of several during 2010; here is a list of 2010 climate camp web sites, in various Anglo and European countries.

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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”.

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Since the G20 Summit in Toronto, activists here in London, Ontario (Canada) have organized a series of protests against the Summit policing regime. Below I’ll offer some photos, video links, and written background about our protests.  First, here are some points about other campaigning and organizing here in London (Ont.) -

Local activists released a statement about Summit policing and detention conditions in Toronto, and the local climate justice group that I’m part of has sent out a connected statement about oil and civil liberties.  Through those statements we have pointed out links between London and the Toronto Summit, and we have shown how the G20 police regime is bound up with much wider neoliberalism, fossil fuel systems, and other large-scale problems.

More than anything, activists here have been demanding civil liberties that were attacked at the Summit.

Civil liberties petition signatures have been collected, and a flyer about civil liberties has been distributed here.  We have brought copies with us as we have used a projector to display video footage of G20 police brutality on walls for crowds at public events. Here is a post about the first of those projection protests, at a Canada Day fireworks show.

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A statement written for Climate Justice London, Ontario -

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.

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I was one of the co-writers behind this action report -
“London, Ontario actions against Fossil Fools”

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.

My photos from that protesting are posted here.

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In London, Ontario

Here are a series of photos from our local protest on March 1st; there also are remarks and videos links about/from that protesting.

I co-wrote this action report -
“Canadian action against Olympics sponsors and greenwashing”

Half of the photos are from me.

A post that I put together for the Sociological Images web site

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.

(A Grist photo)

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UK Climate Campers have said this on Twitter (in their “bio” statement) -
“It’s time to show our ‘leaders’ how we’re going to take action to reduce emissions ourselves. Because it’s business as usual at Copenhagen.”

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Cascadia Brian (of Rising Tide North America)
on the It’s Getting Hot in Here blog -
“Copenhagen and the end of naïveté”

A post from “tanuki” (of Rising Tide North America, and other networks)
on the It’s Getting Hot in Here blog -
“Out of the frying pan and into the streets!, or ‘How I stopped lobbying and put up my dukes!‘”
(I’m not re-posting that link to reject any and all lobbying — particularly at the municipal level, where lobbying impacts are more feasible.)

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Common people are going to have to sort these problems out;
and to accomplish that, we’re going to have to rise up — to take power.

We need to collectively re-make this world; and to do that, we’ll need to motivate and mobilize a lot more people — including ourselves, in some cases.

What are we waiting for? Let’s do this.
A lot more of us will have to be a lot more engaged in making this change happen.

Obama is not a radical superhero; and no one else out there is either.  There are no hero-saviours out there who are going to turn around these crises on, their own.

Join us in the climate justice movement
AND/OR
Join us in the pursuit of practical, community-level solutions.

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(That image was cropped out of a photo taken by Jody B.)

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The COP15 talks in Copenhagen have been called “Brokenhagen” and “Failenhagen.” One write-up in The Guardian is titled “Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure.”

Here is some selected material about the betrayals and the sell-outs in Copenhagen -

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Around the end of the talks

Civil society organization statements -
“US undermines climate talks with bullying tactics and backroom deals”
“Civil Society Denounces U.S. Plan for Fast-Tracking Warming, Worsening Humanitarian Crisis, and Fueling Ecological Collapse”

A statement from La Via Campesina -
“Traders failed in Copenhagen. The future lies in people’s hands”
(Although I support some of the groups and organizations who protested out there, I wouldn’t call the street demonstrations “power in Copenhagen.”)

A video -
“Bill McKibben reacts to climate deal announcement at flash rally”
“350.org founder and author, Bill McKibben offers his perspective of the end of the Copenhagen climate talks amidst a rousing rally to shame world leaders for not stepping up to the plate with a real deal.”

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