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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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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Here in London, Ontario a few of us have produced a local version of a statement from Toronto which was, above all, about G20 police conduct and detention conditions in Toronto during the recent Summit of ‘world leaders’  there.  The local statement was prepared by Climate Justice London and People for Peace London.  And the following pre-amble (which I’m just re-posting verbatim) explains how this statement is connected with the original one from Toronto -

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[The preamble]

Local activists have prepared this London, Ontario version of the Toronto statement about police tactics at the G20 Summit there. We believe it is important for Londoners to present a unified voice to demand the civil liberties that were attacked in Toronto.

We invite signatures from anyone living, campaigning, or working in London, Ontario, or elsewhere in the nearby region.

Our statement is an abbreviated version of the original Toronto call – with added points about links between London activists, London police, and the Toronto summit. (These added points are in paragraph three, and demands 6 and 7, at the end of the statement.) The original Toronto statement basically offers a more detailed summary of events in Toronto in late June.

We also have made one addition to the text from the Toronto call. In the following sentence, we have changed the words “harassment by police” to “harassment and sexual violence from police” -
“The reports of those released from detention reveal a pervasive pattern of sexual, gender, trans, homophobic and racist harassment and sexual violence from police.”

If you want to SIGN ON to the London, Ontario statement, PLEASE WRITE TO theLondoncall@gmail.com and include your name and affiliation (as you would want it in the final version), and the category you prefer to be placed in (trade unionists, activists, arrested and detained, legal workers, teachers, cultural workers, students, etc). We ask you to sign on as soon as possible. We will be collecting signatures from individuals, and from groups and organizations.

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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.

I wrote this statement for a blog about Coulter in Canada events -
http://counteringcoulter.wordpress.com/to-bjorn/

That statement is a response to an e-mail (quoted at the bottom of that page) from a ‘Free’ Press organization.

Here’s a bit more background -
The ‘Free’ Press Society (which was backing the Ann Coulter in Canada events) had sent out hundreds of event RSVP e-mails by mistake. The Countering Coulter blog then was set up to take advantage of that opportunity to reach people who had RSVPed for the event here in London, Ontario, Canada. Someone out here sent those people a message (much like this post) to ask them whether they would want to use the blog to communicate their concerns about the Coulter in Canada event in London, Ontario. After a guy from the ‘Free’ Press organization sent out an insulting and confusing rant about that e-mail and that Countering Coulter blog — in a message to the same e-mail addresses — I put together the reply on the blog page that I’ve linked to above.

In that writing I tried to hint at the limited effectiveness of blogging and e-mailing in general. Online activism and dialogue (via Twitter, and Facebook, and so on) are very overrated, and I didn’t mean to reinforce the rhetoric and false hopes about ‘digital revolution’ and ‘digital democracy’ (Here are some relevant posts.)

To put this another way -
Free speech only can happen when there already is equality and justice in our everyday lives (with or without digital technologies).

On that Countering Coulter blog, it also should be clear that I wasn’t approaching free speech as a vicious barking contest — in which ridiculous and blatantly false claims are fine and good.

When we respond to ‘libertarians’ and blunter neo-conservatives, it’s also important to distinguish hate speech from tolerable free speech. I didn’t try to draw any such lines in the writing on that blog page, but I have put some time into those sorts of conflicts, in the past. (Comments which I bothered to post here and here come to mind. I also put myself in the middle of a nasty hate speech conflict in a former Indymedia group here in London, Ontario; the Indymedia project went down in flames during that battle — which also was a matter of milder sexism, and other problems.)

In some cases, tensions and gaps in understanding are too far gone to warrant the time and effort required to take sides in a conflict. And those counterproductive spats happen a lot more on the Internet. The remarks on the “Other viewpoints” section of the Countering Coulter blog are cases in point.

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.

    
Automobile branding

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Little drivers

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George Monbiot (in this article) -
“Eco-terrorism is a charge repeatedly levelled against the environment movement, mostly by fossil fuel lobbyists. But, as far as I can discover, there has not been a single recorded instance of a planned attempt to harm people in the cause of environmental protection in the United Kingdom over the past 30 years or more.”

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Here are a few blog posts about police crackdowns -

“Sparki” on the It’s Getting Hot In Here blog -
“To be an Eco-Terrorist Now, You Just Gotta Flap your Jaw” (in May)

Benno Hansen on his EcoWar blog -
“Authorities vs Environmentalism” (in April)

Robert Mackey in the New York Times -
“British Police Arrest Protesters Before Protest” (in April)

Michael A. Weber on the PlanetSave blog -
“Activists Detained For Taking Ash Spill Photographs” (December, 2008)

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