Bristol Protest against G8 and Climate Catastrophe, 8th June

Stop them dri­ving the plan­et to destruc­tion

CRITICAL MASS, Fri­day 8th June — 8am in the MORNING!
Assem­ble on St. Augustines Parade at 8am sharp to move off when crit­i­cal mass forms.

What are we doing?
As a start we are call­ing for a crit­i­cal mass on the morn­ing of Fri­day June 8th as the wake up call to a day of action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those protest­ing against the G8 meet­ing in Ger­many. We hope that this will act as a cat­a­lyst for oth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als in Bris­tol to mark the occa­sion how­ev­er they see fit.

Whether it be a pen­sion­ers mass march, a play­ground protest, or you and yer mates throw­ing a lit­er­al or sym­bol­ic wrench in the works, get off your arse and show ‘em you’re mad as hell and aren’t going to take it no more!

Why should you be angry?
CLIMATE CHAOS
We all know the ter­ri­fy­ing sta­tis­tics: a mil­lion species extinct by 2050, 19 of the 20 hottest years on record since 1980, Green­land and Antarc­ti­ca melt­ing, droughts, floods, famines. The G8 have had over 30 years to address cli­mate change and only suc­ceed­ed in pro­vid­ing tril­lions in sub­si­dies to the very indus­tries that are destroy­ing our plan­et and our future.

And while the G8 con­tin­ues to line their pock­ets, island states dis­ap­pear and hun­dreds of thou­sands die as a result of the freak weath­er con­di­tions caused by their irra­tional and uncon­trol­lable obses­sion with nev­er end­ing eco­nom­ic growth. We have a ten-year win­dow to act. As the mega­lo­ma­ni­ac G8 lead­ers meet in Ger­many, masked behind a bar­ri­er of fences and sol­diers, intent on lead­ing us fur­ther towards cat­a­stroph­ic and irre­versible cli­mate chaos, we must shout, scream and roar ˜no more”. Now is the time to take direct action and shut them down, them and their cli­mate crim­i­nal indus­try friends!

THE USUAL SUSPECTS
While cli­mate chaos effects us all, those on the front line are those already dev­as­tat­ed by the cru­el­ty of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism — the poor and dis­ad­van­taged. While the G8 looks to the mar­kets to solve the prob­lem by turn­ing emis­sions into a prod­uct that can be bought and sold, they pur­pose­ly ignore the only effec­tive solu­tion — an end to the con­sumerist mass-mar­ket soci­ety.

Iron­i­cal­ly con­sumerism is the way of life that the G8 is forc­ing poor­er coun­tries to adopt in order to have their pover­ty, debt and trade prob­lems alle­vi­at­ed. Soci­eties are manip­u­lat­ed into becom­ing pre­car­i­ous McCoun­tries: from export­ing cheap mass pro­duced goods from sweat­shops to feed west­ern appetites, to pro­vid­ing play­ground par­adis­es for the rich.

All this does is feed cli­mate chaos and cre­ate fur­ther car­bon emis­sions to be trad­ed as ‘cred­its’ between the rich­est coun­tries.

ANGRY YET?
So what are you going to do about it? Buy a wrist­band, go to a con­cert, sign a peti­tion, go on an organ­ised mass march?

Remem­ber Jubilee 2000? Third world debt is worse than ever.
Remem­ber Make Pover­ty His­to­ry? It didn’t.
Remem­ber Stop the War? We haven’t

The G8 lead­ers have car­ried on with their own agen­da and fan­cy foot­work. The only way that gov­ern­ments will lis­ten to us is if we force them to — this is the only effec­tive form of protest, which is why free­dom to protest effec­tive­ly is being erod­ed and out­lawed. We are sleep­walk­ing into a soci­ety where dis­sent will not be tol­er­at­ed, and it’s time to wake up!

Why June 8th?
The 8th of June Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against Cli­mate Change and the G8 has been called by the Inter­na­tion­al Ris­ing Tide Net­work. This is a call for autonomous, decen­tral­ized actions appro­pri­ate for your town, city, or local area.

We want to send a mes­sage to the pro­tes­tors on the streets and in the jails of Ger­many that we stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them and their actions.

Why a Crit­i­cal Mass?
Crit­i­cal Mass demon­stra­tions are not just about high­light­ing the prob­lems fac­ing cyclists, they are used effec­tive­ly across the world as an effec­tive way of protest­ing. The first one hap­pened in San Fran­cis­co in1992 and since then enthu­si­asts in many towns and cities world­wide have fol­lowed suit. It is dif­fi­cult to describe CM as opin­ions dif­fer wide­ly but they seem to range from a sim­ple cel­e­bra­tion of cycling to an anti-author­i­tar­i­an block­ade of traf­fic, par­tic­u­lar­ly cars, with many facets in between.

Cycling protests have already been hap­pen­ing as a part of the actions against the G8 sum­mit, and the heavy hand­ed response to them shows that the author­i­ties feel they are effec­tive and fear them.

On the 7th May in Utrecht (Hol­land), mount­ed police attacked, beat, arrest­ed and did sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to a peace­ful bicy­cle car­a­van on its way to Ger­many — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/369998.html for details.

On 25th May in Ham­burg (Ger­many), Over 250 peo­ple involved in the G8 mobi­liza­tion took to the streets of Ham­burg in a Crit­i­cal Mass. The police broke up the group of cyclists by dri­ving between them with vehi­cles and by run­ning and stand­ing in front of them. The cops fol­lowed the small­er groups of cyclists to get them to dis­perse. 12 peo­ple were arrest­ed and held for sev­er­al hours — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371656.html for details.

Also on the 25th, Bristol’s own Crit­i­cal Mass was sub­ject to a heavy-hand­ed police response. Although obvi­ous­ly not on the same scale, the rea­son behind it was the same — to smash the Crit­i­cal Mass as a form of protest because it is effec­tive. This forms part of a con­cert­ed effort by police across the UK to stop the protests, includ­ing attempts to crim­i­nalise the action and its par­tic­i­pants (that failed). See http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371358.html for details. And see http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=24359&search_text=Critical%20mass&results_offset=15 for details of 200 plus rid­ers on Bris­tol CM on 28/11/05 held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Lon­don CM after the cops threat­ened them. Who says CM isn’t polit­i­cal?

Why in the morn­ing?
The usu­al month­ly Crit­i­cal Mass in Bris­tol is a sep­a­rate enti­ty that focus­es on the rights of cyclists, while the inten­tion of the June 8th is to have a wider focus and so the change of time will dif­fer­en­ti­ate the two. Also there has been crit­i­cism that the month­ly Mass stops Bris­to­lians from get­ting home for the week­end, which can lead to a lack of wider sup­port.

This Crit­i­cal Mass is a present to the work­ing peo­ple of Bris­tol! If well attend­ed, the demon­stra­tion could mean big delays in get­ting to work on a Fri­day morn­ing, and a per­fect excuse for phon­ing in late — and who but the boss­es wouldn’t sup­port that! Spread the word to those you work with, but remem­ber we need the num­bers on the ride to make it hap­pen!

Remem­ber, the streets are ours, Crit­i­cal Mass is NOT ille­gal (yet!), and you have to get out of bed ear­ly in the morn­ing if you’re going to out­wit those who want to take away your free­dom to protest!

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide Web­site — http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

More info on the G8 protests in Ger­many -http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371754.html

For posters and fly­ers see http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=26367