Brighton, February 6-7-8th 2009
The Earth First! Winter moot is an opportunity for people who feel affiliation with the ideas behind Earth First! to network, discuss and reflect on the ecological direct action movement and to plan for the future. In contrast with the yearly EF! Summer Gathering, which is held outside for around five days, the winter moot is a shorter weekend meeting, inside, less aimed at skill sharing and more at looking where we are at as movement and where we want to be going.
Earth First! is not an organisation, but a banner for non-hierarchical organising and the use of direct action to confront, stop and eventually reverse the forces that are responsible for the destruction of the Earth and its inhabitants.
Topics that have been raised include (Updated):
– the Copenhagen climate summit with a number of people from Denmark coming over to talk about logistics, tactics and mobilisation
– the G20 summit in London
– Leave it in the ground / coal
– GM
– Rossport
– Strengthening the EF network: communication and security, actionupdate and gatherings
– Implications of the crisis
– Climate and migration / eco-activism and Noborder networks
– Heathrow expansion
– UK Biofuels
– Nanotechnology
– Water-based actions
There will not be workshops on any of these topics – please inform yourself on topics of your interest before the moot. We will be focusing on discussing strategy and action planning.
There will be a Saving Iceland meeting on the Friday afternoon before the gathering.
Please contact the organizing collective (moot2009@earthfirst.org.uk) know if you want to add anything, want to help with facilitation or have any other queries. You are welcome to use our PGP key below.
Suggestion: read the activist security guide on http://www.activistsecurity.org/
There will be sleeping places arranged and food available at cost price from Friday evening. The program will start on Saturday at 10 AM. Please be on time.
Venue: Cowley Club, 12 London Road.
http://www.cowleyclub.org.uk/
(Please do not contact the Cowley Club phone nr. with information requests).
Click for directions
Please note:
– No dogs please
– The weekend is not open to journalists
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So, here’s the lowdown on what the Danish people coming over for the EF! Winter Moot will be talking about.
*Copenhagen Climate Summit*
Do we cheer them on, block them in, or close them down?
*When?*
*Where?*
*What?* Danish Klimax activists will kick off a discussion about the movement to stop climate change.
*Why?* The UN talks in Copenhagen this December are supposed to be the place where world leaders agree a new international deal to stop climate change.
But progress so far has been undermined by corporate lobbying and false, market-based solutions. When activists from across Europe hit the streets of Copenhagen, should we be calling on governments to do better, blockading them in until they come up with a good deal, or be saying they are so flawed we should try to close them down?
Most people now agree that we need to do something about climate change. But there isn’t agreement on what. For corporations and most governments its a form of green (or maybe greenwashed) capitalism and before we even get there it will probably be too late. In opposition to this corporate agenda, social movements in the South have proposed ‘climate justice’, a transition to a sustainable world which sees the rich minority who caused climate change pay to put it right, not try and push the costs onto the poor majority.
Within this more progressive agenda proposals range from a ‘green new deal’ of state-led investment for social and environmental goals, to those who argue that only a grassroots anti-capitalism can get us out of this mess. This is the political background to the mobilisation around the Copenhagen climate talks and the strategic and tactical decisions activists are trying to make about it.
This is a chance for activists who are less and more involved in climate campaigning to come together and discuss all these issues. We can also talk about how we mobilise for what may be one of the most important events since the ‘battle’ of Seattle exactly 10 years previously.