12.07.2007
A day of action in Reykjavik kick starts Saving Iceland’s Summer of Resistance to heavy industry and the aluminium industry’s corporate invasion of Europe’s largest wilderness.
Following on from Saving Iceland’s international conference: ‘The Global Consequences of Heavy Industry’ where speakers and delegates from five continents gathered to unite struggles against the aluminium industry, was a day of public actions.
The International Summer of Dissent begins!
Firstly at Kringlan Shopping Mall:
Over 50 people from 5 different continents started the day at Kringlan Shopping Mall, Reykjavik, to protest against the consumer culture that demands new aluminium factories. Reverend Billy, from the Church of Stop Shopping, and his new deciple Reverend Snorri, lead a flock of devoted and extremely noisy earth lovers (also known as Saving Iceland activists) through the consumerist hell that is a the shopping mall.
“The foreign corporations who want to dam Icelands great rivers, and put polluting smelters on our shores – they want us to keep shopping.”
“The Aluminium industry makes most of its money from warplanes, tanks and missiles (30%, actually.) They propose the complete damming of Icelands wilderness rivers, this isnald’s famouse beauty buried under industrial reservoirs. Let us stop the war machine and the ruin of Iceland’s wilderness. The same corporations that keep us shopping, make war around the world. Isn’t a shopping mall like a ‘human’ dam? We re stopped, hypnotized, put in debt. Our energy is taken from us. Save the country and save ourselves…”
…Then a march down Laugavegur (Reykjavik’s busiest street)…
… for a rally at Alþingi
On the lawn outside the Alþingi, the Icelandic Parlaiment, people gathered together to speak out against the aluminium industry. People from Trinidad, who are winning a fight against Alcoa, from South Africa, who are fighting a nuclear powered Alcan plant, from the East of Iceland, who have been devastated by the recent Alcoa Reydarfjdur factory and Karahnjukar dams, from Brasil, who is fighting the damming of the Amazon for aluminium factory energy, and many more gave inspiring speeches and lead energy filled songs against the aluminium industry.
…and finally at the Prime Minister’s Office
Street theatre activists then set up an aluminium smelter, installed some tomb stones and handed out dirty Icelandic water (Iceland prides itself on its pure water, yet it is polluting and destroying its water for the sake of heavy industry dams).
activist video footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJF7uK4cCOM
RUV coverage (Iceland’s state TV): http://dagskra.ruv.is/streaming/sjonvarpid/?file=4338360/5
For updates and details of upcoming actions see: http://www.savingiceland.org/
For more videos of Saving Iceland actions and the recent conference see: http://www.youtube.com/user/octoplasm