£5/4

October 12 2009

7.30-11pm

Green Note Café

106 Parkway

Camden

Throughout the country today actions are taking place in solidarity with the workers of the Vesta Blades factory on the Isle of Wight. This morning the offices of the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) was targetted by protesters who dropped banners and built a mini windfarm in the lobby. SEEDA is being pressured to withdraw £3m of public money they've said they'll give Vestas for a R&D facility despite the Danish company pulling its manufacturing from the UK. Tonight there will be a protest at the Department of Environment and Climate Change, in Whitehall Place, central London.

Arrests have just been made on the Isle of Wight of protesters occupying a
crane to prevent the transportation of Vestas wind turbine blades. There
are still protesters occupying another crane, more arrests are expected
within 35 minutes.

56a Infoshop, 56 Crampton St (off Walworth Rd), Elephant and Castle, London SE17

Call for anti-capitalist analyses of the COP15 - linking what´s going on in the COP-process with other dimensions of the capitalist system.

Over 250 teachers at Tower Hamlets College are in day 10 of an indefinite strike against cuts in courses and jobs.

A mass meeting of 160 strikers today reaffirmed our decision for all out strike. The strike seems to becoming more rather than less solid. Many people have joined the union and the strike at the Poplar (6th form) site and a few members who were working at another site came out this week. Some team leaders and middle managers who were expected to go back to work after a few days are still out.

Altab Ali Park

Whitechapel High Street

Police and security guards have descended in large numbers on the Vestas protest camp and appear to be attempting to break up the workers' and supporters' blockade. There has so far been one arrest - help is urgently needed!

Iranian Embassy, Princes Gate, London, SW7 1PT (nearest tube Knightsbridge)

Fall Delegation to Bolivia: Food Sovereignty and Indigenous Resistance
 
Spend Thanksgiving celebrating indigenous resistance and exploring food sovereignty issues in Bolivia, the first country in the hemisphere to be governed by an indigenous president. 

Arbour Square Site E1 0PT
Bethnal Green Site E2 6AB
Poplar SiteE14 0AF

This report from the Anarchist Federation summarises a workshop held at Climate Camp 2009 on the subject of the interactions between the green movement, anti-capitalism and workers' struggles.

Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, Holborn tube

whitechapel, and pumpin' out of your stereo!

The G-20 meeting to be held in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania is taking place in just under a month (Sept. 24-25, 2009) and it would be nice to receive some advice and/or words of solidarity from London G20 protesters about how to achieve success with this round of protests.  Online support via Twitter updates & Blogs would be helpful too!  You folks have experience and we need to here from you in the states!

www.dissidentisland.org

LARC...and pumpin' out of your stereo

A network for radical anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist groups and individuals in UK universities and colleges formed and statement of unity agreed upon.
STATEMENT OF UNITY;

1. We reject the capitalist system and the structures that defend it - in particular, the state apparatus.
2. We reject and challenge all forms of oppression, including - but not limited to - heterosexism, racism and disablism.
3. We reject hierarchical organisation and the concentration of power in the hands of the few; we are committed to grassroots organisational methods that allow individuals autonomy within the network.
4. We advocate the abolition, rather than the mere reform, of capitalism and hierarchical structures.
5. We advocate revolutionary means to achieve a world based on sustainability, freedom and equality.

Battle of the websites spectactular! 

A knock down drag-out head-to-head debate between libcom.org and the ukwatch.net mob. Sparks (and visions of future societies) fly as they fight it out.  Who's the winner? You be the judge!

Welcome home Mandy! At 6am on June 10, two climate suffragettes and the Yes Men barricaded Peter Mandelson's Regent's Park home in support of the Vestas workers and wind power in the UK. The climate suffragettes, chained to his gate, unfurled a banner reading 'Mandy, Put Some Wind in Vestas' Sales' while the Yes Men inflated their 'survivor balls' in preparation for the worst effects of climate change.

Pogo Cafe

76a Clarence Road, E5

Dateline: Roof-Top Occupation, Vestas Venture Quays Workshop, East Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK, Wed 05 Aug 09 – Before Vestas Wind Systems were handed an eviction order against the 15-day-old Newport turbine blade factory occupation, five climate activists, including an RMT member, occupied the roof of Vestas’ harbour-side facility. With tents set up, plenty of food, and an uninterrupted supply-line to supporters and well-wishers, this solidarity occupation is set to run indefinitely. The London Workers’ Climate Action crew stopped off on their journey home to resupply, cheer on and photograph our climbing-savvy comrades.

Previous Vestas Occupation Features: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

UPDATE: Save Vestas, Phase 2 – The Newport Factory Occupation was concluded on Fri 07 Aug, and that means we’ve six more Vestas Occupiers to tour the UK, drumming up support for the ever-expanding Save Vestas Campaign. Meanwhile the Vestas Roof-Top Occupation runs on strong, as the additional photos D1-E1 below indicate, taken on Fri 07 Aug – when Roof-Top Occupiers enjoyed the best seats on the island for the Cowes Week aerial ‘entertainments’: the RAF’s Red Arrows aerobatic display team, and subsequent fireworks display (though my ferry was in Southampton by then).

Sex workers are routinely portrayed in the media as victims.

At London’s first ever Sex Worker Open University, over two hundred sex workers and allies from the UK and abroad took part in workshops, discussions and actions. 

This film presents an alternative and empowered image of the sex worker: http://current.com/items/90496517_sex-worker-open-university.htm

A special division of 2,500 police are engaged in an assault on the occupied factory. The cops have removed most barricades and are using aerial ladders to attempt to reach the fortified roof positions of the strikers. 3 helicopters are supporting the cop attack. Hand-to-hand battles are presently occurring and the strikers are fighting back with molotov cocktails. Due to the intensity of the fighting, there will probably be many casualties -- and possibly fatalities.

http://libcom.org/news/ssangyong-occupation-update-august-4-korea-time-2009-04082009

Dateline: Newport County Court, Isle of Wight, UK, Tue 04 Aug 09 – Despite hundreds of Vestas Workers, their families, friends, and supporters from across the UK marching in the rain to the Court House, Judge White grants an eviction order to Vestas Wind Systems bosses against the “Boys On the Balcony”, in the 15th day of their factory occupation against 625 green energy jobs cuts and the shutting down of England’s only wind turbine blade factories. But at 04:00, five Climate Campers begin an indefinite roof-top occupation of Vestas’ Venture Quays workshop building in East Cowes, dropping a huge banner reading, “Vestas workers. Solidarity in occupation, fighting for green jobs.” It ain’t over, not by a long chalk!

Previous Vestas Occupation Features: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

[BREAKING NEWS] Ed Miliband's London offices were blockaded this morning by a coalition of "red, green and black" activists in a demonstration of solidarity for the factory workers who have been occupying the Vestas wind turbine plant on the Isle of Wight since the 20th July.

The occupation in Newport is protesting against the Vestas management's decision to shut down the factory, cutting 600 jobs and representing a severe blow to the local community and to a green economy. The workers are currently entering their fifteenth day of occupation, calling for nationalisation and workers' control of the factory.

The activists in Whitehall, holding placards saying "take back the wind power" and wearing red, green and black as a symbol of their diverse political viewpoints, glued themselves in a chain across the entrance of the Department for Energy and Climate Change, demanding that the factory be kept open.

Pics | Previous Features: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

The Carrot Workers Collective's analysis on Alan Milburn's Social Mobility Report Unleashing Aspiration.

Dateline: 4th Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London, UK, 05:00-06:00, Fri 31 Jul 09 – Gerry Byrne makes best use of her one hour stint on the 4th Plinth, as a part of Antony Gormley's One & Other art project, by staging a one woman “Save Vestas – Save Jobs – Save the World” protest, coping as best she can with a bunch of drunk, abusive, foul-mouthed, profoundly ignorant, laddish twenty-somethings that comprised the majority of her audience.

Vidz at YouTube
• playlist: 4th Plinth Protest -- Vestas Occupation -- Fri 31 Jul 09
» http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FF671524FDDD744C
• video: 4th Plinth Protest -- 1. Success vs. Heckling Drunks
» http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqmV3M-GQK4
• video: 4th Plinth Protest -- 2 Interview Commences
» http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9rGLvQTM-Y
• video: 4th Plinth Protest -- 3. Interview Concludes
» http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKsyo10y_m8
• channel: Dalinian's Vidz – to which you’re invited to Subscribe
» http://www.youtube.com/user/dalinian61

Dateline: Vestas Occupation Solidarity Demo No.2, Department of Energy & Climate Change, London, UK, 18:30, Tue 28 Jul 09 – On the eve of Danish wind energy corporation Vestas seeking an eviction order at Newport County Court, Isle of Wight, to turf out the Workers Factory Occupation which is opposing 625 green job redundancies, hundreds of people protested against the pathetic shoulder-shrugging inaction of Climate Change minister Ed Miliband. [More pics]

The Vestas occupation continues - DEMONSTRATE in London TONIGHT, 6pm outside the Department for Energy and Climate Change, off Whitehall.