SEAN trip to SOS

Here’s a little happy-snap from the train trip on the way back from SOS, held in Adelaide this year.

In 2011, SOS will be held in either Albury or Sydney. Stay tuned!

QEAN @ SOS 2010

Their route at the mercy  of Google Map’s accuracy,  the Queensland kids could sleep easy, bellies full of wood fired  pizza, ready for tomorrow’s  long day of driving. Destination? SOS2010 on Kaurna Land, rAdelaide. As  the sun rose on a  chilly South-East Queensland morning early in  July, the first wave of Brisbane kids  busied themselves preparing for their 2000 km  drive across three Australian states.

"In the beginning, there was buttercup"

Their transport? An ex-chip-shop-oil-powered 4x called Buttercup, and a shiny new V6, aptly daubed the horse-powered speed machine. As HPSM zoomed off at the speed of light, Buttercup decided ‘trouble’ was her  middle name; not even  an hour out of Brisbane, she was rattling and spluttering, belching green sludge from her bonnet.  However, with some TLC from a new-found mono-legged friend , Buttercup was happy and back on the road. For now.

Welcome to Goondiwindi!

While half the Queensland crew sped on, stopping and languishing in ’sunny’, ‘tropical’ Goondiwindi, the other half could but crochet,  as Buttercup spluttered along, careening ahead 100 kilometres behind HPSM. Finally they met in darkness in Moree, land of Australia’s largest ‘Pecan-nut crop’. Buggered if they saw any pecans, but my did Moree have a massive… rocket-slide!

Carnage and bedazzlement at the orgasmic rocket slide

…

Entering Day  2 of ‘road trip to rAdelaide, the Queensland kids had to make up  for lost time.  Day two  saw  crops and towering silos melt into the the renowned  red earth and low-clinging vegetation of the so-called ‘outback’.  This you gotta expect when you’re heading out the the back of Bourke. Chips and nutmeat by the choking  river, Darling.  That turbid, regulated MDB tributary, is badly in need of some TLC  (ie. RESPECT, fenced, reveged riparian  zones, and moderated flow  extraction, please).

Pushing Buttercup to rAdelaide

By nightfall of the second day, they were determined to get themselves to rAdelaide, even  if it meant foot-power style. Handstands, circusing, and RSL timewarping. Resolves made to travel  into the night were put to the test,  however, when the HPSM ran out of black gold, and flintstones feet blistered. Wilcannia would be their home for the night. They huddled in tents, awaiting the dawn.

2am. Splash.

Teabag: What the…?

Sophie: The townspeople are evicting us, Wilcannia  style!

Amy: It’s  a town drunk, relieving himself…

Teabag: The police are dousing us with petrol?

Steve: Erm … sprinklers?

Here comes the sun!

Ridiculous broken  sleep was blown  from the minds of the Brisbane Crew, however, with the near-indescribable beauty  of a reddening, endless  horizon. They cruised on  ahead, bound for South Australia…

“Amber skies, black tarmac, red earth. Patches of aqua in the desert after rain. The yellow of euphoria, the violet of inspiration. The spectral swirls of swift dancing to a burning sun, the dark shades of late night camping. A spark of icy blue at early morning sprinklers! Infinite rainbows of SoS experiences, melding and bringing forth new, unknown palettes to dazzle the eye and touch deep the soul. Stepping beyond the grey into a coloured reality!” – Skitmore, 2010

Food Zombies at the Fruit Fly Exclusion Zone

It is suggested that the crew dispose of their precious fruit. A nightmare for those who  loathe rampant food waste! All put their digestive tracts to the ultimate test, stuffing in 3 avos each, whole pomelos, apples, zucchinis, capsicum, all down the hatch! They  refrain from garlic shots,  for the nasal sanity of all involved.

Off the rails.

The call of nature fortuitously lands our travelers on the ‘Great Southern Railway’.

Someone: Hey, it’s deserted! Lets take pictures!

10 mins later, safely inside Buttercup  and HPSM, one giant speeding piece of steam-powered iron careens along train tracks at 1000km/hr. Lesson: you  cannot see your reflection in disused train-tracks.

All this and SOS hadn’t even started.

…

Finally, the Queensland crew reached their destination…

A family of multicoloured tents -Kaurna Land, location Flinders University, rAdelaide

To  learn to show respect…

Warriparinga

To be enlightened …

The famous SOS conversations

To speak up…

CEASE EARTH-DEATH BY MINING URANIUM, DAMNIT!

To f*ck with gender binaries…

To  meet like and new minds.

…

As the narrator of this story it is my job to chose highlights from a trip that was not only epic in terms of distance, but in depth of experience. As a personal reflection all I can say is that SOS was priceless:

I brought along a mind I thought was open, and found it to be narrow,

I bought a set of ideas I thought were obscure, I found rang true with other minds,

I was exposed to old ideas that I could contemplate in a brand new light.

Getting Away with Crime, A Tale of Privilege

By Lian – reach me here: lian [at] riseup.net

I was in court a few weeks ago. The legal part of a ‘lock-on’ action some friends and I did at Hazelwood power station in Victoria in November 2008 is now finally over. It was a good result too. I got a diversion: A 12 month good behaviour bond and no conviction. Sweet right? Well maybe but maybe not…

The action itself was pretty good. The best part of it was the sweet video we made – check it out at whosepower.wordpress.com. The second best part was the debates we had with each other and some of our friends in the climate movement about how change can be made. We approached the action with an unconventionally hostile approach towards government and media. For example on our website we said:

“This is not a call to government to make a series of policy changes. This is not a call for large businesses to become “greener” under the illusion that profitability and what is socially and ecologically beneficial are not in conflict. This is a call for you, friend, to share your experiences, thoughts, words on three simple things. What are we struggling and acting for? What would it take to realise these things? And are we prepared to do what is necessary? Maybe everything depends on these answers.”

This was in the wake of other actions that explicitly pleaded with politicians to ’solve this problem for us’. We wanted to take direct action back to its true meaning, by showing that people can shut down coal infrastructure themselves and can bypass representatives like politicians who are inevitably going to stab us in the back. We wanted to spark change by inspiring people to shut down coal fired power stations. Simple.

But exactly how many people did we think would be inspired by our model of non-violent direct action? Surely we wouldn’t need many groups carrying out similar actions in order to have a real effect on coal burning. And the action was so easy to organise, far easier than large scale climate camps. Much more bang for your effort.

Back to the court case and the stellar result (or was it?). Diversion programs (known as Section 10  in NSW and a spent conviction in some other states) are one way in which the inherent racism and classism of our court system manifests. Applicants, like myself, have to prove that they have ‘good character’. This means some combination of not having prior criminal convictions, being a good student (they even ask you for your grades), being employed (you basically give them a resume), volunteer work, if you co-operated with police, ‘passing’ a face to face interview, if your family knows about your charge and who knows what else the magistrate considers. It boils down to the court saying ‘Hey, you’re a good member of society. We wouldn’t want you to start associating with bad people now, so we will let you off this time, as long as you stop messing about.’ Of course being white and not-poor helps convince the court you are ‘of good character’. I remember reading a zine about racism in the justice system made by some folk in Aotearoa. It stated that Pakeha (White Kiwis) are many times more likely to get diversions than people of colour and especially Maori in New Zealand courts.

Us activists love these legal loopholes. They allow us to be rebels, to break the law and get away with it (kind of). And hey, if the system is willing to give us a freebie because some of us are shiny, let’s take a mile every time they give an inch right?

But what does it mean to be using our privilege in this way? To be taking advantage of what we know is a white supremacist, classist and capitalist institution?

When we glorify these ‘non-violent direct actions’, we are glorifying the people who can pull them off – people who can negotiate the court system, people whose race and class privilege them to do so.

By all means there is a place for ‘lock-ons’ but let’s not let them become the only accepted model of action. It becomes particularly problematic when we consider that these actions are charismatic. They are public, build reputations and are media grabbing compared to secret actions or behind the scenes work. So who gets to be the public face of ‘activism’? Who gets perceived as our leaders?

Have we allowed the legal institutions of the state to co-opt the climate movement? Have we become complicit in oppression by adopting a particular kind of action that conforms to the needs of privileged people, both within and outside the ‘movement’? What cost does that have for less privileged people within the climate movement? And how does this all affect alliances we are building with other social movements?

To me the most positive thing about the climate movement is its potential for diversity. We undeniably have an amazing combination of very experienced and the new, the unashamed radicals and shiny types. Together we can do anything. The trick and the crux of my critique is not to let only one form of action dominate. We need our small affinity group actions, our mass mobilisations, our speaking tours, cop-watch programs and confrontational actions. We need it all and that means the destructive and constructive, the secret and the open, the midnight spray painted slogans and the front page story. That we have the ability to pull off all this and more surely isn’t news to anyone. Maybe it is just our own culture that is standing in the way.

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