I’ll upload minutes here, updates, reportbacks, and anything related.
SEAN Climate Justice Campaign Objectives!!!
To learn from and support three coal-affected groups through:
- Listening to local perspectives and stories on coal and community
- Visiting and running workshops on NVDA, campaign strategy and community organising in the next 6 months
- Supporting these communities to develop and implement direct action plans targeting coal infrastructure and future climate camps
Next meeting: Sunday 9th August at the SEAN space (19 Eve St Erskineville) and Skype at 1pm. Contact gemromuld@gmail.com
Minutes from the SEAN Coal Campaign Planning Day 25 July 2009
Present:
Jen Spencer, Christian, Mark, Emma, Liam, James Curtin, Ben Noone, Ben Dharmendra, Oliver, Scarlet, Gem, Suz, Tessa.
1. Chatting around the pros and cons of targeting planned or already existing coal infrastructure.
|
New |
Existing |
||
|
+ |
- |
+ |
- |
| Easier to blockade | Legal stuff/ red tape | “more epic” | Bad for communities that depend on the work |
| Shows the expansion of the industry | Kind of abstract | Expansion of existing facilities | |
| Possibly greater community opposition | Companies can just transfer capital to another site and build elsewhere | Concrete, not abstract, thus stronger message | |
| Concurrent legal/bureaucratic stuff | Far more painful to mining companies | ||
2. What are our skills and limits, and how can we overcome some of our limits?
| Skills | Limits | Overcoming limits |
| NVDA experience | Science and technology knowledge- overcome with the contacts we have in unis | Contacts we have in unis |
| NVDA workshops | City-based | |
| Facilitations | Time- bound to a few days | |
| Campaign experience | Accessibility- close to public transport and not heaps far away | |
| Outreach and communications: websites and forums | Revolutionary NVDA | |
| Engagement with bigger picture and international struggles | Blockades- we don’t know how to do one! | |
| SEAN- network | Overwhelming scope | Rolling blockades
Quit uni Learn from elders We have won something |
| Media skills | Language and commonalities | |
| Start and support groups | ||
| Ability to be radical and introduce radical ideas | ||
| Energy |
3. Based on conversations already had, what are the wants of the coal communities:
- Energy
- Ears
- Numbers: rent-a-crowd
- Science
- Time
- Radical edge
- Protests and actions in Sydney at the corporate offices and ministers.
- Administrative support
- Networking. We are a lot more mobile
- This needs further research and discussions with our coal community contacts…
4. Timeline:
July
- 30: ALP conference
August
- 13: CPRS vote in Parliament
- 13: Department of Primary Industries Coal Conference
- 28-30: SEAN gig at Sandon Point near Wollongong
Sept
- Hazelwood Climate Camp in VIC
- SA Climate Camp
- Uni breaks
October
- 9-11: Climate Camp at Helensburgh
- 24: 350.org day
November
- Climate Justice Fast
- Uni breaks
December
- 7: Copenhagen
- Walk Against Warming?
5. Next steps
Alternative proposal:
To initiate or support three coal-affected groups through visiting and running workshops on NVDA, campaign strategy and community organizing in the next 6 months; with a view to supporting these communities to develop and implement direct action plans targeting coal infrastructure (to be made less wordy and a bunch of dot points instead!)
ACTIVE CONSENT
Re-evaluation points in the next six months
Climate Action Groups may be keen to be connected with this.
TASKS:
- Researching coal community wins! (Emma K)
- Pick and locate communities:
o Getting a big map to visualize places (Jen S and Ben N. to print big map at UNSW)
o Re-contacting the coal communities with our idea to see who is interested (Scarlet, Mark, Christian, Liam, James, Suz), making it clear that we are offering this to who wants it
o Can they organize a location and invite locals to come to the workshops
o Contacting traditional owners in the area once we know where we’re going; and making a point of talking to the coal community people about working with TOs on this.
- Workshops:
o Developing the workshops- if they can be improved (Mark, Ollie)
o Finding facilitators for each workshop preferably one person experienced and one less experienced, once we know dates (Gem, Emma, James, Liam)
- Logistics of visiting places: transport and food and train timetables and where to stay if we stay overnight (Ollie, Gem, Jen S)
- Turning the objective into dot points (EMMA), sending it to the SEAN list, developing a leaflet to go to collectives about this campaign and what’s going on (Ollie and Emma)
- Going to collectives (Everyone from collectives)! Missing today: Albury, UWS, Bathurst, Lismore, UNE. Represented at this strategy day: UNSW, Newcastle, Wollongong, Canberra, USYD, UTS, Macquarie
- Page on the SEAN website (Gem)
- SEAN gig
- How we’ll communicate: sean e-list and internal group communications for specific tasks. Email addresses and skype names on the minutes (done).
- When we’ll meet next with an organized Skype (its really easy, and can be downloaded easy peasy, contact gemromuld@gmail.com for skype downloading help)- need stuff to talk into it and listen out (microphone and speakers) of it for 9th August 1pm.
