our bits and play at climate camp

by asenkids Comment Closed
the night before we locked ourselves onto a coal loader i lay with a sleeping bag over my head, angry and tired to the point of muteness. sick of meetings, of planning and car troubles and people, scared and almost over it. we sleep all together on the floor and I try not to think too much in case I change my mind. early early in the morning we pile in cars, with large metal tubes and small chains around our ready wrists. we drive to kooragang coal port as dawn threatens pale at the edges of the sky. at the entry to the port a streetlight reveals a car with police prop-legged around it, their feet in it’s open doors. i’m so scared our plans are about to stretch too thin and break. we get confused and drive past the site three times, u-turning in front of the police. i want to not be here now, i want to wake...
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Cranking Up Action at Climate Camp

by asenkids Comment Closed
When one thousand people took action against the coal industry’s role in dangerous climate change, they perhaps inadvertently elucidated an interesting debate about the realms of private and public property. In the ensuing weeks, whilst we were all recovering from ten long days of intense and anxious activism, debates raged online between activists and hecklers about the validity of such a demonstration. When I decided to attend Climate Camp, I had come to the conclusion that in order to solve the climate crisis it would take ordinary people doing extraordinary things to make the politicians do anything. Indeed, if you take a straw poll of many Australians most of them will tell you that politicians are usually reactionary; that is, they respond to crises, disturbances and blips that disrupt their pragmatic politics that allow them to straddle interest groups for decades whilst making little progress on the really difficult questions. It was such that the Climate Camp project captured...
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Fences

by asenkids Comment Closed
Fences are the contours of dominance, power, control, oppression. Whether they are keeping people in or people out. Baxter 05 We stood outside the fences and sent balloons up into the air. So that in their isolation the political prisoners could see that there was humanity. That there were people that deeply believed they should be free. We threw tennis balls over the fence with messages of support in English and Farsi. We threw a grappling hook over the perimeter fence. For which people were arrested and threatened with incarceration within prison walls. More fences. The further fences of prison walls. G20, APEC, FTAA ...raging against fences. I feel hot. I feel suffocated. I feel all the injustice of the world raging through my body. And I feel terrified. The police remind me of the second assault, of the police inquiry into ‘aggravated sexual assault’. They remind me of that disempowerment. And their bodies pressing towards us, masked and faceless in their riot...
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news from the ASEN network

by asenkids Comment Closed
Conveney Bites Roll up, roll up and welcome to our fabulous and newly endorsed ASEN Convenors for 2009. Lian from Perth and Kristy from Brisvegas will step into their roles from February, and Dany from Newcastle will take on the role of Environment Officer for the National Union of Students. Hooray, we love you and good luck! Interwebs The ASEN website is back – beautiful, bewitching, bovine, bedazzling, bigger and better than ever. Check it out – www.localhost/asen.org.au_inital_hacked_version_2014-05-02 Coalture Jam ASEN Climate Pirates have been stepping up attacks on the mighty (and rising) seas this last few months. A series of coordinated cannon-like bangs went off in the first week of November, when there were direct actions on nasty, polluting coal-fired power stations. Brave and wonderful climateers around the continent locked onto four power stations in one week. WA crew even got to share their day of glory with Obamarama Mania (ie, the death of G.W.B.). But the fearsome attacks didn’t stop there - Queenslanders braved...
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Countdown to Copenhagen

by asenkids Comment Closed
The first international planning meeting was held last September for a large climate mobilisation for direct action against root causes of climate change at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009. Towards climate action in Copenhagen We stand at a crossroads in history. The facts are undeniable. Global climate change, caused by human activities, is happening. We all know that, world over, we’re facing a manifold and deepening crisis: of the climate, energy, food, livelihoods, and of political and human rights. Scientific, environmental, social and civil society movements from all over the world are calling for action against climate change. Massive consumption of fossil fuel is one of the major causes of global warming, a problem that threatens the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Instead of leading the way, governments are prioritising economic growth and corporate interests while ignoring the speeding train of climate change hurtling towards the abyss. The corporate exploitation of the planet’s...
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