The following is a series of Calls for different actions during - or in the days preceding - the G8 Summit in Scotland.
Here's a list of the action calls contained in this document:
- Call for Blockades
- Call to Form Autonomous Golfing Affinity Groups
- G8 Climate Action: Draft Call to Action
- Trident Ploughshares G8 Action
- Call to look down on Gleneagles from the Ochil Hills
- Bike Caravan from Brighton to the G8 Summit
- Crea8 Summat! Community Anarchy at the G8
- Working Group Against Work: Abolish Labour, Release Your Desires!
- Global Resistance 2005: A Call to Action
- Resist the 2005 G8 Summit: Global Action Call Out
This list is incomplete, other actions are also being planned, and people are - of course - free to get together with others and start planning their own actions.
Note: A number of these Calls are still 'drafts'.
1) Call Out for Blockades at Gleneagles
On the 6th-8th July the G8 (the leaders of the worlds most industrialized nations) are meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland at their annual summit to make decisions on how they think the world should be run.
The G8 are the group at the heart of the corporate Globalisation, co-coordinating a neo-liberal assault on our livelihoods, public services, jobs, wages and environment. They make promises on seeking real solutions to the world's problems, but in reality have failed to deliver in making any progressive changes. Examples of this are their inability to cancel debts' owed by the world's poorest nations, or implement the Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse omissions that are killing our planet.
The reason for this is that the G8 are not a body that can be negotiated with, as their main interest is to protect and promote free trade in all its forms, encouraging maximum profiteering from the sale of goods, service, crops, and intellectual property. Any pressure to change the G8 will come externally from maximum militancy, organizing against them so as to expose their real agenda by discrediting it.
We need to confront the G8 by disrupting their secret meeting; this can be achieved by blockading the summit when it starts on the Wednesday 6th July.
'The Blockades Group', a part of the Dissent! network, call out to all autonomous direct action groups and individuals opposed to the G8 to carry out autonomous actions to blockade the summit. To maximise participation in such blockades, groups and individuals may coordinate through the Dissent! network.
The Blockades Group is already investigating information useful to assist the blockades. If you wish to coordinate your actions through the network, or would simply wish to request any information which may be useful to your autonomous action, please subscribe to the discussion group at blockads-subscribe
lists.riseup.net (just send email and you will be added)
Actions will be many and varied and will range from confrontational and uncompromising to imaginative and humorous; so all groups and individuals should feel able to participate in a manner appropriate to their ideology.
2) Call to Form Autonomous Golfing Affinity Groups
The People's Golfing Association (the PGA) is planning to host an open golf tournament during the G8 at Gleneagles.
We would certainly encourage people to begin forming autonomous golfing affinity groups. Golfing is harder than it looks (especially when the hole is obscured by teargas), so start practicing your swing!
People will have to bring their own golf clubs and balls, so those not into shoplifting should keep an eye out for second-hand equipment.
Fundraising will also be needed if we want to pull off some of our more ambitious actions.
We are organising in a non-hierarchical fashion, and have adopted the PGA hallmarks as our basis of unity. Additionally, members are committed to the appreciation of the finer aspects of golf.
If golfing affinity groups want webspace, we would be happy to link to them from the PGA site - http://www.tao.ca/~wrench/dist/g8/pga.html or give space and post material.
Photos and golfing tips are most welcome.
We can also list contact emails for various regions for those trying to put together golfing teams in their community.
It should be stressed that the PGA does not claim to have a monopoly on golf tactics against the G8, and thus the formation of other blocs would be welcome.
No caddies, no Masters!
3) G8 Climate Action: Draft Call to Action
This post is a draft- for further discussion at the next gathering.
Tony Blair set the agenda for the G8 summit July 2005 in which he claims leaders will "tackle climate change". We reject any market led techno- fixes by an unelected global elite to this current climate of crisis. We believe that oil fuels capitalism and that there can not be an end to global warming without an end to the system that causes it. The claim to tackle climate change whilst fighting wars for control of the dwindling carbon based energy reserves of this planet is as hypocritical as it is ridiculous. Nuclear power is not an alternative as it too depends on a finite natural resource and the process is massively oil intensive- not to mention the craziness of such technology's waste and nuclear arms issues. Nuclear energy is a by product of nuclear arms- not the other way around. Just as the oil industry exploits people and the planet for financial greed, so could alternative power if controlled by companies and not small scale projects owned by communities, (for example large scale wind energy farms and hydro-dams that destroy estuaries and river habits.) We must recognise that our current ways of life are completely unsustainable and reliant on the burning of fossil fuels and exploitation of the planet. The natural world can provide us with the resouces we need to sustain our comminuties. What is needed is a radical rethink of our societies to drastically cut our energy consumption.
The dodgy connections between state policy and maintaining control over access to natural and energy resources are clear, throughout history and in their plans for our future. We have a unique opportunity and a global responsibility to act. Not only for our own sakes but for the millions of repressed people, ecosystems and future generations around the planet who can not. We believe that anti-capitalist/state activists, environmentalists, anti war groups and all those committed to a sustainable, socially just world, can work together over the linked issues of oil, war, climate change and use the moment of the G8 summit in the UK to expose the hypocrisy of the government's green rhetoric. We can demand a stop to their plans for new roads, wars over oil, airport expansions and support of the oil, gas and nuclear industries with loans and grants that perpetuate north -south north -east exploitation and neo colonialism.
We are building a network of groups and individuals around the country and hopefully worldwide who can share their inspiration and ideas for concrete plans for action around energy, climate change and oil. Existing ideas for action include a critical mass to Scotland, a mass "call in sick" day for those working in the oil industry and calling for synchronised mass and decentralised actions on energy profiteers in Scotland and around the globe. We see the G8 2005 mobilisation as an opportunity to move beyond symbolic protests against a symbolic summit. We want to take action in the only way that really makes politicians and corporations listen -economically. And we need to take action on this issue before it is too late.
4) Trident Ploughshares G8 Action
Why here, why now?
The rich countries of the world depend on their overwhelming military might to defend and extend the globalisation that allows them to exploit and oppress the poor. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate expression of the militarisation that makes economic globalisation possible.
Britains nuclear weapons - the four Trident nuclear weapon submarines based at Faslane on the west coast of Scotland - have a destructive power 1000 times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. They are used, every day, to threaten the rest of the world, and to defend Britain's "vital economic interests" like oil supplies and shipping lanes. Trident benefits the big multinational corporations who see their investments protected around the world, and also the weapons companies who benefit from big arms contracts.
The British government, and other nuclear weapon states, spend billions every year on nuclear weapons - money that could be better spent on health, education and vital public services.
Come to Faslane for the non-violent direct action on 4th July 2005 and show the G8 leaders that another, nuclear free, world is possible!
Background
The G8 is an annual meeting of the eight most powerful countries in the world (US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, Japan and Russia). The 2005 summit will be held in Gleneagles, Scotland from 6-8th July
This proposal is coming initially from Trident Ploughshares and Scottish CND. We intend to organise an action along these lines but the organising group may be expanded to include other anti-militarist organisations.
The Action
We intend to disrupt the work at Faslane as much as possible, primarily by blockading the entrances during the morning shift change. We also hope that people will try to enter the base, whether by cutting or climbing the fence or by swimming in. More information on how to do this safely and effectively will be available nearer the time.
As a campaign, we are committed to confronting the ultimate violence of nuclear weapons non-violently. We would ask that everyone coming to this action respects and follows a set of guidelines reflecting this. Previous blockades have been based upon the following guidelines. Those used for this action will be very similar and the final version will be published here shortly.
* We are committed to always act in a way that causes no harm to ourselves or others. * Our attitude will be one of sincerity and respect towards the people we encounter. * We will not engage in physical violence or verbal abuse toward any individual. * We will carry no weapons. * We will not bring or use alcohol or drugs other than for medical purposes. * We will clear the blockade to allow emergency vehicles in or out of the base and then resume the blockade afterwards.
This action is still in the early stages of planning. If you would like to know more, to be kept informed of developments or to help make it happen then please do get in touch.
For further information and contact details please visit http://www.tridentploughshares.org/g8/index.php
5) Call to look down on Gleneagles from the Ochil Hills
If the G8 leaders manage to meet in Gleneagles hotel some people will be looking at them from above on the Ochil hills, and laughing at them, with a big day-glow banner or two. Please do join comrades there for friendly encounters on the hills. Let the hills be a weapon free zone.
There will be several group walks in the Ochil Hills in run up to the G8 Summit at Gleneagles if only because there are several routes to explore. But also so various groups of people can get together on with walks promoted to different extents, and in different ways. The walks will be great way for people to interact in run up to G8, already several good comrades who don't go to meetings will be coming for walks in the Ochil hills.
It has been said it is possible to go from Dollar to Glen Devon in 2.5 hours (but allow up to six hours first time). Also when going to Gleneagles over hills one reachs the A9 before Gleneagles.
Routes include Tillicoultry to Blackford (which is on edge of Golf Course) as well as Dollar to Gleneagles or Auchterarder.
The Silver group has an interest in Dollar, there are silver mines in valley we will use to go up into hills. But other groups can will meet elsewhere, especially after checking out various routes in practise.
When it started to get more daylight after spring equinox I will be encouraging more people to come up from afar to come with us walking in the Ochils, and there will be walking arranged and promoted every weekend from then till G8 Summit.
By time of G8 comrades will have well broken in walking boots, waterproofs, flask and other gear of use on them hills.
It is recommend to get a copy of 'SuperWalker' Map of the Ochil hills (1-85137-308-X) from Harvey aps as much more inspiring map than using the Ordnance Survey maps setting whole set of hills much clearer on with Gleneagles at top, and all the Stirling Uni campus and the hillfoots at bottom.
Also we hope to test out and learn various communications methods on the hills, from using simple whistles, and calls, to use of semaphore with flags (bring binoculars), or for few hours of darkness Morse code with with flash lights, as well as CB radio. We sure ensure our communications are good as this can be key to outcome of the day.
The state builds monuments for propaganda purposes - to commemorate their imperialist wars or to feign sympathy for those who died in them, to make their authority appear immutable by parading their past leaders or simply to impose their strength upon the people.
Inspired by the multiple uses of a strip of turf at Mayday 2000 that gave a focus to monuments, we plan to the construct enduring peoples monuments.
One project is to ask those coming around the G8 Summit to bring a pebbles from their area to make new cairns with a few talisman chucked in as well, to celebrate our victory, and foretell the burial of those that govern us.
For those interested in majickal aspect of this and other projects around the G8 then may want to join up with the Pagan Magik Association which grew out of encounters around the ESF in London and others majic clusters evolving more within Scotland.
The People's Golfers are up for going via hills too, though they are saving themselves for the second day of G8 summit as re-enforcements. Do keep a look out for second hand golf clubs at car boot sales they often come up as new players often buy wrong size and have to replace, as well as usually reason for resale.
The practise walking will be one of forums to allow a wide interaction in response to G8 outside confines of the meetings, organisational agenda and process, with both pluses and minuses that entails.
Sometimes transport will be arranged but also many walks start and end points can be accessed via public transport.
small pamphlets of use:
Walks: South Perthsire (Hallewell Publications, 1999, 1-872405-13-4)
Ochil Hills - landscape, wildlife, heritage - an introduction with walks. (from: Lindsay Corbett, Forth Naturalist and Historian, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA).
6) Bike Caravan from Brighton to the G8 Summit
The G8 summit will take place in Gleneagles in July 2005. Thirty years of G8 summits has not brought peace and prosperity but has led to further impoverishment for millions of people, undermined basic democratic rights, destroyed the environment and increased global instability. The G8 cycle caravan is travelling from London to the summit to campaign for human rights and global justice.
Join us on this exciting tour, meeting new people from around the world & having a great time! Get in touch infog8cyclecaravan.org.uk
7) Crea8 Summat! Community Anarchy at the G8
Crea8 Summat plans to co-ordinate teams of activists to work on projects led by the local communities, to make practical differences to local people's lives.
This would be a great example of people from across Europe co-operating at the grassroots level to create a little of the world we want. Project ideas so far include restoring community gardens, clearing out a bunker in Edinburgh for the local kids to use, and cleaning up a local river.
If you are interested this idea, let us know, we will need to know what numbers to expect to co-ordinate the projects.
8) Working Group Against Work: Abolish Labour, Release Your Desires!
Action planned: Set for Monday, 4 July, we will have a mobile party in central Edinbrough that will be making appearances at job centres, bailiffs offices, agencies involved with the imposition of the New Deal and welfare benefits regime, companies exploiting casual and migrant labour. It will climax at one of the palaces of commodity worship - an urban shopping area, with further action.
Background: The 'Working Group Against Work' emerged in October 2004 from a meeting at the Beyond ESF gathering in London. The idea for the group came out of the discussions on unwaged struggles and on resistance to insecure, precarious conditions of work and life. We want to take action at the G8 that grows out of our own day-to-day struggles over work, housing and state-imposed punishments for not working. We aim to find routes of resistance that link our own local and personal resistance to neo-liberal measures into a global refusal of the entire waged labour system, the world of borders and money.
As well as working in the Dissent! network, we aim to network with groups organising around precarity both UK-wide and internationally.
Further possibilities: In Glasgow we met with people involved in local housing, workplace and anti-poverty struggles to talk about ideas and places to "visit". Response has been positive, though nothing has been set just yet.
Other actions over the week can include piquetero-style roadblocks and blockades, free shops, occupations & mass self-reduction activities, action in financial centres. It's worth noting that Diageo, owners of the exclusive Gleneagles hotel and golf complex - site of the G8 meetings - runs a New Deal scheme (a forced labour/work-for-benefits programme started by the Government in 1997) called Tomorrow's People.
Some of these actions haven't been tried before in the UK. But if a lot of people come over and take part, it will give us the numbers and backing to make this break. We welcome a wider involvement to make this a truly international action. This is essential when many of the social cuts and economic repression we've experienced in the UK over 20 years are now about to be imposed on a massive scale throughout Europe (ie. the Hartz laws) and beyond.
Those of us who live in London and the south-east of England are preparing for the G8 Employment Ministers' "mini-summit" in London on 10-11 March. The past ten years has seen unwaged resistance, casualised and migrant workers increasingly marginalised. We want to use the employment ministers' summit to bring people together in opposition, make our refusal to be used as human capital visible and begin to overcome this marginalisation. We will address both work and unwaged resistance with some creative disruption!
Actions are also being planned in Brighton and Bristol to mark the employment ministers' summit.
More information to come...
Contact: dissentagainstworkyahoo.co.uk
To subscribe to our email list: http://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/resistg8-wgaw
9) Global Resistance 2005: A Call to Action
Throughout 2005 the institutions of global capitalism will continue to meet, attempting to manage and bring stability to a system that creates war, famine and destroyed ecologies, whilst removing any sense of humanity from all of our lives.
Over the last years, meetings of the institutions have been fiercely contested by the worlds people, providing much needed spaces for more localised, day to day struggles to converge and realise the possibilities that can be unleashed when we begin to co-operate.
From these mobilisation has emerged a global 'movement of movements' that is in many ways unprecedented.
In 2005, across 4 continents resistance to these summits will continue, attempting to learn from and build upon our collective experiences as a global movement and bring us closer towards creating this other possible world so often talked about.
This call is a result of converging at the Caracol Intergalaktika, International youth camp 5th World Social Forum ( Porto Alegre, Brazil)of people involved in building resistance to the April 2005 International Monetary Fund Meeting (Washington DC) , G8 Summit ( U.K in July), Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA) meeting (in Argentina in November) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial ( in Hong Kong in December).
It is a call for people to support and participate in these mobilisations. To show both political and practical solidarity with those actively resisting the summits, and to organise, and take part in actions coinciding with these events in villages, towns and cities worldwide. Moreover, it is a call for this resistance and these expressions of solidarity to co-ordinate and co-operate amongst themselves, to open up spaces in which we can learn from one another, from our differences as much as our commonalities
Let 2005 be the year in which our resistance becomes truly global!
-Assembly of the Caracol Intergalaktika, Porto Alegre, 2005
10) Resist the G8 // Global Action Callout // Wednesday July 6th 2005
In 1990, the G7 held its meeting in London. It passed by quietly. There were no protests and there were no 'red zones'.
see: The G7 Protests in London 1991
Eight years later, 400 social movements from around the world - under the banner of Peoples' Global Action - co-ordinated local resistance to global problems. In the UK 50,000 people came together to resist the G8 meeting in Birmingham.
In 2005, the G8 returns to the UK.
Since 1998, many summits and conferences have been resisted in every country in which they have attempted to meet. This resistance has successfully delegitimised these institutions and strengthened the movements that attack them.
Global anti-summit mobilisations have linked diverse struggles tackling common issues. These mobilisations have, over time, created a global 'movement of movements', in many respects historically unprecedented.
The Peoples' Global Action Conference in Europe, is calling for a global day of action on Wednesday 6th July 2005 - the opening day of the G8 Summit (to be held at Gleneagles in Perthshire, Scotland). This is a call for people to converge in Scotland to disrupt the conference, and for action to be taken simultaneously in villages, towns and cities world-wide.
Alongside co-ordinated actions this is also a call for groups and movements everywhere to learn from our history and our successes; a call to assess our current strengths; a call to debate and strategise; a call to formulate a global resistance to the heads of the world's most powerful states meeting in Europe next year.
-Final Plenary of the Peoples Global Action in Europe Conference. Belgrade, Post-Yugoslavia June 2004.
More information is available from www.dissent.org.uk and the Peoples' Global Action (PGA) G8 Page: http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/resistg8/index.htm