National day of action against coal finance

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) turned out thousands of activists in more than 50 cities across the U.S. today to protest Citi and Bank of America’s investments in new coal-fired power plants and dirty coal extraction methods such as mountaintop removal coal mining. RAN is pressuring the two banks to divest from coal and invest in renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.

SDS: Military shipments contained by 39 women at Port of Olympia

“To update folks: as 39 women blockaded the port of olympia, a soldier from ft. lewis approached the gate and asked the protesters if one of them could give him a ride home since he was refusing to drive the military vehicles out of the port. He said “fuck this, I’m not going to kill anybody anymore.” and got a ride back to the Fort.”

-anonymous, email to NW SDS listserv

Military Shipments Contained by 39 Women at Port of Olympia

http://tacomasds.org/node/207
Posted November 14th, 2007 by Anonymous

OLYMPIA, WA – At 9:00 pm on November 13th the continued campaign to end the militarization of Olympia’s port reached a crescendo tonight when nearly 40 women contained military equipment at the Port of Olympia. The women chanted, “No force is necessary, we are non-violent, no weapons on our bodies, we are non-violent,” linked arms, and placed their bodies in the road blocking the main gate as Olympia Police moved in in full riot gear. Shizuno Wynkoop, one of the women on the frontline said, “I went to the port tonight in solidarity with women globally who struggle to stop human rights abuses and to support soldiers by keeping them home with their families instead of sent off to war.” After the women were taken away, another blockade formed, and police used pepper spray and dragged protesters out of the streets. Demonstrator Noah Sochet reported, “As Strykers left the north gate nearly a hundred people rushed down Marine Drive to block them. Demonstrators ran in front of the vehicles, blockaded them and immediately police used concussion grenades and pepper bullets on the crowd.” Matt McVay, videographer from The Olympian newspaper, was shot directly in the face with a pepper bullet. This is the third Olympian worker to be assaulted by the police. The Olympian has yet to report on the assaults on its own workers.

The women are slowly being released with numerous other demonstrators at the Olympia City Jail. Olympia Port Militarization Resistance is calling for regional support on Saturday, Nov. 17th at 1:00pm in Olympia, Washington. The gathering begins at Percival Landing on the corner of 4th Avenue and Water Street and will end at the Port Plaza. Supporters can contact olypmr@riseup.net for more information.

Contact:

Annamarie Murano
(360)878-1401

Noah Sachet
(360)918-8663

Novemeber 14, 2007

Women demand voice in climate debate

WOMEN DEMAND VOICE IN CLIMATE DEBATE

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/092107WB.shtml
By Haider Rizvi
Inter Press Service
Thursday 20 September 2007

United Nations – Calls for increased participation of women in policy-making decisions are on the rise as world leaders prepare to attend an international meeting on climate change to be held at U.N. headquarters next week.

Most governments have largely failed to consider the gender aspects of climate change, women leaders representing numerous civil society groups told reporters at a news conference Thursday.

“This business as usual is not acceptable,” said Rebecca Pearl of the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), “because women are suffering more than men in all the calamities.”

In an attempt to influence the outcome of the meeting called by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Pearl’s group has organised a similar event, billed as “the first ever global gathering of high-level government, U.N. and civil society organisations” on the problem of climate change.

The roundtable talks scheduled for Friday are to be led by former Irish president Mary Robinson and ex-Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. Both are highly admired by the international community for their relentless efforts to advance the global agenda on human rights and the environment.

“The purpose of the roundtable is to ensure that the impacts of climate change on women and their roles in curbing it are reflected in the outcome of the secretary-general’s event,” said June Zeitlin, executive director of WEDO, an international network of hundreds of women’s groups worldwide that works closely with the world body.

“It is part of our campaign to ensure that national and global response to climate change consider women’s perspectives and concerns,” she added in a statement.

Numerous studies show that when natural disasters and weather changes take place, they affect men and women differently because, in most cases, their roles and responsibilities are based on inequalities.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which consists of more than 1,000 leading scientists, the impact of climate change “will fall disproportionately upon developing countries and the poor persons within all countries.”

“But who are the poorest among those poor persons?” asked Ulla Strom, the Swedish envoy to the U.N., at the news conference. “The women.”

It would be wrong to assume that women in poor countries are the only ones who are disproportionately affected by swift environmental changes, said Zeitlin.

“This is even true in industrialised countries,” she added. “In the U.S., Hurricane Katrina entrenched poor African American women, already the most impoverished group in the nation, in deeper levels of poverty.”

A study by researchers at the London School of Economics last year analysing disasters in 141 countries provided evidence that gender differences in deaths from natural disasters are directly linked to women’s economic and social rights. In other words, gender inequalities are magnified in disaster situations.

In Zeitlin’s view, poor women living in developing countries face even greater obstacles. And despite numerous international agreements calling for equal participation of women, they remain excluded from decision-making in many countries.

“The participation of women is almost absent,” said the World Conservation Union’s Lorena Aguilar, who has published several books on gender and environment and public policy involving equality issues.

Citing a recent U.N. survey of environmental ministries, Pearl said that there are only four or five countries engaged in climate change activities that incorporate gender perspectives and concerns.

In December, the U.N. will hold a summit on climate change in Bali, Indonesia. According to U.N. officials, the reason the secretary-general has convened Monday’s summit is to build momentum for a successful outcome at Bali, with a more comprehensive agreement on deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions beyond the year 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol treaty expires.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) requires member countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels.

Last month, the U.N. held another international meeting on climate change in Vienna, which failed to produce any concrete agreement as many of the world’s most industrialised countries shied away from fixing strict guidelines for greenhouse gases cuts.

At the meeting, a draft text dropped a demand that developed nations should be “guided” by a need for deep cuts in greenhouse gases of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 in the long-term efforts to combat global warming.
Many developing countries, such as India and China, want industrial countries to use the stringent 25-40 percent range to guide future negotiations, leading to less dependence on fossil fuels, which are considered largely responsible for global warming.

Many environmental groups criticised the Vienna meeting for its failure to produce tangible results and called it a “disaster for humanity’s future”.

For their part, women activists see the ongoing negotiations on climate change as more narrowly focused negotiations on emission reductions, rather than social concerns and community well-being.

“Ban Ki-moon should send a strong message that gender equality is to be integrated in Bali,” representatives of WEDO, the Council of Women World Leaders and Heinricthe h Boll Foundation said in a joint declaration.

“Women’s knowledge and contribution has been critical to the survival of entire communities in disaster situation,” they said, urging governments to implement all international agreements relating gender equality and climate change.

One Movement: Power Shift, Step It Up, 1Sky

SDS, SEAC youth shut down Capitol Hill to demand end to war and global warming

On October 22nd, dozens of SDS youth, along with members of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) shut down Capitol Hill to demand an end to War and Global Warming! Youth occupied the streets of Independence Avenue, locked arms, and were later arrested while chanting, “Resistance – is forming! No War – No Warming!”

See more pictures here.

Climate activists shut-down Citibank in DC

This Die-in successfully shut down a Citibank branch in Washington DC, with no arrests.

National day of action against Citibank and Bank of America
November 16-17

A movement is born

The Campus Climate Challenge throughout 2006-2007. A movement in the making, born in a time when it is needed most.