What’s happening: Real Media/PMC newsletter #6

Real Media and Phoenix Media Co-op have teamed up to release a regular newsletter. We collectively seek to provide bold, accurate, accessible journalism which is unashamedly internationalist and subversive. At the centre of this is covering the work of people in the UK and globally who are forging a better world, largely by organising against marginalisation, oppression and destruction.

Climate protest at Lord Mayor’s Show

The Lord Mayor’s Show was in London on Saturday 13 November. Despite high security, activists from Extinction Rebellion managed to disrupt the event several times. They also infiltrated the procession with a float of their own under the guise of “The Physical Society”, and spoofing the BBC as they stopped their vehicle, unveiled banners and placed a drowning head on the ground.

More than a hundred activists also managed to block the procession on Fleet Street and protested from within the security barriers as the Lord Mayor and other dignitaries passed by. The return route along the Embankment was held up for nearly an hour as several protesters sat in the road.

You can see more coverage of these protests in this week’s round-up.

Alternative remembrance

On Sunday 14 November, people laid white poppy wreaths across the UK. The Peace Pledge Union, which organises and distributes white poppies, said they “represent remembrance for all victims of war of all nationalities, along with a commitment to peace and a rejection of militarism”. It also explained that “White poppy wearers held Alternative Remembrance Ceremonies in cities including London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Brighton and Derry/Londonderry as well as many smaller towns”. And it added that “The number of shops and other outlets selling white poppies has more than doubled in the last five years and more schools are now making white poppies available alongside red poppies”.

Huda Ammori, co-founder of the Palestine Action group (which has made waves this year with its regular direct actions against Israeli arms company Elbit), spoke at the alternative ceremony in Tavistock Square, London.

Hamit Dardagan, from Iraq Body Count (which “maintains the largest public database of violent civilian deaths since the 2003 invasion”), also spoke at the National Alternative Remembrance Ceremony:

One attendee who is usually prevented from visiting London due to “his direct action against the arms trade”, meanwhile was able to go, thanks to “an exemption from bail conditions”.

Insulate Britain

Nine protesters from the Insulate Britain direct action climate movement were summoned to the High Court this morning for breaching the terms of a wide-ranging injunction designed to prevent continued disruption on the M25, but which extends its reach to the entire strategic road network and ill-defined “adjoining roads”. They faced contempt of court charges that could result in unlimited fines, seizure of assets and up to two years imprisonment. A solidarity action at the High Court has been called by Extinction Rebellion next Saturday at noon.

See full coverage in this week’s round-up show.

Other actions 

• Israeli human rights group B’Tselem released a report insisting that settler violence in Palestinian territories occupied by Israel “is a form of government policy, aided and abetted by official state authorities with their active participation”. It stressed that “settlers are not defying the state; they are doing its bidding”.
• Authorities evicted two environmental campaigners from an underground tunnel protest on a site of the controversial HS2 high-speed rail line in Buckinghamshire. The activists had been resisting eviction for around a month.
• Equality Labs, a global anti-caste movement, condemned the human rights abuses that the BAPS Hindu sect was accused of carrying out across its sites in the US. The religious organisation, which has sites across the world including the Neasden temple in London, was accused of subjecting Dalits and other marginalised communities to immigration abuses and forced labour.
• London Renters Union (LRU) announced “successful bailiff eviction resistance” on 11 November, with organised LRU members in Wandsworth successfully negotiating re-housing for a tenant.
• Protesters opposing a deportation flight blocked access away from the Brook House immigration removal centre in Gatwick on 9 November. Some of the people targeted for deportation had grown up in the UK.
• In Germany, people took to the streets to stand in solidarity with refugees currently on the border between Poland and Belarus who had fled war and poverty in their home countries.
• People in Bristol held a fundraiser on 11 November to support the four defendants whom authorities have targeted in connection with the mass efforts to topple the city-centre statue of slave trader Edward Colston back in June 2020.

 

That’s all for this week, but please let us know of any stories and issues you’d like to see more of, and remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel and check out our Wednesday evening shows (UK time).