Copenhagen, January 1st 2010

Something is rotten (but not just) in Denmark. As a matter of fact, thousands of people have been considered, without any evidence, a threath to the society. Hundreds have been arrested and some are still under detention, waiting for judgement or under investigation. Among them, us, the undersigned. We want to tell the story from the peculiar viewpoint of those that still see the sky from behind the bars.

A UN meeting of crucial importance has failed because of several contradictions and tensions that have shown up during the COP15. The primary concern of the powerfuls was the governance of the energy supply for neverending growth. This was the case whether they were from the overdeveloped world, like the EU countries or the US, or from the so-called developing countries, like China or Brazil.

At odds, hundreds of delegates and thousands of people in the streets have raised the issue that the rationale of life must be (and actually is) opposed to that of profit. we have strongly affirmed our will to stop anthropic pressure on the biosphere.

A crisis of the energy paradigm is coming soon. The mechanism of the global governance have proven to be overwhelmingly precarious. The powerfuls failed not only in reaching an agreement on their internal equilibrruim but also in keeping the formal control of the discussion.

Climate change is an extreme and ultimate expression of the violence of the capitalistic growth paradigm. People globally are increasingly showing the willingness of taking the power to rebel against that violence. we have seen that in Copenhagen, as well as we have seen that same violence. Hundreds of people have been arrested without any reason or clear evidence, or for participating in peaceful and legitimate demonstrations. Even mild examples of civil disobedience have been considered as a serious threath to the social order.

In response we ask – What order do we threaten and who ordered it? Is it that order in which we do not anymore own our bodies? The order well beyond the terms of any reasonable “social contract” that we would ever sign, where our bodies can be taken, managed, constrained and imprisoned without any serious evidence of crime. Is it that order in which the decision are more and more shielded from any social conflicts? Where the governance less and less belongs to people, not even through the parliament? As a matter of fact, non-democratic organisms like the WTO, the NB, the G-whatever rule beyond any control.

We are forced to notice that the theater of democracy is a broken one as soon as, one approaches the core of the power. That is why we reclaim the power to the people. We reclaim the power over our own lives. Above all, we reclaim the power to counterpose the rationale of life and of the commons to the rationale of profit. It may have been declared illegal, but still we consider it fully legitimate.

Since no real space is left in the broken theater, we reclaimed our collective power – Actually we expected it – to speak about the climate and energy issues. Issues that, for us, involve critical nodes of global justice, survival of man and energy independence. We did marching with our bodies.

We prefer to enter the space where the power is locked dancing and singing. We would have liked to do this at the Bella center, to disrupt the session in accord with hundreds of delegates. But we were, as always, violently hampered by the police. They arrested our bodies in an attempt to arrest our ideas. we risked our bodies, trying to protect them just by staying close to each other. We value our bodies: We need them to make love, to stay together and to enjoy life. They hold our brains, with beautiful bright ideas and views. They hold our hearts filled with passion and joy. Nevertheless, we risked them. we risked our bodies getting locked in prisons. In fact, what would be the worth of thinking and feeling if the bodies did not move? Doing nothing, letting-it-happen, would be the worst form of complicity with the business that wanted to hack the UN meeting. At the COP15 we moved, and we will keep moving.

Exactly like love, civil disobedience can not just be told. We must make it, with our bodies. Otherwise, we would not really think about what we love, and we would not really love what we think about. It’s as simple as that. It’s a matter of love, justice and dignity.

How the COP15 has ended proves that we were right. Many of us are paying what is mandatory for an obsessive, pervasive and total repression: To find a guilty at the cost of inventing it (along with the crime perhaps).

We are detained with evidently absurd accusations about either violences that actually did not take place or conspiracies and organizing of law-breaking actions.

We do not feel guilty for having shown, together with thousands, the reclamation of the independence of our lives from profit’s rule. If the laws oppose this, it was legitimate to peacefully – but still conflictually – break them.

We are just temporarily docked, ready to sail again with a wind stronger than ever. It’s a matter of love, justice and dignity.

Luca Tornatore – from the Italian social centres network “see you in Copenhagen”.
Natasha Verco – Climate Justice Action
Stine Gry Jonassen – Climate Justice Action
Tannie Nyboe – Climate Justice Action
Johannes Paul Schul Meyer
Arvip Peschel
Christian Becker
Kharlanchuck Dzmitry
Cristoph Lang
Anthony Arrabal

To support our prisoners, visit Cop-enhagen.

As millions come to grips with the claimed agreements emerging from the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, it’s impossible to resist the suspicion that politics can provide no solution to the serious environmental and ecological problems facing the earth.

Despite the absurdity of shout shows which daily disparage global warming, it is a fact that sea ice in the Arctic is melting, as are Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets. This, coupled with melting glacial ice in places like the Himalayas, spells climate change that threatens disaster for millions of people in the region of Bangladesh, and the Indian state of West Bengal.

It means both flooding and drought, increased heat, more disease and the destruction of human habitat.

Politicians, speaking for their nation states, pledge a lessening of carbon emissions by 2020, thereby ignoring the view of many scientists that if all such emissions ceased today, the deleterious effects would be devastating.

Eleven years from now, very few of the politicians making today’s agreement will be in office. As Bush showed, it’s relatively easy to abrogate a treaty obligation — just ignore it.

Politicians are overwhelmingly the hirelings of the corporate class; they often do their bidding, as it is usually them — and only them — who can afford them!

When the Tuvalu Islands, low lying atolls in the South west Pacific, go underwater; when rivers burst their banks in Bangladesh; when drought threatens millions in India and Africa, will we look back at Copenhagen and think, ‘well done?’

I think not.

/Mumia Abu-Jamal

Listen to Mumia’s essay at Prison Radio.

Tack till alla er som med kort varsel slöt upp i onsdagens fackeltåg till danska ambassaden!

För er som inte var där var vi ett åttiotal personer som i snöyran gick från Norrmalmstorg under slagord som Lymmeltåg mot Lymmelpakt, Save The Climate – Change The System eller Vem bryr sig om förmögenhetsskatten, när Bangladesh ligger under vatten. Uppropet för klimaträttvisa och till stöd för de gripna aktivisterna i Köpenhamn lästes upp. Sedan tog flera personer tillfället i akt att berätta om vad de varit med om under klimattoppmötet. Även om de var jobbiga vittnesmål andades de ändå beslutsamhet och pepp. Klimatrörelsen har inte knäckts av Lymmelpakt och polisvåld, snarare kan det här vara början på en mer enad rörelse. Vi avslutade med en gemensam hälsning riktad till danska ambassaden.

Ikväll anordnar Tcktcktck en klimatvaka i Stockholm. Slut upp i den, kräv klimaträttvisa och visa ert stöd för de gripna och häktade klimataktivsterna!

Klimatvaka i Stockholm

Toppmötenas toppmöte går mot sitt slut.

På fredag den 18/12 är det tänkt att COP 15 ska avslutas. Inget tyder idag på att vi kommer att få ett avtal i Köpenhamn, som kan rädda oss undan katastrofala klimatförändringar. Men vi får inta ge upp. Aldrig. It’s not over until it’s over.

Därför genomför Tcktcktck en klimatvaka nu på fredag den 18/12:

16.00 Samling inne på Ekoteket, Kulturhuset. Climate Wall där Stockholmarnas klimatbudskap och klimatkonst presenteras.

16.30 Klimatvaka på Sergels torg med tända ljus och tal. Vem som helst får också chansen att bli symbolisk medborgare i den utrotningshotade ö-nationen Maldiverna.

17.30 Beroende på hur läget ser ut i förhandlinarna beger vi oss till någon ambassad eller någon annan betydelsefull instutition och framför åter våra krav om ett BRA – bindande, rättvist och ambitiöst – klimatavtal.

Klimatkampen tar inte slut för att klimattoppmötet tar slut. Vi måste fortsätta med oförminskad styrka inför kommande toppmöten.

Slutet på COP är början på en enorm klimatrörelse…

Kom på fredag! Sprid gärna facebook-eventet och texten i alla era nätverk!

/Klimataktion & Tcktcktck

Fackeltåg för klimaträttvisa och till stöd för aktivisterna i Köpenhamn som är utsatta för godtyckliga massarresteringar och massivt polisvåld.

Onsdag 16 december kl. 18, samling på Norrmalmstorg, sedan avmarsch till danska ambassaden (Jakobs Torg 1, vid Kungsträdgården).

Under lördagens Global Day of Action, då uppemot hundra tusen aktivister protesterade för klimaträttvisa och mot det havererade klimattoppmötet, frihetsberövade dansk polis 968 personer i godtyckliga massgripanden. De gripna vittnar om hur de fått sitta på den iskalla asfalten i flera timmar med bakbundna händer, utan tillgång till vatten eller läkarvård. Flera kissade på sig och fick sitta i sin urin eftersom polisen förvägrade dem rätten att gå på toalett.

Dagen efter, under demonstrationen Hit the Production, gick polisen oprovocerat till attack och grep fler än 250 personer och tvingade återigen människor att sitta med buntband runt vristerna på marken medan temperaturen låg på två grader. Scenerna var en exakt upprepning av de människorättskränkningar som utspelat sig dagen innan.

Vad händer den 16 december?

I Köpenhamn den 16:e kommer en aktion äga rum som riktar sig mot själva toppmötet. Målet är att störa förhandlingarna och samtidigt öppna upp ett utrymme på deras arena för att där hålla ett Folkrörelsernas möte. Det mötet ska ge röst åt dem som annars inte hörs och utgöra en möjlighet att förändra agendan, att diskutera riktiga lösningar. Efter femton år av förhandlingar utan några allvarligt menade lösningar på klimatkrisen säger vi: Det räcker nu! Inga fler marknadsbaserade lösningar, som bygger på företags girighet och kortsiktig politik och påverkar vår framtid! Nej till kolonialism och rovdrift på ursprungsbefolkningars land!

Slut upp varhelst du befinner dig för att återta makten över vår framtid!
Protestera mot gripandena, mot polisvåldet och mot COP15!

Vi ses på vid Norrmalmstorg kl. 18!
/Climate Justice Action Stockholm (klimataktivister från olika grupper i Stockholm)

Här följer ett upprop alla grupper och privatpersoner är välkomna att skriva under på (mejla cop15 [att] anarkisterna.com eller skriv under på plats under demonstrationen ikväll).

För klimaträttvisa och till stöd för de gripna klimataktivisterna i Köpenhamn!

För närvarande pågår klimattoppmötet COP15 för fullt, mötet som ska fatta besluten som ska förhindra en fullskalig klimatkatastrof. Samtidigt pågår Klimaforum, gräsrotsrörelsernas motsvarighet till politikernas toppmöte, samt dagliga protester och demonstrationer mot COP15 på Köpenhamns gator. Lördagens folkliga demonstration var den största i Danmarks historia, men det var även de massgripanden som polisen genomförde längs vägen.

Ledarna för den rika världen och värdlandet COP15 har inget till övers för den framväxande klimatrörelsen.

Vi är alla lymlar i deras ögon

Namnet på det repressiva lagpaket de hastigt klubbade igenom inför klimattoppmötet i Köpenhamn visar deras inställning till aktivisterna med all önskvärd tydlighet: Lømmelpakken. Från tolv- till nittifyraåringar, från militanta till uttalat ickevåldsliga aktivister: alla är vi lymlar i deras ögon. Potentiella bråkstakar.

Det är den föraktfulla syn politikerna har på oss – och då inte bara på de av oss som möjligen kan tänkas ta till våldsamma metoder. Alla som protesterar mot deras mjäkiga miljöpolitik kan godtyckligt gripas, bakbindas och fängslas i preventivt syfte, för att förhindra ordningsstörningar. Politikerna väljer att behandla politiska protester som rena ordningsfrågor.

På sätt och vis gör det dock konflikten i klimatfrågan synlig; konfliktlinjerna dras upp i all sin tydlighet. På ena sidan står politiker, lobbyister och företag som med polismakt och tillrättalagda lagar vill upprätthålla de rådande missförhållandena. Å andra sidan har vi den framväxande klimatrörelsen; så kallat vanligt folk och autonoma aktivister, forskare och hitresta bönder från Via Campesina som representerar 200 miljoner jordbrukare i Syd, desperata delegater från fattiga länder och andra lymlar.

Och det är alla oss som politikerna på COP15 inte vill veta av.

Det handlar om politik, det handlar om klimatet

För vår agenda är inte deras, den kan inte vara deras. Klimatkrisen är något som de rika länderna har försatt oss alla i, När vi säger att den rika världen måste kompensera den fattiga, svarar de att vi alla sitter i samma båt, när vi säger öppna gränserna för klimatflyktingar, svarar de med hårdare gränskontroller och fler murar, när vi säger drastiskt sänkta utsläpp svarar de ökad ekonomisk tillväxt, när vi säger klimaträttvisa utropar de LYMMEL! De ser miljön som en resurs att utnyttja medan vi ser oss som en del av miljön. Vi har inte samma agenda, vi delar inte samma analys. De säger sig kunna lösa de problem de skapat, medan de förvägrar oss vår röst.

Men vi vet att det enda som kan åstadkomma klimaträttvisa och förhindra klimatkaos är en enad global folkrörelse för klimatet.

Take action in support of the activists in Copenhagen facing a police state on wednesday!

Free all the climate justice Prisoners in Copenhagen!
Stop a police state and a repressive capitalist summit!
For our autonomy on the streets!

Take simultaneous actions on wednesday 16th December.

During the ‘Global Day of Action’ in Copenhagen on Saturday, were up to 100,000 climate justice activists were protesting against the failed UN climate summit, Danish police indiscriminately made a mass arrests of 968 activists. They have expressed severe physical discomfort and have no access to water, medical attention or toilet facilities. Many are reported to have urinated themselves while detained on the ground.

The next day, during the “Hit the Production” demo on Sunday. Without any provocation, the police charged violently at the crowd and began more than 250 arrests, forcing people to sit on the ground in 2 degree temperatures while cuffed. The scenes seem to be an exact repetition of the human rights violations from the day before.

Why the 16th?

In Copenhagen, the 16th will be the day for a mass action at the Summit itself! Our goal is to disrupt the sessions and open a space inside the UN area to hold a People’s Assembly. The assembly will give a voice to those who are not being heard, it will be an opportunity to change the agenda, to discuss the real solutions. After 15 years of negotiations and no real solutions to the climate crisis, we say enough! No more markets based solutions, no to corporate greed and short term politics deciding our future! No to colonialism and the land-grabs taking place in local and indigenous communities!

Join us and take action anywhere you are to reclaim power over our future! Protest against unjust arrests, police violence and capitalist summit.

See you on the streets!
/Climate Justice Action

For the latest news in Copenhagen, go to:

*iCop15.org, a site that gathers feeds, tweets, images and more.
*Climate IMC, the climate indymedia.
*Indymedia Danmark, the Danish indymedia.
*Modkraft, freelance journalism covering Danish activism and more.

Here is a list of the Reclaim Power info meetings, planning meetings, and spokes councils, please forward widely.

Info meetings (introduction to the action aims, consensus and plan, how to get involved and start organising)

Every morning at every convergence space. Ask the people around you – if there isn’t one happening, then organize it!

Block meetings (to organise the different blocks in the action)

Bike Block @ Candy Factory
Fix your bike 12-3pm Monday 14th
Planning and action training 3pm 14th & 15th

Green Block @ Ragnhildgade
Planning meeting at 3pm on the 14th.

Blue Block @ Ragnhildgade
Planning meeting at 4pm on the 14th

Peoples Assembly @ Folketshus
Planning meeting at 4pm on the 14th

Reclaim Power spokes council (two spokes from each block, working group, and large affinity groups to share info, coordinate plans and make decisions if neccesary. All welcome to attend, but recomended that only spokes participate in discussions)

Monday 14th, 8pm @ Ragnhildgade
Tuesday 15th, 7pm @ Ragnhildgade

We will RECLAIM POWER!
/Climate Justice Action

NO BORDERS DAY OF ACTION

Today, 14th of December, is the No Borders Day of Action and in Copenhagen activists march to the ministry of defence. The last days unprovoced mass arrests and police violence, serves to illustrate the importance of connecting the fight for climate justice with the struggle for solidarity with migrants. Here follows the call to action from Climate No Borders.

The debate over climate change and global warming management at the UN is a struggle among the national ruling establishments for their own interests on the international diplomatic stage. While there is concern that climate change can have unforeseen political and economic consequences, these competing capitalist states have no means of seriously addressing the issue, other than making preparations for cracking down on social unrest.

Elites globally have pushed the criminalization of the movement of people for years now. Their latest excuse for this is climate change. They talk about people migrating for survival and better lives as a security threat that justifies border repression and moves towards a more defined global apartheid. Their reckless pursuit of profit has caused the climate crisis, and now they want to criminalize those who are absorbing the effects of their greed.

The military industrial complex is the epitome of their hypocrisy. The majority of wars fought in the last decades have been resource wars fought to secure government and corporations access to the planets resources. Their exploitation of resources is the cause of the climate crisis. Now climate change has joined their wars as the two major causes of forced migration. At the same time, the war machine is the instrument of the criminalization of migration.

In addition, “The Stockholm Programme”, which is set to be passed in december will foster more surveillance of the internet, common access to European police databases and more cross-border police collaboration to fight “illegal migration”. It will force countries outside the EU to take back their citizens who enter the EU without a visa and it will push the use of biometrics and radio-frequency identification (RfiD) and enlargement of the police agency Europol and the EU border watchdog Frontex.

In the face of this, refugees act in defiance of the borders when they move for survival and a better life. They migrate and in doing so refuse to comply with laws that put profit and control above life and dignity.

To counter this act of defiance and hope, governments, corporations and elites foster and promoted racism globally. The COP 15 is another instrument for this. Their definition of a ‘good target’ already displaces hundreds of thousands of people. Their false solutions condemn millions more to suffering to maintain their profits.

It is fitting that Denmark hosts such a conference as COP15. The Danish state actively fostered racism in order to justify the eviction and deportation of the Iraqi’s who occupied a church in Copenhagen for three months earlier this year. But like many of the other governments participating in the COP the Danish elites are not confining their racism to the Danish context. The recent Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen is now the leader of NATO. He has been pushing for ’security crackdowns’ and reinforcement of fortress Europe to prevent migration from places more immediately effected by elite caused climate change. To the NATO alliance an array of threats exist in today’s uncertain world, from terrorism and transnational crime to unrest following food crises, extensive migration to the countries of the NATO alliance and social conflicts as a result of climate change. On a just planet- his job would not exist. The war machine would fold and so would borders.

On December 14th we will take action to create this world. In the context of the COP 15 we will take on the most potent site of their sickness here in Denmark- the Ministry of Defense. We want to breakdown their control, disrupt their surveillance and confront their repression. We will open their offices to the weather they are changing and to the people they lock out. Our action starts at 11am at Rådhuspladsen and will march to the Ministry of Defence!

/Climate No Border

Until recently, anyone who suggested nationalising the banks would have been derided as a ‘quack’ and a ‘crank’, as lacking the most basic understanding of the functioning of a ‘complex, globalised world’. The grip of ‘orthodoxy’ disqualified the idea, and many more, without the need even to offer a counter-argument.

And yet, in this time of intersecting crises, when it seems like everything could, and should, have changed, it paradoxically feels as though very little has. Individuals and companies have hunkered down to try and ride out the crisis. Nationalisations and government spending have been used to prevent change, not initiate it. Anger and protest have erupted around different aspects of the crises, but no common or consistent reaction has seemed able to cohere. We appear unable to move on.

For many years, social movements could meet and recognise one another on the *common ground* of rejecting neoliberalism, society’s old *middle ground* — those discourses and practices that defined the centre of the political field. The crisis of the middle has meant a crumbling of the common.

And what now? Will neoliberalism continue to stumble on without direction, zombie-like?
Or, is it time for something completely different?

The full content of the issue is available online here.

/Turbulence

För en vecka sedan kom äntligen vår tidning “Dealing with Distractions – Confronting green capitalism in Copenhagen and beyond” från tryckeriet.

En liten redaktionsgrupp bestående av några köpenhamnsbor och malmöbor har under hösten satt ihop denna antologi av nyskrivna och gamla texter. Vårt mål var att analysera “klimatkrisen” ur olika antikapitalistiska perspektiv.

Här hittar du den som pdf.

Trevlig läsning!
/COP 15 zine crew

The apocalypse looms like a dark tempest on the horizon. Things are serious now. If we are to get through this Crisis we have to forget all old grudges and past wrongs, leave behind all dissent and rebellious activity, and gather in support of our leaders.
 ”Come,” they smile at us in the green-shimmering full-page advertisements from a future where new technology and new markets have saved the planet, ”only together can we solve this”.

But wait a minute… Their proposal for how we are to be saved from ruin seems sickeningly familiar. Haven’t we heard all this before? What is it they are hiding? What is it they are trying to distract us from?

As the faith in the proposed future crumbles, an increasingly clear line is becoming visible between those that believe that a solution is possible within the capitalist system, and those that don’t. While the world is shaken by crises, a growing number of people on the earth can be found on the side of those doubting the current structures of power and capital. When this zine goes to press, preparations are in full swing on both sides for the next big event in this drama: The 15th Conference Of the Parties of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, better known as the COP15.


The crowd preparing to oppose the summit is a diverse bunch. The Climate Crisis seems to have opened the possibility of uniting a broad range of struggles against capitalism: from indigenous peoples to workers unions, from the landless to the european autonomous, from climate campers to youth from the suburbs of the metropolis, from anti-industrialists to anarcho-syndicalists. Just as big is the scope of the strategies, tactics and dreams.

The radical class struggle movements have just recently started to join in. In spite of the division between them and the environmental oriented movements, it´s getting more and more clear that whoever wants to have any influence on the upcoming development of the future needs to start addressing the topic.

By putting together this zine, we wanted to look for the connections: What common interests can we find faced with the ”Climate Crisis”? How can it be understood in the context of the Capitalist system? How will the changes to the climate and the proposals at the COP15 influence our fighting and living conditions in the future? And the inevitable question: How can the devastation be stopped?

Some of these articles were written specifically for this zine, while others have been printed elsewhere. Some authors are well known, others wish to remain nameless. We hope that you find the following texts thought-provoking and inspiring.

See you in the streets!

ABC Stockholm bjuder in till infokväll om danska lagar söndag 29/11 kl. 15:00 på Kafé 44.

Det mesta du kan tänkas behöva veta inom aktivistjuridik inför en lyckad resa till COP15. Du kan redan nu skicka in dina frågor. Skicka dom helt enkelt till abc-stockholm [kanelbulle] anarkisterna.com så hinner vi kolla upp svaret och kan presentera det på infokvällen.

Varmt välkommen!
/ABC Stockholm

Söndagen den 29 november är det ett år sedan Cyklopen brann. Vi minns huset och vägen dit men framförallt blickar vi framåt och pratar om hur vi ska gå tillväga framöver. Hur ska vi stoppa Disneyifereringen av Stockholm? Vad är ett frirum och hur kan vi skapa dem? Hur kan vi lära av varandras kamper?

En heldag på Kafe44, Tjärhovsgatan 46, Stockholm. Mer information på Kulturkampanjen.