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.on Copenhagen
Despite the unexpected level of police repression at the Climate Summit
demonstrations in Copenhagen, Denmark, thousands of protesters kept up the
fight for ten days of action against the bankrupt United Nations climate
conference, COP15, at the end of 2009. With this newsletter we take a look
back at what happened.
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**Contents
*1. Organising
*2. Police Repression
*3. Actions
*4. Alternative Summit
*5. Official Summit Outcome
*6. Trade → Climate Caravan
*7. Moving Forward
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*1. Organising:
With the COP15 being a conference on climate change, and a United Nations
one at that, there was some concern that mobilisation would be difficult.
The UN is the most democratic forum we have for global decision making...
right? How else will we deal with the problem of climate change... right?
Actually, the UN is half of the problem. By legitimising and justifying
massive corporate influence on government decisions and the continued and
increasing exploitation of common natural and human resources, the UN
climate summits are doing exactly the opposite of solving climate change.
They are legitimising ways of making it worse, and earning lots of money
in the process.
Many groups began planning and mobilising more than a year in advance -
since September 2008 - and a new international network was created exactly
for this purpose - Climate Justice Action (CJA).
Climate Justice Action (CJA) was a very broad network made up of groups
ranging from the explicitly anti-capitalist and direct action based Rising
Tide through to policy-heads such as Carbon Trade Watch, southern NGOs
like Jubilee South who facilitated the participation of indigenous groups
such as Filipino fisherfolks, and well-established global networks like
Via Campesina. Making any kind of decision with all these groups in one
room was always going to be a challenge (though most of those who could
attend the meetings were based in Europe), but over the course of 16
months the network reached consensus on a call-out, set of goals,
principles of unity and agreed to support a whole series of actions.
The Klima Kollectiv was the local on-the-ground group, formed in response
to the need for logistical preparations (such as sleeping spaces,
convergence centres, food, info points etc). But it grew into a climate
action group that also organised its own actions and is continuing to be
active on climate issues post-COP15.
Street-medics, legal support teams, action kitchens, alternative media and
tech collectives, people with practical skills and others with corporate
media skills came from across Europe to contribute to the practical and
logistical organisation of the protests. Several local groups were
reinvigorated and stepped-up for the mobilisation, including Copenhagen
Activist Trauma Support (CATS), the local prisoner support group, and the
legal team Rusk who provided legal advice in the run-up to the summit and
support for the thousands of people who were arrested throughout the
fortnight.
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*2. Police Repression:
Police repression in Copenhagen began months before the summit began. A
new law package, called 'Lømmelpakken.' was pushed through the Danish
parliament in the lead-up to the summit. The law turned acts that
previously resulted in a fine into crimes causing unconditional prison
terms, and criminalised people for being simply in the area of
'disturbances' for 'contributing to the atmosphere'. The new law also
permitted the police to pre-emptively arrest people...a power which they
used and abused massively throughout the climate conference.
....................
Border Controls
In advance of the summit, Danish police had already issued warnings about
border controls that would restrict people from entering the country. They
publicly announced a 'black book' of activists who would be stopped and
turned away at the border, angering many people at the repression of
freedom of speech (http://indymedia.dk/articles/1422). True to their word,
Danish Police stopped and searched many of the coaches bringing people
from across Europe to demonstrate their dissent, forcing people to empty
their bags and searching their belongings before any crime (whatever that
means these days) might even have been considered -
(http://indymedia.dk/articles/1457)
....................
Raids
Many people began arriving from the first days of December to help prepare
the convergence spaces and sleeping halls. There was much practical
building and maintenance work to be done to make the giant halls warm and
liveable for the thousands of people who would be coming. Despite the
majority of people not arriving before 10th December, and despite the
spaces being legally rented from the local municipality, Danish police
raided both big convergence spaces – 'Teglehomlen' on 4th and
'Ragnhilsgade' on 9th December – even without a warrant. At the second
raid police took everything from work tools to banners and placards and
even stole all the public meeting notes, practical information and task
rotas from the notice boards in the No Borders Cafe.
Police raids activist housing - http://indymedia.dk/articles/1398
Police Search Ragnhildsgade Sleeping Space -
http://indymedia.dk/articles/1432
Another Police Raid on Climate Campaigners -
http://indymedia.dk/articles/1450
Report from the raid at Ragnhildgade - http://indymedia.dk/articles/1448
Activists: Police out of proportion - http://indymedia.dk/articles/1443
Picture before and under the accomodation raid -
http://indymedia.dk/articles/1446
....................
Arrests
During the ten days of protest there were over 1800 arrests in a shocking
demonstration of the UN's war on dissent. Seven people continue to face
serious charges of conspiracy, despite the entire summit mobilisation
having been organised on an entirely non-hierarchical and open basis.
Solidarity demonstrations took place and continue to happen at Danish
embassies across Europe, and there is a further callout for solidarity
demonstrations at Danish embassies on 16th March to coincide with the
court dates of two defendants.
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*3. Actions:
The fortnight of the summit was an action-packed time, with even some
tension in the lead-up between activists who demanded 'action action
action!' and others who wanted to create space for political discussions
and network-building on the streets. The actions began with Don't Buy the
Lie on Friday 11th December, a hit-and-run game of target-tag with
activists receiving info via telephone and text message on an action-map
of corporate offices to strike with invasions, occupations and noise
disruptions. The arrests began immediately.
....................
This was followed on Saturday 12th with a march of over 100,000 people
through the streets of Copenhagen in the annual Global Day of Action,
mirrored by marching in cities across the world. In a dramatic
demonstration of escalating police repression of dissent, over 900
demonstrators were arrested in a pre-emptive mass-kettle halfway through
the march, with police randomly cutting off a section of the 'System
Change Not Climate Change' block and re-routing the rest of the march
around it. Those arrested were made to sit on the ground in lines for over
5 hours, without access to food, water or toilets, and then held in cages
overnight, causing outrage from protesters and media-outlets over the
inhuman treatment of those who show dissent (even by just marching!).
Despite over 900 arrests on this day, no one was charged.
....................
Not deterred by the repressive policing, Sunday 13th was the day to Hit
The Production - a mass action to shut down the harbour of Copenhagen as a
symbol of global capitalism and key hub for the transportation of goods
from production in the south to consumption in the north. Over 200 people
gathered to march to the harbour with the intention of blockading the
entrances. Immediately surrounded by police, demonstrators were eventually
outnumbered by police. Police stormed the sound van and arrested everyone
in sight, again in a pre-emptive strike. Despite this fiasco, word got
around that the 24/7 harbour had actually stopped work for the
day....meaning that even without reaching their target, the protest had
succeeded in achieving it's stated aim.
....................
Monday 14th was No Borders day. Again in a show of pre-emptive aggression,
police raiding Ragnhildgade a few days before had stolen many of the
banners and placards painted for the demonstration. Undeterred, over 1,500
protesters met at Israel Plads in the morning for a march to the Danish
Ministry of Defence.
....................
Also on Monday 14th Tar Sands activists targeted the Canadian Embassy. The
protest was called by the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Rainforest
Action Network, the Council of Canadians, the Indigenous Peoples Power
Project, and UK Tar Sands Group to protest about the planet's most
destructive industrial project, which is destroying the habitat and
culture of Canadian First Nations peoples whilst tipping Canada's carbon
footprint completely over the edge.
....................
Whilst this was all happening, news emerged from the climate summit that
the talks had broken down. Unsurprisingly, the BBC reported that the
"negotiations at the UN Climate Summit have been suspended after
developing countries withdrew their co-operation," ignoring the G77 chief
negotiator Lumumba Di-Aping who explained the latest development with the
following statement: "The president of the COP (Danish climate minister
Connie Hedegaard) is absolutely committed to violate any democratic
processes".
....................
On the evening of Monday 14th the Reclaim Power Party turned into a
stand-off between protesters and police, resulting finally in a dramatic
police invasion and occupation and mass-tear-gassing of Free-town
Christiania and the arrest of 196 people. Seemingly the police were trying
to wear down street-level opposition through constant offensive action
against activists.
....................
Tuesday 15th December was agriculture action day with Via Campesina, ASEED
and others organising a Resistance is Ripe! demo and info-evening to
highlight the energy and emissions intensive farming practices and in
support of peasant access to land, the abolishment of the agro-export
model of food production and the scaling down of industrial agriculture
(http://indymedia.dk/articles/1393).
....................
Reclaim Power, the mass direct action organised by Climate Justice Action
began early in the morning of December 16th, with affinity groups joining
different blocs based on their choice of tactics. The blocs were decided
in big preparations assemblies that took place in Ragnhildgade every
evening running up to the action. The blue bloc met at a metro station
nearby the Bella Centre to carry the People's Assembly on a pre-arranged
route up to and over the fences which surrounded and excluded people from
the United Nations Summit. The green bloc was made up of autonomous
affinity groups who would try to get into the summit grounds from all
different directions across the fields that surrounded it. Unfortunately
this group made the minor error of also choosing to announce a starting
point for the morning of the action. The bike bloc, working out of the
Candy Factory all week, repaired all kinds of shapes and sizes of bikes,
to be used in any way possible to evade or distract police, pass messages
between groups and blocs, or defend moving targets from attack. The inside
bloc organised to disrupt the proceedings from the inside, gathering
people together for a mass-exodus from the Bella Centre to join the
People's Assembly outside.
In the end the action felt disappointing for most people involved. The
police had all blocs surrounded from the start, and they made plenty of
use of their pepper spray and batons to keep people away from the summit.
Communications and decision-making structures hadn't been thought through
very well, so when things didn't go according to plan, there wasn't an
agreed way to make changes and communicate them. One heroic affinity group
on the blue bloc had prepared a floating bridge to get across the small
river between the roadside and the Bella Centre! The inside-bloc were
threatened with arrest repeatedly on their way out of the Bella Centre and
towards the People's Assembly, and then beaten with batons and charged
from both sides by police who trapped them on a bridge near to the blue
bloc. The two blocs were close enough to shout at each other across the
river surrounding the conference centre, but police heavy lines would not
let them meet. Eventually with many arrests made, the blue bloc improvised
a People's Assembly where they were surrounded by police just outside the
fence surrounding the Bella Centre.
http://indymedia.dk/articles/1894
http://indymedia.dk/articles/1893
....................
Exhausted and repressed, but not deterred, activists organised one final
demonstration on Friday 18th December. The 'Free Political Prisoners'
solidarity march began with sound trucks blaring tracks of resistance and
the now familiar array of Dutch, German, Swedish and Danish police
vehicles in tow. Many more people than anyone expected came out to
demonstrate against the escalated police repression of dissent around a
supposedly democratic United Nations meeting.
....................
As well as all the street-level actions outside and against the summit, a
number of groups who had gained accreditation participated in actions
inside, creating something of a circus atmosphere in the public areas with
colourful and noisy demonstrations several times a day. Actions inside the
Bella Centre were done by Avaaz, Via Campesina, the Yes Men, and FOE
international (who were eventually banned for unauthorised clapping in a
noisy demonstration which involved lots of people dressed in blue
rain-macs clapping in chorus to symbolise the ticking of the climate
clock).
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*4. Alternative Summit:
KlimaForum09 was an alternative civil-society summit to create space for
NGO and grassroots politics outside of the Bella Centre. Supported by a
range of small and medium NGOs, it put on a programme of 202 debates, 70
exhibitions, 43 films, 16 concerts and 11 plays from all over the world.
Throughout the fortnight of the official summit, the KlimaForum process
created an alternative Declaration to counter the corporate-biased one
that would inevitably be produced by the UN proceedings. See the
Declaration here: http://www.klimaforum09.org/Declaration.
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*5. Official Summit Outcome:
On Friday, December 18, the final day of the conference (the conference
finished late, on Saturday, December 19), the Copenhagen Accord emerged.
The two-and-a-half-page text does not provide for any emission reduction
targets for developed countries after 2012 (when the current Kyoto
Protocol expires). Individual countries may volunteer reduction targets,
but there is nothing to bind them.
The Accord sets a goal for developed countries to contribute U.S.$100
billion annually by 2020 towards developing country climate funds. This
non-binding goal gives no guarantees... and everyone knows that developed
countries rarely, if ever, deliver promised funds. A proportion of the
money is already planned to come from carbon markets - see
http://eyfa.org/carbontrading on why this is very bad. Developing
countries themselves will also be expected to contribute to the pot. On
top of this, the money comes based on the condition that developing
countries also start to reduce their emissions (erm..what emissions?!)
The Accord stabs in the back more than 100 countries which have demanded a
maximum temperature rise of 1.5°C by including only a reference, in the
very last sentence, to the possibility of discussing this sometime in the
future. The process through which the Copenhagen Accord emerged has been
compared to a WTO-style "super green room" process, in contrast to the
supposedly open, inclusive proceedings at the UN.
During the final session of the COP, at about 3 in the morning on Saturday
19th, the Danish prime minister introduced the Accord as a done deal. Four
hours earlier Obama had announced to the world that a deal had been made
and that "most of the text has been completely worked out." He then left
to go back to Washington to avoid a snow storm. The Bolivian ambassador,
noting that the Bolivian delegation had learned about the Accord through
the media, asked, "Why have we not discussed this document before and why
are we given 60 minutes to look at this document now, which will decide
the lives of our people... This document does not respect two years of
work and our people's rights are not respected, so we cannot endorse this
document which is by a small group that think they can take the
opportunity to impose on us."
The U.S. and the U.K. tried to hold back climate funding from developing
countries who do not accept the Accord, but in the end parties to the
UNFCCC agreed to merely "take note" of the text rather than to adopt
it...the conference neither accepted nor approved the Accord. Because a
small number of developing countries were able to stop the Accord from
being adopted by the COP, the U.S. and other big players complained about
the difficulties of staying within a consensus process, despite the fact
that they have been happy to use the same consensus process in the past to
block advancement of anything not in their own best (profitable)
interests.
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*6. Trade → Climate Caravan:
From December 3-9 more than 60 activists from the Global South travelled
across Europe from the WTO Trade Summit in Geneva to the COP15 Climate
Summit in Copenhagen. Their intention was to highlight the close relation
between trade politics and the climate crisis. The purpose of the caravan
was it to enable voices from the South to have their say in the current
debates about trade and climate. With public events, workshops and actions
the representatives of movements from the South showed how climate change
and trade liberalisation affect their lives and how they struggle against
it. The caravan travelled on two routes, one through France and Belgium, a
second through Germany – crossing the border into Denmark together on the
9th December to a warm welcome party in Christiania.
Social and Justice Climate Caravan Begins - http://indymedia.dk/articles/1394
Caravan from WTO to COP15 - https://publish.indymedia.dk/articles/1316
First Stop of the "Climate-Justice Caravan" (east) -
http://indymedia.dk/articles/1399
Fourth stop of the Climate Caravan (west) Brussels -
https://publish.indymedia.dk/articles/1455
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*7. Moving Forward:
At the end of the 10-day long protest in Copenhagen, exhausted activists
got together to evaluate the actions and the process, and discuss 'where
next from here?'. The next meetings of the Europe-based Climate Justice
movement will take place in Amsterdam from 27-28 February, and then during
the Bonn Climate Summit (COP15.5) from May 29-30, with Monday May 31st
dedicated to discussing what 'climate justice' means in a European
context.
To join the international CJA email list send an email to
climate09-int-subscribe[at]lists.riseup.net
* * * * ** * * * ** * * * ** * * * ** * * * *
**Published electronically by EYFA**
* * * * ** * * * ** * * * ** * * * ** * * * *
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