Blockade Australia gave a press conference at 2.30pm today at Pyrmont Bay Park
Media liaison Zelda Grimshaw said:
“Exactly one year ago, NSW police tried to smash our network with a highly repressive ‘strategic incapacitation’ operation at Colo and subsequently in Sydney.
Today we have come back, like the hydra, threefold.
You cannot decapitate the climate movement.
You cannot solve climate breakdown with jail sentences and anti-protest legislation.
We are committed to resisting the destructive machinery of Australian exploitation and extraction.
We are growing in number and in determination.
Blockade Australia is here for ecosystems, not empire, and we will stay the distance.”
Brad Homewood, 51, who blocked the port of Melbourne today on a monopole, said:
“This system is doing exactly what it was set up to do, extract and exploit with a callous disregard for all forms of life. You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it, we can’t vote our way out of this mess, the system cannot fix the system.”
“I’m taking action with Blockade Australia because the Australian system and it’s institutions are a core part of the problem.”
Raffi, 22, suspended herself from a bipole to shut down the Newcastle coal port at the same time. Raffi said:
“Everyday people are feeling disenfranchised and disempowered. We’re breaking that down by building a resistance movement that disrupts pinch-points in this destructive machine. We all have the power to disrupt and transform the colonial project, known as “Australia”.”
Jem, 23, who closed the port of Brisbane this morning, said:
“The writing has been on the wall for a very long time, that the functioning of Australia is causing climate collapse… 98% of the trade on this continent happens through ports. The cargo and quantities that go through these ports represent the mass destruction and over-consumption of land and people. Australia’s destruction of ecosystems and gluttonous consumption can be represented by the current function of these ports.”
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Thank you for putting your necks on the line for those of us not quite so courageous.
If those 3 dopes could show a bit of patience they would see resource restrictions are in the pipeline.
Call it a big ‘energy haircut’, or a return to a pre-industrial lifestyle, the UN is all over it:
Commuters on the Port of Brisbane motorway were subject to extended delays over two days and emergency service vehicles had to be re-routed.
Very little sympathy or support for this type of dislocation – perhaps demonstrations at the state parliament precinct would be more productive and less disruptive.
Just saying !
Yes we all understand the problems, and that’s why, in a structured way, massive and complex actions are being enacted to change the energy and industrial infrastructure without shutting down industry. Infrastructure and services which if shut down would quickly bring on mass starvation and widespread death.
It would appear that some protest by unthinking aggressive absolutists can lead to the embedment of hypocrisy. For example, in this instance, communicating via the internet. Seems to be a pinch-point that they care to ignore for their own convenience.
The internet! A growing global service, which by its operational structure is impossible for users to claim they’re only using it locally. A service that used about 800 terrawatt hours of electricity (2022), by 2025 estimated to be about 20% of all electricity demand worldwide, and set to double by 2030. It produces about 3.7% of all global carbon emissions (more than all combined air travel), and is growing by about 9% per annum.
Attitude …. also just saying.
That said, around the world and here in Oz, the attacks on freedom of peaceful protest and assembly are being assailed, and criminalised. The ALP and Albanese are no exception. Undemocratically, they haven’t left any middle ground enabling us to hear the ‘noise’ we should be free to hear.
More attitude, perhaps worser.
I am with you Dance of the cuckoos I would cheer, if they glued themselve to the exits of parliament house, garage included, so the pollies would be locked in. I did hear, from the rabbottians, at the golf club, that when that happened in germany, the police cut up a square of the road under their hands and arrested the protesters with the road attached.
The golf boys were also happy with the treatment of the protesters who glued their hand to workshop machinery and the workers locked up the shed and went home for the weekend.
German laws on safety must be more relexed???