Direct Action workshop

mayo | environment | event notice Sunday June 12, 2011 22:11 by rossport solidarity camp rossportsolidaritycamp at gmail dot com aughoose, co.mayo 0851141170

Come up for a weekend of direct action training, meet the community and see this incredible place.

If you came up for the Party Against the Pipe festival, this is a great chance to get more involved in the campaign.

If you have ever wanted to take action and be part of the campaign, the time is now! All welcome, open to complete beginners-no experience necessary. Please try to arrive by the evening of Friday 24th if possible.

We are running direct action trainings here and around the country for people who want to take part in safe and effective protests. The training is aimed at complete beginners, covering your legal rights and different methods of protesting.

Get in touch if you would like us to give a direct action workshop in your area.

Food will be cooked communally, donations welcome.

Accommodation is available in the camp house or book in to the lovely Kilcommon lodge hostel http://www.kilcommonlodge.ie

The Shell to Sea campaign has successfully used direct action for the last 11 years to frustrate, delay and try to stop Shell's destructive project. We take direct action because the Government has failed us and the authorities that are supposed to protect communities and the environment have refused to act. So we have no choice but to protect it ourselves. We also take action to inspire other communities to do the same. Whether it's stopping Shell illegally drilling in a Special Area of Conservation or blocking the trucks carrying building materials for this experimental and dangerous project, using direct action works! So come along & get prepared...

Shell's Corrib Gas Project is already decade late and 3 times over budget - impressive for a rural community fighting one of the biggest multinationals in the world!

There is a huge global history of direct action campaigns. Martin Luther King and Gandhi symbolise the most well known campaigns but there have been thousands of successful direct action campaigns in our history. Direct action was used during the anti-war campaign at Shannon airport, in the civil rights marches, during the amazing anti-nuclear campaign at Cansore Point and also to kick out dirty industries such as Raytheon, Merrell Dow and Raybestos Manhattan.

The Rossport Solidarity Camp has guidelines which state that all actions must be agreed by consensus at the camp. Direct action is used in parallel with other campaigning tools such as engaging in the planning process, lobbying, public meetings and taking legal challenges against Shell.

As Frederick Douglass, the US abolitionist orator said in 1857:
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess
to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops
without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder
and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of
its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will."