On tour in the belly of the beast - Rising Tide North America

So its been a while......Again.

Plunged headlong into the paradox of so much going on and so little time to process any of it... let alone blog any of it.


A massive 7,129 miles or 11,473 kilometres.

So the Rising Tide tour... well it was intense. However three and a half months, 40 stops, traveling on a bus, with a small group of people, talking about climate change all the time always was going to be intense. We all went a little mad, and sank to far into our vices - mine being kombucha & myspace .



A couple of months in we banned 'end of the world' conversations, took up bad harmony singing, and were a lot better off for it - and I now have the ' floodculture ' blog to vent my climate despair..
(OK my tourmates are gonna KILL me for putting that song online.. *hides*)

As always.. a knudge to check out my pics on flickr .



The tour was quite an undertaking.. and we never 'finished' the planning.. as every stop we'd debrief and tailor and adapt for the next stop.. this was a full time 24/7 job! But it got better and better as we gained confidence and learned off all the great folks we met. There is a film of one of out later tour stops below.



OK.. the tour.. well here's my blurb on it (its in italics if you wanna skip it and to get back to my more random ramblings):

climate change, community response & popular education

Climate change is happening already and affecting life all over the planet. We need to do as much as we can to stop it getting any worse, but we also need to be prepared as communities to deal with the effects of what’s coming as the changes get more severe; we wont be able to rely on governments when resources become scarce.

Communities are preparing to respond to climate events and to be able provide for their own needs.. This translates to the many projects already in action and the many more in creation.

Emergency disaster relief teams, health collectives, community gardens, permaculture projects, bike collectives, wind & solar projects, social events, cross community solidarity projects, skill shares and practical training.

Popular education is an integral part of this work as these projects rarely emerge from people being told that things need to happen. They emerge instead from people acting on the needs in their area and from cross-pollination of ideas from other places and cultures.

One of the most rewarding things as a popular educator is to bring together groups of people and find common interests and spark conversations and projects.

At our New York tour stop we were doing a mind mapping exercise on disaster relief. The different needs were mapped out by the group and then it was found that different folks that had never met before had skills in many of the identifi ed areas. An email list sheet was passed around and taken away by one of the participants to organise their next meeting. A new project started!

Film of tour stop in Guelph, Ontario.
guelphsocialjustice.org/wiki/index.php/Rising_Tide
And on Google video

Radio Interview of the tour crew in Guelph, Ontario.
resistanceisfertile.ca

And... I've just finished a 'tour documentation project' which has become a 'resource pack for trainers & facilitators' with descriptions of the games & exercises.. and all the tools you need to create your own climate road-show! Its really quite good - I've had lots of ace feedback already so take a look: risingtide.org.uk/pdfs/RTNAtour.pdf 2.4 MB pdf



So.. the most memorable points on the tour?

Florida rocked. (and your all totally hot, it cant just be the endless sunshine?) We swam in warm seas, met up with locals resisting LNG & Coal plants, community gardens, rockin' parties, torrential tropical storms... and.. and we went row boating in the everglades in alligator infested waters! Tour Blog post on Florida.



Hmm what else? Bloomington (my bloomies.. I love & miss y'all), clowning with circa in chicago, gourmet dumpster chefs in Shepherdstown, sleeping out in the west Virginia Appalachian mountains, crazy gorges & high-school stops in Ithaca NY, Kick-starting Rising Tide Canada in Ottawa, (40 folks to their 1st meeting) and Montreal - Ces't Fantastique...





The Little Village Environments Justice Organisation
are the most inspiring & cool folks ever! In the largest mexican community in US they are making all the link with community organsing, fighting 2 coal power plant and community gardening turning lawns into food.. and much much more..


The 'seed sow road show' was a total high.. we met up with a cycle tour.. which, after spending a day cycling around the projects of The youth run Worcester Roots project who have test lead levels in soil then plant bio-remediation plants in problem soil.. all in a big ghost-busters 'toxic soil busters' bus.







Visiting and bringing supplies to the indigenous Six Nations Blockade in Canada was amazing.. to see them taking down condos.. check out these links to find about more about their inspiring & bold actions..



There were also some intense & hard places. Like visiting Larry Gibson, who's home is surround by coal mines.. . in Appalachia they literally blow off the tops of the mountains to get at the coal.. he used to live on the smallest mountain in the area.. now his land tower about the rubble and devastated land around. There is a short film about Larry here.




There is so much more to tell! maybe some stories will eek out at a later date.. we met so many fantastic folks at every stop we were hosted by the most rad amazing people.. so a huge thanks to y'all - love ya!

Some pics from the road below.. and there are many more on flickr . And more on the blog real soon!

Carbro web of fun..


The 'L' in Chicago


Vote Nobody.. in Guelph, canada


Shark Jars.. real or not? (Florida)


To the point


Creepy how the graves & sky-scraper look the same..


Somewhere in the north-east it all started getting a little strange.. (HP Lovecraft country)


Cowboys for Christ.. (Gas station in Georgia)


'Community'. (Arlington, DC)


All these cakes are Vegan.. Cookie loves Vegan cake... (a NYC bakery)


Florida.. (at river threatened by power plant)

'Its not my revolution if I can't floss'

Texas.

Culture.

Shock.

Tassie to Texas is a huge dislocation and as a few days ago I walked to a Taquareia (Taco & Burrito shop) by six lanes of traffic and a huge flyover with giant Hummers and SUVs thundering past and above under the bright plastic signs of the strip malls and gas stations... I felt pretty overwhelmed. Hey Toto.. I'm not in the forest anymore.



Probably doesn't help that whenever I shut my eyes I am back in the Florentine, under the leafy green light walking the forest paths or high in the tree tops listing to the kookaburras laugh below me. The camp I've been living at was busted and there have been many arrests and violence out there.

So what am I doing in Texas?



Snap Displace
My Resource Rebels adventure has switched countries & continents and brought me to Austin, Texas to meet up with the New Rising Tide North America (RTNA) to travel with them on their US roadshow.. although I should be saying 'our' as I have been rapidly assimilated into RTNA by hours & days of consensus meetings..

So to get into the activist lingo.. I'm going to be 'bottom lining' the tour blog that can be found here: risingtidetour.blogspot.com With updates from the road and all the cool folks we get to meet on the way.

Meeting Meeting Meeting Meeting
Well after hankering for more meeting protocol in Australia..(Although there was some great stuff in places.. so big ups to the fab facilitators over there!) I was excited to get to such a crew with strong meeting process - However I feel like I've been in a perpetual meeting since I arrived! We spent weeks camped out in Austin at The' Brownfield' (see RT blog) with the wider Rising Tide crew before we got onto the road, restructure in the RT Network.



One meeting even started around while I was asleep in my crashbag under our big tarp... Another morning I awoke was to a mass flossing session around me... with a worried discussion about how they were going to floss after industrial collapse.

No really.

Flossing aside, The RTNA folks are very exciting & cool folk. There is activists from all over and also Artists from the Beehive Collective & Musicians from Riot Folk.



The Roadshow bus broke down.. and our lives we taken up by meeting after meeting.. so I don't feel like I saw that much of Texas! Apart from the many cacti and spiky things at the Brownfield earning Texas the title of 'Brillo-pad of America'. What I did see was pretty cool - lots of Vegan fun.. amazing big food co-ops full of Yummy Vegan treats, ice-creams places.. Pizza places that have soy cheese.. mmmm. Austin seemed way cooler and more chilled out than I expected, but does have the reputation of being the 'Eye of the redneck hurricane'.

Anyhow check out the roadshow blog for tour news! - risingtidetour.blogspot.com

Forest Furnace

(Photo by Bob Mossel)



“so we are going to cut down the ancient forests, feed them into a power plant and call it green power”..

It reads like some un-funny far-side cartoon, but is an all to real proposition in Tasmania.

With the all-to-familiar ‘record breaking figures’ it’s the hottest-driest year on record in Tassie and months before the usual forest fire season all around us the forests burn.

Thought out Tasmania& Victoria (where the east Gippy blockade in my ‘ Causing trouble in Victoria’ blog was) the ancient forest, plantations and peoples homes are in flames.

It dominates the headlines daily with insane fiery pictures.



Climate chaos is hitting hard here and governments & industry continue to do their best to push it over the edge.

There are two different proposals for wood-fired power stations in Tasmania current slip-sliding their greased way through the approvals process. One at the Southwood 'Integrated Timber Processing Centre' just outside the Weld valley where I was living in the forest over the winter, and one as part of a new pulp mill proposal up north.

Not that the logging and subsequent 'regeneration burnings' aren’t damaging enough to the climate as the last old carbon storing trees are felled.



However the audacity of trying to call it renewable energy takes another big step towards Orwellian ‘War is Peace’ doublethink.

Living out the forest up as tree is amazing, but in these dry times does bring on some fire paranoia.. ‘Its looking a bit hazy today…’ Does the air smell smoky to you?’ There is no mobile signal in the forest.. and at one of the blockades we were an hours walk away from the nearest car access.. when would we do? Many strategies were discussed, live jumping in the river, and that it better to run away downhill.. as fore travels faster uphill. How fast could I absail down this tree?? So many things we don’t have to consider living in the wetter uk!! but for how long?



So for life at the blockades, and a taste of these amazing acient forests check out my last three Tassie posts, and my video from the Florentine:

‘Carry on up the Flozza’
‘Blockade over the Weld River’
‘Trouble of Tasmania – Pirates of the Weld’

And a website I found with more info on Climate Chaos & Tassie

Also check out the Tassie, Weld & Florentine photo sets on my flickr.

Carry on up the Flozza.. Adventures in the Florintine Forest

Little 4 min movie I made in the flozza up some very big trees!:



The Upper Florentine Forests

Every step you take in the upper Florentine forest presents you with another ridiculously beautiful scene, and I constantly am grinning wide-eyed and grabbing for my camera.



When Peter Jackson filmed the Loth lorian forest scenes in The Fellowship of the Ring he found some amazing NZ forests, but then had to mock up the bases of giant trees to crate the forest he pictured..



These are the forests he was looking for - these are the forests of Loth lorien.. as you weave your way through moss covered myrtles & sassafras's you come across the basses of giant trees then looking up their massive trunks they disappear off into the canopy.



Waking up in the spongy moss under dappled light streaming through the canopy & man-ferns is like waking into more beautiful a dream than you could have ever been having - then rubbing your eyes again and again to really believe what you are seeing.



If forestry get their way this would soon be a road an the stunning giants around us will be falling.

- But the people are resisting!

There are several tree sits up and more on the way the forest kids here really know their stuff.. many are trained arborists and industrial climbers. I've been learning different climbing techniques and how to rig things up.



Plans are afoot for an Ewok village in the treetops with rope bridges connection the different homes. Soon cries of 'Bechawawa' will fill the forest along with the cackling kookaburras.

I soon find myself high above one of the tree-sits sat astride a branch hauling up thick polyprop lines to connect up traverses in the trees around, trying out the newly learned 'donkeys bollox' knot which unfurls itself when looped over a branch - then trying to hurl it over a branch of an adjacent tree. After more tree fishing more trees are 'caught' and traverses put up.



There is an amazing aerial photo of the tree-sit I slept in here on Green Senator Bob Brown's website.

With bountifully dumpsters, kind grennies & locals we eat well in the forest, even campfire baked bread & banana cakes from dumpstered goodies!

Both the Florentine and the Weld are due to be logged any day now.. tree-sits need climbers, so anyone who can get down here do - January is all on!

There are different groups involved in protecting the Upper Florentine... check out:

Forest Defence Unit

The Derwent Forest Alliance

The Wilderness Society

Blockade over the weld river

1 min clip of my first day in the tree sit:



Later that night...

It starts in the distance, a deep roar. It comes closer, the pressure changes and its suddenly much colder. The branches of the eucalyptus tree start swaying & rustling.

You can hear it coming with the directional certainty of an oncoming car.. or juggernaut.

Then the roar hits and everything is swaying, the platform swings and the rudimentary tarp shelter rattles & whips nosily in the wind.

With it it brings rain and I curl up further away from the cold shower encroaching further and farther in the open end of the shelter.

30 Meters below the rumbles and splashes of the weld river churn on in the darkness, the when light comes I watch the river rise and rise with all the rainfall.



I'm up in a blue tarp world above a logging road reaching into the weld valley. A few weeks ago, while I was at the G20 in Melbourne they busted the ongoing camp I lived at over the winter, felled some of the trees with tree-sits, pushed through a new road and destroyed the pirate ship.

But now we have re-taken the valley.

The tree-sit I am in is made from 4 poles in a rectangle with a net tied in between with a small tarp on top like an open ended tent.



So essentially I am floating up in the tree tops with no floor.

The sit is attached to a rope hooked over a branch leading down to the logging road, there its attached to a monopod (single upright pole) lashed to a logging gate.



The idea is if they try to take down the sit.. the sit will fall.

The idea is that they don't.

At first I stayed in the tarp bubble getting used to being up there.. and eventually I grew more confident and started exploring. climing higher, exploring, reading books sat astride branches 30 up in the tree tops..




Most of the rest of the 'down below' time at camp, when others are up the sits, is spent on the road.. oftern getting up at 4 am incase foresty arrive with the cops to bust us. Daily wash swims in the frezzing Weld river, so pure you can gulp down the water while swimming..

Sometimes its cold and we are huddled around the fire, then a day, or somtines hours later it is burning hot and we are sweltering and dreaming of the river again. Never again will I call England 'changable'!

Its hard to believe they will come in and destroy this amazing forest, but after taking a numbing walk back to the old camp and seeing the new road they have put through the danger is all to real and immidate.

Keep up to date with happenings in the weld on huon.org and Melbourne Indymedia.

Causing trouble in Victoria - The G20 & Gippy Forests

Wow so life has descended into another crazy blur.. a house, home & bed seem like a hazy luxurious dream and it seems like forever since I slept somewhere where we weren't on full alert for an early morning bust.

5 new photo sets on my flicker!



First it was down to Melbourne for the G20 madness. A crazy week of squatted social centers, spoke councils, rebel clowning, snatch squads, vegan yumminess, tram jumping, dumpsters, police violence & paranoia. Sounds like a summit to me! Lots of photos here



Oh and somehow (..I blame that Irish boy) ended up as climate speaker at the 'big rally' which was pretty intense as there were thousands of folks around and a wall of press.. I NEVER go and listen to speakers at rallies! But there I was.. and how a copy of it can be found here - Most of it plagiarised from London Rising Tide.

So with post summit snatch squads circling and paranoia heating up a crew of us head out to the victorian forests where we hear of a coupe being logged that might be saved after the upcoming elections...

"A three hour drive".. "leave at 3pm"... Hmm, there in time for tea then. Marvelous.

My first trip with the veggie oil van dumpster crew is a fantastic initiation to the true power of faff as we finally rock up to East Gippsland at dawn the next day after a mammoth tangental all night drive. However fun and dumpsterfull! And when we get to business we are a newly bonded tight crew - it was the most cuddly blockade ever.. Check out the really ace photos

We stopped logging in a coupe near Goonerah. There were four big machines there all put out of action, two by lock ons and two by being ties off to a tree-sit hanging of a branch. We went in after dark and spent the night setting up..

I headed up the road with a few folks to 'scrub' (pulling lots of stuff onto the road to slow the loggers & down when they arrive and buy us some time).

A frantic mission searching around with head torches and hauling logs & stones - whip a clove hitch around a log then haul on the rope.. oftern with many of us hauling & pushing with improvised leavers.. 1..2...3.. urrrragh...1...2...3.. urrragh...



Then the sky starts to lighten.. not long till the contractors show up for work and soon we can see without head-torches... and such an essential never leave your side item becomes redundant for the next 17 hours. Everythig is ready and now we wait... we huddle round the fire in the pre-dawn chill.



I buddy for a friend locked on to a 'Logmate' AKA 'Forest Fucker' a huge beast with clamping jaws thats grab tree trunks as a automated chain-saw cuts them down than then the jaws attached to an articulated arm to stack the cut trees in a pile.



The contractors show up, grumble a bit, take photos and leave. Later the cops show up and do the same thing. Then the forest is ours. I fInd a sense triumph sitting on the machinery, so do it a lot. Big hunk of metal not destroying the forest today..



Later Reinforcements arrived so Red & I hit the road for more forest blockades across the bass straight., via a look-see around the Sea Shepherd's Farly Mowat, and onto the overnight ferry away from the mainland and back to Tasmania...