Jacinta jumped on top of a freight train at the Port of Melbourne today, halting its import/export operations.
The Port of Brisbane, Port of Newcastle and Port of Melbourne are three pieces of infrastructure that are critical to Australia’s operations. Shutting them down halts global supply lines. These are growth-driven chains of destruction that are actively harming the climate and failing to provide the needs for any life to thrive.
This is what Jacinta had to say:
“Australia works within an extractive system that is literally killing our chances of survival. We need to reimagine a world we want to live in”.
“We do not have time to wait for the government and corporations. They are never going to do what we need to do to survive. The system is geared solely towards exponential economic growth and expansion. We can’t have exponential growth on a finite planet.”
Naomi has been granted magistrate’s bail after blocking the road into the Port of Brisbane on Wednesday.
She is in good spirits and being cradled in community after the Police tried to forcibly remove her arm from the lock-on device causing a severe tear in her finger. She stayed locked-on while they cut her out for two more hours blocking work across the port. She received finger surgery in custody and is expecting a full recovery.
She let us know, “this injury is so much less than the damage being done to ecosystems, to water, to climate, to all beings.”
“The violence that this state enacts on the climate itself will have dire consequences for all life on earth, it is because of the states threat of violence against ecosystems that we continue to take action to protect life.”
Activists who disrupt destructive projects have experienced police and human violence since the earliest days of nonviolent intervention.
Meaningful resistance is, by its nature, uncomfortable. It is also the purpose of resistance because change only comes through discomfort.
How we move through discomfort and care for each other is how we show what a different world could look like. To reconnect with each other and continue to take action is what’s needed if we are going to dismantle this system and build a world of care.
Addressing violence against each other and against our biosphere is the challenge we must all face, together.
Aiko climbed a nine metre monopole this morning, tied across all five tracks at the biggest rail bottleneck of the Port of Melbourne.
They said:
“We need some radical change, we need some radical resistance against the exploitative system.”
“I’m here because I have seen that the state intentionally inflicts violence on the land and the people, and that those in power are profiting off this exploitation.
It’s important, as people, to take back that power, to resist something that is causing so much violence.”
Together we can act to stop this relentless destruction and create a system that supports and nurtures life. Getting there requires a determined and committed resistance movement that physically resists Australia at the most destructive points in its operating systems.
Vickers scaled a stacker reclaimer this morning at the port of Newcastle and pressed the big red button to shut its exports down. Like many of us, Vickers fears it’s too late to stop climate collapse …
“It’s time we take a crowbar to this system, pry it up, rethink it, reimagine it.
Now there’s nothing left to do except for non-violent direct action, except for pushing the big red stop button. If you look around, around corporate institutions, there’s heaps of them. Pinch points in destructive supply chains, like ports, are exactly the places we can shut this machine down.
Hopefully in the chaos down the slide of ecological disaster, there will be enough space to reimagine our relationships with each other and the environment.
This particular system is not listening to us, it’s time for us all to go push the big red buttons.”
Jacinta jumped on top of a freight train at the Port of Melbourne today, halting its import/export operations.
The Port of Brisbane, Port of Newcastle and Port of Melbourne are three pieces of infrastructure that critical to Australia’s operations. Shutting them down halts global supply lines. These are growth-driven chains of destruction that are actively harming the climate and failing to provide the needs for any life to thrive.
This is what Jacinta had to say:
“Australia works within an extractive system that is literally killing our chances of survival. We need to reimagine a world we want to live in”.
“We do not have time to wait for the government and corporations. They are never going to do what we need to do to survive. The system is geared solely towards exponential economic growth and expansion. We can’t have exponential growth on a finite planet.”
WE STOPPED A COAL TRAIN. ONE BOTTLENECK AT A TIME.
For the fourth consecutive day, the operations of the world’s largest coal port at Newcastle was stopped by two activists who locked on, atop a loaded coal train at a Hunter River bridge crossing in Singleton (on stolen, unceded on Wonnarua Country). Ayla has just been released and is on their way home, and Kalpa is still in police custody awaiting court tomorrow.
Ayla (16) said: “I’m here because this system is hurling us towards total climate collapse, because I’m worried about my future, worried I’m not going to be able to have kids. I’m taking the power back for myself. I don’t believe anyone has a say in our current political system, especially not those whose future we’re trying to save. I’m here in solidarity with everyone else who’s fighting for our future, in solidarity with the land and the water and the trees. Because it’s something worth saving.”
Kalpa Goldflam (64) said: I take this action today on Wonnarua Country as an act of civil resistance. As I write this, our world as we know it is continuing to hurtle towards ecological and climate collapse.”
“The system that is called Australia – the industries, governments, and organisations are all complicit in maintaining economic growth, despite the certain increasing death of more and more people, animals and ecosystems this priority ensures.”
“So much climate disaster is already happening, and that’s one of the reasons I believe governments and corporations are engaging in gaslighting. It’s not like we’re going to be at some point in the future, we are in an emergency right now.”
“I have climbed onto the train that was heading towards Newcastle coal port, the biggest coal port of the world and a key economic world fossil fuel gateway, to protest this system’s inability to care about the survival of any form of life on the planet.”
“I have three beautiful grandchildren from 10 down to 3 months. I have a village of millions of children around the world, and as a village member I’m taking responsibility for making changes – not within the current system, but direct at the system itself. It’s the system that’s causing the harm they are saying they are managing to fix.”
BRISBANE / BLOCKADE AUSTRALIA / FRIDAY 23 JUNE 8:20PM
A Blockade Australia activist, Kitty (25) has stopped all trains from entering the Port of Brisbane this evening by climbing on top of a coal train. This is an act of defiance against a violent system that has never had the well-being of people and land as a priority.
Their banners read “Hope Lies in Resistence” and “This System is Killing Us”.
Tonight’s action completes a five-day run of disruptions which are intended to actually put a spanner in the workings of the business-as-usual systemic exploitation of land, resources, and people on this continent.
Disruption taken this evening at Queensland’s fastest growing port has been taken along side disruption at Newcastle Port, the world’s biggest coal port, and Melbourne Port, the biggest container port in Australia.
Kitty says
“Climate collapse is happening right now and it is the direct result of these systems, governments, industries that are deliberately creating this destruction.
“It’s really important that we remember we have the power to activate any change that we want to see in the world.
As a young person I feel uncomfortable in the reality that I’m living in because I’m inflicted by this system that doesn’t actually serve the people. I don’t want to look back on myself and say oh I just sat and watched the planet screaming and did nothing.”
BA refuses to specify demands of a system that was built to profit off exploitation, while aiming to provoke systemic change of institutional direction, especially away from endless extraction and consumption. The consensus of climate science is that the current trajectory is unsupportable and unethical and it is going to result in tragedies on an epic scale in the fairly near future. Unprecedented floods, fires, heatwaves and drought are already happening in multiple locations, across Australia and globally.
A Blockade Australia spokes person said “We are calling for fellow community members to get involved in the multiple roles that make such direct actions possible. Collective and organised disruptive activity at economic bottlenecks is a proven method to generate vital change.”
Supporters can find online information talks happening within the next week to learn more about how they can get involved.
WORLD’S LARGEST COAL PORT OPERATIONS HALTED ON FIFTH DAY OF SUSTAINED DISRUPTION
At 6am am, Vickers entered the Kooragang Island terminal of the Port of Newcastle with a bike scaling a stacker reclaimer with a lock on and stopped all operations.
Location: https://goo.gl/maps/ztr2wXSfg7PGgGBb7 Kooragang Island NSW
Time: HAPPENING NOW – 6am start
The solo activist explained: “This act of resistance is happening on stolen, unceded Awabakal and Worimi Country. I pay my respects to First Nations people across this continent and everywhere that are resisting organised destruction.”
“Unless you’ve recently swapped your head for a pumpkin, you’ll know that humanity and the ecosystems we live with are in deep shit.”
“Australia, which I see as the entirety of our intertwined economic and political system, is unwilling to control its addiction to extracting fossil fuels and flogging them to the rest of the world. Australia is massively driving the climate crisis that we’re all having to face right now and into the foreseeable future if we don’t act now.”
“In the absence of any braking system to this runaway train towards global destruction, I am taking matters into my own hands by stopping the world’s largest supply chain export of coal from operating. We need to disrupt Australia where it hurts most. Ports represent 98% of Australia’s trade – where most of its wealth and prestige lies with the rest of the world.”
“I am one person, I can do this, imagine what could we do if you join us.”
This is part of a coordinated mobilisation in response to Australia’s facilitation of the climate and ecological crisis, and its active blocking of impactful action towards a safe climate.
