Photos from gigs in Copenhagen

At the Raahuset as part of the KlimaForum program.  We were honoured to share the stage with David Rovics and Anne Feeney.  There were about 100 activists packed into a room that would comfortably fit about 50 people.  The sound system broke down, so it was a totaly acoustic gig – but one of those magic times where the whole room is with you all night – even though people came from all over the world and spoke a myriad of different languages.

This was in a circus tent at Christiania – a free state that used to be army land until squatters moved in and set up a self governing autonomous community.  The police don’t like it (see our earlier post about the riots) but the 900 or so residents of Christiania have held their ground for over 30 years.

Aussie media coverage

After an early rush of interest from journalists from Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Poland, the Aussie media have finally given ‘Sooty’, our boxing kangaroo mascot a run:

A great photo in yesterday’s Australian:

And an article about our adventures in today’s Sydney Morning Herald.

See the full file on comrade Erland’s blog.

On riots

Last night: we went to see Anne Feeney and David Rovics play in Christiania. We played a wonderful gig with them a few nights back so went back to soak up more.

As we were about to leave the bar there was an announcement that there were major riots outside and noone should leave the venue. It was really smokey and as Australians we didn’t really concieve of what ‘major riot’ might constitute. We headed out the back door as the front entrance was bolted. Outside there was tear gas, explosions and lots of traumatised looking people. Suddenly it felt more scary than fun so we scooted back up the stairs to the safety of the bar. With nothing else to do we played guitar, shared folk songs with some Norgeigens and waited it out. Several hours later, by about 1am we decided to try again. There was still the smell of tear gas and hundred of riot police vans shining huge intimidating lights at us. Luckily we were a bit of a colourful rag tag crew in colourful beanies, a couple of guitars and a garbage bag of campaign t-shirts. The Norgeigans managed to talk our way through about 4 policw check points. We had to leave our bikes behind though cause they were in a lock down zone.

People we spoke to said the riot started when police raided a meeting where Naomi Klein was talking – planning for peaceful civil disobedience on Wednesday (tomorrow). The police started arresting people preemptively at the meeting, which sparked the whole thing off.

The Danish Government has passed some totally ridiculous laws for the duration of the conference with some highlights being:
– the police have the right to body search you without suspicion if you are in a search zone
– you have the right to be body searched by an oficer of your own sex, though the police are allowed to deny you this right
– the police are allowed to make a preventative arrest although you have done nothing illegal to prevent unlawful acts from happening.

So far my tactic for deescalating tensions is to sing happy songs, wear rainbow coloured socks and keep smiling.

There is also a video taken last night in Christiania here.

Aussie bloc at the world’s biggest climate protest

Happy to report that the repair job with a bicycle repair kit and some sticky tape did the trick and one of our blow up roos survived to represent us Australian’s at the mass rally in Copenhagen yesterday. We started with just 4 of us but our songs quickly drew other Aussies like moths to a flame. In the end there we’re about 12 of us (though the Danes walking next to us said it sounded like double, due the the gusto of our singing). We even had a few honourary members – a New Zealander, and American who was married to an Australian. Some Danes also joined in and translated our cries of ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie, cut the coal!’ into Danish.

Overall the Australian contingent definately punched above our weight in noise and colour and passion in the rally. Let’s hope Penny Wong and the Australian negotiators decide to punch above their weight in the negotiations instead of sitting on their hands and trying to do as little as possible.

Here we are at the end of the march.  It’s about 4:30pm, and we’d been marching in the total dark for maybe 45mins.  It’s a strange cultural experience, having a mass rally in the dark.

Tonight: activism of  a musical nature as we play a gig with David Rovics and Anne Feeney at the Raahuset – one of the activist hubs around Copenhagen.

Disaster strikes

Punctures in both our inflatable roos. 1am and we are mounting a desperate repair operation in time for tomorrow’s mass rally.

A day with our two blow up roos and fascists.

Outside the conference we must have been close to the most sane activists with our blowup green and gold Kangaroos and yobbo c’mon aussie chants.

Lot’s of media attention again – you can see more of a wrap up here. And more tales of our adventures for that matter.

Today we competed for attention of the conference queue with the Larouche fascist loonies and people promoting global conversion to veganism as the key solution to Climate Change. It’s hard work but the masses trudging into the world changing talkfest got our message again about Australians wanting real action from Kevin Rudd and Co. Greenpeace gave us a free coffee, we met some lovely polish activists handing out free oak seeds to plant across Europe and met the only journalist at Copenhagen from Serbian media. The Polish activists, horrified at Australia’s hopeless reckon on climate change confided that the Polish government “are climate shitters too”.   Solidarity.

Tomorrow we will continue our grassroots activism as small bunch of young, non-affiliated Australians who want a safe future for us and our kids. We’ll mark up some new placards and hopefully find a spot closer to where Australian bureaucrats enter the conference.

ps. Larouche is a fascist lunatic who runs a cult that claims the world is being run by the British royal family and climate change is false and all left wing activists are part of a conspiracy to de-populate the earth. Today one of his cult members called us stupid australians because we have marsupials in our country and we care about our planet (work that logic out). I took great pleasure in calling him a fascist. When you meet a fascist call it how you see it.

Martin

Thought for the day

Knowledge is not activism. Having gossip from inside the un climate change conference won’t do a thing unless it’s used for activist purposes!

Mithra

Why are we here?

First full day in Copenhagen for the Lurkers and a day of cold rain and teetering hopes. For those who wonder Copenhagen is heaving with Climate Change campaign posters, effective networks of bike paths and affluent northern Europeans.

Denmark is hosting the next best chance our civilisation has of having a future home on earth and although our leaders (both elected and dictators alike) are bring the bear minimum of leadership to the conference of nations most people are happy for them to keep leading. Maybe we are collectively too busy shopping in the western world to really consider our future that will result if we fail to take radical action to arrest our heating earth. Or maybe activist just need to get our shit together more than ever before.

Standing in the Conference Centre line registering for an observer status access line for four hours I spent my time shuffling forward and listening in to the conversations between other activists in the que. most the long line seeking a lanyard seemed most concerned with how much they knew, and could impart to each other in superior terms to their fellow observers about when Obama was actually arriving and how that might effect the media focus of conference outcomes.

Earlier we spent most of the precious 14 days we have of potential world media (an subsequently potential for majority of world population focus) on strategy for the developing a plan for the next 14 days and to bore you with some details on such acronyms LULCF (Land Use Land Use Change and Forestry).

The concern for The Lurkers, and hopefully most people wanting effective action on climate change, these are activists who made the effort, expense and further carbon pollution through our travel to conduct planning meetings where the agreed list of requests of politicians can be imparted , discussed and re-formulated in the an environment movement policy wish list.

Excellent!

But what happens when our leaders say no. They say no to our requests, our demands and the pressing need to address global warming. That will be the likely outcome, and are we as a movement of concerned citizens are not ready to force our leaders to act.

We are ready to lobby, to set up plenary discussions as adjunct to UN conferences, ready to call ourselves activists while secretly wanting to be lead negotiators in meetings with Penny Wong, Kruddy and maybe even Barack himself.

Great ambition and those negotiation jobs need to be full-filled in the process but the truth is not enough people in our democracies and dictatorships care enough to force the hand of our leaders to act. At Copenhagen, for two short weeks, we have an opportunity to focus some more middle class, swinging voter mass power-brokers who make up the real political force in many of of countries. These people once engaged and focused on Climate Change can really make leaders think, assess their own power base and act the polluting profiteers who threaten our future.

Progress will be made at Copenhagen, I’m positive we can have an effect. I’m concerned that lobby politicians is being the made the focus of our environment movement rather than organising in communities so we all ask the right questions of Kruddy and the rest.

The Lurkers and Co will be doing our bit to get some important messages out to our homeland tomorrow morning as the conference opens at 10am. If we succeed you may see us on the news if we fail you’ll never know what we’re up to unless we blog on it tomorrow.

Martin