by DGR News Service | Feb 1, 2014 | Lobbying, Obstruction & Occupation
By Inter Press Service
Residents of a town in Argentina have won the first victory in their fight against biotech giant Monsanto, but they are still at battle stations, aware that winning the war is still a long way off.
For four months, activists in Malvinas Argentinas, a town in the central province of Cordoba, have maintained a blockade of the construction site where the U.S. transnational company is building the world’s biggest maize seed treatment plant.
In this previously peaceful town, protestors continue to camp in front of the construction site and to block access to it, even after a provincial court order this month put a halt to the works.
The campaign against the plant, led by Asamblea Malvinas Lucha por la Vida (Malvinas Assembly Fighting for Life) and other social organizations, began Sept. 18 in this town 17 kilometers from the capital of Cordoba.
Tense situations ensued, with attempts by the provincial police to disperse the demonstrators and provocations by construction union envoys, but a provincial labor court ruling on Jan. 8 upheld the activists’ cause.
“The ruling shows that the residents’ arguments are just, because they are claiming basic rights that are recognized and established in the constitution and federal legislation,” Federico Macciocchi, the lawyer representing opponents of the plant, told IPS.
The court ruled that the municipal ordinance authorizing construction of the plant in this mostly working class town of 15,000 people was unconstitutional.
It ordered a halt to construction work and banned the Malvinas Argentinas municipality from authorizing the construction until two legal requirements are fulfilled: carrying out an environmental impact assessment and a public hearing.
“This is a big step forward in the struggle, achieved by working together on institutional demands, along with social activism on the streets,” Matías Marizza, a member of the Malvinas Assembly, told IPS.
“This struggle has resulted in guaranteeing respect for the law,” the activist said.
The Malvinas Assembly and other organizations have decided to continue to camp out at the site and block access until the project is abandoned for good.
Monsanto replied to IPS’s request for comment with a statement that describes local activists as “extremists” who are preventing their contractors and employees from “exercising the right to work.”
The court ruling arose from a legal appeal lodged by local residents and the Club de Derecho (Cordoba Law Club), presided by Macciocchi.
The labor court has ordered an environmental impact study and a public hearing, he emphasized.
The views expressed in the public hearing will be “highly relevant,” he said, although under the General Environment Law, participants’ objections and opinions “are not binding.”
However, the law does stipulate that if the opinions of the convening authorities differ from the results of the public hearing, “they must justify them and make them public,” he said.
Now the Malvinas Assembly also wants a public consultation with a secret ballot.
Such a ballot would comply with the environmental law and “guarantee citizens’ full rights to decide on which model of local development and what kind of social and economic activities they want for their daily life, and what environmental risks they are prepared to take,” Víctor Mazzalay, another resident, told IPS.
“It is the people who should have that information and decide whether or not to accept the costs and risks involved,” said Mazzalay, a social researcher funded by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) at the University of Cordoba.
“An environmental impact assessment should include a public consultation so that citizens can provide the ‘social license’ necessary for developing any social, economic and productive activity that may affect their environment and health,” he said.
Monsanto’s statement said the company does not agree with the court ruling, but respects judicial decisions and will abide by the verdict.
The company stated that it had already conducted an environmental assessment, which is currently under review by the provincial Secretary of the Environment.
In Macciocchi’s view, the court’s ruling is definitive and “brings the legal conflict to an end.”
“The ruling arose from a legal appeal, so there is no further recourse in ordinary law,” he said.
Monsanto can still appeal to have the decision overturned by the provincial High Court (Tribunal Superior de Justicia, TSJ).
The company has already said that it will appeal. “We consider our right to build legitimate since we have complied with all legal requirements and have obtained authorization to build according to the regulations, as confirmed by the ruling of the Court of First Instance of Oct. 7, 2013,” their statement said.
However, in Macciocchi’s view “this appeal will not overturn the labour court ruling.”
“If we consider how long the TSJ takes to process an appeal, by the time there is a decision, the Malvinas municipality and the Environment Secretariat will have complied with the laws they previously violated,” he said.
According to the lawyer, the high court takes up to two and a half years for appeals lodged by individuals under sentence, and five to seven years in labor or civil cases.
“It would create a real institutional scandal if the TSJ were to deal with this case by leap-frogging all the other cases that have lain dormant in its offices for years,” he said.
The Jan. 8 ruling cannot prevent the definitive installation of the plant, which Monsanto plans should become operational during 2014.
“But if the citizens’ demonstrations against the plant and the environmental impact assessment are unfavorable to the company, Monsanto will not be able to instal the plant in Malvinas Argentinas,” Macciocchi predicted.
Mazzalay emphasized that the “substance” of the arguments of opponents to Monsanto’s plant was “the defense of the people’s right to decide on the kind of productive activities and the type of environmental risks they wish to undertake.”
The company announced it was planning to build more than 200 maize silos, and to use agrochemical products to treat the seeds. Monsanto is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of herbicides and genetically modified seeds, and has operated in Argentina since 1956 when it established a plastics factory.
“It is frequently argued that there is a reasonable doubt that this productive activity is harmless to human health,” Mazzalay said.
In his view, “a multiplicity of scientific studies have shown negative effects on health from both seed transportation and handling of and exposure to different agrochemical products.”
“When there is a health risk related to environmental issues, reasonable doubt should bring the precautionary principle into play, that is, an activity should not be developed until it has definitely been proved to be harmless,” he said.
From Upside Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4669-argentine-activists-win-first-round-against-monsanto-plant
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 22, 2014 | Education
Lierre Keith has been selected to give a keynote speech at this years Public Interest Environmental Law Conference. The annual meeting will be held February 27th – March 2nd in Eugene, Oregon and features over 125 panels, workshops and multimedia presentations addressing a broad spectrum of environmental law and advocacy.
This year PIELC’s theme is “Running Into Running Out” and focuses on the escalating environmental crisis. PIELC will be a space for critical assessment of past strategies – honestly measuring failures and successes – and, of course, new solutions dedicated to ending the destruction. Lierre is a natural choice as a keynote speaker- as an impassioned writer Lierre has forcefully advocated direct action to address our dire environmental crisis for years. Instrumental to the creation and organization of Deep Green Resistance, Lierre continues to be at the forefront of the fight to save the planet.
Lierre is perhaps best known as the author of The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, which has been called “the most important ecological book of this generation.” and as the primary author of the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. Her writing and lectures focus on civilization’s violence against the planet, male violence against women, and the need for serious resistance to both.
As an outspoken advocate for radical feminism and a leader of the radical environmental movement, the selection of Keith as a keynoter continues a long tradition of controversial speakers at PIELC. Past speakers have included Ralph Nader, Julia Butterfly Hill, Ward Churchill, Winona LaDuke and Paul Watson.
The keynote speech also highlights the increased participation of Deep Green Resistance members at this year’s event. In addition to Lierre’s speech, DGR members will host four more panel sessions throughout the conference on topics including the failure of “green” energy, the pitfalls of radical subcultures, and the connections between misogyny and ecocide. DGR members participated in PIELC last year as well, providing two workshops- recordings of which are available on DGR’s YouTube page .
DGR is also expected to have a a large contingent of members and supporters in attendance at the conference. As a social and ecological justice network, DGR has experienced rapid growth in recent years, as increased numbers of activists see the accelerated destruction of our planet and the lack of effective action by traditional and mainstream environmental organizations.
Read more about PIELC on their website: http://pielc.org/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 21, 2014 | Indigenous Autonomy, Indirect Action, Mining & Drilling
By Claire Stewart-Kanigan / The Dominion
“Eco-consciousness” and “green living” are centrepieces of product branding for the Toyota Prius. But that feel-good packaging has rapidly worn thin for members of the Algonquin Nation and residents of Kipawa, Quebec, who are now fighting to protect traditional Algonquin territory from devastation in the name of hybrid car battery production.
In 2011, after nearly two years of negotiations, Matamec Explorations, a Quebec-based junior mining exploration company, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Toyotsu Rare Earth Canada (TRECan), a Canadian subsidiary of Japan-based Toyota Tsusho Corporation. The memorandum confirmed Matamec’s intention to become “one of the first heavy rare earths producers outside of China.” In pursuit of this role, the company plans to build an open-pit Heavy Rare Earth Elements (HREE) mine directly next to Kipawa Lake, the geographical, ecological, and cultural centre of Kipawa.
Rare earths are a group of 17 elements found in the earth’s crust. They are used to produce electronics for cell phones, wind turbines, and car batteries. Rare earths are notorious for their environmentally costly extraction process, with over 90 per cent of the mined raw materials classified as waste.
Toyota has guaranteed purchase of 100 per cent of rare earths extracted from the proposed Kipawa mine, for use in their hybrid car batteries, replacing a portion of Toyota’s supply currently sourced out of China.
Over the last seven years, China has reduced the scale of its rare earths exports via a series of annual tonnage export caps and taxes, allegedly out of concern for high cancer rates, contaminated water supply, and significant environmental degradation. Despite China’s stated intention to encourage manufacturers to reduce their rare earths consumption, the US, the EU and Japan have challenged China’s export caps through the World Trade Organization (WTO) and are seeking new deposits elsewhere for exploitation. Toyota and Matamec are seeking to make Kipawa part of this shift.
Kipawa is a municipality located on traditional Algonquin territory approximately 80 kilometres northeast of North Bay, Ontario, in what is now known as western Quebec. The primarily Indigenous municipality is home to approximately 500 people, including members of Eagle Village First Nation and Wolf Lake First Nation, of the Anishinaabeg Algonquin Nation. The town of Kipawa lies within the large Ottawa River Watershed, a wide-branching network of lakes, rivers and wetlands. Lake Kipawa is at the heart of the Kipawa region.
Lifelong Kipawa resident and Eagle Village First Nation member Jamie Lee McKenzie told The Dominion that the lake is of “huge” importance to the people of Kipawa. “We drink it, for one….Everyone has camps on the lake [and] we use it on basically a daily basis.” This water network nourishes the richly forested surroundings that make up the traditional hunting and trapping grounds of the local Algonquin peoples.
“Where the proposed mine site is, it’s my husband’s [ancestral] trapping grounds,” said Eagle Village organizer Mary McKenzie, in a phone interview with The Dominion. “This is where we hunt, we fish, I pick berries….We just want to keep our water.” Jamie Lee and Mary McKenzie also emphasized the role of lake-based tourism in Kipawa’s economy.
The Kipawa HREE project would blast out an open-pit mine 1.5 kilometres wide and 110 meters deep, from the summit of a large lakeside hill. It would also establish a nearby waste dump with a 13.3 megatonne capacity. Rock containing the heavy rare earth elements dysprosium and terbium would be extracted from the pit via drilling and explosives, processed at an on-site grinding and magnetic separation plant, and then transported by truck to a hydrometallurgical facility 50 kilometers away for refining.
Matamec confirmed in its Preliminary Economic Assessment Study that some effluence caused by evaporation and precipitation is inevitable, especially during the snowmelt period. A community-led presentation argued that this could create acid mine drainage, acidifying the lake and poisoning the fish.
“There’s going to be five [truckloads of sulfuric acid transported from pit to refinery] a day….[I]n a 15-year span, that’s 27,300 truckloads of sulfuric acid,” said Mary McKenzie. “We’re worried about spills and the environment….They’re talking about neutralizing [the acid], when a spill does occur, with lime. I have [sources that say] lime is also a danger to the environment.”
In a 2013 presentation in Kipawa, Matamec stated that while “some radioactivity [due to the presence of uranium and thorium in waste rock] will be present in the rare earth processing chain,” its effects will be negligible. Yet these reassurances ring hollow for some, who point to cancer spikes observed in communities near rare earths projects in China. In the project’s economic assessment, Matamec itself indicated that waste rock is too dangerous for use in concrete and dikes.
“Whatever goes up in the air [from blasting and evaporation] comes down….A lot of those particles are radioactive,” said Mary McKenzie. “Our animals eat this [plant matter potentially affected by the mine]….We depend on our moose, we depend on our fish, so that’s a scary situation.” The refining process also uses strong acids and bases.
While Matamec stated in the Assessment that “most” of the water used in processing will be recycled, a portion of the post-processing solution will be directed into the lake or tailings ponds. The mine is intended to be operational for 13 years, but tailings ponds would require maintenance for generations, and leaching is always possible. Adding to this risk, Matamec has “assumed that [certain] tailings will not be acid generating or leachable” and will therefore only use watertight geomembrane for a portion of the tailings ponds.
With the approval process being accelerated by both public and private factors, production could begin as early as 2015. Quebec’s regulations call for provincial environmental impact assessments only when projects have a daily metal ore production capacity that is considerably higher than the national standard—7,000 metric tons per day versus 3,000 in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. What’s more, by categorizing HREE in the same regulatory group as other metals, these tonnage minimums fail to reflect the higher toxicity and environmental costs of heavy rare earths extraction.
Because of this, the Kipawa project does not trigger a provincial-level assessment. It only requires clearance from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and a certificate of authorization granted by the provincial Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks.
On the private side, the assessment process has been fast-tracked by a series of multimillion-dollar payments from TRECan to Matamec ($16M as of April 2013). According to Matamec president André Gauthier in a July 2012 press release, this makes Matamec “the only rare earth exploration company to have received funds to accelerate and complete a feasibility study and an environmental and social impact assessment study of a HREE deposit.”
The chiefs of Eagle Village and Wolf Lake First Nations have been demanding a consent-based consultation and review process since the project was quietly made public in 2011—one that exceeds “stakeholder” consultation standards and acknowledges the traditional relationship of the Algonquin people to the land. Residents only became widely aware of Matamec’s plans following the company’s community consultation session in April 2013.
Jamie Lee McKenzie has not been impressed by Matamec’s consultations. “They come in and they have a meeting…and they tell us all the good things about the mine,” McKenzie told The Dominion. “[They say,] ‘It will give you jobs. We need this to make batteries for green living,’ but that’s it.”
Local organizers told The Dominion that a Matamec-chaired community focus group had been cancelled during the early summer after one local participant asked that her critical questions be included in the group’s minutes. Following what many residents see as the failure of Matamec and provincial assessment agencies to meaningfully engage with Kipawa residents, the community has taken matters into their own hands.
In the summer of 2013, Kipawa residents began to organize, with the leadership of Eagle Village and Wolf Lake members. Petitions containing over 2,500 signatures were sent to provincial ministers, demanding a provincial environmental assessment as well as “public hearings to review the Mining Act…to strengthen rare earth environmental monitoring.” As of late November, there had been no official responses to the petitions, and no positive response to letter-writing campaigns directed at the office of the federal Minister of Environment. (Quebec adopted a new Mining Act in early December, as this article went to print.)
But demands have grown beyond calls for review. “We’re not okay with the BAPE [provincial assessment]; we’re not okay with the mine,” said Mary McKenzie. “We’re against the [project] 100 per cent.” In September, McKenzie helped organize a 100-person anti-mine protest on the shores of Kipawa Lake. In November, the resistance network formalized their association as the Lake Kipawa Protection Society, committed to stopping the mine through regional education, local solidarity, and creative resistance strategies like a “Tarnish Toyota” day of action.
The Kipawa HREE project, if approved, would open doors for the numerous other companies exploring the watershed—such as Globex, Fieldex, Aurizon, and Hinterland Metals—as well as for heavy rare earths mining in the rest of Canada.
“We have mining companies all over in our area here,” said Mary McKenzie. “Matamec is the most advanced, but it’s not just Matamec: we want all the mining out of our region.”
The mine is not the only project on the fast-track: Algonquin and local resistance efforts are picking up momentum, and backing down on protecting the water and land is not on the agenda.
“This is ancestral ground,” McKenzie stressed. “We can fight this.”
Claire Stewart-Kanigan is a student, Settler, and visitor on Haudenosaunee territory.
From The Dominion: http://dominion.mediacoop.ca/story/toyota-prius-not-so-green-after-all/20373
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 13, 2014 | Indigenous Autonomy, Lobbying
By Natalia Ruiz Diaz / Upside Down World
The Sawhoyamaxa indigenous community in Paraguay have spent over 20 years fighting to get back their land, which they were pushed off by cattle ranchers.
They started the new year by collecting signatures to press Congress to pass a bill that would expropriate their ancestral territory from ranchers, in order for the state to comply with a 2006 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Justice ordering the restitution of their land.
“More than 20 years after being expelled from our ancestral land and living [in camps] along the side of the road, watching the cows occupy the place where we used to live, we decided to return because that land is ours,” the Sawhoyamaxa said in a message accompanying the petition drive.
“Che rohenói, eju orendive, aldeia unida, mostra a cara” (I am calling you, come with us, the people united, show your face) thousands of people sang at the “Todos con (everyone with the) Sawhoyamaxa” intercultural festival in Asunción in mid-December.
The event launched the start of their new crusade demanding enforcement of the Inter-American Court sentence, which ruled that they be given back their territory and that they be provided with basic services, such as medical care and clean water.
The “Che rehenói” chorus was heard over and over again in a mix of Guaraní (one of Paraguay’s two official languages, along with Spanish) and Portuguese, sung by the hip hop ban Brô MC’S, whose members belong to the Jaguapirú Bororó indigenous community from Brazil.
The goal set by the Sawhoyamaxa leaders is to gather 20,000 signatures, to pressure Congress to approve the expropriation of the land.
The epicentre of the community’s two-decade struggle is the Santa Elisa settlement, where the largest group of families are camped out along the side of the road 370 km north of Asunción en Paraguay’s semiarid Chaco region.
They are living “in extreme poverty, without any type of services, and waiting for the competent bodies to decide on the land claim they filed,” according to the 2006 Court ruling.
The Sawhoyamaxa form part of the Enxet linguistic family. There are 19 indigenous groups belonging to five language families in Paraguay, spread out in 762 communities mainly in the east of the country and the Chaco region, a vast dry forest area.
According to the 2012 census, 116,000 of Paraguay’s 6.7 million people – or 1.7 percent of the population – are indigenous, with over half of that group belonging to the Guaraní people. However, the overwhelming majority of the population is “mestizo” – people of mixed European (principally Spanish) and native (mainly Guaraní) descent.
The Sawhoyamaxa, who had no title deeds to the land where they had always lived, were displaced from their land, which was taken over by large cattle ranchers.
“They don’t want us to progress in our way of life,” the leader of the community, Carlos Cantero, told IPS. “We want the land to dedicate ourselves to our ancestral activities, like hunting and gathering in the forest.”
He was referring to the powerful cattle industry, which has successfully lobbied to block implementation of the 2006 binding sentence handed down by the Inter-American Court, an autonomous Organisation of American States (OAS) body.
Cantero said it was important for the situation to be resolved immediately because “there is still a little forest left on our land, some swamps and streams; but if the state does not take a stance on this soon, those reserves are going to disappear.”
Cattle ranchers have steadily advanced on Paraguay’s Chaco region, where in November 549 hectares a day were deforested, according to the local environmental organisation Guyra Paraguay.
The Chaco scrub forest and savannah grassland, which covers 60 percent of Paraguay but accounts for just eight percent of the population, makes for good cattle pasture.
Since the 19th century, the worst dispossession of indigenous people of their lands in this landlocked South American country occurred in the Chaco, especially after the 1932-1935 Chaco War with Bolivia, when the government sold off huge tracts of public land to private owners.
Today, less than three percent of the population owns 85 percent of Paraguay’s arable land, making this the Latin American country with the greatest concentration of land ownership.
The Sawhoyamaxa community is fighting for 14,404 hectares of land.
In a largely symbolic move, when the final deadline set by the Inter-American Court expired in March, the native community began to “recover” their land, setting up small camps on the property to which they are waiting to be awarded a collective title.
Their fight for the return of their ancestral lands dates back to the early 1990s. After exhausting all legal recourse available in Paraguay, they took the case to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in 2001, which referred it to the Court.
The Sawhoyamaxa case is one of three in which the Inter-American Court has handed down rulings against the Paraguayan state in defence of the country’s native people. None of the resolutions has been fully complied with.
After the 2006 sentence, the government attempted to acquire the land in question in order to live up to the resolution and return the property to the native community. But it failed, due to the refusal by the rancher who holds title to the property, Heribert Roedel, whose 60,000-hectare estate includes the land claimed by the Sawhoyamaxa.
“The other route for expropriation is through the legislature, for which a bill was introduced, currently being studied in the Senate,” said Oscar Ayala, a lawyer with Tierraviva, which supports indigenous communities in Paraguay.
This local non-governmental organisation and Amnesty International Paraguay are the main civil society supporters of the cause of the Sawhoyamaxa.
The bill Congress is debating was presented by the government in August for the expropriation of the land, in order to fulfil the Inter-American Court order.
According to Ayala, there is a more positive environment than in the past. “The impression we have is that there is greater openness” for an eventual solution and for justice to be done in the case, he said.
On Dec. 18, the Senate commission for audit and oversight of state finances pronounced itself in favour of expropriation of the land.
“This first favourable ruling is a good indicator; these questions are always complex because caught up in the middle is that deeply rooted economistic view of land, but in this case those issues are no longer in debate,” Ayala said.
The bill will now go to the agrarian reform and finance commissions and then on to the Senate floor, before being sent to the lower house.
Some 120 families – around 600 people, half of them children and adolescents – are living in the Santa Elisa settlement.
The Court also ordered the state to provide food and healthcare assistance to the community. But while the situation in this respect has improved in the new settlements, much more needs to be done.
“We have a health promoter but no health post,” Cantero said. “The worst affected are the children, who are suffering from dehydration because of the bad quality of the water.”
The settlements receive clean water every month, but it is not enough, and they depend on rainwater, which is scarce in the semiarid Chaco.
To find a solution, Sawhoyamaxa men and women have been knocking on doors everywhere, showing people papers that describe the history of their community, their struggle, and the Court ruling, in search of support.
“We won’t stop until we are living on our land; our very survival depends on that,” Cantero said.
From Upside Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/4629-sawhoyamaxa-battle-for-their-land-in-paraguay
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 17, 2013 | Education, Mining & Drilling
By Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
It sounds like a bad business plan: Las Vegas is planning a $15 billion project to extract water from the driest places in the country. Ranchers, farmers, indigenous and rural communities, hunters, and
environmentalists are coming together to oppose the project, and clean air activists from Salt Lake City are worried that the project might cause major dust issues in the valley.
Join community organizers Saturday, January 11th at the downtown library in Salt Lake City to learn more about the so-called “Water Grab” – the project that is the epitome of unsustainable development and massive public subsidy to the rich. Despite a recent court ruling that deals a major blow to the project, opposition continues as SNWA will not give up on their desperate gamble.
Prepare to learn about the burden this project would put on taxpayers, the stunning natural places it would turn into deserts, the communities that would be impacted, and the political scheming going on in Las Vegas to make it happen.
Join us on January 11th to stand up for what is right. We say, “Stop the Water Grab!”
The event will take place at 3pm on Saturday, January 11th at the Downtown Salt Lake City library – 210 E 400 S, in Meeting Room A, downstairs in the main foyer of the library.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 23, 2013 | Direct Action, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Strategy & Analysis
By Ben Pennings / Over Our Dead Bodies
Big Coal? We’re talking the biggest. The Galilee Basin is the biggest proposed coal complex in the world. The numbers are staggering, frightening; well past the point of insanity.
The great news is that the nine mines planned are very marginal economically. The ‘quality’ of coal is low, the price of coal is low, and the debt levels of many companies involved are high. However, a company called Aurizon is planning to bail out the debt-ridden company GVK, allowing them to dig up the first 2 mines. These mines alone would be responsible for carbon pollution 6 times that of the UK.
A broad cross-section of the mainstream environment movement have signalled their intentions towards Aurizon, but thus far been pretty much ignored. Millions of emails have gone unheard. Aurizon continues unabated towards investing billions to mine the Galilee Basin, before solar makes it completely economically unviable.
The Over Our Dead Bodies campaign is adding a new dimension to the decision-making processes of Aurizon, and has garnered significant interest from both the company and police. Aurizon now face sustained direct action and civil disobedience strategies, on top of the increasing pressure from mainstream groups. The campaign is blatantly honest, starting to document the number of activists in Australia and globally who will do whatever it takes to stop Aurizon.
Activists started the campaign by stealing a ‘carbon bomb’ from their offices, visiting the CEO’s mansion (twice) and messing with their football sponsorship. All in one weekend. While also hunger striking! But the real deal is still to come.
How can activists be honest with Aurizon about what may be on the way? Go along to their AGM of course! I was one of twelve activists who bought enough shares to attend and ask questions that were not the usual fare. For the first time in AGM history (as far as we know), activists asked audacious questions to directly challenge a company about the security, insurance, industrial action and recruitment costs related to direct action by environmental activists – providing an honest warning to shareholders of risks the company has thus far refused to disclose.
A multi-organisation protest was also held outside the AGM venue. Police inside and outside the AGM outnumbered protesters two to one – uniformed, plain clothes, photographers and high-ranking officers. Walking from our briefing to the venue, the anti-terrorism police made their presence known, greeting me by name. As did other officers throughout the morning. Nice to be loved! The leading image above shows one of the anti-terrorism police ‘Aaron’ (real name is Bruce) talking to an activist on the day.
Activists know they can’t stop Aurizon’s plans through appealing to their ethics or values. Those who have tried have failed. The chair of the board John Prescott confirmed this belief when answering the first question:
“The fundamental business of this company is transportation, the majority of it by heavy haul rail systems, and a key part of that is certainly the carriage of coal… it is a fundamental part of this company’s business to carry coal for interested customers. It is a perfectly legitimate activity and it is one that to withdraw from would not be in the interest of shareholders, customers, employees, and the communities in which we serve.”
He also admitted to shareholders in this first exchange that Aurizon “have not made any estimates” when asked about the costs of activism by organisations with many millions of members. This is an important admission but the point needed to be laboured. The next question about their security strategies got right to it:
“It seems to me that Aurizon are very vulnerable to direct action strategies from environmentalist groups. Given you have thousands of kilometres of rail line and have difficult to secure facilities around the country, what strategies do you have in mind to secure what seems to be in-securable?”
After questions about climate change, water and the future of coal, it got serious with a question about targeting the board and executives:
“As Aurizon’s planned investment in the coal mines in the Galilee Basin (involves releasing) truly massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, threatening life as we know it on this planet, such a radical step calls for a radical response. Are you aware that over two hundred activists from one group alone have thus far committed to use direct action against the Aurizon Board of Executives to remind them of their personal responsibility regarding runaway climate change; and given they claim to have home addresses of most of the board members and senior executives, and considering activists have already visited the CEO’s home twice, are you concerned that executives and board members will leave the company if they are seriously challenged in their homes and neighbourhoods about these responsibilities, their responsibilities beyond Aurizon, responsibilities to the future of all of our children, our grandchildren, the community, country and the world we live in?”
Despite protestations, a further audacious question was asked, this time about stopping trains with cardboard boxes:
“In 2011, an activist stopped a coal train in New South Wales using a lightweight box contraption. Now he was inside that box, but it’s easily conceivable that you could stop a coal train with an empty cardboard box. Now given you’ve got thousands of kilometres of track, how do you envisage oversight over those tracks and managing that; I can see it would be quite easy for activists to stop coal trains and get away with it scot free. So is there a cost each time a train is stopped like this, and have you factored those kinds of costs into your business plans?”
Just by chance, this happened to be outside the building when shareholders left the meeting. 
You can imagine the company (and some shareholders) were not too happy with such questions. The chair of the board said repeatedly that they would not divulge security strategies, but it seemed reasonably clear such strategies did not exist. But the shareholders did respond with applause to the question about coal dust, public health, and the excessive salary of the CEO:
“My question is to Lance Hockridge, CEO, and my concern is about dust. I’ve been reading a bit in the media the last few months about coal dust coming from wagons and about the particles, and the doctors and health experts’ concerns about the dust particles; the larger ones and the smaller ones which can get lodged in the lungs and in the bloodstream and the concern, particularly for children… My question, given that Aurizon has so far refused to cover the coal wagons and that there is quite a bit of public outcry about this issue is, Lance, you earned $6 million more than the average Australian last financial year, would you personally be willing to donate some money to stop the damage to public health, and if not, would you personally live on a railway line and breathe in what you transport?”
That question was bound to be popular but this question hit a different nerve:
“Are you concerned that once environmental activists start direct action strategies that your unionised staff will undertake industrial action due to perceived safety risks? Have you factored in these potential massive costs to your investment in the Galilee?”
A shareholder responded to this, saying she was “absolutely appalled at the suggestion that lives would be put at risk because of ideological beliefs.” I jumped up to defend this activist before question time ended. It is Aurizon in fact who are putting millions of lives at risk over an ideological belief, the belief that profit by any legal means trumps ethical considerations, or a livable planet for that matter. After the AGM some shareholders spoke freely with activists. Many were concerned about climate change, coal dust, and the shortening future of the coal industry. Aurizon have since sent a strongly worded legal letter, threatening a Supreme Court injunction against Generation Alpha, Over Our Dead Bodies and their ‘members’. What a shame that Generation Alpha is a Facebook page, Over Our Dead Bodies is a website, and neither have members! Aurizon write that they are ‘disappointed’ in us, and if we do what they say we’ve threatened, we’re in big trouble! But now they just have to wait and prepare, knowing they can do little to stop the next move by the 221 (and counting) activists who have said “Over Our Dead Bodies”.
