PN staff
On 8 May, a wedding was broken up on the steps of the London headquarters of the Church of England.
Christ’s bride (representing the church) was about to be given in marriage to the fossil fuel industry, when Jesus objected and persuaded the bride to break her engagement with fossil fuels and to seek forgiveness.
Christian Climate Action’s sketch was one of dozens of actions around the UK during the Global Divestment Mobilisation (5 – 13 May).
Thousands of people…
PHOTO: Emma Sangster
The Peace News/Housmans Bookshop ‘Chelsea Manning Freedom Party’ had people crowding into the bookshop on 17 May to eat cake and hear trans women Kirsten and Mika; Ben Griffin of Veterans for Peace; and others.
Lots of high-profile direct action cases have court dates coming up.
DSEI appeal
On 13 June, the high court in London will review the acquittal of eight anti-arms fair activists – Isa Al-Aali (Bahrain), Bram Vranken (Belgium), Luis Tinoco Torrejon (Peru), and Lisa Butler, Angela Ditchfield, Thomas Franklin, Susannah Mengesha (UK) – by Stratford magistrates court in April 2016.
The high court’s decision is likely to affect peace activists’ ability to use the legal defence…
Holding a meeting by online video saves travel time, money and carbon emissions, but it does mean most people have to have access to the equipment and to the internet. (You can add someone who just has a phone, but it costs money – see below).
We’re going to talk about using Skype for internet video meetings though there are other options.
Skype has been owned by Microsoft since 2011, and Microsoft has made Skype video, audio and text messages available for capture by US…
Today, Peace News is publishing the first full-face photographs of 'Andy Davey', the identity taken by undercover police officer Andy Coles in 1991 when he infiltrated the nonviolent direct action group ARROW.
Coles was publicly exposed as a police infiltrator on 12 May, after investigation by the Undercover Research Group. On the same day, details emerged of an abusive sexual…
Chelsea Manning is a whistleblower who was working for the US military as a data analyst during the US-led coalition war in Afghanistan. She was sentences to serving 35 years in military prison for leaking classified US government documents to the Wikileaks website, and revealing to the public that the US army, the CIA and Iraqi and Afghan forces committed human rights violations. The crimes she…
Donald Trump is being sworn in on 20th Jan. Does that make YOU nervous?
If so - don't just sit on your backside...gather together with like minded people all over the UK!
Colourful banners baring positive slogans will be hung from bridges across Britain, showing the world that this country stands defiant against populism & bigotry
Together we can create a unified voice, more direct and…
On 23 September, Index on Censorship and English PEN, another freedom of expression group, held a vigil outside the Turkish embassy in London in support of art teacher Ayse Çelik and others currently persecuted for speaking out in Turkey.
As we went to press, Çelik was awaiting a new trial date, accused of ‘promoting terrorist organisation propaganda’ after she called in…
‘We’ve put up with noise and dust from the pits – we’re used to it. We shouldn’t grumble about a few turbines singing in the wind’. These words were spoken in 2000 and, 16 years later, the community wind farm turbines in Mynydd y Gwrhyd, 20 miles north of Swansea, are due to be commissioned by December.
Community benefit society Awel (Welsh for ‘wind’) is funding the scheme through shares (raising £1.27 million to date) and Welsh government loans of £4.…
On June 16, the New York Times reported :
'More than 50 State Department diplomats have signed an internal memo sharply critical of the Obama administration’s policy in Syria, urging the United States to carry out military strikes against the government of President Bashar al-Assad to stop its persistent violations of a cease-fire in the country’s five-year-old civil war.
The memo, a draft of which was provided to…
A Letter to the Prime Minister, Jo Wilding's Diary from Iraq - trailer from Julia Guest on Vimeo.
Jo Wilding’s Eye Witness account of the war and occupation of Iraq between 2002- 2004.
The film focuses on the effect of sanctions and war on civilians and where this breached Geneva conventions.
It is an eye…
In April, two dozen activists, facilitators and trainers from around the UK took part in two advanced workshops led by Erika Thorne and Nico Amador from the US group, Training for Change (TfC).
TfC’s ‘Training for Social Action Trainers’ and ‘Advanced Training of Trainers’ workshops finally took place in London after two years of hard work by Peace News, Turning the Tide and Campaign Bootcamp.
A comment…
In July of last year, 13 climate activists occupied Heathrow airport’s northern runway for six hours, causing around 25 flights to be cancelled. On 24 February, the Heathrow 13, who were found guilty of aggravated trespass and being unlawfully airside, were given suspended sentences of six weeks in prison. This means that if they commit another ‘offence’ in the next 12 months, they will be sent to prison for six weeks for the runway occupation, as well as being sentenced for any new ‘crime…
On 9 February, Greenpeace installed a realistic-looking 10-metre fracking rig and drill in Parliament Square, London, to ‘bring the local impacts of fracking to the heart of democracy’. The rig gave off a bio ethanol flame every hour, speakers broadcast the sounds of drilling and lorries, and a two-metre-high illuminated road sign gave drivers and passers-by anti-fracking messages (many of them sent in by Greenpeace supporters by social media).
On 28 January, 30 life-size cutouts of peacemaker Jerry Berrigan blockaded the main entrance of Hancock air national guard base outside Syracuse, New York. The 12 nonviolent drone resisters who supported the 30 Jerry Berrigans were arrested after blockading for 90 minutes. Jerry Berrigan dedicated his entire life – like his brothers Dan and Phil – to Jesus’ command to love one another. He came to the base for drone…
