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.”
The main road leading into the Port of Brisbane has, for the third day in a row, been blocked by an activist bringing attention to the vital system change that we need to foster a healthy environment on this planet.
Naomi was locked onto the back of 2 vehicles for a couple of hours to stand in the way of the destruction of this continent. This disruption was taken collectively, on stolen land, with actions happening across so-called Newcastle and Melbourne ports.
In her livestream, Naomi said “I’m doing this because otherwise I’d be completely miserable watching the ecosystems around me be destroyed. Direct action is a method for creating change because it speaks truth to power and demonstrates the urgency of the situation. I really wish for humanity that we can find common goals and a sense of purpose, and more loving ways of existing with the earth.”
An organised resistance movement, made up of everyday people, is what is required to stop Australia’s destruction and protect the natural systems necessary for all life.
Update: 35 hours later (at publication time) and Naomi has still not been released or seen a magistrate and likely won’t until at least 2 days after this protest.
2 supporters of Blockade Australia have were arrested on site at this protest and have been in court and ordered to be held in prison at least until 17 June.
Stealthy Ninja Grace (18) and Angus (22) the impromptu comedian ground coal export to a standstill on Tuesday night. Separated by 50km and 5 hours they live streamed their legendary acts of courage on facebook. One cheeky and one hilarious they’re both great entertainment.
Grace jumped the barbed wire fence surrounding the mountains of coal at 9pm in the worlds largest coal port and ran in to pull the breaks an enormous machine that unloads trains and loads ships. She then scaled that machine and glued their hand to a maintenance railing 5 stories high.
Angus erected a 9m metal pole in the middle of the train tracks on a narrow rail bridge at 3:30am, the pole was tensioned across all the train tracks and Angus proceeded to safely climb up the pole and livestream for 6 hours.
Muloobinba local, Angus, stopped the Hunter Valley supply line leading into the Newcastle coal port, atop a 9-metre pole in early morning darkness into sunrise this morning on Wonnarua Country. The 22-year old said:
“The Australian system is killing us. We need to fight to continue living. The luxury of a handful of people is being prioritised over the lives of every other living thing on the planet. The best way we can fight the system is by directly confronting its operations with direct actions like this. Physical action that disrupts the destructive functioning of the colonial project known as Australia is real, political power.”
Glued on
Stealthy ninja, Grace (18) said:
“Engaging in direct action like this makes a clear statement that we won’t be messed around. We are doing this because it’s necessary for survival and necessary to avert mass extinction. Actions like this are for our collective survival. I act out of love for our haters, for the people rooting for us, for literally all human and nonhuman life.”
They are proud to have taken impactful action to disrupt the system that is killing us.
This morning, Niamh (20) abseiled off the Footscray Rd Bridge, blocking six lanes of traffic and access to the Port of Melbourne, the biggest container port on the continent.
Niamh said: “Blockade Australia has no demands because you cannot demand anything from a system that is designed to extract and exploit. The system that will always put profit above acting on the climate crisis. This system is the problem and the only way to create change is to stop it.”
For the third consecutive day, activists have mobilised to blockade major ports across the continent. Ports are a critical part of the infrastructure of the Australian export economy. This is an organised response to Australia’s role in causing the climate and ecological crisis.
