Stop NATO Cymru and Anarchist Action Network Meeting

Stop NATO Cymru and Anarchist Action Network National Convergence

Saturday 19th July 11am -5pm in Newport, South Wales at the Community Space Partnership, 128 Lower Dock St, Newport, NP20 1EG

Sunday 20th July 11am- 5pm in Cardiff, South Wales at the Owain Glyndwr Pub, (Tair Pluen function Room) Cardiff, 10 St John’s Street, Cardiff, Wales, CF10 1GL

Stop NATO Cymru is a group initiated by local activists to mobilise against the NATO summit. Stop NATO Cymru joined with the Anarchist Action Network as a group with the same fundamental principles and as a group with the experience and skills gained from the anti-G8 mobilisation in 2013.

The Anarchist Action Network is working with Stop NATO Cymru to mobilise against the forthcoming NATO summit. This is the penultimate organising meeting before the summit – come and join the mobilisation!

Please email us in advance to discuss any queries about disabled access, childcare or crashspace at: stopnatocymru at riseup dot net.

Newport Rising Timetable – 26th May to the 1st June 2014

 

Venue announced: 95-96 Commercial St, NP20 1LU. Map is here. If you get lost ring/txt 07440 192330.

 

The programme for the week, more TBC!

MAY 26 – JUNE 1
A whole week of events in a venue in Newport

Mon 26th

11am-5pm: Kids’ Chartist mural re-creation

 12pm Community Singing Workshop

1-4pm: Self Defence for Women taster session – Women only 

4.30pm: Know your Rights with the Police Training 

7.30pm: Community, Democracy and Chartism 

Tue 27th

11am: Animal Rights 

12.30pm: No to the new nuclear build. Nuclear Power = Nuclear Weapons by South West against Nuclear 

2pm Fracking in Wales 

2-5pm : Stencil/graffiti workshop 

4-6 pm: Basic first aid workshop 

7.30pm The Levels Motorway Campaign and Fracking in Newport 

Wed 28th

2-5pm: Banner-making workshop 

Time TBC: The Tea Tent Claimants Solidarity – Strategies for coping with 21st Century unemployment

2pm: IWW Worker’s Power in Under an Hour Training 

Time TBC: Beat the Bedroom Tax 

7pm: Stopping forced workfare labour by Boycott Workfare. 

Thu 29th

2-5pm: Badge-making workshop 

3-4.3pm:Why Men against Patriarchy?(all genders welcome)

Time TBC: No Borders Morocco Presentation 

7:30pm: Borders & racism, plus film screening about nationalism.

Plus! Anti-facist network stall

Fri 30th: 

12.30pm:Prison abolition talk 

Time TBC: The Historical Aspects of Anarchism 

Time TBC: Anarchism for beginners 

7.30pm – ‘How can we destroy capitalism and make new worlds of anarchy and freedom?’ – workshop by Kaput (https://network23.org/kaput/)

There will be an acoustic gig afterwards with Cosmo, Emu Lou and Raz plus “Dancing Queer” bellydanceing performance.

Sat 31st

Day of protest and street theatre

7.30pm: Talk by people on the Dignity March from Bristol to Cardiff.

Sun 1st

12.30 pm: Session on resisting the drone wars – with emphasis about resistance to Parc Aberporth in Wales and Barclays Bank, investor in drone technology.

2pm: Countering military Recruitment in South Wales.

4pm: Resisting the NATO Summit in Newport – presentation by Stop NATO Cymru.

6.30pm: Organising meeting to build resistance against the NATO summit. All welcome!

Every day:

Free tea and cakes all week.

Free hot meal each evening.

Anarchism Exhibition 

Zines and Books

All welcome!

Venue details nearer the time.

To help out or donate food, materials or money, pop round for a chat or email stopnatocymru@riseup.net

 

What is the Anarchist Travelling Circus

Anarchist Action Network is planning to hold similar Travelling Circus events around the UK with the aim of raising public awareness of anarchism and building a movement with the strength to take renewed action. Go to www.anarchistaction.net for more information.

Anarchists Shut Down Barclays

On Saturday, 3rd of May, a group of 25 anarchists and anti-militarists closed Barclays’ Cardiff city centre branch in protest of the bank’s investment in the arms trade.

The campaigners formed a Radical Bloc on the Trades Council-organised May Day march, breaking from the main route to take action against the bank instead of going to listen to speeches by union officials at the Trades Council’s rally.

A local anarchist and member of the Stop NATO Cymru campaign group said: “We took part in the May Day march to draw attention to the struggles of workers all over the world against exploitation and violent oppression which is exacerbated by arms producers here in the UK.

We targeted Barcalys because it’s a major investor in Exelis Inc. the parent company of the EDO Corporation which is guilty of mass-producing arms to sell to oppressive regimes, exacerbating violent conflict and suppressing legitimate protest. Barclays Global Investors UK Holdings Ltd has 5,059,591 shares in Exelis and Barclays PLC has 63,071 shares.

We entered the branch after leaving the May Day march and refused to leave until we had made an impact. Within half-an-hour the management decided to close, depriving the company of a busy Saturday afternoon’s profit through direct action. We sent our message to the public by plastering the front of the building with stickers which gave details of Barclays’ guilt and sent a clear message to the company that we won’t tolerate money from our communities being used to fund war.”

The protest was organised by Stop NATO Cymru as part of an ongoing campaign to oppose the forthcoming NATO Summit in Newport this September.

A member of Stop NATO Cymru added: “We oppose all wars between nations and see NATO, the armed wing of western capitalism, and the companies which manufacture its weapons as being two sides of the same coin. Both murder ordinary people who are forced into conflicts by their conditions and escalate situations like Ukraine’s, where two imperialistic powers are forcing their will over an innocent population, NATO being one of those powers.”

1) For more information on Stop NATO Cymru: network23.org/stopnatocymru 

2) For more on opposition to the forthcoming NATO Summit: 
http://www.radicalwales.org/2014/02/nato-in-newport-2014.html 

3) For more information on Exelis Inc./EDO Corp.: http://www.smashedo.org.uk

Cardiff Mayday Radical Bloc

May Day is about radicalism. It’s about celebrating working people’s history of fighting for better conditions. It’s about the global struggle against a system which tries to keep us in subservience instead of leading fulfilling and liberated lives.

In September NATO is holding a major summit in Newport, gathering some of the world’s wealthiest, most powerful warmongers in an area with a proud history of radical struggle.

NATO is the armed wing of capitalism. It exists purely to further the interests of American elites, uniting American puppet-states in bloody wars over oil, political influence and to force their ruthless, “free-market” economics on the entire world.

Every year thousands of people are killed for being in the wrong place, on the wrong side of US interests, having the wrong colour skin, or being part of the wrong class.

Join us on Sat 3rd May on the Cardiff May Day demo, not to listen to the same old speeches, but to take action against the Military- Industrial Complex, show that building a better world is possible and send a clear warning to NATO that we’re ready to fight back.

Meet 12pm, St Mary’s St, by Maldron Hotel. http://www.network23.org/stopnatocymru

Anarchist Action Network meeting in Newport, South Wales

We welcome you to be at the second meeting of the newly formed Anarchist
Action Network (formerly Stop G8)…

Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 March 2014

12noon – 5pm Saturday (main meeting)
12noon – 4pm Sunday (working groups)

Join us for the weekend as we discuss plans for ‘Newport Rising’ a
family-friendly festival celebrating anarchism, as well as opposition to
the 2014 NATO conference in Newport in September.

At the Community Space Partnership,
89 Lower Dock Street, Newport NP20 2AH

More info soon at:
http://anarchistaction.net
network23.org/stopnatocymru

Anarchist Action Network Meeting / Stop NATO Cymru – 22nd-23rd February – London

Please circulate!

Announcing the NATIONAL WEEKEND CONVERGENCE in LONDON of the ANARCHIST ACTION NETWORK (previously known as STOPG8) and STOP NATO CYMRU. To be held on the weekend on 22-23rd February 2014 at The London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel, London, E1 1ES.

http://www.londonarc.org/

About

The Anarchist Action Network (previously known as StopG8) has existed as a network in the UK since July 2012. It initially came together both to mobilise against last years G8 summit, and to help re-build an anti-capitalist movement in the UK and beyond. In January 2014 StopG8 adopted its new name – the Anarchist Action Network, and the Network was joined by Stop NATO Cymru, the South Wales network opposed to the NATO summit in Newport in September 2014. The Anarchist Action Network will shortly be putting on a programme of events on Anarchism and anticapitalist struggle, and working with Stop NATO Cymru to support the mobilisation against the forthcoming NATO summit. The Anarchist Action Network respects diversity of tactics and has adopted the PGA Hallmarks.

https://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/en/

This is a two day event and all are welcome (except cops and journos) from 11am til 5pm each day on the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd of February 2014.

Please email us in advance to discuss any enquiries about disabled access, childcare or crashspace at: stopg8@riseup.net

Stop NATO Cymru Statment

This statment was taken from Indymedia UK.

Today several banners were dropped at various locations around Newport, south Wales as an act of solidarity with the NATO 3 and to launch the statement below which was handed out in the city centre.

For more information about the NATO 3 follow this link.

Stop NATO Cymru Statment

This year NATO will have their next summit at Celtic Manor Resort, in Newport, south Wales. In early September 2014, “world leaders” – all directly responsible for untold death, illegal torture flights, and wars fought purely to protect Western business interests and resource supply routes – will gather on the edge of this historic Welsh city. Many people from Newport, Cardiff, Bristol and beyond, will oppose the summit and use a diversity of tactics against it. We, an anti-capitalist, anti-militarist network in South Wales, plan to facilitate mobilisations and provide space for workshops, skill-shares and social events. We are organising without leaders as we do not agree with bosses or bombs.

NATO has often used the term ‘humanitarian interventions’ to disguise the fact that it actually fights for the strategic, economic and political benefit of the elite classes within NATO member countries. Militarism and capitalism are part of the same global power structure. A critique and confrontation of capitalism is therefore an indispensable aspect of our anti-militarist stance.

As it stands, NATO is a nuclear armed alliance with over 5000 nuclear weapons. It was supposedly established for mutual defence during the Cold War, and should have been disbanded when the Soviet Union ended. Instead, it has expanded and become an aggressive alliance force, engaged in wars with a crusader mentality.

For nearly ten years it has been conducting the war in Afghanistan, historically a pivotal region between the West and the East, where around 100,000 innocent civilians have died and three million innocent people have become refugees.

But a critique of militarism and capitalism doesn’t end with NATO: The annual global military expenditure stands at over £1,072,600,000,000. Spending is estimated to equal £150 per person, per year, across the world. The UK military budget is the fourth highest in the world. At a time of austerity we must demand to know why military spending is so high and expose the brutality of those in global positions of power.

Most people face much more pressing issues than new fighter aircraft or submarines. People want money spent on local facilities and proper access to social and health infrastructure. Even when the military has made some cuts, these have almost entirely impacted on people in the first instance – rather than material things like arms purchases – through reductions in personnel, lower wages and pensions. The UK still plans to spend almost £160,000,000,000 on new weapons by 2022, including £35.8 billion on nuclear-armed submarines that are designed not to be used.

While people around the world struggle to provide basic necessities for their families, governments still squander vast resources on military interventions that are wasteful of both resources and lives, and reflect outdated paradigms.

The USA, under the banner of NATO, is still working to place a “missile defence” system in Europe, which is provoking an unsettling arms race with Russia. However, we do not have to agree to their plans for us. People in communities around us are building resistance to military bases in their area. Including in Aberporth, Ceredigion, Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, Faslane near Glasgow, EDO in Brighton, local people are mobilising and opposing militarism.

Newport has a history of radicalism. The Chartist rising, which celebrates it’s 175th anniversary this year, was the last large-scale armed insurrection in Wales, England and Scotland. A popular piece of public art celebrating the revolt was recently demolished ahead of schedule, as part of a planned redevelopment of the centre, financed by a £90million loan which the Council have gifted to developers whilst slashing funds for frontline services. This naive gamble on reviving the fortunes of the town via the pumping of public funds into private companies, joins a long list that includes LG, The Ryder Cup, and now this NATO summit.

Together with people from across South Wales and beyond, we are going to mobilise between this winter and September against militarism, Cold-War relics, and inflated defence budgets.

We hope you can join the events, mobilisations and activities to oppose NATO and world leaders being in Newport. Much is planned between now and September. We aim to be an open and inclusive network, working together, with as many people as possible to find non-hierarchical local and global structures as alternatives to the system of exploitation, while being mindful of potential state and corporate infiltration of our movement. Our website will be updated with news and information and we have an email
address that we can be contacted at:  stopnatocymru@riseup.net

Stop NATO Cymru, part of the Anarchist Action Network

supported by

South Wales Anarchists, Cymru Wales IWW, Cardiff Food not Bombs, Swansea Food not Bombs, No Borders South Wales, Bristol Against Arms Trade