Stolen from this lovely comic

For those worried about safety, I’ve just been given permission to share this letter to the Lord Mayor of Newcastle discussing event safety, hopefully it’s readable!

I’m afraid I don’t know, I’m not in direct contact with the organisers and everyone is really busy with the Canberra wave and supporting Sundays arrestees.

I expect it’s just because Norway has done it and it’s then been adopted by Rising Tide as something the Australian government should also do.

✊

God what a fucking powerful icon she was, the fact that she was willing to risk custody before the police were required to show basic decency to trans people gave me strength to go out there.

I was lucky to be able to speak to a number of trans people who’ve been arrested before I went out, there are so many stories of bravery and passion in our community.

💚💚💚 Thankyou for your kind words and support, it means so much to everyone who took part.

Some people do have negative reactions to virtually any protest action, and I suppose there’s some misguided if understandable reason behind it. I appreciate you being gentle with this person.

We’ve all been called far far worse things on national television by some very nasty people in positions of power, that’s one way we know we’re being effective.

Well, it sure doesn’t happen in a voting booth. Otherwise I’d be enjoying some great renewable energy right now instead of talking to you using coal and gas while I watch the world burning around me.

People share cool stuff they’ve done on here all the time, and this was one I did. It doesn’t make me special or anything and it seems like a lot of people enjoy hearing about it, so I figured I’d spread the word around.

We’ll almost definitely have to do this again next year and we need all the support we can get.

The police narrative has been all about safety, but it’s honestly been a huge lie. At no point was I or anyone else in any danger, everything I did was well planned. There wasn’t even a ship in the channel at the time and it wasn’t possible for me to put anyone else in danger, that’s a conscious decision you have to make for yourself as the channel is a fair way from the shore.

The arrest happened because we paddled out into the shipping channel and deliberately disobeyed a lawful order.

Police exist to protect the private interests of the wealthy, they were not there for anyone’s actual safety. There was a safety team out on the water as part of the protest, and they’re doing a far better job than the police ever have. In all honesty the police are the biggest safety risk to us, I’ve seen images of people being handled very roughly and I watched them manhandle an elderly man from the boat in this photo.

This protest has run for 13 years now and every year except this one we’ve been allowed to sit in the channel for a few dozen hours without incident. The government wants business as usual and we had no intention of allowing that.

I didn’t commit a violent act or anything, my job is fine. And hey, if it’s not and my current employer lets me go, I’ll be fine, there are plenty of places I could apply to without issues. But thankyou for your concern, friend.

I was very well prepared for this and new exactly what I was risking.

We had a planned set of goals, and most where achieved. We had hoped to actually block the coal ship from departing even for a short time, but we didn’t really manage that.

I did try to see if I could get it changed but I couldn’t find the old “send a message to the writer” thing I recalled being on the old website. Plus I’ve been living on a pretty old phone I didn’t mind loosing and it was a huge pain to use.

If you want to, feel free. One of the other reasons I didn’t is because it’s the same in all the other media companies’ stories, and it was more than one so I really couldn’t be bothered. At this point it’s not really news anyone is reading, Sunday was way more important and interesting. Up next we’ll have the protest moving to federal parliament in Canberra so that’s hopefully where everyone will be looking over the next few days.

Hell yeah, way to go comrade!

It was a pretty wild experience, but I consider myself extremely privileged to have had a relatively easy experience and very minor charge. Those who took a stand on Sunday were far braver than me, we had a number of children, great grandparents and even an actual coal miner who where arrested for demanding their future back.

I’m an ordinary person, who less than a year ago sat around on a couch and cried about how powerless I was about all of this. Never forget that we give up our power by thinking we don’t have any.

There is so much you can do, and you don’t have to go anywhere close to the extremes I’m willing to.

Hobbies were always my go to in the past, but honestly I didn’t have a ton of luck with that. I’ve made most of my new friends this past year in one of three ways:

• Starting a group for people like me. I run a small but global chat group for people to find friends, I won’t be linking it for privacy and safety reasons even in DMs, sorry.
• Activism. Activists are the nicest people on the planet and just being in their presence generates friends. I’m on my way home from a huge protest, and I basically just walked around and sat in tents and people just befriended me without me prompting at all. The exposure at events like this has boosted my confidence a huge amount and now I’m one of those people who actively befriends others too.
• Volunteering. Same thing as activism tbh, you build a sense of camaraderie very easily when you’re working towards a common goal. I cooked about ~1000 meals at that protest as a volunteer cook and made about 20 friends in the first hour, it’s nuts.

Not Safe For Working Class - by Trashbag Ponchos

It’s a lot of effort to solve an issue that’s already solved by being vegan so eh, I’m pretty indifferent to it at least at face value. If it can compete with a vegan diet in terms of climate and ecosystem impact then I’ll support it but I’ve no interest in it personally. I don’t really have any justification for not being interested, I’m just not.

I’d be much more interested in seeing artificial cheese made from proteins created by yeast or bacteria tbh.