[Cc-webedit] Drum Out report - blog proposal

[Jonathan Stevenson]

Hi all,

I'd like to put this up as a blog post. It was actually written by Ruth 
from the London nhood.

J

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Oil Industry under Siege 

    As oil executives gathered at a London hotel for their annual
strategising conference last night, up to 200 climate activists
crossed the river from BP-sponsored Tate Modern to converge on the
front entrance with a samba band and a giant paper-mache oil-covered
seabird. Titled "Drum It Out", the protest also put the industry on
trial before a People's Court which loudly found it guilty of crimes
of pollution, war crimes, climate crime, and more. 

    The court heard live testimony by witnesses not only from the Gulf,
but from Nigeria, Ghana, Colombia, Peru, from Iraq which has suffered
the devastation of a war for oil, from Canada where indigenous people
are resisting the Tar Sands oil project destroying a land as large as
England, and from Kenya and China which are suffering droughts as a
result of the changing climate. "The Gulf of Mexico is not the only
disaster," the protesters said - "in fact it's not even the largest,
and in some places this destruction of life has been going on for
decades. The oil industry is not sustainable. They think they rule
the world, but they are facing resistance everywhere. They cannot
come to this hotel and think they will carry on business as usual". 

    A dead fish award was presented to Bloody Oil in its various company
guises, and a "fish" was delivered to the hotel to be passed on to
Congress delegates.

    Following the trial, the main and back entrance were besieged by the
drumming crowd, with no injuries and no arrests. Two activists who had
succeeded in penetrating the building were unceremoniously ejected. 

    The Drum Out will be followed this Saturday by a Teach In, at the
School of Oriental and African Studies, where campaigners will learn
more about the ongoing resistance by workers and communities in oil
regions, will link-up live with organisers in Ghana, and will discuss
how to work together to bring the industry down. One protester
commented, "If even half the money invested in subsidising oil,
cleaning up its disasters and funding its wars were devoted to
alternative forms of energy, people wouldn't be suffering these
outrages, and the planet would be safe."