dan glass active user Campaign categories: environment, community-building, democracy, community-building, democracy, community-building, climate change Location: Scotland

I mobilise with Plane Stupid Scotland, the direct action network against the impacts of the aviation industry. I work with some of worst-hit UK communities affected by climate injustice with a popular education network 'DIY Education Collective' + others

I've been campaigning and taking direct action against the growth of the aviation industry for two years.

Aberdeen Airport Occupation

Since being involved in Plane Stupid I have been involved with shutting down the entire of Aberdeen airport in order to stop as many carbon emissions as possible and bring to light the impact that aviation expansion and aviation in general has on local and global injustice.

After tucking our trousers into our chequered socks and tying golf flags to our backs Plane Stupid activists peacefully invaded the taxiway at Aberdeen airport and settled down inside the fencing for an early morning golf tournament. Our message? It’s silly to play golf in inappropriate places, just as its silly to expand airports whilst trying to tackle climate change. The nine players from the Plane Stupid Scotland team refused sponsorship from Trump, BAA or any carbon hungry team and proceeded to lay the taxiway turf, swing our (toy) clubs and hit the balls home for all the regions of the world soon to be engulfed by rising sea levels. After five hours, team ‘peer reviewed science’ with a handicap of zero, beat team ‘exponential airport expansion’ with a beautiful hole in one; we drank some water and wrote a letter to Scotland’s finest import, Mr Donald Trump.

Climbing the Scots Monument, climbing the Parliament roof, blockading Stansted airport, community organising, organising with queer movements, interfaith movements and much more.....

The Aberdeen occupation was on the last day of the Scottish Governments planning bill, which legitimises the airport expansions. We felt we needed to make our mark. Sixty days previously, we climbed the Scots Monument in the middle of Edinburgh to hold our heads high and state that we will do whatever it takes to stop the expansion.

Before the occupation at Aberdeen airport, I helped bring troops to the occupation at Stansted airport, I have been there when when we climbed on the roof of the Scottish houses of parliament, I have helped set up AirportWatch Scotland (the coalition of community groups against airport expansion) and 'PlaneSpeaking' (the outreach project using participatory techniques to involve marginalised communities affected by climate change), I have been there with residents from all over Scotland blaring airport noise through the door of the First Minister Alex Salmond at 4am so he can feel what it is like to live by an expanding airport. I have been outreaching with different faith networks particularly the Jewish community. As a grandson of four Holocaust survivors I have learnt about the importance of standing up to injustice. As a person active in the LGBTQueer movement I see it as vital that we tackle social injustice so that everyone has a part to play in tackling the biggest issues of our time. So I am now organising with some of the most ignored communities throughout the UK affected by climate change to address the racist nature of climate change. African, Caribbean and Asian communities are significantly affected by heavy industry in the UK as well as, on a global scale, the people being affected by rising sea levels, flooding and drought first; even though it wasn't these communities who created the problems in the first place.

Sticking it the Big Man; supergluing the Prime Minister

Last Summer I found out I had won an award for my work. To collect it I was to go to No 10 and meet the prime minister, the same man who has been wilfully ignoring all campaign group Plane Stupid's work and the 70,000 London resident's rejections of the the third runway at Heathrow. It didn't take long to decide what I would do.

With a team from Plane Stupid backing me up, I put on my second-hand suit wearing a device in my pocket that was linked up to an anonymous Skype account on a computer in front of the team. At 6.15pm Brown came out into the audience to shake our hands. I knew what I was about to do as I squeezed the superglue into my left hand.

I grabbed his arm, and started to deliver my speech. This is what I started to say as I superglued myself to his arm before the PM tore my hand away from his suit.

If I could have continued talking to my captive, here's what I would have said:

"We need you to make the tough decisions you keep on talking about. If you need someone to hold your hand, then we are willing to do just that. But we are not going to wait around for politicians to catch up. Remember, you only have two possible legacies before you leave office: as the first prime minister to take climate change seriously, or the last one not to.

"It's time you stopped hiding from communities on the frontline affected by climate change. While we stand here smiling nicely for the cameras, Inuit communities in the Arctic are planning survival strategies for their families as the deep seas gradually engulf them. While we stand here drinking champagne and eating canapés, communities in Tuvalu are desperately building sandbanks to stop their island, their families, their lives and ultimately, their dignity, from going underwater. And, prime minister, as you know, the community of Sipson in west London awaits complete demolition because of the planned third runway at Heathrow airport.

"Your Heathrow consultation is a fix, pure and simple. It is the single most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing this government has done since the Iraq war. If supergluing myself to you, prime minister, is the only way to cut through the power of corporations like BAA and ensure you hear what people from west London really think, then so be it.

"Heathrow is a sign of things to come. In Heathrow, the battle-lines are drawn. We could continue careering down the path of relentless economic growth and ignore the world's top scientists who are calling on us to curb aviation, or stop, take a breather and support workers in the aviation industry and communities surrounding airports into a sustainable lifestyle, before it is too late. The choice, prime minister, is yours.

"Allow us, the future generation, to shake your faith. Put your hand in ours, let us lead you through this labyrinth and realise that we have this remarkable opportunity. I could be your son. Explain yourself to the next generation. The people of the next generation will either thank us for taking the necessary, logical action, or lament us for not being radical enough. It is not good enough to do our bit – we must do what is necessary. If you find a basis to disagree, by all means take the other side. But please don't ignore it, don't look away, prime minister.

"Almost every day, I notice signs that more and more people are longing for our species to cease its self-destructive war with earth and each other. And that's the real strength of Plane Stupid; creating new spaces to confront climate change. Powerful people know that ordinary people are not innately selfish or slaves to consumerism. Creating spaces to strategise resistance to forces promoting this inter-generational catastrophe is not just a campaign, or even a movement, it's a whole culture not negotiated by governments; but enforced by people. By the public. A public that can link hands across national borders and acknowledge that we are all learners, and always continuing to learn to tackle climate change.

"Bring on the spanners. If we succeed no one will remember. If we fail no one will forget."

Exposing police infiltration in the national news

Over the last six months The police have been sniffing around my and others in Plane Stupid and trying to bribe Plane Stupiders to spy on the rest of us. As soon as we found out about this, we hatched a plan, wired ourselves up with recording devices and recorded every damn thing they sail; from using tax payers money to infiltrate peaceful groups to the core of their threatening behaviour; on the front page of the national press. This adds to the picture of routine violence meted out to Climate Campers at the G20, Kingsnorth and Heathrow camps; and the “intelligence led” pre-emptive arrest for conspiracy of 114 activists in Nottinghamshire last week; and it is clear that the emerging climate action movement has been singled out by the police for some very special treatment.

The question is: why?

It is fair to start by looking at the reasons the police have given. In the case of the surveillance on us, it wasn’t Plane Stupid they were “worried about, but individuals within Plane Stupid”; individuals, it was claimed, who may be planning acts of violence in the name of our cause. At the Climate Camps, it was the elusive “hardcore of trouble-makers” intent on provoking violence, and in the case of the Nottingham conspiracy, “those arrested posed a serious threat to the safe running of the site." EON, the owners of the alleged target of the alleged protest, give us a helpful clue about what is going here in their statement following the arrests: “While we understand that everyone has a right to protest peacefully and lawfully, this was clearly neither of those things.”

So if accusations that climate activists represent a threat to people are unfounded, then what kind of threat do we really represent, to warrant all of this police attention?

As members of Plane Stupid we care passionately and are deeply committed to tackling climate change with appropriate measures. We have public interest at the fore of everything we do and we feel defensible in the tactics we use to halt runaway climate change, the most defining and terrifying issue of our generation. For these reasons, although we are not unaware that the police will be interested in our activity, we nonetheless feel that they have no right to intimidate and attempt to deter us from becoming actively involved in our 'democracy.' We hope that by exposing the police force's and criminal justice system's dirty tactics for policing peaceful protest we can help other people involved in the climate movement and prevent them from being intimidated or deterred.

Everyday we are told that the threat of climate change is looming and 'if we don't act now it will be too late'. The world's top climate scientists state that airports cannot expand and coal fired power stations cannot be built if we are ever to meet the CO2 reduction targets necessary to preserve our future. Today carbon heavy industries can pollute relentlessly with barely a legal challenge and when ordinary citizens challenge this, they are criminalised. If climate change is indeed the main concern of our courts and government, then this logic must be challenged and the question must be asked, 'who are the real criminals?' Are the criminals the people of this nation clearing up this social and ecological mess to prevent devastation for future generations? Or are the criminals filling their pockets with cash whilst the poor get poorer and our future is snatched from us? We felt it is high time for the tables to turn. If we are to stop runaway climate change we need to support the people taking the necessary action and expose those working to protect a system which protects profit over the planet. We are not a threat to any person‘s health of well-being. We are firmly committed to peaceful protest. However, we ARE a financial threat to big business and a financial threat to carbon-heavy industry. Aviation is still the fastest growing source of Co2. If the Climate Change bill is to be enforced, the industry has to scale down massively. For us, this isn’t merely about Plane Stupid and the police, it is about exposing 'police' tactics which protect a criminal justice system that defend big business instead of civil liberties.

Building a movement of civil disobedience to tackle climate change whilst we have the opportunity

Since the occupation at Aberdeen airport I have been involved in putting together our legal defence, coordinating all the people who have got in contact asking to be our witnesses'. These are people affected by climate change in the Arctic and in countries facing flooding right not. This is to say that our actions at Aberdeen airport were to stop a higher crime.

A noticeable period of quiet on in Britain has lulled the government into discounting civil society as a potential political and social force; now that patience seems to be running out. Once in a great while , a few times in history you could say, humans are left with the responsibility so great, so acute and possible unexpected that people cant quit decide what is more amazing- the fact or the thinking of it. The time has come, the stakes are raised. Perhaps things could get worse, but actually, perhaps things could get a lot better.

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