29 January 2012  http://www.huon.org/

Hi, Thanks to Huon Environment Centre for flying me down to Tassie for these workshops and thanks for keeping up the resistance to industrial logging in Tasmania. The workshops on 29 January will focus upon campaign strategy and planning in the morning and in the afternoon we will be exploring campaign sustainability and ways of avoiding individual and organisational burnout.

These workshops will employ several road-tested techniques for campaign success such as conflict mapping, whole of campaign strategic planning techniques for personal and group empowerment The workshops will be set against the background of the ongoing struggle to protect Tassie’s old growth forests and its toll on all concerned.

In the days before it was great to visit the folks at The Florentine blockade. http://stillwildstillthreatened.org/main-categories/camp-florentine

Inspiring to experience again the warmth, the stress and the camaraderie of blockade camps. Congratulations to the Florentine mob for holding the line there for so many years and incidentally for their great performances in the recent film “The Hunter”. It was on from the blockade to a rally outside parliament , with a live cross over to Miranda in the Observertree: http://observertree.org/

Update

The workshops were a great success, not only for the training but also for the value of bringing together the various groups involved in direct action to save wild forests still threatened by rampant old growth logging and roading.

Groups represented included

Still Wild Still Threatened http://www.stillwildstillthreatened.org/

Code Green Tasmania http://codegreentas.org/

And of course our hosts the Huon Environment Centre.

It was a great opportunity for frontline activists to take some time from the day to day actions and look at the wider picture, and particularly useful to have the various groups in one place to focus on planning and survival. The Tassie forest dispute is like an old growth social movement issue in itself so it was great to focus in the workshop on the life cycle of social movements and reach some consensus about where the current direct action campaign fits within the history (on the frontline of course). It was very interesting to explore the roles played by established environment groups and the front line blockaders and activists of today.

All power to the tireless warriors of the southern forests.

 

 

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