- Home
- Commentary
- Mind over matter: The world of abstraction is driving us to destruction
- The real threats to our liberty and survival
- Avoiding the abyss of conspiracy theories
- The difference between a legal system and a fantasy novel
- What’s a conspiracy and what’s just common garden variety corruption?
- Unpredictability, humility and an emerging anthropandemic
- The trilemma – climate change, economic collapse, and rising fascism
- Happy New Normal for the decade ahead
- Fires, liars and climate deniers
- The race to the bottom in australian politics
- Talking about lock-on devices – an article in ‘The Conversation’
- The Ponzi scheme is teetering
- Regenerative culture a key part of the blockade experience
- Staying sane in the late Anthropocene
- Extinction Rebellion
- Major parties have failed on climate, it’s time to rebel.
- Elections In The Late Anthropocene
- It is the Greens that are defeating the Nats and it’s all about your preferences
- Australia’s powerhouse of democracy and innovation is in the Northern Rivers
- Is identity politics a problem for the left?
- The climate emergency and the awful state of Australian politics
- Liberty, freedom and civil rights? Do any of us understand these things anymore.
- Democracy and rights under threat in corporate police state
- The forest wars are back, time to mobilise
- …more commentary
- Workshops
- News & Events
- Media
- Activism educator Aidan Ricketts explains how and why protests can be peaceful
- Bob Brown Is Taking “Shocking” Anti-Protest Laws To The High Court
- Anti protest laws could arrest nannas, seize tractors
- “They blinked first”
- Colin Barnett quick to protest against ‘activism degrees’ – The Australian, 16/10/2014
- ‘Degrees in activism’ put brake on growth – The Australian, 15/10/2014
- Magistrate throws out vexatious police case against CSG protesters
- Outrage over school PR ‘by stealth’- The Northern Star
- CSG clash a certainty
- Communities use new tactics
- Gas group attacks lecturer
- …more media
- Activist Resources
- Reviews
Politics in the Pub: 24 February 2016.
Continue Reading → 
By Melissa Gulbin. Reprinted from the Northern Star, 10th Mar 2016.
A RAMPED-UP anti-protest bill proposed by the Baird government this week could see the forcible removal and mass arrests of Knitting Nannas and the seizure of bike locks – even tractors – under mere suspicion they could be used […]
By Thom Mitchell. Reprinted from New Matilda on 10 March, 2016.
Continue Reading → Former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown has launched a High Court challenge to Tasmania’s anti-protest laws – labelled “shocking” by a United Nations official – arguing that they breach the right to freedom of political communication implied in the Australian […]
By Hamish Broome. Reprinted from The Northern Star, 4 Nov 2015.
Continue Reading → WITH the departure of Metgasco from the region, the Bentley blockade will assume a permanent place in the history books, according to activism academic and gasfields free organiser Aidan Ricketts.
Mr Ricketts, who is […]
They blinked first. And that doesn’t happen very often. They usually make sure they have a symbolic victory over social movements. It is very rare for them to back down in the heat of the moment because they have been overwhelmed but we saw that happen.
Aidan Ricketts, a law academic and an activist against coal-seam gas, runs the Southern Cross course. He said it wasn’t about teaching people how to mobilise, but about teaching how power operated in democracies, the powers available to citizens and the legal implications of different courses of action.
Reprinted from The Australian (paywalled), 15 Oct, 2014.
Continue Reading → AUSTRALIA’S largest resources companies have warned green activists campaigning for an end to fossil fuels are destroying jobs and fast becoming one of the greatest challenges to growth.
Andrew Smith, the chairman of the Australian arm of Anglo-Dutch company Shell, yesterday […]
AIDAN RICKETTS: I end up asking the question, you know, someone, presumably in Sydney, was so desperate to secure a conviction in this case that they pulled out all stops, decided to use a previously unheard of charge and proceed through successive prosecution. I mean, I think the big burning political question […]
Sunday 25 August 2013 at 11.30 am
Adele Ferguson, Aidan Ricketts, David McKnight
Once Australia grew rich on the sheep’s back, now rocks and minerals carry the economy. It’s no secret that mining has a major impact […]
Metgasco is basically a coal seam gas company operating in the Northern Rivers, and as far as we know the only available reserves of gas they have are in the Northern Rivers. The residents of the Northern Rivers are resolutely against coal seam gas development. We’re not dealing with a small protest movement here, we are dealing with a massive virtual social consensus against this industry. So there’s a palpable sense of failure of democracy in the Northern Rivers, and I think people are kind of aghast at seeing this industry imposed on them by force by virtue of the State government, the riot squad.
Buy The Activists’ Handbook
Only $28 with free postage
Talking about lock-on devices – an article in The Conversation
As a tool of non-violent civil-disobedience, using “lock-on” devices avoids risking group stand-offs with police, which can end up worse than rugby scrums. These devices certainly cause inconvenience, but it’s difficult to imagine how a person with one or both hands locked into a device could be anything but non-violent.
[…]