Grassroots Direct Action Movements with scott crow, Jake Conroy & Scott Parkin

Direct action gets the goods!

Radical action is shifting the conversations around how to make change to a wider audience. Whether it's organizing hard hitting campaigns against powerful corporations, establishing occupations in open resistance to capitalist power or building a network to provide disaster relief, direct action is the strategy which both resists state power and creates new institutions that undermine that power.

From Earth First! halting logging and wilderness destruction to the Stop Huntin
gton Animal Cruelty (SHAC) campaign effectively bankrupting Huntington Life Sciences to Rising Tide North America and other climate justice activists fighting oil, gas and coal tooth and nail, our movements have proven that effective organizing and action can hurt corporate profit and undermine the corporate state’s power. But it comes at a cost as state repression hits back hard.

On Dec. 9th at 7pm at the Holdout in Oakland, join our three amazing speakers Jake Conroy, Scott Parkin and scott crow as they discuss their experiences in building grassroots direct action movements fighting state and corporate power and dealing with state repression.

WHERE: The Holdout, 2313 San Pablo Ave, Oakland CA
WHEN: Sunday, Dec. 9th at 7pm
DONATE: Free (as we’re gonna be)
CONTACT: Rising Tide escobar.jack [at] gmail.com
RSVP:http://www.facebook.com/events/122452297913022/

scott crow is an Austin-based anarchist community organizer, writer, and trainer who began working on anti-apartheid, international political prisoner, and animal rights issues in the mid-1980s. He is the co-founder and co-organizer of several social justice groups and education projects throughout Texas and the South including Common Ground Collective in New Orleans with Malik Rahim), Radical Encuentro Camp, UPROAR (United People Resisting Oppression and Racism), Dirty South Earth First!, and North Texas Coalition for a Just Peace. He has trained and organized for Greenpeace, Ruckus Society, Rainforest Action Network, ACORN, Forest Ethics, and Ralph Nader, and many smaller grassroots groups. He is currently collaborating on long-term sustainable democratic economic mutual aid projects within Austin.

Jake Conroy, a long-time animal rights activist who was sentenced to 4 years in prison for his involvement in one of the most successful animal rights campaigns in history - Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC USA). Conroy has been involved in a wide range of activism since 1995. After graduating from art school in 1996, Jake’s passion for positive change led him to volunteer with and organize various campaigns on local, regional, national and international levels. Dubbed the SHAC7, he and his codefendants were tried as domestic terrorists for running a web page, supporting controversial ideologies, and sharing ideas. Jake was sentenced to 48 months, which he served in two prisons in southern California.

Scott Parkin is a long time environmental and social justice organizer based in San Francisco. He is currently a Senior Campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, a core organizer with Rising Tide North America and sits on the board of the Ruckus Society.While living in Texas, he co-founded the Houston Global Awareness Collective (2001) and Dirty South Earth First! (2003). Over the years, Parkin has participated in and/or organized campaigns against George Bush’s war machine, ExxonMobil, Maxxam, Halliburton, Citibank, Bank of America, Massey Energy and, most recently, TransCanada. In 2005 Parkin was detained and then forcibly removed from Australia after being deemed “a direct or indirect threat to Australian national security” by a “competent Australian authority.”