The explosion of free and open source software and mass co-production of things like wikipedia has shown that people together can do amazing things.

Business West's Bristol 2050 consulted business leaders from across the City. A group of people associated with Occupy Bristol are starting a rival People’s Bristol 2050, which involves all the communities in Bristol, not just the business leaders. The people of Bristol and the surrounding area have the knowledge, ingenuity and skills to come up with a far greater plan, and start putting it into action. We also think the 40 year timescale frees people to think more imaginatively, and to propose creative and hopeful futures. Occupy Bristol envisage the project including,Open Space meetings, online discussions and information sharing, events in community centres and more. The first event will be an Open Space meeting at the Trinity Centre, Saturday 21 Jan 2pm-4pm (upstairs hall). The hope is to bring interested people together to talk about sensible ideas and plans and kick start initiatives, both big and small.

If you’re interested, please come along. Bring your thoughts, ideas and enthusiasm and, above all, a willingness to listen to others. Full Article

After QC Denyer refused to recognise due process and made an unlawful summary judgement in favour of eviction, Occupy Bristol is now on full red alert. Despite the media saying otherwise, occupy bristol does not recognise the judgement and WILL be resisting the eviction attempt. Sources have fed back to the site that it will be happening within the next week.

Currently occupy bristol are clearing certain sections of the site to preserve materials and are also planning for the resistance. occupy bristol needs as much help as possible over the coming days to clear supplies off the site. Also, if you have access to or know of anywhere that occupy can store all the bender poles and tarps then please get in contact.

Fundamentally though, occupy bristol needs support to resist the eviction itself.

If you want to help, or just wish to be kept informed, then text: 07814901175 or 07926381959.

Big thanks must go out to all of you that have supported occupy bristol through thick and thin. Phase two is just about to begin...

On 22nd December, two Bristol Rising Tide activists appeared at Lanark Sheriff's Court to be sentenced following an action to stop work at the Mainshill open cast mine back in March 2011.  The two were fined £400 each for aggravated trespass by Sheriff Stewart.

They were part of a group who entered Scottish Coal's Mainshill mine in South Lanarkshire to disrupt coaling operations.  The two Bristol activists managed to reach and scale a huge 260 tonne 'prime mover' in the bottom of the pit, one of the two biggest machines on the site.  Other activists there to support them were brutally attacked by Scottish Coal employees and Trustcare Security.  The action lasted over 4 hours before a specialist police team from Glasgow removed the people occupying the excavator, which had been in the process of loading coal from the seam on to dump trucks.

The action in March was part of the on-going campaign by Coal Action Scotland to resist the expansion of the open cast coal mining in the Douglas Valley in South Lanarkshire.  In 2009/2010 there was a 7-month occupation of the site by the Mainshill Solidariy Camp; over 70 people were evicted from the site, with 45 being forcibly removed and arrested