The launch of the green guerillas..

Guerrilla gardening is a form of nonviolent direct action - armed with trowels, seeds, and vision, the idea is to garden everywhere and anywhere!

The first GG event was on March 1st on the unused land behind the back of St Sidwell's Centre. Join the Facebook group for updates:

www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=53984197827&ref=ts

A lot less allotments (Trews Weirs)

A potential new campaign:

http://www.exeter.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=8721

The council currently rents this piece of land by Exeter Quayside for local residents to garden. Now the owner, Adrian Rogers, is planning to sell the site, and all allotment holders have been sent notices to vacate.

* Adrian is a Conservative candidate who ran against Ben Bradshaw in one of the elections.
* We could start a petition to the council to buy the land.
* It might actually be a legal requirement for the council to buy the land as they have a legal duty to provide people with allotment space.

Do you know anyone who owns an allotment at Trews Weir? Please email it to exactenvironmentalists@gmail.com!

* It was pointed out that a similar thing happened in Crediton. Local residents protested and won the battle to keep their allotment spaces. However in their case the local council already owned the land in question. More updates soon..

General Meeting update - April

Since ExAct members have voted not to post meeting minutes online, here is a brief summary of current campaigns.

~ Meeting management – to encourage involvement from all members and set up a structure that does not require one person to be in charge of everything - we have agreed to rotate the host of each meeting, taking it in turns to take minutes. We still use decision-making hand-sgnals used at Climate Camps.

~ 'Food Not Bombs' – collecting food and cooking it to feed to people in Exeter - the first Food Not Bombs meeting will be on Monday the 27^th of April, for banner-making.

~ Community Garden - St Sidwell’s Centre would like to invite local Exeter groups to each paint one of the concrete troughs in their Community Garden, and help to maintain one of the gardening beds

~ Sabbats event – an open-faith event to show the different ways that people celebrate the changing of the season – this is being organised with St Sidwell’s Centre.

~ ‘The Gospel of Love Choir’ - a happy non-religious choir that invites people of all abilities to sing in it, and invites community organisations to come along and join in/enjoy the show for free – we are searching for a central location to hold this! Someone suggested The Hut (in Belmont Park) and the space outside of it, covered by donations.

~ Garden skills/labour exchange group – for people with gardens but no gardening skills/confident and for people without gardens who are happy to maintain other peoples’ plots - needs to be brainstormed/planned out at a meeting for ExAct members who are interested in the idea.

~ Litter picking campaign – tidy up the streets of Exeter!

~ Newsletter/website – this is currently being put-together. ExAct members have agreed that it should be easy for members to edit/update, using a Wiki format with a forum on the website so that people can easily get involved with ExAct campaigns.

~ Database of groups - Exeter needs a database of all the local active green groups so that people can get involved with them easily

~ Recycling in Exeter - at the last ExAct stall several members of the public complained about the difficulty of recycling things like batteries and cartridges, and don’t know what to do with their compost. They would like the council to have pick-up points for these items

~ There will be a Clothes Swap event on the 8^th August at the Sidwell Centre.

Update on chalk protest

Protest for Paul Saville – arrested for using chalk! - several ExAct members attended this event, along with a lot of press (see links below!). The day before, however, the court date was mysteriously dropped! However we went along to show solidarity with Paul anyway. He sends thanks to all who travelled to Bristol to support him.

News articles here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7992204.stm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1168813/Police-chalk-5-000-failed-case-student-civil-liberties-graffiti.html