A New Year’s message from DISRUPT BURRUP HUB
This message from DISRUPT BURRUP HUB campaigner Gerard Mazza was emailed to our supporters list. Sign up to get on our mailing list for future updates from the campaign.
Happy new year to you.
I hope you had a restful, joyous, and reflective end to 2023.
Sadly, it can’t have been that way for all.
On my mind this holiday season was the young volunteer firefighter who tragically lost his life in a bushfire on Boxing Day near Esperance, Western Australia. Also on my mind were the families who lost their homes in the Perth Hills days before Christmas and all those who had to evacuate from their properties in recent weeks.
2024 will offer no respite. On New Year's Day, as I draft this message, Leeman residents are being told to leave their homes as another ferocious blaze approaches.
I think it's vital to point out what The West Australian newspaper won’t, no matter how many pages it devotes to bushfire coverage this summer: The deadly fire conditions we are seeing in WA are a direct result of the burning of fossil fuels. Given this, it is distressing that the WA government seems willing to go along with Woodside’s plans to exploit more untapped gas reserves as part of its Burrup Hub expansions.
DISRUPT BURRUP HUB’s New Year’s resolution is to cause as much disruption and difficulty as possible for Woodside and the elites dedicated to protecting it.
Will you join us?
The year that was
Before I tell you what’s in store for 2024, I want to reflect a little on the year that’s just been.
DISRUPT BURRUP HUB began in January 2023 as a small network of grassroots activists who were disturbed by Woodside’s plans for expansion and felt compelled to do something about it. The campaign had no funding but plenty of determination.
DISRUPT BURRUP HUB first drew headlines when artist Joana Partyka spray painted the Woodside logo onto Frederick McCubbin’s iconic painting ‘Down on his Luck’. She was protesting Woodside’s desecration through chemical emissions of the sacred Murujuga rock art on the Burrup Peninsula. Then-Premier Mark McGowan was quick to decry the action, but descendants of the artist said it was a continuation of McCubbin’s environmentalist legacy.
Next, we used paint to draw connections between the powerful forces that maintain the status quo in the pariah petrostate of Western Australia. In a series of actions, campaigners defaced the Woodside building, Parliament House, and the Perth Police Station.
In May, Emil Davey brought the DISRUPT BURRUP HUB message to Freo Dockers fans by invading the pitch during a game against Geelong:
The next month, DISRUPT BURRUP HUB campaigner Kristen Morrissey shut down work at the Woodside building for almost an entire day. She caused the evacuation of more than 2,000 workers by simulating a gas leak using safe, non-toxic ethyl mercaptan, also sold as ‘stench gas’. It’s a substance typically used on mine sites to sound the alarm about an emergency. Hers was a poetic choice of tactics.
Then, in August, things really escalated: 19-year-old Matilda Lane-Rose intended to stage a nonviolent protest outside the home of Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill, carrying only a bike lock and some paint. She didn't the chance to even step onto the driveway before she was swarmed by 12 counter-terror cops who were lying in wait. Four campaigners, including myself, were swept into custody, and a media and political frenzy began.
“Everyone has a right to feel safe in their own home,” Chamber of Energy and Minerals CEO Rebecca Tomkinson said during the fallout. Again, I think of the families forced to flee their homes due to bushfires in recent weeks. I also think of the 1.2 billion climate refugees expected to be displaced globally by 2050.
More actions followed: In September, Noongar leader Des Blurton staged a protest and cultural ceremony outside the home of former WA Treasurer and current Woodside board member Ben Wyatt. In December, Maz Misiewicz blockaded the offices of NOPSEMA, the federal offshore oil and gas regulator, which is more dedicated to appeasing Woodside than it is to protecting our oceans. And, just before Christmas, a DISRUPT BURRUP HUB group in Melbourne held the campaign’s first eastern states action, occupying Woodside’s local offices:
Our actions put the Burrup Hub on the map. We gained extensive local, national and international media coverage. We exposed the damage Woodside continues to inflict upon culture and climate.
Hundreds of ordinary Australians were directly involved in our campaign, causing disruption, coming to our meetings, turning out for solidarity actions, and helping behind the scenes.
Meanwhile, more than 1,500 people made generous donations to support our grassroots work.
Woodside is evidently concerned: It’s not only totally rebranded the Burrup Hub project, it’s also threatened to sue DISRUPT BURRUP HUB campaigners for loss of earnings in the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Woodside’s friends in the media have attempted to run smear campaigns on us, the police have subjected us to intense surveillance and overreach, and major party politicians have fallen into line, repeating the lines fed to them by their major donor, Woodside. None of it deters us. Elites dedicated to protecting fossil fuel interests are clearly unsettled, so we must be doing something right.
The year to come
In 2024, we shift into a new phase of the campaign, in which we invite everyone to get involved and get onto the streets to DISRUPT BURRUP HUB.
We want to show the breadth of opposition to the Burrup Hub, demonstrate our political power, and create opportunities for more people to take action.
In 2024, we will see thousands marching on the street under the banner of DISRUPT BURRUP HUB.
We will see hundreds risk arrest in direct action against the Burrup Hub expansions.
Local DISRUPT BURRUP HUB groups will form across Australia and Western Australia to take their own actions.
We will be everywhere, in numbers.
When climate disasters strike, as they inevitably will, DISRUPT BURRUP HUB will be there to remind Australians that fossil fuel expansions, if allowed, will cause even more fires, floods, deaths, and destruction.
Thank you
Thank you for being part of the campaign in 2023.
In particular, thank you to everyone who donated through Chuffed. We raised enough money to pull off our actions, pay our fines, get the word out, and take care of various other expenses.
You can always donate here if you want to provide further financial support.
If you want to spread the message and contribute financially at the same time, why not buy a t-shirt to wear proudly in the new year?
We’ll be in touch in the coming weeks with more detail on how you can DISRUPT BURRUP HUB.
If you’ve got ideas of your own on where you’d like the campaign to go, we’d love to hear from you. Just send us an email.
Or, you can do what we did a year ago, wherever you are: get together with a group of like-minded people, come up with a plan, and commit yourselves to getting the job done.
At this juncture in history, we each have a responsibility to do whatever we nonviolently can to prevent the untold horrors that would result from further coal, oil and gas expansion.
As long as the fossil elites are allowed to continue to make short-term profits from new projects like the Burrup Hub, we can’t meaningfully execute the climate solutions that already exist.
You can withdraw your consent from the fossil fuel regime by taking direct action.
Together, we can DISRUPT BURRUP HUB.
Cheers
Gerard
