Campaigning

In the next year, the SPEAK network is embarking on an ambitious quest to cycle, campaign, fundraise and share the Biblical call to justice around the country. Spearheaded by Fish, our regional support worker, we are hoping to notch up 1,103 miles (that's the number of passages in the Bible referring to creation), and we're hoping to do it ALL using pedal power. To make this happen, we're going to need YOU...
The Rio+20 summit in June saw, arguably, the most significant meetings on sustainable development since the 1992 Earth Summit in the same city. SPEAK focuses on whether the outcomes of the summit are truly progressive enough in order to affect positive sustainable development. We also take a look at the biblical mandate for campaigning to protect the environment.
On Thursday 14th June, Indonesian police gunned down Mako Tabuni, secretary-general of the KNPB (West Papua National Committee); triggering violent riots in Jayapura. Hannah Kitchen, a member of Edinburgh SPEAK group (long supporters of the Free West Papua Campaign) has written a short prayer for us to reflect on the chaos:
To coincide with the Rio +20, we are beginning SPEAK's first ever Bardic Bike tour this June - a crazy prophetic action on wheels, that will hopefully visit historic sites of protest around the UK and connect up to campaign and fundraise with local SPEAK groups along the way.
A packed bus, somewhere in the Netherlands. A few days before Easter. I saw an advertising-pillar at the bus stop. It had an advertisement of a German supermarket on it and promised me and other bus-travelers the following: “luxury for everyone!”.
At the end of February, SPEAK's Day of Action 2012 featured a demonstration outside Shell's London Headquarters in Waterloo to draw attention to the company's so far unmet responsibility to clean up extensive oil pollution in the Niger Delta.
On Monday 27th February, after an inspiring weekend at Soundcheck, SPEAK Network members gathered for our 2012 Day of Action.
This week Greenpeace released it's latest report 'Dirty Laundry' investgating the toxic water pollution produced by textile factories in China. The report accuses Nike, Adidas, Puma, H&M and Lacoste of allowing the discharge of dangerous chemicals into Chinese water systems.
We've been inspired this week to see what mischief the Craftisit Collective have been up to.
Brian Haw, the anti-war peace activist who has been protesting on Parliament Square for over a decade, has died after a battle with cancer.