Learnings from today's action outside Woodside

🎯 Actions
, ,
#1

A snap action was planned for the 29th November outside Woodside, who have recently decided to go ahead with the Scarborough Gas project and the Burrup Hub.

This action was not well attended. Some possible reasons for this are:

  • The notice for it was short
  • It was advertised to go for six hours with no specific focus times.

Another learning from this action was that a ranger reportedly said that there is a by-law that forbids people to sit on the footpath outside Woodside. This was told to one person sitting alone beneath a street tree and in no way obstructing the footpath. This by-law may be worth following up to confirm or debunk.

A total of 4 police officers attended but then reduced to two officers, who later left at 1pm when two rebels were still there.

Interactions with the police were close to non-existent but civil to amicable when they occurred.

#2

Let me tell you the story. I suggested a follow-up action this Monday after attending the last snap action on Monday, that was well-attended with lots of people in costume. Because everyone seemed keen and ready, I didn’t want to lose that momentum at such a critical time, and suggested to the Western Suburbs group we call another one. I was asked to fill roles for the protest, and while I decided to act as PL is necessary and Pirate Jesse as LO if necessary, I tried to contact the regen team and received no response. I wrote copy for the event to be put on Facebook - I am unsure when this was uploaded. I think there wasn’t enough time for planning, and perhaps not enough time to invite the same people back as last time because they didn’t hear about the event. The fact is, everyone is really busy and all our activists are stretched to their limits. That’s why it’s so hard to fill roles.