Angie Zelter (born 5 June 1951) is a British activist and the founder of a number of international campaign groups, including Trident Ploughshares and the International Women's Peace Service. Zelter is known for non-violent direct action campaigns and has been arrested over 100 times in Belgium, Canada, England, Malaysia, Norway, Poland and Scotland, serving 16 prison sentences. [1] Zelter is a self-professed 'global citizen'. [1]
In the 1980s Zelter founded the Snowball Campaign, [1] which encouraged mass civil disobedience with participants each cutting one strand of a fence around US military bases in the UK, then waiting to be arrested. During the campaign, which lasted three years, there were around 2,500 arrests and many of the activists were sent to jail for non-payment of fines. [2] [3] [4] Caroline Lucas, future Green party leader and MP was involved in the campaign, [5] and poet Oliver Bernard was sent to prison. [6]
In 1996 she was part of a group that disarmed a BAE Hawk Jet, ZH955, causing £1.5million damage and preventing it from being exported to Indonesia where it would have been used to attack East Timor. [7] She was acquitted for this action in a victory which forced the issue of arms control onto the mainstream agenda.
Along with American Ellen Moxley and Ulla Røder from Denmark, she became known as one of the Trident Three of the Trident Ploughshares, after the women succeeded in entering Maytime, a floating trident sonar testing station in Loch Goil, and damaged 20 computers and other electronic equipment and circuit boxes, cut an antenna, jammed machinery with superglue, sand, and syrup and tipped logbooks, files, computer hardware, and papers overboard. [8] In December 2001 the Trident Three were awarded the Right Livelihood Award. [1]
Between 2001 and 2005 she was active in many actions with the International Solidarity Movement and other organisations designed to protect the Palestinians on the West Bank against the violence of the Israeli army and of the illegal settlements which made their lives increasingly difficult. The Israeli government eventually refused to allow her to return.
In March 2012, the South Korean police arrested Angie Zelter for obstructing the construction of the controversial Jeju-do Naval Base. [9]
In September 2014, Zelter received in Istanbul the Hrant Dink Award for her fight against nuclear weapons. [10]
During the April 2019 Extinction Rebellion London occupations Zelter was arrested on Waterloo Bridge and in Parliament Square, becoming the first activist to be prosecuted. [11] She was given a conditional discharge in June 2019, after arguing in court that humans faced mass extinction unless governments implemented wide-ranging changes. [12]
Zelter was one of more than 1,400 protesters arrested during the October 2019 'Extinction Rebellion Autumn Uprising' two-week campaign in London. She was charged under Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986, pleaded guilty, and was ordered to pay a £460 fine, £85 costs and £46 surcharge. [13]
In 2021 she published a book detailing her work between 1982 and 2021 with the title "Activism for Life" (Luath Press Limited ISBN 978-1-910022-39-9). [14]
Caroline Patricia Lucas is a British politician who has twice led the Green Party of England and Wales and has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Brighton Pavilion since the 2010 general election. She was re-elected in the 2015, 2017 and 2019 general elections, increasing her majority each time.
Trident Ploughshares is an activist anti-nuclear weapons group, founded in 1998 with the aim of "beating swords into ploughshares". This is specifically by attempting to disarm the UK Trident nuclear weapons system, in a non-violent manner. The original group consisted of six core activists, including Angie Zelter, founder of the non-violent Snowball Campaign.
The Plowshares movement is an anti-nuclear weapons and Christian pacifist movement that advocates active resistance to war. The group often practices a form of protest that involves the damaging of weapons and military property. The movement gained notoriety in the early 1980s when several members damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and were subsequently convicted. The name refers to the text of prophet Isaiah who said that swords shall be beaten into plowshares.
Hrant Dink was a Turkish-Armenian intellectual, editor-in-chief of Agos, journalist, and columnist. As editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, Dink was a prominent member of the Armenian minority in Turkey best known for advocating Turkish–Armenian reconciliation and human and minority rights in Turkey. He was often critical of both Turkey's denial of the Armenian genocide and of the Armenian diaspora's campaign for its international recognition. Dink was prosecuted three times for denigrating Turkishness, while receiving numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists.
Milan Rai is a British writer and anti-war activist from Hastings. He is co-editor with anti-war artist Emily Johns of the magazine Peace News. Along with fellow activist Maya Evans, he was arrested on 25 October 2005 next to the Cenotaph war memorial in London, for refusing to cease reading aloud the names of civilians by then killed in Iraq in the course of the Iraq war.
Anti-nuclear organizations may oppose uranium mining, nuclear power, and/or nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear groups have undertaken public protests and acts of civil disobedience which have included occupations of nuclear plant sites. Some of the most influential groups in the anti-nuclear movement have had members who were elite scientists, including several Nobel Laureates and many nuclear physicists.
The anti-nuclear movement in the United Kingdom consists of groups who oppose nuclear technologies such as nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Many different groups and individuals have been involved in anti-nuclear demonstrations and protests over the years.
Events from the year 2007 in Armenia
The prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated in Istanbul on 19 January 2007. Dink was a newspaper editor who had written and spoken about the Armenian genocide and was well known for his efforts for reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and his advocacy of human and minority rights in Turkey. At the time of his death, he was on trial for violating Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code and "denigrating Turkishness". His murder sparked both massive national protests in Turkey itself as well as widespread international outrage.
Seeds of Hope was a plowshares group of women who damaged a BAE Hawk warplane at the British Aerospace Warton Aerodrome site near Preston, England, in 1996. The four were part of a larger group of 10 who that planned the action.Their aim was to stop the aircraft being exported to the Indonesian military, for use in the illegally occupied country of East Timor. They left a video and booklet in the cockpit of the aircraft in order to explain their motivation.
Action AWE is a grassroots activist anti-nuclear weapons campaign/group launched in February 2013. Its aim is to increase and activate public opposition to the UK Trident nuclear weapons system, and depleted uranium warheads manufactured at AWE Burghfield, along with AWE Aldermaston.
Zion Lights is a British author and activist known for her environmental work and science communication.
Extinction Rebellion is a UK-headquartered global environmental movement, with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse. Extinction Rebellion was established in Stroud in May 2018 by Gail Bradbrook, Simon Bramwell, and Roger Hallam, along with eight other co-founders from the campaign group Rising Up!
Gail Marie Bradbrook is a British environmental activist and a co-founder of the environmental social movement Extinction Rebellion.
The extinction symbol represents the threat of holocene extinction on Earth; a circle represents the planet and a stylised hourglass is a warning that time is running out for many species. The symbol dates to at least 2012 and has been attributed to anonymous East London artist Goldfrog ESP. The symbol has been called "this generation's peace sign". It is used by environmental protesters, and has been incorporated in works by artists and designers such as Banksy. In 2019, the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired a digital copy of the symbol, and other artifacts featuring the symbol, for its permanent collection.
Julian Roger Hallam is a British environmental activist, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, cooperative federation organisation Radical Routes and the political party Burning Pink.
Extinction Rebellion has taken a variety of actions since 2018 in the UK, USA, Australia and elsewhere.
Phil Kingston is a climate activist and protester with the climate groups Christian Climate Action and Extinction Rebellion.
The Kings Bay Plowshares are a group of seven Catholic peace activists who broke into the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base and carried out a symbolic act of protest against nuclear weapons. The name of the action and the wider anti-nuclear Plowshares movement comes from the prophet Isaiah’s command to "beat swords into plowshares."
At that time Caroline was also involved with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Inspired by the women at Greenham Common, she took part in the Snowball Campaign, a countrywide movement against nuclear weapons which saw growing numbers of people cutting fences at various military bases with the aim of getting arrested. "The idea was you had so many people doing it, the courts wouldn't be able to process everyone and, hopefully, it would prompt a rethink of nuclear weapons. Sadly, it didn't get to that level. I did get arrested but eventually they dropped the charges, which was a bit disappointing."
In 1985 he became a Catholic and was involved in the Snowball campaign to cut the wire perimeter fences at airbases, in protest at the government's attitude to nuclear weapons. For this he was sent to prison for several weeks, emerging in a very good mood: "I felt grateful to just about everyone," he said.
When I was released, I came straight back out and went around all the four places where the blockades were still held and checked where they needed more support. I went back to a friend's house, had a rest then came and joined here at Oxford Circus this morning. I plan on being here for at least two weeks. If I get arrested again, so be it.