Shut em’ down

 Airport protests ‘08

Airports, global trading centers, “ports” of commerce and industry and other obvious targets for impacting global awareness, have experienced a spate of protests of late:

Stansted, U.K.: On the morning of December 8th, dozens of members of the U.K. environmental activist group Plane Stupid used wire-cutters to break into a secure area of Stansted Airport, 40 miles outside of Central London. While some members chained themselves together, others erected a barricade of fencing around them, successfully forcing at least 56 flight cancellations and extensive delays (it took police about 5 hours to cut them all apart). The action drew attention to opposition to proposed airport expansion and air traffic pollution. The group is well-known among the U.K.’s environmentally conscious, for breaching  tight security and attention-grabbing direct actions (last February they managed to sneak onto the roof of Britain’s House of Parliament, and one of the members hot-glued himself to PM Gordon Brown in July). 57 were arrested. 

Athens, Greece: during October, groups of Olympic Airline employees outraged by plans to privatize the state-owned airline intentionally walked across runways in protest, disrupting and delaying flights.