ALEC Update

Well...it’s been a busy week with the announcement that the Cameco/Paladin joint venture has been granted the rights to explore for uranium within our water catchment, a meagre 25 km out of town! It was great to see about 70 local people gather at the Council Lawns and march up Gregory Terrace to the Chief Minister’s office on Friday afternoon. This was within 3 hours after the NT Government’s announcement – a commendable and heartwarming effort by all involved. This was followed with a rally on Sunday morning where about 300 people gathered to hear and voice their opposition to the approval with a strong commitment to take action if necessary to stop the project. However, the uranium situation in Central Australia extends well beyond the Angela Pamela deposit. There are a number of exploration projects currently underway that are only 40-50km south of here. We must remember that if uranium mining starts in any of these areas the yellowcake will be trucked into Alice Springs, unloaded and trained up to Darwin.
There are a host of risks associated with this as well!
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If you want to get involved in the campaign, come along to the Alice Springs Angela Pamela (ASAP) Collective meeting this Thursday, 6pm at the ALEC office. Tonight we will be talking strategy, so bring your ideas or open mind to contribute to the campaign for the self-determination of our town and a nuclear-free future.
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The Management Committee and I conducted a strategic planning meeting on Saturday and resolved that the key foci for ALEC in the next 12 months will be:
- Water – conservation, efficiency and protection in conjunction with the Climate Action Group, COOLmob and other relevant agencies
- Community Resilience – community gardens, workshops, forums, skill sharing, networking and community engagement and;
- Providing organisational support for the ASAP Collective

If you would like to discuss any of these projects or get involved please email me at: info@alec.org.au or call me on 08 8952 2497
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ALEC has a blog
The weekly updates will be posted to this blog and hopefully in time will become an ALEC Community (cyber)Space for organising, networking and communicating ideas.
Check it out:
http://aridlandsec.blogspot.com/

On Leave...
I will be on leave between Wednesday October 15 and November 4. I will post to the blog but will not be able to send group emails. If you have events that you would like to have publicised, email me and I can post it to the blog but the ALEC Updates won’t be emailed until November 5.
Have a fun October

Jimmy

‘Our first task is to create a shadow economic, social and even technological structure that will be ready to take over as the existing system fails’ – David Ehrenfield