Can't QUITE agree, Nigel. I think there may have been scope for us to protest in our way and the more militant in their way, without necessarily getting 'lumped together' and without conflict between the 2 styles. (Except if they were camping IN the circle/damaging it etc obviously.

It's moot anyway as we're way too far behind the game!

love

Moth

PS Hope nobody minds this bit of HA stuff here, but not everyone has joined the Smartgroup yet!

PPS If anyone else wants to join, shoot me an email at the address on my TMA profile page....

Hi Nigel... I think we need to identify what we mean by HA support. As far as I have gathered so far, support can work on two levels.

One is by providing publicity and links to a specific site or issue concerning a site (eg it's listed on the website with links to a organisation concerned with a specific site), providing information for concerned individuals to either access more info or become involved.

The other by actively supporting a cause and directly engaging in the process of dealing with the authorities or individuals that own or control the site (eg regular news/info updates on the website, letter writing campaigns, petitions, press releases etc).

My personal viewpoint is that all endangered sites should at least be given the first level of support, in so much as we help them to spread their message. Then people interested in the issue can act as individuals and choose their own level of militancy.

I agree that if we are to deal with the authorities and the press we need to appear professional and not go too far out on a limb, but I think we should be prepared to get our hands a little mucky and take a stance against the destruction of any site... whether it has crusty protestors or not.... otherwise, we'll just be seen as toothless tea n' cakes suck-ups by a large section of people involved in protest... we don't really need to alienate anyone. Once we have a few results under our belts, we'll hopefully be seen as effective.... but it would be good to have respect from both sides.

So yeah... we do want to be taken seriously by the people we are protesting to, but not at the cost of losing grassroots support from those who take a more radical stance.

> Sorry to discuss HA stuff here, but the Great Divide in protest tactics is relevant to TMA.

Of course it's relevant, and please don't feel that you can't discuss HA matters here.

My comments last week were directed towards discussion of HA website page layouts rather than HA causes!

TMA Ed