Brand-new!

We have some news for you this week:

Benefit-Button §278a
We are all $278a! The trial against the 10 animal rights activists in Austria will start in March. You can show your solidarity with our new Benefit-Button. All the profits will be given to the donation account for legal assistance. Animal rights groups can order the button for a wholsale-price in quantities from 10 pieces on to use them for their solidarity actions.You can find all the dates for their court cases and further information here.

Further there will be a Global Action Day Against Repression on March 3, 2010 because of the beginning of the lawsuit against the criminalized austrian animal rights activists to increase the public pressure on the austrian public authorities and to show solidarity with the prosecuted activists. There are going to be a lot of actions in front of austrian embassies, consulates and other institutions.

ROC-Myspace with a brand new design
Our Myspace-Page has been receiving a major update regarding design and like we already said in our blog, we will feed it with new information almost daily. Add us as a friend and let’s get started!

Twitter
Slowly but surely web2.0 has been arrived at the Roots-HQ. That’s what you have waited for a long time: You can now find us on Twitter. So, if you always wanna know what is going on in our office just follow our Tweet.

Daily Shipping
We have new shipping times for parcels: They are gonna be picked up every day now – Monday through Friday. So, that means you will receive your order even faster!

A HAPPY NEW YEAR…

starts with a brand new blog entry. A lot is going on at the Roots-HQ lately despite snow and ice.

Besides the marvelous fist paw-pin, we have a brand new pamphlet in our shop, called “Liberation Days“, regarding repression against political activists. Unfortunately it is in german. The pamphlet ist based on the conference of the same name which took place from May 21 to 24, 2009 in Vienna, Austria. The cause was the arrest of ten animal rights activists in Austria on May 21, 2008. At around 6:00am members of the Viennese elite police force (WEGA) stormed several apartments in Vienna. A total of twenty-three apartments, houses and offices were searched in Vienna and other cities in Austria. The grounds for the searches was the accusation “Formation of a Criminal Organization” according to §278a. Ten activists got arrested and released after 3 1/2 months. The lawsuit will start on March 2, 2010 at the district court in Wiener Neustadt. The court sessions are scheduled to take place over six months, with the court convening three days a week. Approx. 10.000 EUR (US$ 14.500) per person are estimated for the costs of the lawsuit. The accused are dependent on your solidarity actions and donations. If you want to support them, please transfer your money to following bank account:

Account Nr: 01910815837
Bank Code (BLZ): 14 000
Account owner: Grünalternative Jugend Wien
Purpose: Antirep 2008

IBAN: AT451400001910815837
BIC: BAWAATWW

Soon we will have a Solidarity-Button in our shop, so stay tuned!

A LONG DUE UPDATE.

Twitter LogoSo, its been a while since we posted something here, but the end of 2009 has proven to be a very busy one indeed. Marc and Michi were on the road with the documentary ‘EDGE’, which now has been screened in 7 countries already. So over the time we were away, everything else was kept pretty much basic in terms of new items or projects. But there have been a couple of noteworthy changes:

First of all we have new shipping times for parcels – those are now picked up 3 times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That means we can ship your orders even faster 🙂

Apart from that we’ll expand our web 2.0 presence a little – you can now find us on twitter and it’s our plan to add more updates to our facebook and myspace pages.

Our conversion to a co-op is almost done, but its a little bit of a neverending story. Why did we decide to become a co-op you might ask? Since we’re a collective, we wanted that to be reflected in our legal form, so even if we were equally organised before, we are now as well on paper and legally. Thats right, no gods, no masters 😉

Over the holidays we’ll take things a little easier, but you can of course place your orders, and we’ll ship them around Dec 28th / 29th. For the new year we already have plenty of new plans and projects and products lined up so, expect to hear / read from us soon!

Happy Holidays and happy new year!
the roots of compassion collective

Three weeks in one posting…

We would like to tell you what was going on the last weekends, because we did all kinds of exciting stuff.

At the end of August we attended the Animal Liberation Congress which took place at the Castle of Lohra. Besides many interesting panel discussions, workshops, food for thought, talks and lectures we met a lot of really nice people. There are plans to release a DVD with recorded talks and writings soon. We will keep you posted.

One week later on September 6th we had a stall at the Vegan Festival in London. Unfortunately we can not give you a link for their website because of a Trojan Horse… you might just want to use a web search engine. The programme was very broad like last years and had a lot of intersting things to offer, e.g. workshops like: ‘Why should vegans and vegetarians be opposed to racism and fascism’ and ‘Veganism, Anarchism and Pacifism: Living compassionately’.

Last weekend the Freie Schule Leipzig (Free School of Leipzig) organized a charity run that Roots of Compassion supported. The kids are collecting money to attend the IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) in Israel in April 2010. That is our (silent) starting signal for another project of Roots: We want to criticize the school system. Soon you will be able to find literature to Democratic Schools and Unschooling in our shop.

If you are interested already, check our link list here.

Here comes the Newsletter!

The brand new V1 Blackspot Sneaker just arrived. The production was shifted from Portugal to Pakistan and the design changed a little bit. Of course, it is still certified fairly traded. You can get more information on the official Blackspot-Homepage soon.

We also had time to clean up our office and you can find all the stuff we found in our SALE. In our shop you can also discover brand new products: beanies, soy cubes, an ‘Antifascist Action’-flag, and lots more.

Oh and big news! The official world premiere of ‘EDGE- perspectives on drugfree culture’ the documentary on straight edge will take place in New York City, USA. You can find a list of all US movie tourdates and more info on www.edgethemovie.com

By the way, you can subscribe to our bi-monthly newsletter here.

New Blackspot V1 preview

Two days ago we received the new Blackspot V1 shoes. As previously mentioned, Adbusters has shifted production from Portugal to Pakistan and changed the design a bit. The Shoe is now manufactured in the same factory that produces the Ethletic Sneaker, so its still a fairtrade product. We’ll let you know all the detailed info in a few days. You can order the shoe from us next week.

Our supplier Vegetarian Shoes from Brighton, UK has raised prices for their shoes, so we have to raise ours as well. The Panther Sneaker, X-Trainer and New Fanatic are from now on all 84EUR, still a good price for good quality shoes i’d say!

London Vegan Festival! On Sept 6th we’ll have a stall at the annual London Vegan Festival, the biggest Vegan event in Europe with 88 stalls, talks, workshops and musicians! If you’re going, make sure to say hello at our stall!

Heaven and Hell

Like you already know, we were at the Fluff Fest in the Czech Republic two weeks ago; except a journey of 8 hours (one-way!) and an endless struggle against wind and weather – our tent had no chance – we had lots of fun. The vegan burgers were delicious like always, but we were just too tired for karaoke and the dance hall – no surprise!

Just the subsequent Saturday the 4th Veggie Street Day took place. You will find a detailed report, pictures and so on right here! Altogether 5.000 visitors came to the fair in Dortmund that day. Besides the Vegan Strength Team with Bodybuilding-World champion Alexander Dargatz and a terrific show of Kafkas, we saw willful polonaises through Burger King next door and last but not least Jana Wagenhuber who just escaped from Big-Brother-slammer. But there were lots of information about veganism and animal rights, vegan delights and, of course, the roots of compassion-stall. Furthermore we met a lot of nice people, among others members of the band Horns of Resistance from Wuppertal, Germany.

In addition we have some news from the ROC-HQ: The cookbook ‘Vegan lecker lecker!‘ is almost sold out, but no fear, we already organized the printing of the second edition. We have even more ideas for other cookbooks in our minds, but we won’t tell yet…

Le Tour de ROC!

Even though it seems that it is raining for ages, we decided to do a road trip to the FLUFF FESTIVAL in Pilzen (Czech Republic) today. Besides music, yummy burgers and the amazing public pool there will be an interesting entertaining social and cultural program during the whole weekend – and of course the Roots of Compassion-stall will be there too! So, come along and drop by for a chat.

We are looking forward to be at the annual VEGGIE STREET DAY at the Reinoldikirchplatz in Dortmund on August 1 – yeah! There are going to be lots of food, music and nice people.

The Shirt ‘How about I eat you‘ in black with grey printing is back in stock – very cool and foremost it is made out of 100 % organic cotton, fair trade and co2-neutral. Besides the pin ‘Antispeciest Action’ is available again. In the beginning of September at the latest we will have even more pins in our ROC-shop – please be patient.