Fanging for a good time

So I went to hop into the New Tactics conversation about ‘Using humour to expose the ridiculous‘ and realised there isn’t much of an archive or history out there about some of the great fun we had in the Fremantle Anti Nuclear Group – working to highlight issues around militarisation, nuclear weapons and uranium mining.  I mean, what is more hilarious than massive war, dispossession and genetic mutation! Amiright?! I was involved from around 2003 until leaving for Sea Shepherd adventures in 2008, and the group lives on in various forms… seen here pulling some quality dance moves to Britney Spears, ‘Toxic’.

Probably one of my all time favourite actions was when we made up a super sized parking ticket which was signed by hundreds of Fremantle residents and went out on a small boat to try and present it to a US warship that was berthed in the harbour.  We got chased away from the ship by Australian water police – they were quite nice about and ended up handing it over for us – reckoned they were saving us from being shot by the US Military – apparently they get a bit tetchy when you get close to their ships – no sense of humour, those bloody yanks. Or maybe they do have one – we heard they kept it in the bridge as a souvenir.  The local paper loved it so much they printed not only an article about it, but replicated the whole parking ticket. The only thing that stopped us making the front page of the state wide paper was that they found Saddam Hussein the same day – oh the irony…

At the height of the campaign challenging John Howard’s anti worker legislation we marched in solidarity handing out ‘Atomic Workplace Agreements‘, we gave out badges in the local footy colours (No footy on a dead planet), and made an appearance each year in the Fremantle festival parade, giving out Fang dollars to bribe the crowd, with various random themes such as ‘War – It is just not cricket’ (?!) …

one year we even managed a great culture jam at the annual Uranium conference held in our hometown – whilst we always managed a presence out the front to some degree, this particular year we got inside with a DVD inserted into delegates showbags – purportedly to be showing the results of investing in uranium mining, complete with super cheesy exec corporate dude on the cover – only for them to open it up and a video to start showing the *actual* impacts of depleted uranium in war zones. Although not very funny, we reckon the looks on their faces when they saw it might have been.

So, just a few of the fun times I had with my favourite fangers… we were a small and slightly mad posse, but we had a darned good time. I will note the picture above shows John Owen, one of our lovely older members, RIP. A funny, gentle and creative man – this one is for you!