If anyone has additional information about this demonstration, please email us at i69news@riseup.net. Also, to everyone, please remember to send us information about actions like this!

Its a fact that the Indiana Department of Transportation is planning to begin
construction of New-Terrain I-69 in 2008, next year. Despite their rhetoric-
that its a “done deal” and can’t be stopped- we feel that the time is more ripe
than ever before to stop this road for good. After two decades of struggle,
people across our region are getting angrier than ever, especially when
confronted with the reality of mass evictions by the state. But if we are
going to win, we’re gonna need new perspectives, new tactics, and a much wider
discussion.

To that end, we are initiating a consulta process. When we say consulta, we
mean creating a space for discussion, for strategizing, and for the initation
of decentralized organizing. We’d like to show people some of the land and
communities that will be destroyed in the upcoming years unless we can prevent
it.

We’re excited to hear your questions- about the road project itself, about our
strategy ideas, and about the local conditions- and we’re excited to open up
the answers to as many people as possible. We want to hear some of your ideas
and And we’d like to see the emergence of an informal network of people
communicating around southwest Indiana, the Midwest and beyond, who are
planning to resist I-69.

We will release a proposed agenda in the upcoming weeks. This will include
time to run through the basic issues around I-69, as well as updates, but will
also set aside time for focused discussions,workshops, and fieldtrips. Please
contact us if you’d like to contribute proposals for that agenda. Also, please
plan to RSVP if you’re interested in coming.

We hope to see you soon,
Your Friends at Roadblock Earth First!

We’ll be sending an additional update out with an agenda, location, etc. But
please RSVP sooner rather than later.

Bloomington activists shut down an Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) “Community Planning Program” on Wednesday, Aug. 21, after vowing to never let I-69 be built in Bloomington.

After a brief verbal confrontation with INDOT officials and their multi-million-dollar Evansville consultants, about 15 banner-carrying activists walked to the front of the Bloomington High School North cafeteria and brought the dog-and-pony show to a halt.

City and state police converged on the scene and marched to the side of the room, where they huddled with the meeting’s organizers. After extended discussion, INDOT’s Stephen Smith announced the meeting over about an hour after it began.

The audience was sparse, with no one from any of the leading I-69 opposition groups in attendance. City Councilman Andy Ruff showed up 40 minutes after the meeting began, saw what was happening and retreated to the hallway to engage in private conversations. He did not speak to any of the protesters.

The protesters were a mixture of local and EarthFirst! activists, who have been engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience along the I-69 route and in the Bloomington area to call attention to Gov. Mitch Daniels’ ongoing assault on the Indiana environment.

One activist was arrested this week at a tree-sit protest in the Morgan-Monroe State Forest against Daniels’ plans to increase state forest logging by 400 percent for short-term, private-sector profits.

After the I-69 meeting, police followed some of the EarthFirsters to the parking lot, where they said they were investigating a theft during a recent action in Petersburg and demanded identification from each protester.

Also at the meeting were officials from the Evansville consulting firm Bernardin-Lochmueller & Associates, which has received 10s of millions in INDOT contracts on I-69 and has a long history of contributing 10s of thousands to state politicians from both parties.

for pictures and original article
http://www.bloomingtonalternative.com/articles/2007/08/21/8592

Also, Chad from WHFB captured some of the meeting shutdown here: http://news.wfhb.org/news/archive.php?id=721

The Indiana Department of Transportation’s I-69 Community Planning Program
is holding four meetings to “plan” for I-69. They are open to the public.
You are invited to attend one of the following meetings:

– Monday, August 20, 2007 at 1:00 pm, at the Indianapolis Power and Light
Company located in the Community Center/ Communications Building at 6925 N.
State Road 57, Petersburg, Indiana 47567

–Monday, August 20, 2007 at 7:00 pm, at Eastern Greene High School at Route
4 Box 623, Bloomfield, IN 47424

–Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 1:00 pm, at the Morgan County Administration
Building at 180 South Main Street, Martinsville, IN 46151

–Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 6:00 pm, at Bloomington High School North at
3901 North Kinser Pike, Bloomington, Indiana 47404