Busy times

Hello fellow vegans,

the Rabbit-Shirt as well as the How about I eat you-Shirt are finally available in all sizes – hooray!

Here we have some very interesting events for your iPhone calender or old-school diary:

From September 27th to October 3rd there will be the No Border Camp in Brussels. People from around the world will get together to share experiences and skills as well as organize actions. Please have a look at this homepage.

From October 8th to 10th the Anti-repression congress will take place in Hamburg. You can expect lectures of critical scientists, people working in media and representatives for political organisations and social movements from USA, Israel, UK, Austria, Switzerland and Germany. You can read all the details right here.

Thank you and ROC on!

Stalls and Shirts

Hello hello.

We just came back from our 4 day trip to Fluff Fest in Czech Republic. Thanks to everyone who stopped by and had a little chat with us. We also had an open-air screening of EDGE with about 350 people on Sunday night which was really amazing.

The weekend before we went to the Veggie Street Day in Stuttgart, Germany. Besides bands, food, and information stalls there was a fashion show with roots of compassion apparel et al. The whole event was a huge success since a lot of passers-by seemed to be really interested in vegan food and animal rights. In two weeks, on August 14th, we’ll be at the Veggie Street Day in Dortmund with a stall.

It was your decision: The We heart the ALF Shirt came off as the odds-on winner of the vote we started 2 weeks ago!

And finally, we have the Tofu-Monster Shirt in all sizes back in stock. The new shirt is a bit shorter and has a slightly different shade of color than the old one.

Sincerely yours and rock on
Roots

ESCADA drops fur!

Howdy folks,

ESCADA
We’ve got some good news: After 2,5 years of heavily campaigning ESCADA finally announced to stop selling “farmed fur” products from now on. You can find all the news here.

Le Tour de ROC
This summer we will have stalls at various events:
- Veggie Street Day in Stuttgart, Germany on July 17th
- Fluff Fest in Pilzen, Czech Republic on July 23rd-25th
- Veggie Street Day in Dortmund, Germany on August 14th
- Ieper Fest in Ieper, Belgium on August 14th-15th

Book “Eating Animals”
We have a brand new book in our shop: “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer. You can find it right here.

Have a good week and enjoy the sun…
Yours ROOTS

Freedom-shirt-revival and election week

Hey there,

soon we will have the much sought-after Freedom-shirt back in stock and this time in Earth Positive-quality. Excellent! Continental Clothing Company has expanded their color palette and now a nice shirt in Melange Grey is available.

Further, Roots will go retro! That is why we want you to choose a former design for our next shirt. It is up to you to choose from 7 different designs, please vote now!

Have fun in the sun and enjoy your week.

All the best
yours ROCers

GoMaxGo? No!

Hi everyone,

today we wanna let you know why we have decided not to sell the brand new GoMaxGo-candy bars in our online shop.

The sweets are supposed to taste like Bounty, Mars, Snickers etc. and available in Germany for a few weeks now. Of course, they have aroused our interest as well. But there are two main reasons why we will not sell them:

1. The chocolate is not fair trade nor organic
2. The manufacturer in the US can not guarantee that all ingredients are 100 % non-GMO

Everyone who wants to know why we do not like the genetic engineering, please have a look right here.

We would be really glad, if GoMaxGo would take a closer look on their ingredients in the future, expecially regarding genetic engineering, fair trade labor conditions, and ecological aspects.

The ROC collective wishes you a wonderful week(end)das ROC-Kollektiv

EDGE DVD, new bags, shirts, and food for your mind

Hip hop hooray! Finally, the DVD of Marc and Michi’s documentary EDGE – Drugfree Perspectives on Culture has arrived. The movie is in English, but of course there are 15 subtitles altogether. In the shop you have the opportunity to choose between the PAL and NTSC version. Here you can find out which format you need.

We have brand new super-chic bags in the colors green, black, red and blue. In addition our new shirts for the summer just arrived – pretty clothes with a decent message: EcoDefence, Animal Rights, Drop Fur, shirts against boredom, and for more risk, dreams and awareness. Yep, our designer was really creative!

Also, a lot is going on in the next weeks:

5th June / London: Action Against Animal Testing
The ‘Antispeciesist Action Tübingen’ in cooperation with ‘Doctors Against Animal Experiments Germany’ will organize a community event as part of the campaign against animal testing on apes in the city of Tübingen .
You can expect information and food stalls, a huge demonstration, stage show and an evening party. For more information: Antispeciesist Action Tübingen, Doctors Against Animal Experiments Germany

12th June / Berlin: Free Space Demonstration
The demonstration will take place in Berlin / Kreuzberg. The basic idea is to create an emancipatory, caring society. One step in this direction is the preservation and creation of free spaces.
Therefore, the demonstration is against the eviction order regarding the community space ‘Liebig 14th’. Check out: Liebig 14 and Freiraumdemo

18th June / Düsseldorf: Series of Lectures
Last but not least, a monthly series of workshops and lectures started recently in Düsseldorf.
All events will discuss veganism, animal liberation and animal rights. In June, for example, Andre Gamerschlag deals with the interconnection of speciesism, racism, sexism and capitalism.One month later  Susann Witt-Stahl will talk about how to use the Critical Theory to free animals. Further information: Veganer Fortschritt

We wish you many fruitful discussions and lots of inspiration! Thank you for your attention.

The latest and some thoughts on vegan shoes

Patches
We finally have all patches in stock again. Especially those we haven’t had for a while, like ‘Break Free’ and ‘The silence ends’. Printed by the Fairdruckt collective from Münster.

Spring Collection
We are still working on a few minor design changes, but we’ll be releasing our spring collection on April 2nd! The Shirts will be at the printer next week

Sale
Our sale is still on, and most of the stuff is already gone, but we still have a lot of Shirts from our older collections, like Make Hunting History, The true face of capitalism or End animal testing for only 12€. These are the last ones for sure!

Shoes
Every now and then we get a request from our customers to list more vegan shoes. There are quite a few companies now that produce under fair conditions and with recycled or organic materials. So, a good question!
We’ve discussed this issue a few times in our plenary, but we’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t want to support any companies directly or indirectly that sell leather products.
Someone might argue that the purchase of vegan products would increase the demand and thus increase the range of these products. That might be true, however the sales still support leather products indirectly, and thats something we don’t want to support at all. With Vegetarian Shoes we already have a cruelty-free company that might not always have the ‘latest styles’, but we are very satisfied with the quality of their shoes.
So we’ll stick to the vegan companies, and hereby officially request all other companies to drop leather.

Let us know your thoughts on the issue, we’d be happy to hear from you.

Sale, vegan Energy and Protest against §278a in Vienna

Sale!

If you already noticed the countdown in our shop – from February 15th we’ll start our Spring Sale. Maybe its a little early, but fingers crossed that it will help with an early beginning of spring! We have a lot of t-shirts, hooded sweatshirts and jackets, books, shoes and more. Single items, stuff with minor errors or old stock for really low prices.

Energy Supplier Change

We’ve been looking for a vegan and ecological energy supplier for a while now, since our current suppier, Lichtblick also offers Ecogas, which is derived from manure from factory farms, something we don’t want to support. Most of the German eco energy suppliers already offer or are planning to offer Ecogas, so the only alternative is Greenpeace Energy. At the moment their energy mix consists of Water and Windpower, however they told us that they also might use Ecogas for energy production at some point in the future. So we’ve decided to go with Greenpeace Energy as they seem to be the best option for now.

Shop news

The Blackspot V2 is available again from Adbusters, and we just ordered them, so next week we can offer all sizes again

SMASH §278ff – Protest on Feb 27th in Vienna, Austria!

On March 2nd the lawsuit against the 10 previously detained activists will start. The protest is the kick-off for further actions and protests around the lawsuit. No matter what the outcome of the lawsuit will be, as long as the §278ff exists, the threat remains that leftists structures, groups, NGO’s etc. will be monitored and criminalized. So come to the protest because we’re all in the same boat.
When: Saturday Feb 27th, 1pm, Schottentor, Vienna, Austria
More info: www.antirep2008.tk

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

You can find further information on this webiste. Soon we will have a Solidarity-Button in our shop, so stay tuned!