AUT: (fwd) london j18 report

[pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Steve Wright)]

>
>Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1999 19:47:30 +0000
>To: nettime-l@xxxxxxx
>From: johnbarker <harrier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>     (by way of richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Richard  Barbrook))
>Subject: j18
>Sender: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>JUNE 18TH
>
>What a day, a day to lift the spirits after weeks of being stuck between a
>rock and a hard place and terrible arguments with old comrades over what
>has been happening in Kosova. At last, a chance not to be the passive
>spectator, and know that all over the world there will be actions against
>global capitalism and its inhumanity.
>
>The sun shining and hot. In the morning I hear on the radio reports,
>mainly
>on the traffic news, of imaginitive actions, Tower Bridge closed by a
>low-slung banner hung by abseilers. The radio talks of abseiling policemen
>trying to get it down. In the meanwhile, by coincidence our underfunded
>underground train system is breaking down all over the place of its own
>accord. In the meanwhile cyclists out in force are closing off streets
>around Blackfriars and then the Bank of England while elsewhere a ring of
>people surround the Treasury. This is co-ordinated decentralisation and
>the
>cops don't know how to deal with it, used to all those easy years of
>leftist marches to Trafalgar Square, controlled by them marching either
>side of it, always at a pace that makes your feet hurt. The traffic news
>of
>the various radio stations around town are working overtime. Lloyds Bank
>is
>occupied for a while, so is Natwest and Peat Marwick.
>
>>From 12 o'clock is to be a Carnival of Resistance aka a Carnival of the
>Dispossessed, and I feel a sense of continuity which adds to my happiness
>because it is continuity in the right direction. On election day 1970 some
>500-1000 of us did the first march I knew of that went through the City of
>London. The Festival of the Oppressed  it was called with drummers to the
>fore.
>
>This time the Carnival kicks off in Liverpool  St station and the drums
>are
>loud and thrilling on the marble type floor of the huge concourse designed
>for the discomfort of travellers and  just waiting all these years for a
>rave. A good choice too, hard for them to close the Main Line Station,
>even
>if they are about to close the tube. Here is and we snake out with the
>drums to a dead plaza with a McDonalds and a brazen office block of the
>Thatcher era.  The drum beat is thrilling, mountaineers climb up the
>office
>block to do a cheeky dance on the parapet, wild cheering of the Naked
>Protest while the officers of the office stand looking out of the window,
>they the passive spectators of what is normally their undisputed
>territory.
>
>I want to meet up with my pal back in the station which coincides with
>another partial move back in there. She just makes, one of the very last
>out of the London Underground before they close it. I'm reading the great
>spoof of the Evening Standard paper and called Evading Standards that are
>being given out. One of many sharp headlines reads "The Final Act of
>Enclosure". The drummers keep up the momentum. Someone gives us Green
>masks, this is the Gift Economy, the selfless and anonymous work that is
>making all this happen.The mask has a practical suggestion inside- "On the
>signal follow your colour...Let the Carnival Begin. In the station there
>are also   Red and Gold Masks.  We see later that there have been other
>colours. Inside the mask too is printed a web site address and a keen
>understanding of the mask:-
>
>"These in authority fear the mask for their power partly resides in
>identifying, stamping, cataloguing: in knowing who YOU are...The wearing
>of
>a mask symbolizes the rejection of the cult of personality so crucial to
>consumer capitalism...While the elite gangs of state and capital become
>evermore faceless their fear of the faces of everyday resistance grows.
>The
>search for the resisters intensifies with endless CCTV cameras unmasking
>the streets with new devices that can pick out and identify a single face
>in the growing   crowd."
>
>So, we are with the Greens and at the word set off away from the main
>crowd, a thousand of us. No leaders but messages are passed and there is a
>mood of trust, the very production of the mask and the paper speaking of
>the intelligence and nous of those who have worked to make this happen.
>This is a Magical Mystery Tour to be enjoyed. With whistles and drums,
>inviting those in the offices to come out on the street we cross
>Bishopsgate and down Middlesex Street. The cops are hardly anywhere to be
>seen.  Some in the masks are dressed in suits. Meanwhile those in the
>offices and banks have been told to  dress down. More identity confusion.
>The suits that are in suits look strangely sheepish. The move it
>transpires
>is for Aldgate East Station. The few cops there let us stream through. The
>word is for a Westbound District Line train. Not the first train. We wait
>for the second. Full of blank faced passengers it does not stop, nor the
>one after. For a moment the trust is shakey. Feels like a trap down in the
>tube but the word is to make it out of the other exit. Back out on the
>street we start back Westwards back into the heart of the city. Complete
>takeover of the street, traffic halted. London sightseeing buses full of
>tourists who wave. Some angry guy wants to smash our faces in but 'there
>are too many of you'. Precisely. Up around Fenchurch Street. Security guys
>stood in Bank doorways. So many faces at the windows.
>
>And then that great feeling, suddenly we are all re-united, masks of all
>colours, in a street by Cannon Street, Dowgate Hill, right in the belly of
>the beast by the LIFFE building where billions of dollars are sent
>whizzing
>round the globe from computer screens on a 24 hour basis. More anonymous
>geniuses have been at work. In the street running down by the side of the
>building, cobbled, running down to the Thames, a whole area has been
>blocked off by our side and best of all in the heat a hydrant let off and
>turned into a forty foot waterfall as the drums beat out in these alien
>buildings. It's fucking mental. Dancing and singing in the rain. Which is
>also cover for the bricking up of some LIFFE entrances and the smashing of
>others. We blocked up the drains of Dowgate Hill to flood it and took a
>rest with some other joyous faces down on a tiny bit of beach on the
>Thames. The Thames that has been so enclosed by private capital as it
>continues its colonisation down river through East London. Sit there in
>the
>sun and smoke a spliff. We work our way along the river and back up on to
>Cannon Street proper and another site of wonder. More anonymous geniuses
>have been at work.
>
>The LIFE building is in large part a multi storeyed bridge across Cannon
>Street. Right along is strung up a huge banner: THE EARTH: A COMMON
>TREASURY FOR ALL.
>
>This is Precise Protest. Where it matters. Other geniuses the musicians,
>have used an underground car park as a base to ferry in an out speakers,
>decks, computers even. Down Cannon Street beat the drums. More banners are
>raised up using the CCTV cameras to tie their ropes to. The musicians have
>taken a bit of precinct further back. A veteran of the Stop the City of
>1983 is so happy. They said protest and resistance politics is finished,
>he
>said, but then we were 5000, now it is 15, 20 thousand maybe. He said he
>was sure that we had succeeded in  stopping the non-stop flow of money
>because there was at this time supposed to be a change of shift in this 24
>hour process and that we had prevented the shift change from happening.
>Only a piss in the ocean as far as they were concerned, he said, but it
>can
>be done again.  We could see the wiseguys that man this non-stop flow of
>money stuck up there on its highest walkway and laughed at them, one suit,
>his uptight visible from a hundred yards. Someone gave me a leaflet saying
>their would be later action in Leicester Square to try and close down the
>UCI cinema. Why so?  Because they are planning to build a cinema complex
>and what had been a swathe of  Crystal Palace's parkland.
>
>There were no speeches, none of the usual Bolshevik sect newspapers, no
>leaders or superstars but everywhere was visible a precise attack on what
>the Midnight Notes comrades in the USA have called the New Enclosures, the
>river, the city itself, public spaces. That headline in The Evading
>Standards newspaper the Final Act of Enclosure referred to the Biotech
>companies and GM food, the monopolization by patent of seeds, the impact
>it
>will have in India where there is mass mobilization against this form of
>enclosure. We were not then, 'a mindless mob', but rather an international
>day against finance  fetish and the global enclosures for profit underway.
>
>
>We too a break a couple of streets away to get a drink and returned to
>find
>a new mood. News of a young woman being run over by a police van and some
>of the fearless youth who had stormed into the LIFFE building itself. Now
>the cops showed themselves, they were hot, they had been given he
>runaround, had never dealt with the fast-moving fearlessness of  the
>generation who are the children of us middle-aged 'anti-capitalists', as
>the media had begun to say, that a kind of victory in itself. They had the
>new telescope batons, the shields, the all-in-one helmets and they were on
>the charge. Young guys in suits brought out flare canisters out of
>suitcases to join the bottles flying in the face of the police charge.
>Adrenalin was up and running. A luxury Mercedes showroom was trashed,
>another bank attacked as the police charge was held off.
>
>Me, I'm too old for this, don't have the nerves or the stamina but am
>loath
>to say that somehow this violence fired up by police attacks ruined the
>carnival as the Lord Mayor of London was saying a couple of hours later.
>My
>mouth opened and closed in astonishment as he said that the
>anti-capitalist
>had their point of view and though the city might disagree with this (OH
>yes) they respected the views of others (oh yes) but that this mindless
>violence was a disgrace.
>
>Now the words on the mask are prophetic, the police say today (the 19th)
>that they will be studying hundreds of hours of CCTV footage to add to the
>14 people arrested. They are not going to admit it but I suspect that J18
>cost them a lot of money especially if LIFFE did have to suspend the
>international currency roundabout, and 14 arrests is little to show for
>it.
>At the very least some offices were closed, staff sent home and security
>expenses upped. Some 3 months ago sitting in a cafi I picked up the Daily
>Mirror and read how keen the cops were to infiltrate Reclaim the Streets
>and other Groups organising J18 in London. They being a not Bolshevik type
>organisation they have obviously found this hard to do and are well
>pissed-off. They will be holding all sorts of debriefing sessions and
>consequent planning to secure their enclosures. J18 in London showed a
>generation of young people capable of responding to their response.
>
>
>To see what happened internationally-the real bravery of 10,000 in Nigeria
>for example doing their own political carnival in Port Harcourt , also in
>the USA, Germany etc
>See the web site
>http://bak.spc.org/j18/site/
>
>and if it's still up and running
>http://www.gn.apc.org/june18
>
>
>----------------- End Forwarded Message -----------------
>
>+3 says:
>
>!ASCII_ART_IS_DUFF!




     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---