What
Actions Have You Been Involved In?
JB from Reclaim
the Streets
mk->> Could you talk about actions
you've been involved with that you consider to have realized
positive results, whether through achieving the goal of the protest
or maybe through getting a message out or strengthening an activist
community or network?
JB->> I think June the 18th was an extraordinary
example of a global network, as can be seen by the forty-three
countries getting involved. And I think for me, there were three
ways of trying to define the success of June the 18th. One was
its process in terms of networking, and creating this network
on a global level, which has happened. When I read an email this
morning that 10,000 people, mostly cross-tribal, in Nigeria at
Port Harcourt had occupied the offices of AGIP gas and then had
blockaded the Shell HQ, it was like, "Yeah! Amazing, absolutely
amazing." Meanwhile, I ran into a little thing that one
guy in some town in Argentina had creatively transformed a clock.
There's this clock apparently sponsored by some media outlet
that celebrates the 500th anniversary of Columbus. And, June
the 18th, this one guy went and basically covered it in red paint.
So, this diversity in the network is really amazing. But also
on a local level lots of groups have come together in London
that wouldn't normally come together. And all over England there
were about forty different groups working specifically for June
the 18th, who hadn't worked together before. And I think they'll
continue to work, continue to create affinity groups and so on.
So for me, that was the success of June the 18th. The day was
just a cherry on the cake, in a way.
The other thing was the education, trying to get people to think
about capital, think about financial markets and so on. And I
think the booklet The Square Mile is great, it works toward that. I think the
Evading
Standards works
a bit towards that. I think that's been really important, educating
activists. Also on a wider level, the fact that all the media's
been talking about anti-capitalist protesters. Getting that vocabulary
into the public domain is very important.
And thirdly, for me, the threat of disorder is always greater
than the organizing principle of the social movement. A nice
little anecdote there was all the letters that were going from
the law firms and from the Corporation of London, and all the
businesses. A letter was sent to the CEO of every single business
in the Square Mile, and he was told (well, I say "he,"
it probably was "he") to distribute it to all employees.
So everyone in the city, before the day even happened, was building
up, thinking about it. They would have been for a moment thinking
about the ethical consequences. I don't have a fancy that it
was a very in-depth thought, but they normally go 365 days of
the year, probably don't for a minute even think that anyone
gives a damn about what they're doing. But the fact that they're
thinking "Well, there's going to be 10,000 people on this
one day who are going to actually give a damn" I think was
important. A nice little anecdote: I have a friend who, because
of her job, has some fairly wealthy clients. And one of these
clients said to her the other week, "Do you know anything
about RTS?" And she said, "Oh, I might." And she
said, "Well, my husband who runs an Internet company,"
nothing to do with finance and banking, quite trendy, young,
but I think quite big Internet company in the city. She said,
"He's been up until three every morning all weekend, and
he's had to employ four Ph.D. level consultants at enormous expense
to put virus programs on all their computer equipment for June
the 18th." So, you know, that threat of disorder was extraordinary,
and it's not even a bank. So fuck knows how much it cost the
bank to protect their stuff from a virus! And that was just because
one person from a Sheffield June the 18th group in an FT article
said, "We don't need to occupy their offices because we
can just do it with viruses." And then this big article
came out in a magazine called IT, which talked all about how
hackers were going to work on June the 18th. That was it.
mp->> But was anyone even planning that?
JB->> I don't think so. No, an off-handed remark.
So for me the mythology and the use of mythology, this is art
and poetry and imagination. You make them imagine that you're
even more scary than you are. And I think that's very powerful.
I think that all social change has involved that kind of level
of mythologizing, really. You realize how powerful it is. Well,
as I say, I think the three, the education, the planning and
the threat of disruption, they work in that way. It was strange,
I wasn't nervous before the day, and I couldn't understand why.
Partly it was how surreal it was, the idea that I'd worked for
a year for one day. That just felt pretty weird. And the other
thing was I felt it had already succeeded. I felt that even if
we hadn't done any action that those things had succeeded. I
think it will be very interesting where we go next. I don't know
where we go next. I'm confused. I'm scared, to be honest, of
what the state is gonna to do. Are they going to ban RTS? Are
they going to just come in and take everyone in the meeting?
Are they going to try and find scapegoats, organizers? Or are
they just going to go for the guys who were smashing out the
windows? Who knows. Part of me wants to do it again. I like the
idea of really pushing the carnivalesque aspect, because carnivals
were a regular feature, they'd happen every year. I quite like
the idea of having this carnival against capital every year.
In a sense, if it's a carnival against capital, it suggests that
it can't be recuperated. Because only capital can recuperate
the carnival. I mean, of course it will be recuperated, and at
that moment you dissolve it. But it would be fucking difficult
to recuperate carnival against capital. Well, maybe not, actually.
Given post-modern capitalism, it's pretty easy to recuperate
anything.
- Square Mile (Squaring Up to the
Square Mile)
Refers to
the area of the City of London, defined by the medieval walls
of the city, which is the world's most important financial center.
London handles more foreign exchange, has more foreign banks,
and deals with more foreign stocks than any other city in the
world. While a large percentage of London's financial business
occurs outside this concentrated area, the Square Mile is both
a tangible and symbolic focus of the staggering wealth and power
being manipulated by global capitalists. Squaring Up to the
Square Mile is a pamphlet prepared by Corporate Watch and
Reclaim the Streets for the June 18th Carnival Against Capital.
Detailed maps of the City of London pin-point the location of
many institutions, banks, corporate headquarters, and watering
holes wherein the fate of the world is bandied about every day.
The pamphlet includes clear, concise definitions of key financial
and economic terms (stocks, futures, loans, currency exchange,
investments, commodities), bringing the abstract concepts and
esoteric vocabulary of global finance down to a concrete, intelligible
level. An invaluable educational tool for critics and opponents
of globalization.
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- Evading Standards
A hilarious prank
newspaper produced for RTS street parties, spoofing the London
newspaper the Evening Standard in format and style. On June 18th
1999, the front-page headline screamed "Global Market Meltdown"
(by-line Watt Tyler and Emma Goldman). Inside were a range of
articles and photos, from info and opinion on the growing world-wide
resistance to globalization, to a 1649 letter from Digger Winstanley
to the City of London. Similar to the spoof Seattle Post-Intelligencer
on N30.
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