mk->> This idea of being in a group of friends, knowing each other on an intimate level, experiencing a level of community in a world that basically denies you that community on almost every level, would you all say that this is the kind of world you're fighting for? The kind of society you want to bring into existence?

Liz->> Well, I only got that when I moved to England. Everywhere in Germany there's miserable fucks, and I thought, "I don't want to make a future society with them." In Germany, the stuff I was involved in was purely reactive. This kind of a really fucked up attempt expressed itself in being as politically correct as possible, and it just fucked me off really. And in England I saw a bit more joy in life, day-to-day life and day-to-day doing things. And I felt a bit more that anarchist ideas and direct action were a part of my life properly, instead of just some weird thing that you went to the Autonomous Center (that was a bit of a fortress) to do.

Ozzie->> The lack of community in the West is one of the most horrific things about our society. I think our society is incredibly immature and it's just got its priorities back to front. You know, everywhere the way things are and the way things should be, socially, is just completely reversed and wrong.

Miles->> A lot of people involved in ecological direct action are quite conscious about this whole thing, about creating visions of future society within struggle. I think that probably came out of anti-roads site based stuff and that carried on through to RTS, all the propaganda that's been put out about those street parties has been about creating a sort of future society within this one. And I think people are quite consciously offering alternatives and sorting their own life out. Whether it's sorting out living in a place like this, or squatting a big building with loads of mates, or living on a site, or living up by an allotment and doing stuff there at the same time as going off and doing actions.

Ozzie->> I think we're quite numb to quite a lot of the little things which are horrific about capitalist society. I was talking to my mum about this earlier, about kids playing in the street. I always used to roam over a really big area when I was growing up. And that's not so long ago. And if you took someone from say seventy years ago, and walked them 'round an area, they'd think all the kids had been murdered because there's no fucking kids. Kids don't play out in the streets, you don't see kids roaming around and stuff. And that, to me, is the sign of a fucking death culture. The fact that you don't see kids in the street and they're confined to their houses, quite often. It's horrific. Small things horrify me more, like the fact that there have been song birds in this country forgetting how to sing. Even wild animals have become alienated from their natural behavior. That's horrific. We're alienated, but the idea that wild animals could become alienated. I can't say how much that horrifies me.

Jess->> What was your question again? It was a bit different. It was something like, "What was your vision of the future?" [Everyone laughs]

Ozzie->> I'm explaining why I'd love to see a future which has children playing in the streets.

mk->> Actually, reading histories of roads and streets, the street used to be a public space, it wasn't taken over by cars at all. All sorts of things used to happen in the streets, people marketing, vending their wares, and kids playing, all sorts of stuff going on. And now it's exclusive, if you stand in the street you're dead. You're run over, basically. You don't have the right of way at all.

Jon->> It's a really noticeable thing you can see on an everyday level. There was something I read about gardeners, some sort of sociologist social survey thing they'd done, they mapped the street and all the people where they go, their journeys and how they cross the road and stuff like that. And people mapped when they've popped out down the road and visited their neighbors and all that stuff. And then they increased the traffic flow, 'cause all the traffic got redirected down the road. And then the number of journeys that people made, it wasn't just that people didn't cross the street anymore, they didn't actually go out their front door and go two doors down anymore. It was just really completely shriveled away. All the people stayed in their own houses. And you can notice it yourself. I was just thinking that when I went up to Bradford, they have these old Victorian back-to-back terraces, and they have a sort of back alley that runs up between the rows of houses. It's just cobble stones, and you can't get a car up it really.

Ozzie->> It's quite common, there.

Jon->> Yeah. You don't really get it so much down here but it's sort of common up there. And Bradford's a real Asian area, and you get all these kids practicing cricket up the back alley. And I was quite amazed, because you don't really see that down here. 'Cause if you try to play football in the street you get run over.

Ozzie->> That's another thing. Me and my mates always played football in the streets. And we'd stop if a car came down. But it seems to be in the area of Brighton where I grew up, there's more cars and the fear has descended upon people and they won't let their children out. Even in the last ten years, it's very, very incredibly sad. It's making for really badly, badly formed children, I think, personally. Oh, an old lady said to me once, "I don't know how you young 'uns keep up today because everything moves so fast." And she was saying, "I was glad I was born when I'm born and I'm glad I'm gonna die when I'm gonna die, because I can't see how you keep up with everything moving so quickly." And that's basically it really. That was quite a shocker.

mk->> So, a slower world.

Ozzie->> Yeah. I thought, "I wish I was born when you were born as well." Jon's got a local history book, carrying on the subject of kids, which was written by a geezer who grew up where I grew up. He's very pessimistic, and he says that if things carry on as they are, children aren't going to have any memories worth having of their childhood. They're not having much childhood and the book is about his childhood. That's a perspective which you can get really insulated from if you don't have the overview through the years.

mk->> That is pretty terrifying. If you don't have memories you don't have a life, do you?

Jon->> In fact, going back to your question about kind of what world do we aim for, in a sense children's play is the last refuge of human sanity. And that's why in large amounts of RTS propaganda and our stuff in general, we're talking about play, we're talking about pleasure, we're talking about reclaiming those areas and starting to experience collective imagination. And one of the reasons why I think the forms of action that have happened in Britain have grown very quickly, way faster than our own expectations, is because they were playful. They're quite serious, you're getting sometimes injured, you're risking arrest, and getting arrested. But they're still quite playful. You're creating stuff, you're living on that edge in the same way that you did at the best play times of childhood. And I think that's nearer to the kind of world we want. Away from work, away from that kind of slavery and death of imagination, and towards a world where the best moments that we have in play are our whole existence. It's very theoretical, but also quite real to many people who have experienced those struggles.

Ozzie->> That's not theory to me. That's just life.

 

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