carnivals vs. capital
what's it all about?

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June & July 1999, we spent some time in England, Wales & Scotland. One thing that we were very lucky to be part of was the Carnival Against Capital on June 18th, a massive protest & street party, right in the heart of the global economic beast: the City of London. Organized in coordination with actions all around the world, June 18th was an international, collective declaration of resistance to the commodification & corporatization of the world. A carnival meant to turn the world upside down, show it as it could be, a place of laughter & celebration instead of misery & oppression. It was an amazing day.

We had heard of various protest & activist groups of the UK through working with the anarchist collective Left Bank Books in Seattle, WA. Publications like Not For Rent, SchNews, Do or Die, Earth First!, Car Busters, & others all gave glimpses into this active & vibrant culture of protest that had emerged in the late years of Thatcher's reign. We soon found ourselves tracking down all that we could on these groups & movements. One of the reasons we went to England was to try & contact these groups & interview them, to hear their ideas, stories & experiences of being engaged in radical politics, of the worlds they were fighting for, and of what inspired them & kept them going. Collected here are some of the things they talked about with us. We hope you find it interesting & inspiring food for thought. Food for action, too.

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Some notes on the structure & navigation of this site: When we first put this whole project together, we had some specific questions in mind that we wanted to ask activist folk in the U.K.
We were interested in hearing about the day-to-day details of their lives, the ways in which the personal & the political had become interwoven, the stuff that doesn't always make it into more journalistic coverage of activist & radical movements. We also wanted to avoid a rigid interview format & ended up having more of a conversation with each group &/or person, over dinner, or a few pints at the local pub, or under the trees of a local park.

So, each of the conversations we had filled up quite a bit of tape, being a bit rambly & open-ended in their structure. At first the prospect of simply transcribing & presenting it all verbatim was quite daunting. This whole project was a book first & foremost, & we needed to edit something just to make it a size we could afford to print up ourselves out of relatively threadbare pockets. We eventually came up with the idea of presenting it all in a thematic fashion, along the general contours of that personal/political weave we first envisioned.

Whenever you see a word highlighted & underlined, it means it's a link that will take you to another part of the site. At the top right corner of every page there's always a link (e.g., carnivals vs. capital) that will return you to the main menu.

The main menu is a list of seven general question areas. Clicking on any of these will take you to a listing of the various conversations that touched upon this question in some way, along with a brief excerpt from each. Clicking on any of the listed names (e.g. SchNews, Reclaim the Streets-Dee...etc.) will then take you to that part of the conversation.

In each interview the folks we talked to made references to things, events & ideas not everyone may be familiar with, especially anyone living outside the UK. In each conversation, when someone refers to something along these lines, we have linked it to a brief bit of info (located at the bottom of that page). Hopefully these briefs help flesh out each of the conversations with the cultures & histories within which they are all immersed. If you're interested, there's a full index of all these info-briefs, with links to other websites, as well as a read all about it page.

We have tried to make the site as easy to navigate as possible.
Please email us with any suggestions.

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THANKS THANKS THANKS to everyone who helped out with this project. Sorry it took us so long! First there were movings & relocatings, finding jobs, then there was Seattle, then Boston, then DC in April. Busy times. That & we get distracted sometimes.... Anyways, what's caught here is still good & useful & true, regardless of the many months now gone by.

Thanks first to Stacey Wakefield, Grrrt & Amber Gayle of Evil Twin Productions for putting out Not for Rent long ago, which was a major inspiration for this project. Thanks very very muchly to the lovely Zoe for sending us SchNews (another inspiration) & for hooking us up with all the great folks we met, & for housing us for so long. Thanks most especially to everyone who talked with us, fed us, let us crash on their couches, & welcomed us into their many folds & families. You all rock the house in a truly righteous fashion.

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carnivals vs. capital is a map-making Project a not-for-profit endeavor summer 1999 / spring 2000

This site contains pictures taken from the WWW. All are believed to be in the public domain. We have endeavored to credit & provide links to their places of origin. Copyright photos will be removed at the copyright owners demand.

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p.s. webwork's all a homemade jam