>Encompassing the movement.
>
>Containment. Filtering. Mediation.
>
>
>A reversal occurred at the New York City World Economic Forum
>Protests. The protestors were no longer a decentralized mass covering
>a city, attempting to breach a fortress of the elites. After all, it
>was always those big ugly fences, the perimeter defense, that made it
>look like those on the inside really did have something to hide. The
>prior decentralization of the protestors throughout a city had made
>the protests seem democratic, representative of the masses attempting
>to breach a closed inner circle of power-mongers, an enclosed elite
>attacking a citizen uprising. The violence of the fences and teargas
>and nightsticks exposed a real brutality behind the elites huddling
>over their new plans of exploitation. Quebec was turned into a
>fortress. The WTO ran to Qatar. But here, the strategy inverted. Here
>it was the protestors who were contained, in a massive
>military-police-media trap. Here, in New York City, the heart of
>capitalism, the elites turned the strategy, the structure inside
>out. Now, in a stroke of (psy-op) genius, it was the protestors who
>were the infiltrators into an otherwise peaceful city. Now it was the
>protestors that must be contained, not the elites that must be
>defended. A new defensive strategy emerged, the strategy of the
>security state (now visible and expanding): a strategy of
>encompassment.
>
>Encompassment is the combined stratagem of endocolonization: an empty
>structure of universal mediation divides and distributes, filters and
>contains. Encompassment is the military/info/economic/media(ted)
>space in which all people participate only as the representational
>images allotted to them, and always as intruders. The spatial
>structure is inverted. All space is claimed. All movements are
>encompassed. The perimeter of defense turns itself inside
>out. Containment is now a universal stratagem. Each and all are
>contained within a structure, within a space that claims all space. No
>one escapes the satellites, the helicopters, the police, the cameras,
>and the dual blade of privilege. No, in fact, each and every one is
>contained, isolated through the filter, and communicates through the
>mediation of the power structure. In other words, a power structure
>claims all aspects of space through a series of overlapping
>transparent, semi-transparent and opaque apparatus of containment:
>empty structures, filters. These filters serve the essential function
>of appropriating space by dividing it, by doling out certain spaces to
>certain individuals, by dispensing privilege. This empty structure of
>universal appropriation, of objectification and commodification, of
>division and distribution, in fact simultaneously creates BOTH the
>overlapping spaces of privilege AND the all-encompassing space from
>which they are carved. Between the divisions of privilege lies the
>empty structure of power. This is the essential aspect of an
>all-encompassing system of power:
>
>The structure which divides and contains is the same structure that
>connects and 'empowers', the empty structure of mediation, space.
>
>
>
>Containment (Inverting defense.)
>
>Containment inverts space. Containment claims the entire environment,
>the entire earth, the entire media-sphere. The structure of
>containment claims all space through a reverse legitimization, the
>limited spaces created refer back to the infinite empty structure of
>space that created them. Containment creates the fuzzy, variable
>bounded utopias, in which individuals may act 'freely' - in that they
>are blinded to its limits, as the limits exist not as walls, but as a
>series of overlapping mediated filters, fading to a supposed infinite
>horizon. Bounded spaces refer back to an all-encompassing space to
>avoid the exposure of their limits. Similarly, the space of
>encompassment refers to the bounded spaces when its hegemony,
>homogeneity, and depth is exposed. Containment isolates
>action. Containment surrounds, divides and innoculates. Containment is
>the first step of filtering. The dissenters are separated from the
>non-dissenters. The citizens are separated from the consumers. The
>first spatial division is crucial. To construct a defensive wall
>around oneself automatically limits oneself, defines oneself, and
>gives the exterior environ to those outside. This is absolutely
>unacceptable to the elite for a few reasons: one, everyone must be
>appropriated and vested into the system in order to compel
>subjugation, (re)production, consumption. Two, the appearance of an
>exterior indicates an alternative. Three, an exterior makes the
>restricted interior appear undemocratic. The fence, after all, appears
>much too harsh.
>
>The strategy became apparent as we marched out onto the street. The
>protesters were limited to one lane of traffic through most of the
>march, contained by a human fence of police. We were kept in a long
>linear formation, thereby keeping the ratio of protestors to police to
>a manageable number, and making direct communication and crowd emotion
>difficult. Instead of creating a perimeter zone of defense,
>necessarily defendable at all points on the perimeter, protestors were
>always contained WITHIN a linear moving progression surrounded on all
>sides by police. This is not to say there was not a defense of the
>perimeter, there was. (For example, after leaving our pen, we chanted
>from the closest blockaded street we could find to the remaining
>penned-in protesters, and immediately had about thirty more cops
>dispatched to our area.) But the overall strategy was that protestors
>were herded rather than allowed free range. By making the protestors
>appear as contained infiltrators, as opposed to citizens, the entire
>protest was framed as a security issue. (Or was it the other way
>around? The protest was a security issue and therefore the protestors
>must be contained? This circular rhetoric of justification easily spun
>onto television screens everywhere.)
>
>Almost the entire length of the parade route, the police stood
>shoulder to shoulder - a (robotic) human wall. 'Someday you will be
>replaced by real robots' someone shouted. When the police moved, they
>moved in numbers, always in formation. The entire police force acted
>as choreographed military units. If seen from the low-flying chopper
>above our heads, you could easily distinguish the strategy, unfolding
>underneath you like it did on the maps and plans drafted
>earlier. Broad strokes and lines and movements made following a logic
>from above. This was not at all a police operation, but a military
>operation. Any autonomy afforded to individual police officers in a
>normal street-scene was removed. The police were robotic soldiers
>forming human walls and vectors. They remained silent, except to bark
>an occasional rebuke. The massive police force that formed a barricade
>of bullet-proof wrapped flesh corralled protestors into a long linear
>powerless formation that went where the police told them to go. The
>police were in control.
>
>
>
>Filter (Profiling)
>
>The parade was frozen in place. Formations of police charged through
>the crowd at specific points, cutting the long linear parade line into
>numerous sections a block long. In this way, the mass was divided into
>manageable sections, surrounded on all sides by police. The parade was
>partitioned and dismantled long before any rally could occur. The
>police controlled the parade, and then they killed it before it could
>turn into anything else. The protestors were instructed that the only
>exit was behind us. We were allowed to leave the pens single file at
>one rear corner of each of the pens and exit the assembly through
>blockaded side streets. At certain points, no one was allowed to
>leave.
>
>Perhaps we could assume that this emulates a broader strategy in
>dealing with dissent: dissenters are encouraged out into the open (and
>those found elsewhere are without support or witness), dissenters are
>led in certain directions and in certain formations (an offensive
>containment rather than a perimeter defense), dissenters are segmented
>and compartmentalized. Within each segment, the dissenters are told to
>leave immediately, to disperse into the mediated structure. A certain
>tension and intimidation encourages each to leave. After a significant
>number of each segment are weeded out by leaving of their 'free will',
>certain segments are combined and the process begins again. In this
>way, a sort of sieve or filter is created. The end
>compartmentalization being into the city buses (borrowed for use here)
>and paddy wagons and then jail cells, and further, if necessary,
>solitary confinement.
>
>(The anti-terrorist operation seems to follow a similar operation:
>more intense, more brutal, more thought-out. Encourage tips (for
>citizenship). Identify profiles. Demand registration. Zoom in. Contain
>(based on some visa violation or something). Release one-by-one. Keep
>those contained isolated. Torture (sensory deprivation, solitary
>confinement...), encourage tips, contain...(loop))
>
>We cannot rely on the image of the fence. There is no singular fence,
>there are only levels, filters, containment apparatus, seemingly
>transparent windows of mediation. A series of levels of access and
>appropriation (filters) are much more adequate for control than a
>defined fence. Instead of a restricted interior, a power-structure
>prefers a hierarchical system of inclusion, mediated between levels in
>order to capture and direct the lines of flight back inward.
>
>
>
>Mediation (Visibility)
>
>This containment was also facilitated by the protestors in their
>willingness to converge all the parades into one, hoping to keep a
>permitted peaceful march that would show large numbers. And, after
>seeing the coverage, we can see this was quite naive. CNN said there
>were 2000 protestors. ABC cancelled their documentary because of a
>lack of violence. Media coverage emphasized non-violence as the result
>of the police. (However, the vast majority of protestors were keenly
>aware that even a perception of violence at that point in time could
>sink the movement, at least as far as media coverage was concerned.)
>
>In this moment of the image, where the world trade center collapse was
>looped ad infinitum, it was quite possible that an image of violence
>could be used to construct the link: anti-globalization =
>terrorism. The 'protestor equals terrorist' equation was ready to be
>applied, previously framed both in the media, and by the structure of
>police containment. We did not give them that raw image. And yet, the
>image that emerged through that corporate media filter, was not one of
>questioning why so many people were there (it wasn't so many according
>to them), nor was it one of relief that protestors had not resorted to
>violence. Instead, it was one of victory: anti-globalization
>innoculated. The movement was successfully reduced to a mediated
>visibility.
>
>This was a moment where the movement chose to play by the rules: the
>rules of the police, the rules of the media. And it is not surprising
>that those rules were changed, subverted and spun back on us as we
>were following them. The permitted march to the rally: altered,
>subverted, and aborted. The media coverage on a massive non-violent
>protest: altered, subverted, and aborted. After all, was it not these
>exact strategies that we were here to protest in the first place. Had
>we forgot?
>
>The WEF itself has followed a strategy of appropriation and
>containment. Strategically inviting certain critics to the table, in
>order to appropriate key sectors of the movement, appear democratic,
>and suggest 'free' trade arguments for the problems brought up. But
>never is too much opposition allowed, rather, it is a token of
>opposition in order to legitimate, never to upset the power
>structure. Always keeping the numbers of dissenters in a ratio and
>formation to allow the appearance of free speech, but the
>impossibility of free action.
>
>On the interior, dissent is included and appropriated, contained
>within a system of simulated democracy and dialogue. The most visible
>lines of flight are appropriated, channeled back in, subverted,
>chopped up, controlled, and used to fuel a moral media image. The
>strategy of containment is one of inclusion in such a way that each is
>isolated and controlled within the larger structure. The constructed
>environ within the WEF is to appear as infinite and without limits to
>those within it. One is encouraged to be blind to their own
>appropriation, their own privilege, their own commodification, their
>own subversion.
>
>Said another way, the 2/2/2 NYCWEF protest was the perfect example of
>simulated democracy. Within the encompassing police/privilege
>apparatus, action is contained, communication segmented, the mass
>cellularized, and between all divisions, all is mediated. All occurs
>within the empty structure of mediation: space.
>
>
>
>The im-mediate
>
>But freedom, despite what we have been told, has very little to do
>with space. In fact, space is entirely a concept of the empty
>structures. Space is a supposedly neutral, invisible all-encompassing
>medium that simultaneously divides and connects. The vast utopic
>spaces of security and freedom are in fact the gargantuan mediated
>expanses of the empty structures.
>
>"Ultimately, the violent state and the corporate power doesn't know
>how to fight the non-violent people's movement. So, if not today,
>tomorrow we are going to win. Its not just enron that collapsed, you
>know? But even these kind of empty structures which are trying to
>change our cultures, not just sections or structures - as I believe
>it, are not sustainable in themselves." (Medha Patkar, interviewed on
>Democracy-Now.)
>
>We have too long lived within the empty structures. We reject the
>empty structures of transcendence. We reject the plan. We reject the
>secure, limited and commodified utopias sold to us. There is no
>freedom without (from) risk. There is no freedom without (from)
>responsibility. We are building individual ethics. We are building
>individual responsibility. We do not anticipate a revolution of force,
>we live within and (re)create innummerable forces. We act
>im-mediately, we create im-mediately, a multi-pronged involution of
>individual powers, of particular actions, of innumerable forces, of
>constant self-re-creation from the inside-out never from the
>outside-in. We live within the particular, within the moment, within
>the action. For this is the great hope of building a new movement of
>freedom: within the un-mediated, within the im-mediate, we are our own
>creation.