If you look at every movement in history which has achieved radical social change, it wasn’t by signing petitions, talking to politicians, begging our rulers to “be nice”, it was by the mass action people taking power of their own lives into their own hands. Good examples are the Suffragettes who rioted, blockaded, smashed and burned their way to getting votes for women; blacks in South Africa who forced the abolition of apartheid by threatening to destroy the State itself; blacks in the US who stopped segregation by shutting down shops, attacking white supremacists and organising self-defence against racist police.

But what about here, now?
Government represents the interests of the rich and powerful. This is why it deploys its violent forces against people who challenge them, such as the miners in the 80s or the Liverpool dockers in the 90s and against anti-G8, -WTO and -EU demonstrators today. It is very happy to sit back and ignore a few thousand people waving placards and marching from A to B. But it will notice those thousands of people reclaiming democracy in the name of the oppressed and blockading ports, shutting down summits, going on strike: disrupting the capitalist profit-machine. In short, by taking Direct Action.

A direct action is the most empowering event imaginable, a rite of passage that fills the participant with pride. There is the special satisfaction of a David defying Goliath, doing the right thing, acting out what Bill Devall calls the "will of the planet." We learn to work in concert with others with life-affirming values. Demonstrations "demonstrate" to the culprits, and to the world, that when all our letters are ignored, our arguments mitigated, and our legal appeals denied, we still refuse to accept the accelerating destruction. We put our bodies and our time where our mouths are: on the front lines! We demonstrate our fear, our hurt, our suffering and our rage against the despoilers.
So please don’t leave Parliament Square feeling powerless: we do have power. We can win and we will win, but we must do it for ourselves, not expecting those in power to do it for us.