Skip to content or view screen version

Disobedience against War, direct @ction meeting 12/11/02

disobedience | 11.11.2002 15:26

Meeting of the newly formed disobedience against war
network is on Tuesday 12th November at 7.30pm.
Venue: LARC, 62 Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel, London E1.

Disobedience Network was set-up by a group of people
involved in various anarchists and grassroots direct
action groups from Reclaim the Streets, WOMBLES,
West London Anarchists and Radicals and AYN.

The idea was to apply creativity, confrontation and horizontal methods of organising gained from experience from J18, N30 and Mayday actions to the top-down, SWP/CND dominated anti-war movement. We have so far participated in the first [and probably last] STW coalition day of action on October 31st with a call to occupy the Houses of Parliament, an adventurist, stuntist and spectacular call of action.

So what next? The Stop the War Coalition thinks direct
action is about handing petitions in to Downing Street or organising ineffective demonstrations, the next being
planned for February 15th, 2003. What about in the meantime, there are many possibilities.

Making sure that the 'war on terrorism' becomes a part of our everyday lives, the new BAe systems advertising campaign, who also sponsored the British legion's red poppy campaign, are promoting themselves as the new 'acceptable' face of capitalism. BAe, the UK's No.1 arm manufacturer with profits of £13.1Billion, are spending millions of pounds in advertising for the UK civil market whilst making billions supplying weaponry to the UK and others.

One way of bringing the war home would be to target the industries which profit from these wars be they
arms manufacturers and there subsideries [many companies involved in car manufacture], oil companies
and the armed forces itself.

Tedious A to B marches won't stop this war, no matter
how many people turn out. It's only when we cross the
thin blue line can real impact be made.

Be realistic, think the impossible!

disobedience
- e-mail: disobedience@riseup.net
- Homepage: www.disobedience.org.uk

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

Why?

11.11.2002 17:12

Why does the StWC not want to organise more days of action? I thought that 31.10 was quite a success.
And btw. organising demonstrations with half a million participants is definately very effective, because they are a very concrete expression of what a large number of people think, whereas with direct actions you will only get a far smaller number of people to participate. Different people have different ways of making themselves heard, it's silly to dismiss those that agree with you but don't necessarily feel they should take it as far as you. The diversity is a strength - Don't introduce the Tories' selfdestruction techniques to the anti-war movement.

pir


Theres a time for everything

11.11.2002 20:59

And the time has come for more direct action (not to be confused with random acts of violence) but direct of the type taken on 31st October. The kind that provokes and challenges people in a way that marches cant. The pace is speeding up as a mere 200 trans national corporations set out their plan for control of the world, our air, water,seeds to grow food. Crop life, Avanti and Monsanto are forming a partnership so that utimate control of all food production throughout the world belongs to them. Bush and mates are busily ensuring that they can demonstrate complete global military control to ease the pathway for the corporations so that they can privatise the earths resources. We are losing our rights and our world at an alarming rate. Demos are fine but not enough they are too easily ignored or if reported are not reported for their politics.

scooter
mail e-mail: scooter@yahoo.com


This action should be on a Saturday as well!

12.11.2002 09:43

The only thing wrong with the last day of civil disobedience against this coming war was that it was on a weekday and not at the weekend therfore far fewer people turned out that had it been at the weekend. This coming day of action needs to be on Saturday to ensure that the maximum number of people turnout for it.

Harlequin


Oh Harlequin...

12.11.2002 11:17

The reason the "day of ACTION" is a weekday is that people can actually carry out effective action to disrupt the war economy. THAT IS THE POINT OF DIRECT ACTION! Strikes, blockades, walkouts. We could probably get the most people on a Bank Holiday Monday, but then we couldn't do any effective action whatsoever.

It's not just numbers which count, it's what we do with them. This is why the huge in September would achieve nothing on its own.

blacknred


It must be at the weekend!

12.11.2002 18:32

If the day of action is on a weekday then it will be far too small and will be intimidated by massive numbers of police as always happens on such events like Mayday for example. This coming action must be at the weekend or it will be a failure!

And by the way people wont walk out of work to disrupt the war effort as was shown by the poor turnout at the last day of action!

Harlequin