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Climate Camp in the city

kriptick | 03.04.2009 02:11 | G20 London Summit | Climate Chaos | Repression

For twelve hours, a narrow granite and concrete crevice in the city, normally swilling in dirty money was transformed into a ribbon of colour and music. While the rest of the city raged, gambled and gleefully rolled the earth towards runaway climate change, climate campers opened the street to people and relaxed in the sun. Workshops educated us, stand-up poets and musicians entertained us and a zero carbon kitchen fed us.

Street dancing within the first minute of camp
Street dancing within the first minute of camp

Tent city sprang up just minutes later
Tent city sprang up just minutes later

Suburban lawn brought to the city
Suburban lawn brought to the city

Workshops in progress
Workshops in progress

St Marylebone's students take afternoon off & get involved
St Marylebone's students take afternoon off & get involved

Danny the poet
Danny the poet

DIY kitchen
DIY kitchen

Hot beans and beer? from the rocket stoves
Hot beans and beer? from the rocket stoves

Bike powered PA systems
Bike powered PA systems

Blue sky thinking
Blue sky thinking

The big picture, scroll left & right to see all
The big picture, scroll left & right to see all

Maybe the police are not so bad...
Maybe the police are not so bad...

Bang
Bang


The way the climate camp swoop worked was brilliant. There were small groups of people with circular tents on their backs hanging around in the nearby streets and then suddenly at 12:30 - Bishopsgate was chocka with 2-3 thousand people. It was cheering to see that it is possible to overcome the stereotype of vague activist timing as within just a few minutes, it was as if we'd been there for hours as a tent city popped up and bunting and banners flew between the street furniture. Journalists from all over the world were tip-toeing between the crowded tents and doing live interviews. Not much later a kitchen was serving up food and workshops on the evils of carbon trading were in full swing. Bored city workers ventured into our little world and far from feeling alienated, actually enjoyed the experience. I didn't see a single "outsider" scowling so much as once during the day. Some local school girls spent their free afternoon really immersing themselves in the fun and spectacle.

How things changed at 7pm though. By then the mainstream media had returned to base to file their reports or rushed to capture the more sexy rioting elsewhere and the light was becoming too low for good filming. With no provocation, riot cops with battering shields and flailing batons came storming into climate protesters who offered only upstretched palms as resistance. They succeeded in taking just 10 metres of street back and I found myself comparing their action with famous WW1 battles for the absolute pointlessness of their brutality. And then the police in a truly infantile display of their hyper-active toddler mentality screamed in with flashing lights and wailing sirens displaying 8 of their newest macho toys for boys - Humvee like armoured police trucks that could have rolled straight off the set of some futuristic police state Hollywood film. It would be comical if it weren't so tragic that this is the new style of policing in 21'st century Britain. Considering how the Joint Commitee on Human Rights report had just warned that such immediate resort to aggressive police tactics inflamed public order situations, it was like the police were collectively wiping their filthy arses on that report. The lunacy of their tactics continued as although they presumably wanted to clear us from the street, they imprisoned us in that same street for 5 hours, not letting anyone out until the small hours. Conditions became pretty squalid by then with rivers of piss running along the pavements and gutters. If you transform a living space into a prison, the occupants will hardly maintain and respect it in the same way. It was a shattering end to what had been a joyful and empowering day. Anyone coming on such a protest for the first time will have experienced a complete reality shock and will for ever see the police in a totally different light. But this seems to be part of the master plan - to step by step make it less and less acceptable for anyone to protest about anything going on in this wickedly unjust world except in the most utterly ineffectual manner.

Riot porn film & stills to follow if I have time.

kriptick

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

Cheers K

03.04.2009 09:15

Great pics and nice report thanks. Love the wide angle thingy too!

anon


Solidarity?

03.04.2009 11:03

Good to see that climate camp was set up so successfully.
However I felt pretty betrayed at the beginning of the day when a few comrades were arrested trying to keep the police from kettling the climate camp.
The lack of solidarity from the climate campers was pretty pathetic, most just stood around or ignored the cries for help from comrades that only minutes previously were being cheered on top of the bus stop but no found themselves being beaten to the floor by riot cops.
If the campers had been more pro-active then arrests would have been prevented and the police would have found it much more difficult to kettle the camp and carry out the baton charge in the evening.


Allan Crocker


The police were always going to kettle the camp

03.04.2009 12:34

Any demo of that size, in a street with only three exits, and which is, by its very nature, static, is BOUND to get kettled when they have that many officers available. There was really no way to avoid it, as far as I can see - the golden rule for not being kettled is "keep moving", and as soon as the swoop was finished, it was a camp, and thus couldnt move easily.

rogue


Indeed

03.04.2009 16:40

Firstly, I would like to say that this article is amazingly well written. Bravo to kriptick.
I totally agree with what is said in this article. It is described as it was and as I have seen being there myself. I would not add anything as I would repeat exaclty what the article says.
Marlene

Marlene
mail e-mail: ds_marlou_3192@hotmail.com


Not sure it was lack of solidarity...

03.04.2009 18:32

If you're talking about the same incident i saw when one guy was arrested at the north end after a few guys had linked arms and were getting pushed around by the police then my interpretation is different.

They were shoutin "reclaim the streets" - and whilst i guess they thought they were trying to defend the camp, the camp perimiter was already established and people were making a perimiter out of bicycles.

I tried talking to one to say look the camp edge ends here, you've won already cos the camp is up - but he didn't want to listen to an old fogey like me and carried on shouting.

(ps great report thanks!)

me


Thanks Kriptick

03.04.2009 18:58

Thanks for the photos kriptick, definitely one of the better reports from the camp I've seen. Especially the panorama one of the camp is very impressive..

indy reader


ok for a day

03.04.2009 20:22

might be ok for a couple of days, but you couldn't really live your whole life like that.
it would be really weird, something like the village in The Prisoner. Or the world of nintendo.

charmed


Not all anarchists are comrades

03.04.2009 20:48

Great article. What a success.

While I agree that it's pretty poor for the police to succeed in snatching people, I don't think Allan should think to badly about the lack of "comrades". Anarchists aren't signed up to one thing or another, or under any high command. Each one gets to choose what is their path. Some approaches to dealing with the police draw out the fun side, and many people come along to support and sing and dance. On other occasions, a different approach won't attract the same team work.

It's not a lack of comradeship... Those people getting snatched and arrested will have had their buddies and (hopefully) know the risks. If anything it's just a lack of planning and training... or just that people weren't that bothered about standing their ground at all costs. It's up to them :)

And... just look what a non-hierarchical group of people DID achieve. It was amazing. I think the next camp should be in the BBCs car park... the failure to cover the police eviction was ridiculous. They knew the police would wade in, and only a rare few in the mainstream media will try to tell the truth.

Neale


how is legal support working?

07.04.2009 17:48

I have been reporting police brutality to a person that was supposed to be part of the climate camp legal team (called ben) I want to know if this person was indeed part of our organization or if this was other infiltrated strategy from the police....because as soon as things started getting very Uggly there was almost no legal advisors on the scene and that person did not contact me at all,...I still don't know why all this happened and what does this mean...will be making a statement soon but considering that can't get hold of a legal advisor I am asking here if anyone can please get in contact. please reply by leaving a comment here with a contact number.


tranquility group member at climate camp