discussion on g20, visteon, strasbourg
various | 12.04.2009 12:08 | G20 London Summit | Analysis | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements
So I wonder in terms of media if Gordon Brown's Save the World summit got away with relatively good press because G20Meltdown didn't have any press strategy?
I'm not in a position to evaluate the success of actions taken against the G20 summit. To me it looks as if the G20 ministers all met, shook hands, smiled a lot and got photographed a lot, and that they are about to push forward with keeping their system together (if they can). but protests had not too much imppact on them. Most people are being told to hope that the G20 meetings succeed because there is no alternative.
But I am able to say that despite a hastily organized process with little or no media strategy, no legal support, no resources, a democratic process born with less than ten fingers, and consequently skepticism from the uk direct action scene (who were none the less supportive), that the number of people coming out was surprising to me! The media called me during the event laughing at the police estimate of 4,000 people and what was our estimate. Media eventually decided to report ten thousand people (not counting climate camp (2000) and the other demonstrations such as the antiwar demo elsewhere in the city, etc). Exactly where they came from is unclear to me but some comments
1. David remarked on a rabbit being pulled from a hat... I do think there was a lot of predictions and "bigging" it up before the event. I think there have been quite a bit of "speculative" IPOs in the anti-globalization movement, people making things big by saying they were going to be big. But I thought that had collapsed with the economy- everyone is now meant to be basing estimates on real work done, capitalist and anti-capitalist alike, rather than exchange value in a bubble. It was a bit of an unpleasant surprise to see the slightly speculative PGA europe greece conference come down at almost the same time as the entirely speculative capitalist economy last summer autumn. Speculation on the value of an event not tied to the labour value put into the event seems a pretty poor strategy. I definitely know that hits on the website skyrocketed in the last week after all the controversy hit the press.
2. As for actual work done, the facebook groups and twitter stuff was all new to me. I am used to the antiglobalization movement that began in the 90s connecting circular groups of people by an email list network. But the twitter and facebook medium was highly involved in bringing people out. Also Youtube-
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3. For an anti-summit mobilization there was very little presence at the summit. The Put People First demonstration went to hyde park. The rest of us went to the Square Mile where all the financial transactions happen. Almost noone went to the Excel Centre where the summit was happening. If most summit protests are "direct action at the point of decision" (compare all the various forms of direct action, direct action at point of production / point of destruction (laying down in front of bulldozers,etc)/ direct action at the point of consumption, etc) what type of direct action was this? The bank of England is the centre of the state/finance capitalism nexus and so by going there we were taking direct action against the public assumption that the problem was elsewhere a.in the excell centre or b.what the media were saying greedy bankers/not enough regulation/corruption. It was a slightly awkward form of direct action at the point of assumption and the bank of England was the point of assumption that the BofE and 19 other G20 central banks have nothing to do with the economic crisis. It was implicitly an attack on monetary policy rather than fiscal policy although I think (sadly) few of us on the media team or in the meeting that decided targets could effectively have articulated even why the target was chosen. But after someone suggested it for more or less symbolic reasons (it's big, it seems like the heart of the beast!) then the idea stuck. The fact that much of the uk direct action scene chose to be involved in climate camp rather than meltdown when they compared the level of organization to each of them meant that what was initially to be a large coalition was a bit stunted and so the BofE street party (originally one action among many potential actions) became the main or only action organized. The 'government of the dead' had a lot of influence in planning this because they had agreed to spear head or take responsibility for that particular event.
4. There was very little message about what we want as an alternative. although lots of ideas were made up on the spur of the moment by the press team- i think for this list a lot of those ideas would sound pretty niave but they were ok to give a general sense to the press that people were considering alternatives and it was still an open conversation. I met several people from this money_banks_crisis list (it was great to finally put some faces to email addresses). One of whom remarked on the blank page in the colour printed map flyer of all the companies in the square mile. page 1 all the events and what is happening during the week. middle pages 2-3 big fold out colour map of the square mile and different companies, where they are and what they do/trade. and the back page where one imagines it would say "what do we want": was blank. who spends money printing thousands of colour posters and leaves one page blank? Grassroots bottom up protests are pretty famous for identifying an enemy but having very little idea about the issues so it is not entirely surprising. but I think there needs to be some open conversations to fill in some of the blank page. It would probably be a non-starter to try to fill that page with answers but there could be some open conversations that start to lay out different frameworks for debate. Then people will begin to work with the issues themselves. The point would not be to come up with a commonly agreed unified position- that kills movements. But rather to come up with a variety of commonly agreed questions for debate that frame the economic and ecological crisis in more radical terms and lay out some of the different ideas. This is an example of something that the money_banks_crisis list (for example) hasn't yet done. While it has been very good for sharing information it doesn't seem to yet be an organizing tool to the full potential that it possibly could have. I'm sure there are other formats, networks or locations from which this type of organized conversation could emerge. But the not-quite completed switch in the mass direct action networks of europe from anti-globalization to climate issues (which began to happen before the economic crisis was really apparent) have left us organizationally constituted in a way that makes it difficult to address an anti-capitalism organizing question such as *How do we answer the question 'what do we want?' in such a way that we enable debate and include/increase movement participation from a variety of peoples but also provide tangible direction for building strategy and propelling a movement forward. An open plan still has to be a plan. With the mass direct action networks of europe halfway into the process of reconstructing themselves as climate networks and suddenly the economic crisis arrives, the capacity to answer that question has been parked sideways.
lastly, i'm pretty used to the red, black, and greens in our movements but what color is silver?
solidarity and autonomy, michael
various