Just some addition to remarks by David on the G20_Meltdown process. This process was done on short notice and without much of the uk direct action community involved. Many of the direct action scene were involved in the Climate Camp which had a very clearly organized democratic process and despite being rushed, had legal observers, resources, etc. To build a democratic process so that people know how each other feel about issues and decisions made have some kind of general consensus behind them, well that takes a long time. but it stops really obvious mistakes from happening. no that didn't come together effectively as part of the G20meltdown process in the end. I think this was most apparent in media messaging when Chris Knight said "violence will be met with violence" and a lot of us thought this was a stupid thing to say but we now had little control over the what the media said about us. but there was some attempt to just hold together because we had to rather than there was any agreement within the group about what was going on. Also journalists were (as individuals) pretty supportive of us - just as the public in general is mad as hell about bankers. We also had a lot of political cover by emphasizing the "theatrical" quality of the event and the fact that it was on Fool's Day. Posters and flyers to distribute about the event were bottom up so not all of them had messages on them that made TV network editors and establishment types happy. The "storm the banks poster" ect. will be being used to scare middle-class children into behaving themselves for years to come. Police and right wing media started hyping potential for violent protestors weeks before we even sent any type of press release at all. Because of all this we had to be at pains to declare ourselves a peaceful demonstration. There was no proactive media strategy and some niavety that you could use the mass media to say confrontational things and not have that distorted and used against you. The debate became "will there be a riot in London" which no matter what you argue, yes or no, you are not talking about whether or not G20 ministers are about to steal everyone's future to pay for their own economic crisis.
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-  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl-IfrMh6cI There were a lot of flyers printed and distributed- particularly the 20£ note money flyer was very good. 20,000£ of the 20£note financial fools day flyer was printed and distributed.  http://www.g-20meltdown.org/sites/g-20meltdown.org/files/money.pdf A lot of this distruibution happened during the put people first march which had a significant crowd of likely people. This G20 Meltdown network seemed to have relatively few people on the email list but more on the other mediums of communication that were attached to that. Also the mass media profile was huge and even the police helped us out by publicizing the event in a way that made it interesting to people (a street party but it might become a riot...). UEL closed their whole university as part of security concerns and it may be that a lot of those student for that reason came to the event en masse. I am not in a position to evaluate how much work was done by whom and what of these medium were the most important but it does seem as if web 2.0 is now successfully being engaged. So in this sense a rabbit out of the hat may not have been entirely about bigging it up or "speculating". Again to build a democratic process that would be able to serve as a model of a new world from this huge crowds from nowhere phenomena has not quite been considered. My model (from 90's antiglobalization movement) and probably a lot of other people's in the UK scene, doesn't know quite how to deal with this. The level of mass-mediation that brings people to be involved is not compatible with the techniques of democratic participation built off an email list and public meetings. Scaling up and scaling up hastily hasn't yet been discussed. So that may account partly for the seeming confusion about whether or what democratic process there was in the meetings. it's crucial to build collective decision making into these events rather than audience and leaders, otherwise you put a lot of work into building a process that gets taken away from you and becomes yet another medium of control. There was a second level of informal communication happening in the bring-your-own-contribution-to-our-commonly-owned-event attitude which existed outside the formal meetings. And I think that was democratic even if the meetings and the media group weren't (and the failure of those aspects was more by haste or incompetence than intention to be undemocratic, i think, if i am trying to be fair). Perhaps this was most apparent in the sound systems at the event. Several and all portable. but no centralized stage or amphitheater. billy bragg played from a block of granite up against a bank plugged into someone else's home made barely portable on two wheels sound. block bloc kids had a wheelie bin with hip hop music pumping out of it. there was a brass band wandering around in the crowd. dozens of other bring your own sound. The scale of the stage is proportional to the scale of the capital that sponsors an event. Our stage was several portable sound systems proportional to the from-your-pocket capital that sponsored the event. And a lot of conversations. This aspect of the event was really inspiring to me.

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