Reclaim the Street Party - Mayday
Me | 14.04.2010 21:39
Saturday 1st May 2010, 4pm
!RAVE AGAINST THE MACHINE!
!STREET SOUNDCLASH!
!RECLAIM THE STREETS PARTY!
Spread the word and invite your friends!
Location to be confirmed... Waterloo/Southbank/Se1 London
Reclaim the Streets! Fuck the Election!
!RAVE AGAINST THE MACHINE!
!STREET SOUNDCLASH!
!RECLAIM THE STREETS PARTY!
Spread the word and invite your friends!
Location to be confirmed... Waterloo/Southbank/Se1 London
Reclaim the Streets! Fuck the Election!
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=115953691749777 Hopefully we can build some momentum behind this, so there is something interesting happening on mayday.
Me
Additions
THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RECLAIM THE STREETS
15.04.2010 01:36
BE WARNED
THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RECLAIM THE STREETS
THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RECLAIM THE STREETS
OlD RTS
Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square Mayday Rally
15.04.2010 14:49
As well as this and Meltdown there's also the traditional Mayday March and Rally from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square. Complete with organised speakers including Tony Benn. Likely to be a less raucous affair than Meltdown and This bring you own booze street rave.
See, there's something for everybody. So take your pick or organise another alternative.
http://www.londonmayday.org/home.php
See, there's something for everybody. So take your pick or organise another alternative.
http://www.londonmayday.org/home.php
Mayday
Comments
Hide the following 21 comments
why we protest
14.04.2010 22:14
none of that boring politics or changing the world stuff.... thats boring
most of us are just looking for a party. Thats why we protest, its a social thing to meet people and have fun
Sophie
Uhh
14.04.2010 22:49
Better than just nothing happening.
Howard
you're making it up!
15.04.2010 00:06
Party can be a legit part of protest, but organising street parties took quite some, er, organising, not just making a facebook event and knocking up a poster for Indymedia!!! And it was never just about the party, or the police, but there's was a whole load of politics, aims, thought....
"bring booze"......If you had only two more words to use on a poster, is that all you can come up with.
boozer
Response
15.04.2010 09:28
First 'Anarchists' claim event's are not anarchist because a select group of people aren't involved in organizing. Then a legitimate event to celebrate mayday is delegitimised as "not being connected to Reclaim The Streets". Anyone under 25 probably doesn't even remember the old RTS parties and anyway it's a tactic, there is no ownership by RTS inc. No one owns the right to the title.
What is with people at the moment. Has everyone forgotten what autonomy and solidarity mean? You don't have to agree with everything everyone does but that doesn't mean we should be opposing peoples efforts. There is a bigger battle to be fought.
“There are no such things as superior forms of struggle. Revolt needs everything.”
-At Daggers Drawn
How long are these fractured attitudes going to last? Worst of all it seams to come from people with long term involvement who should know better. Will you not be happy till you make young anarchists feel as alienated and marginalised as you?
And whilst I agree that drinking heavily round the cops may not be a good idea, since when are people not able to make up their own minds? If people want to party and drink let them, if they have more sense to keep their heads in a tense situation then all the better.
Tom
...
15.04.2010 10:02
"Street parties can be a legit form of protest...
Better than just nothing happening."
The alternative isn't doing nothing! The alternative is hard work, organising in our workplaces, communities or colleges. But the alternative actually achieves something, street parties do not. All they do is serve to give maybe a couple hundred of young politically radical people a chance to have fun, at the expense of giving left politics a serious recognition. This kind of event is extremely alienating to the vast majority of the working class population, and serves to give anarchist (or whatever else) politics a bad name. I don't think for most people some student types (nothing wrong with being a student, students are still part of the working class, but a small segment of it) dancing is likely to engage people with working class politics - the politics of the International Workers' Day.
Also, isn't there already a similarly badly organised, quite pointless London based activist-y thing going on Mayday? The Election Meltdown Carnival thing? Why we need two of these things is a mystery to me!
Tom:
You fail to give one reason why
a) this will achieve anything
b) criticism is not useful.
Some of the earlier criticism includes the lack of proper organising going into this, that is constructive and we get no response to it.
Besides, I doubt libertarian communists and anarchists like myself and the rest of the organised anarchist movement (AF, SolFed) do have much in common with the liberal "anti-capitalist" politics behind these types of events. Anarchism, other radical left politics, and workers' day must be about class struggle not dancing if we want to build a genuine fighting force to confront capitalism.
(A)
@ (A)
15.04.2010 10:54
Anarchist
Response to (A)
15.04.2010 11:10
I am not suggesting constructive criticism is not useful, we should always attempt to provide analysis for our actions but it's not helpful when that criticism is unnecessarily hostile, not constructive and from a group which paints it's self as some sort of elite who knows better than others rather than from within those organizing in this way.
This event provides a visible aspect to anti-capitalist/anarchist organising the likes of which has provided the anarchist movement with new faces for the last decade.
I couldn't agree more that real organising is crucial and there are obvious areas where this mobilization is lacking. But constructive criticism would be to make positive suggestions about how to make the event better not criticise it's very existence. There are many things that this event can achieve (redefining public space, empowerment, disruption of capitalist infrastructure etc etc) from an anti-capitalist perspective but I think we probably will ideologically disagree on these.
I would argue that this event differs from the Meltdown event in that streets parties are more spontaneous and egalitarian in nature than some bizarre form of street theatre (which without aiming to contradict myself I believe is alienating to most people). I'm not suggesting that the meltdown should not take place but it's not something I would support personally.
Tom
could someone remove that addition?
15.04.2010 11:51
good luck comrades!
@
Homepage:
http://rts.gn.apc.org/sortit.htm
Calm down
15.04.2010 12:36
Ivor Had-Enough.com
Point made in general terms
15.04.2010 12:41
The way I see it drugs and alcohol are not particularly useful when it comes to political activity. It is just possible that the consumption of such substances by a large part of the population actually help to maintain the status quo by negatively impacting on our ability to think critically. This is aside from the cash that sales taxes on alcohol provide for the state.
My particular bias is that I was forced to stop taking alcohol and drugs since I am completely incapable of taking them in moderation. Richard Sennett once claimed that radicalism in the UK was particularly high in the 18th century fermented by roudy gatherings in coffee bars. With the subsequent expansion of the gin trade and public houses everything calmed down again.
party pooper
what a bunch of
15.04.2010 13:37
"Anarchism, other radical left politics, and workers' day must be about class struggle not dancing if we want to build a genuine fighting force to confront capitalism"
Yep, we want serious talking, not fun and kicking it off with the cops. You'll never get those working class types dancing and fighting. It's such a distraction from the 'class struggle'.
party poopers
ELECTION MELTDOWN
15.04.2010 14:20
Election Meltdown
Booze
15.04.2010 14:21
Tom
if i cant dance
15.04.2010 17:35
Reclaiming space is a political act, dancing is a political act.
Capitalism dictates how, when and where we can relax, dance, rave and how much these activities should cost.
Its mayday, a day of celebration and workers relaxing. In this country and around the world we spend more time working than we do just relaxing and being happy.
Class struggle doesnt just take place in our workplaces, or in the dole office, or housing office, it occurs everywhere we struggle and in the post criminal justice act society the struggle occurs everytime we seek to reclaim space for a free rave.
Solfed and afed types not approving of activity like this only further alienates me from these groups. a bunch of middle class pseudo-intellectuals telling us what class struggle is or isnt just pushes me futher away from so called "class-struggle" organising. Workplace organising is important yes (buts let not forget that many working class people in this country dont have jobs), community organising is important too, but real class struggle takes place everywhere and all the time, and particularly whenever we gather en masse and give authority and the legal system the middle finger.
emma goldman
ok...
15.04.2010 18:04
Tom and others: I appreciate your point that having fun is important. I think where we differ is that you find political content in these street parties, where I find... street parties. On the other hand, I recognise that the original RTS protests were relatively effective and did help mobilise a generation. However, I think these must be very much the sub-heading to the major story, which is not as "party poopers" would have it, sitting around in heated academic debate, but instead organising around the issues that affect us all as part of the working class.
As a specific event, this is absolutely fine, and could well be really fun. I guess my reaction was to the more general trend of activism. You can say that this is just complementary to other stuff, but in practise we've seen a great deal of activism along these lines from the anti-capitalist/anti-globalisation scene, but it has translated into not a huge amount in terms of upping the class struggle. My other concern is that this kind of thing is the image that anarchism gets in the public image, and this can be alienating to many (see the poster, a hugely alienating advert), and certainly this kind of thing is not the main point of anarchism (working class self-organisation and class struggle surely are) so is misleading.
Some of the alleged pro's of holding this:
- Empowerment. Empowerment is a great thing, and you get it from taking collective direct action with others, especially on an equal basis. Reclaiming space can give this. So can an EDL rally for its members - I'm sure smashing up Asians areas was empowering for the people at their demos. The point is that empowerment should be a fortunate by-product of doing effective action, rather than an end in itself.
- Confronting Capital. Really? For one thing almost certainly no damage will be done to private property. But more importantly, if it were, then what would that achieve? Almost no cost damage compared to, say, a strike would be caused. And without a supportive working class it only serves to further the misonceptions people have about our (or mine, if you're an insurrectionist then I suppose then there is no real misconception) kind of politics, which will only help the cause of capital.
(A)
Time to party!
15.04.2010 18:27
Krop
Don't trust them
15.04.2010 19:06
scouser
Response to (A)
15.04.2010 22:40
To me anarchist revolutionary behavior (or at least in some cases) is where people come together to determine their own conditions. This can be in the workplace, though there is less pride or craft in the workplace now(a symptom of the global capitalist condition) so people tend to just hate their job and feel apathetic towards it- maybe not a bad thing), it can be in our communities both geographical or social/cultural or it could just be a group of people redefining a space, having fun together and finding joy in a world where so much of what we do it predetermined for us.
As for empowerment, I understand what you are saying and it would be hard to comment further without discussing power dynamics to a length I don't wish to get into here.
As for disruption to capital. That doesn't require smashing windows, just taking space can do that. But your right a strike would be much more effective so lets do that to!
I feel as though I have said enough here now. Essentially, our arguments aren't so different, which was my initial point that we should be supportive of diverse forms of anti-authoritarian struggle, even if it doesn't fit our understanding of how social change takes place. There are larger battles to be fought.
Towards anarchism without adjectives.
Tom
deadend
15.04.2010 23:00
Such an automonous move is benign when the hangover is over. We need to reflect on what has been done before and build on it rather than just partying. If you're just there for a good time, then you aren't really interested in what happens in the bad times. Alcohol and drugs are distort reality and only offer a false sense of security.
Support other brothers
communist libetarian
festival of ideas
16.04.2010 00:30
a respected comrade in the right to work group
he likes meltdown's idea calling for the setting up of democracy village for the 6 days to election day in the square.
can we drop our differences and pull it off?
why not put out invitations to all the different groupings, if we work together we can bring people forward from different leftist/libertarian struggles & share in a festival of ideas, the real parliament in the square. let's meet on mayday week to share, create a space for bridge building, ideological exploration in class solidarity (from below) and express something includes but also goes beyond theatre/ party and helps to create new connections for the future. maybe we can inspire more people to so something different on election day; what about amassing at town halls or come down to parliament square.
for people interested in the right to work campaign there is a resist anti-union law meeting next thurs 22nd 7.30pm NUJ Head Office WC1
and if you don't like the way meltdown organises, come to the next meeting - this sat 17th@ the foundry 3pm
power to peoples' assemblies
no-one
Homepage:
http://www.meltdown.uk.net
patetic
16.04.2010 15:10
no name