What now after G8?

 http://www.dsei.org/

No don't shut it down, lets go and buy arms. I can think of a million uses around the house for anti-personnel mines. The microlights which fly over my garden, I could blow tham out of the sky with a ground to air tactical assault system. Not to mention all those exciting guns. Guns, guns, guns. Whoopee! Would I love to show the kids off the estate what I brought back from the arms fair. " who's pointing a lazer at me?" they'd say, then BLAM I do the job that a dodgy condom failed in 16 years ago.(sorry thats a bit fascist and wrong) Who's with me? Lets arm ourselves to the teeth and stay in our homes!

dear ex-lax(or whatever you are today..)for a person who thinks indymedia isnt really that significant in the long and short of it all-i've noticed you do spend a lot of time on these boards-i was wondering,are you some kind of sad anorak-clad geek who obsesses over appearing cleverer than anyone who attempts any form of constructive dialogue on these boards..or are your motives somewhat more sinister? do tell....

So from one spectacular action to another? If there was one thing that I brought with me from it and i'd hope most others did too, it's the need to go home and start organising in our own communities and not for the next big "activist" action, but around social struggle relevant to those in my community/neighbourhood/locality/etc.

I'm afraid my motives are far more sinister. In a lot of ways I've just begun posting here to avoid ranting at my long suffering freinds and family, I care a lot less about alienating people I can't see. Besides, someones got to keep you lot (dis)honest. Power surge... how does that become a conspiracy? It's obvious what that is.

Anyway, who said I thought Indymedia was insignificant. All I said was that it was censored with a little suspect bias and filled with little worms and moles who don't seem to be too well trained in psychological manipualation.
Plus I didn't much enjoy being hacked by them before being censored.

I haven't seen you say anything too constructive my dear, dear friend... perhaps I missed it. After all I am new here.

Anoraks are a fashion statement.

I think that we need to spread the word locally. I don't know about anyone else but I was very dissapointed to return back from the G8 to find that most people didn't know why I had been there or what I was protesting for. They thought I'd gone to hold hands with Sir Bob or something...

So, how do we mobilise people from our local community? How do we find these people? How do we get them motivated to take action? Because I'm finding that most are happy to live in their comfortable little lives, only taking action to skip between Sky News and the BBC. I know that I am not the only one who cares and who wants to make a difference, and am prepared to fight for change, as I met many others in Edinburgh last week.

I have started by writing a letter to my local paper. I expect this to be printed this week and then I'll se what response I get. I'll then try and arrange a get together locally of interested parties and try to structure some sort of group. Ideally I'd like to bring at least one coach load of people from my town to the next demonstration.

I'm very keen to hear from anyone else about what/how they intend to do to increase the movement.

I don't think it's possible for mass summit protests to change the world, or even change anything at all, quite frankly. They have become profoundly disempowering for the following reasons:

(a) The police can out-manoeuvre even large crowds of protesters very effectively.
(b) The protests have become increasingly about participation in "cat-and-mouse" games with said police to the exclusion of pretty much everything else these days. The almost obsessional focus on "the police state" and "civil liberties" in the fallout from each successive protest is quite revealing in this regard. "Please Mr. Police Officer, please let me shut down the G8/IMF/WB/WTO/EU for a few hours" seems to have become more or less the voice of protest. Risible and (I'm sorry to say) indicative of profound disempowerment and disciplining. So long as protesters' complaints can keep being channeled down the rather particularistic "civil liberties" route then the G8 ministers have little to worry about.
(c) It's still clearly mired in the profoundly unwelcome "summit-hopping" phenomenon, which is no more attuned to the needs of the genuinely poor than Live8 was. It's still just wealthy white kids committing to two days of "action", then buggering off home and doing apparently very little else.

A localisation of the "anti-globalisation" movement is perhaps a means out of this deadlock, given that the impacts of neoliberalism all tend to be experienced at a local level anyway, though a much greater debate is required.

But summit protests are a waste of time, existing increasingly so that some participants can enjoy wallowing in a disgracefully addictive self-pity about how they were "brutalised" by "the police state" - comments that are likely to repulse potential allies in other parts of the world who have been on the receiving end of genuine oppression.

The Dungavel protest was perhaps the single most powerful one of the entire week. Whereas the Carnival for Full Enjoyment really ought to be written-off as a thorough waste of time, both in intent and in execution. It's descended to vainglorious "vanguardism" of the most repulsive kind.

"So from one spectacular action to another? If there was one thing that I brought with me from it and i'd hope most others did too, it's the need to go home and start organising in our own communities and not for the next big "activist" action, but around social struggle relevant to those in my community/neighbourhood/locality/etc."

Nah - the idea that the sales of arms have revelance to ordinary peoples lives is preposterous, right?

So what if taxes prop up despots and tyrants?

I'm unclear as to what exactly you will be 'organising' in your local community, and why it precludes a response to Europe's largest Arms Fair............

However, I'm sure you're not for a moment suggesting that no-one should respond to DSE1, right?

I do agree with the point of organising locally. We still need big actions at summits and things like the arms fair mentioned, but it is important to try to attract new people and try and communicate our message as far and wide as possible.
There is one particular group called Reshape at www.reshape.org.uk, which I think was set up specifically for anti G8 actions, but I know there is a post G8 meeting in Edinburgh as well as other towns in the UK. I haven't been involved with it yet, but hopefully it will be a good place to start building up a stronger network.
There is also a site: Bridge Initiative, www.bridge-initiative.org, a French NGO setting up dialogue between various actors with conflicting views on globalization issues. They have set up talks between civil society groups and people like George Soros and representatives of the World Bank and so on.
I would really like to set up something like this on a local level - people from all different backgrounds getting together to discuss local and global political issues, and to try to open up the debate in mainstream society and media. Otherwise it is far too easy for activists to be marginalised.

I have to say that I agree with Paul about the need to organise at a local level and I also think that simply organising to blockade the DSEI arms fair because it is a 'bad thing' is politically simplistic.

I say this because I live about a mile and a half away from the Excel Centre in Canning Town, where the Arms Fair is taking place. The problem with the previous demonstrations I attended, in 2001 and especially in 2003, was that due to a complete failure to engage with local communities about the importance of shutting down the arms fair, the majority of local residents were massively pissed off - about the demonstrators. There was a real sense that our neighbourhood was just a venue for a protest that had descended on the area for the day. More groundwork would have made so much of a difference, especially as there is atill massive resentment about the false promises of jobs for the local area that were made when the Excel Centre was built. There is also a very healthy mistrust of the police (in 2001, some demonstrators got away from a battering by the police because local lads showed them how to find their way out of the Keir Hardie estate). But local support has to be developed and encouraged. Simply turning up with a pair of pink fairy wings and thinking people wiill support you cos the arms fair is 'bad' is naive.

I'm sure that someone will say, "so what the f@ck are you doing then?" Therein lies the problem. The local East London Against the Arms Fair group are very nice CND types but their idea of protest is going down to the Excel Centre and singing songs on a Sunday. I've no problem with that but its a bit limited. What those of us who live near the Arms Fair venue and oppose it completely need is a concerted effort by the national coordinating networks to talk to local residents and get them onside. And yet the Disarm DSEI campaign's public meeting is in central London. It should be in Canning Town or at the very least in Stratford. I'm pretty sure that the list of supporting groups might then include some from Newham.

Some of us in this part of east London want the Arms Fair removed from the Excel Centre permanently. I fear this year's protest will instead involve a massive and oppressive police presence for a couple of hundred demonstrators, antagonism from local residents who have no idea what the hell is going on - and then we can all come back and do it again in 2007 and feel good about ourselves.

There has to be a better way.

This is a quick response from someone involved in DISARM.

One of the problems we have in engaging with people in Newham is everytime we've held a public event in Newham, the only people who attend are those from ELAFF.

That said, I totally agree that more work should be done in Newham, but it would also be nice to have a local group for that work to feed into. We've tried with ELAAF but they don't support us because we don't have a total commitment to non violence and we don't find them particularly representative of East London. We've talked for a while about holding a public meeting in Newham and if there's some Newham residents around who'd like to help with this, that would be fantastic.

With regard the upcoming public meeting (30th July, Conway Hall). This is in Central London because it is aimed at people over a large area and to pull in people who have been involved in DISSENT and the G8 and want to help with DSEi.

I also agree that we shouldn't be moving from one spectacular to another. It is for this reason that we've been working on issues surrounding DSEi and the arms trade for the last two years. We haven't just been focussed on one week of action. However DSEi is a big event and if we want to try and have an impact (and yes, in an ideal world shut it down), then there's a lot of work to do and we need as many people as possible to get inovlved.

I would like to have a break now - and my favourite option would be to dissolve Dissent now and continue to organise locally.

Of course the good links and experiences will be kept and work on, but i do not see the gist of keeping a network just for the sake of it, if it is not based on practicalities and practical tasks it will might become an ideological and political tretmill.

Hi,

I want to respond to an earlier comment by John that the Carnival for Full Enjoyment "really ought to be written-off as a thorough waste of time, both in intent and in execution. It's descended to vainglorious "vanguardism" of the most repulsive kind." This is in relation to the question of local vs mass actions — because the Carnival was precisely intended to bridge the gap between local organising and mass action against the G8. Many people involved in the Carnival were active in local issues – resisting forced work schemes & dole snoopers, organising resistance to sheriff's officers (bailiffs). They hoped this action would link everyday resistance in Edinburgh to working class struggles throughout the world.

You could argue it failed in this respect. There are various tactical points to think of: better distribution of prop during as well as in the run-up to the action, better networking with affinity groups to prevent cordoning or to ensure important places are 'visited' in case larger groups are cordoned, etc. But where does 'repulsive vanguardism' come in?

A perceptive commentary on Irish Indy by James r is worth quoting here. He is also very critical, but critical in how the action fell short of its original goals:

"The demo had a very clear theme and that was a tour of the city visiting institutions that contribute to the immiseration of our daily lifes, these included welfare offices implementing the new deal and workfare, employment agencies and army recruitment centres. The idea of 'full enjoyment' itself was a subversion of the old leftist adage of marching for 'full employment'. Unforunately, there was little of this sentiment on the action. There were a few banners the organisers had which made the theme explicit, but these were lost among the corrals. In essence what i am trying to say that this was meant to be a demo which pushed the style of reclaim the streets politics beyond spectacle towards clear class politics...

"There might have been a number of reasons for this. Perhaps within Britain there hasn't been the same level of groudwork put in on the idea of precarity. Again the propaganda for the demo was a wee bit muddy, the graphic looked just like a carnival rather than aesthetically representing the theme and then of course, I do think there is somthing of an unthinking aspect to the demos people go on.

"Im just raising these points as i think they are quite relevent in terms of advancing beyond summit hopping as we relate to it and as most people view it."

Now, I'm not sure myself what the answer is to the broader question of what to do next... I've been through this kind of discussion before. I'm all for 'organising in my local community', but what does such a community consist of for many people? Communities, like work, are increasingly transient. Localism can also become a demoralising swamp in itself — ask anyone who's been to a lot of TRA (Tenants and Residents Association) meetings!

come to the Earth First! summer gathering to continue making those links between us all, share experiences & skills, and plan actions locally and nationally, plus I'm sure a lot of 'G8 debrief and what next?' conversations.

17-21st August, Derbyshire

Website for gathering is
 http://earthfirstgathering.org.uk/

General website and latest EF! Action Update at
 http://earthfirst.org.uk/

Protesting against G8 meetings is pointless. Marx said the 'the philosophers hvae described the world, the point is to change it'. The point is to change yourself, only then should you attempt to change the world.