Says Billy:
Yesterday we went to Rostock for the large, anti-G8 demonstration there. This was the first of the week of any large numbers, and clearly planned to be a huge "everybody left of center" type ordeal, complete with trucks blasting political rhetoric and music, vendors and porta-potties galore, and hours and hours of speeches and music planned for the end. It was a huge array of mostly far-left folks, but a good sprinkling of unionists, peaceniks and environmentalists, anti-poverty reformers, etc. We walked some 3 or 4 kilometers before reaching the harbour area.
Spread out for hundreds of metres along the sea, some 50,000+ folks were supposed to stand in long lines for food, drink and toilet and listen to "uplifting" chatter about our bold stances in response to the G8. Meanwhile, the polizei had an occasion to exercise their elaborate "security concept" that has been underway for many months. They stationed some 50 vanloads of police throughout the town, and another half dozen huge attack vehicles - tanks, armored trucks and a huge water cannon truck. Meanwhile, one of the largest groups of Black Blocs i´ve ever seen (police and BBC estimate some 2,000 black-clad militants, marching row after row) have a chance to push the limits of allowable activity. In germany, these folks are known as the "autonome," or autonomous protestors. They have a reputation for "simply destroying," which is perhaps not so different from the anarchist reputation in the US, except likely worse. They are always upsetting liberals.
After a couple of hours of rather tedious, and sporadic, back and forths between the police and protestors (police charging through the crowd in a huge display of nastiness, being pushed back by stones and sticks and occasional fire and then back again to the same starting point), things turn decidedly more violent. At a certain point, the police "retreated," in order to shoot the first dose of tear gas into the crowd. In the power vacuum that followed, the autonome set fire to a couple of cars, sending black smoke hundreds of feet into the air and visible throughout town. Police responded with a series of punishing attacks, sending wave after wave of riot police (dressed in various colors and with various gear) into the crowd, making great fascistic gestures like thrusting their batons in the air in unison, shooting cloud after cloud of tear gas, and eventually dowsing the entire crowd in huge bursts of water from their water cannon truck and pushing everyone back with their tanks and armored cars.
In general, the upset liberals will carry the day´s discourse. The media reports that the "security concept" is correct, because the autonome are so violent. Ludicrous numbers of injured police are broadcast publicly, and likewise the list of damaged property is pumped with steroids. The violence of the anarchists will "legitimize" future repression of this weeks´ scheduled protests.
Ok, so they will say what they like.
Let me attempt to draw a few strategic conclusions/lessons from the day.
First, let´s remember a few things about the "legitimacy" of violence and repression. Both sides can "legitimize" their actions in any way that they like, at any point. The police can and do come up with all sorts of reasons to prove themselves as necessary, but essentially everything the police do is based on the basic idea that the state has the right to a monopoly on violence, which is not to be questioned. And the water cannons that attacked protestors were in place long before any violence "legitimized" their presence (and weren´t used to put out the fire, let´s remember!). On the other hand, the autonome can "legitimize" violence based on the death of Carlo Guiliani or even Fred Hampton, for as far as actions taken are "legitimized" by anything at all.
Second, it´s important to note that no protest with such a mixed set of goals is likely to go well. If some organizers and some thousands of participants wanted a festival by the sea with music and vendors and such and some 2,000 more wanted confrontation, both sides were likely to be frustrated. Furthermore, if the autonome really wanted destruction, they might have done better moving away from the harbor and towards places (even outside rostock) where hundreds and hundreds of riot police were not concentrated.
Lastly, it is clear that anyone attending a demonstration at this point needs to be both informed in advance about what they are getting involved in and thoughtful constantly in the moment. All protests move extremely quickly from one dynamic to the next, and it is certainly the peace-loving white woman in her 40s with a split head that is the saddest sight for all involved.
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2 comments:
selfishly, I am grateful that it is not the peace loving white woman in her twenties with a split head. I was worried that you would experience this kind of witnessing, if not worse, and you mentioned that you might not be in the main protest areas. I didn't however, believe you for a moment, hence the rescue remedy.
Honestly, if people want a seaside vacation, why do they have to go to a political event? and if people want a riot, why do they have to leave their own neighborhoods? I think people are not thinking very clearly.
Especially lately, when I think of the increasingly scary tactics of police and military persons, worldwide, I think that people are not thinking very clearly. Yet who can think so clearly, when they are worried about the unsolvable problems of humanity even learning to treat itself with a little compassion, let alone not destroy the beautiful lands, the valleys the oceans and creatures who inhabit these hills and waves, to not mangle this beauty from its open breath into a strangled cry for help? It is hard to know how to solve this one obvious problem in all of its manifestations but I am pretty sure that:
a) a touristic consumerist approach to activism does not help.
b) a ludditian hurled brick which pauses the machinery does not help.
and c) an ignorance of the exact nature by which militaristic forces seek to subdue or repress any dissent that rises up in response to the gaping unsatiated maw of commerce which appears to grind every last animal and plant up into dust, does not help.
Frankly, I am somewhat stumped as to what will help, the last few protests that I went to in New York, turned so violent, that I had to wonder what good could come out of such experiences. I am not saying that something should not be done, but that maybe the vehicle of protest as spectacle should be more thoroughly examined.
It occurs to me that perhaps more daily, random and dispersed activities of protest, which cannot attract the attention of large groups of trained repressors, might be a more effective strategy than gathering in large crowds.
If what protestors really want is some kind of media coverage, in order to best reach " the masses" it might be better to create a constant flow of protest acts, a daily course of them, so that the media cannot downplay the experience of the other people in the area where the protestors are living. This kind of decentralized protest would be much more sustainable, as well as having the benefit of not having such a high price tag and petroleum use ecological price tag asssociated with it. I also feel that protest could very effectively involve taking the means of production into one's own hands again, as say Ghandi did, with the manufacture of cloth.
I would also like to briefly mention culture jamming. If this were taken up by a majority of activists, if alternate media were distributed inside of mainstream media, if messages were altered to reflect the truth, if people did not so revere the systems which they want to change, that they would simply see them as opportunities for their own messages, I think that we could create a more open environment for our alternate perspectives.
I think also, one very effective way to look at our current situation, all of us who are essentially poor, essentially asked to live in ways with which we do not agree, by a ruling class, is to see ourselves, worldwide, as occupied countries. I live in a country which is occupied by a foreign government, if you want to know my opinion.
The regime which runs my country, the United States, is incapable of understanding Walt Whitman's, Leaves of Grass, June Jordan's book of essays, On Call, Stephen Harrod Buehner's, The lost Language of Plants, or any other thought/feeling patterns that actually make sense to me. I look at these persons, who say that I am their citizen, and I see marauders, persons who were not only not elected, but who have changed a possibly workable system for elections into a complete travesty of such. These people will never be capable of representing me, and I can never expect them to. They do not understand the most basic of my concerns, and are thus incapable of representing me in the smallest way.
I live in an occupied country and I want my freedom. I want the freedom to for once not feel as though I am oppressing every creature on earth, just because I was born in the U.S. I want the freedom to honor the compassion that bursts from my enormous heart, I want to heal the wound of the land that I live on, I want to import nothing, and oppress no-one.
I want to never have to worry that there are animals being tortured for "the benefit of humanity" a mere 7 blocks from my house at the university, I want to stop having nightmares about refugees and immigrants being interred at sweatshops in New York City, in the land of opportunity where people came tired, poor, huddled, yearning to be free, wretched, homeless, and tempest tossed, only to experience the same kind of trouble again.
I mean the real question is or one is: do these protests actually help with those things? Have we figured out anything to actually help with the horrible ache in the soul that we have life, we have it we have breath and we feel sorrow at suffering and we know that it is happening and we want to alleviate it, and we are not sure how? Do these protests do anything for that ache in others? They do not quell my ache, not even a little. and I am not saying that to do nothing is a solution. It is complete bullshit, to do nothing, in the face of suffering.
I hope that I figure out some good things to do, with this, which is my own suffering about suffering.
I love you Libby Loft.
Please keep your wonderful beautiful head, whole.
Lily
I'm interested in learning more about these 'Black Blocs'. I'll do some searching and get back to you on it.
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