Breaking the law with a commitment to getting away with it: after the G20
taken from http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/02/140171_comment.php#140202
Reflections on anti-G20 actions and their aftermath by someone who maybe threw a rubbish bin and possibly shoved a cop or two, and who wishes to remain anonymous for reasons I hope are obvious
Ever since a bunch of us threw some things, plastic rubbish bins mainly, and broke the window of a police van, and had a bit of push’n’shove with the cops, everyone has gone crazyworld. All of these respectable anti-globalisation people said we were bad, as did a few socialist groups and of course the police and politicians. The media have printed images of us to help the cops track us down, police have raided our homes and seized our property and charged us with riot and affray and such, people have even spent time in remand with sometimes substantial delays in getting bail. We have been marginalised by most and condemned by many, even by Community Legal Service lawyers and others who presume to adjudicate the legitimacy of our actions.
I hadn’t really paid that much attention since the actual events – I was sick for a few weeks afterward – and now it is like I’ve woken up and the world has gone nuts. I read the Arterial Bloc statement before I turned up at the G20 thing. Those Arterial Bloc people were talking pretty radical before the G20 and during, and now people are being hunted down all the ‘defence’ stuff seems like people are terrified and yapping apologetic nonsense. Because people are mad at them. For throwing a bin!
Where is your sense of proportion? The G20 are mass murderers, and now we’re being hunted down. Hunted down! For throwing a bin!
I know Arterial Bloc doesn’t equal those who took action or those charged. And I wasn’t in Arterial Bloc and I haven’t been arrested and my photo is not on display on wanted posters decorating newspapers and media websites, so I guess so far I’ve got away with it. Unlike the thirty odd people charged by now, I suppose. This could change, but so far I’ve avoided their attentions. I don’t speak for anyone except myself, of course.
But really, people charged now have lawyers who seem to have already said all over the place that they condemn everything that Arterial Bloc types and other radicals said they were about. Lawyers who made these statements not just as general principles but specifically in relation to the anti-G20 events.
And if I get arrested, I really think the odds of doing time are pretty small, even if I did throw a bin.
The hysteria of our critics all over the spectrum was revolting but not all that surprising – but I guess it provided the soundtrack for the police taking repression a bit further than had previously been experienced by some of the kind of people at the protests. Some of whom were, not to put too fine a point on it, white and middle class and not notable amongst the participants at Palm Island or Redfern. (All but the ‘middle class’ bit is true of me too, of course.)
We – whoever ‘we’ is - need to resist this repression for so many reasons. So we can do similar things in the future being one. So it is accepted that antagonistic people acting together can have the social weight to prevent some exacting enforcement of law. Because we should be able to attack the G20, and what the hell the police too.
Because the G20 is a club of governments who are mass murderers many times over. Because these governments and the capitalist system they further are one face of the status quo, and the status quo, the state of affairs that is this world, doesn’t require some extra reason to justify disobedience, some new ‘crime’ to make legitimate an active contempt, a destructive criticism.
Because in the world these people defend and recreate all the time, every day has its holocaust. Because they seek to control us and when people don’t want to be controlled by them this is fine, to be encouraged. Because their efforts to control us should inspire our hatred.
If you want reasons why not: Because Australia has been at the cutting edge of creating new types of concentration camp. Because Australia helped to enforce the ‘sanctions’ on Iraq in the nineties which killed over a million people and now pretends the hatred of Iraqis for the military might of their saviours is shocking. Because Australia keeps throwing its weight around ‘the region’, Because ‘our rights at work’ are not something I want to be told is ‘worth voting for’.
Because everyday life in Australia for people who aren’t rich is getting worse not better and I expect this trend to continue. Because the police are the violent defenders of the local version of our collective global hell, the army policing our lives as occupied territory.
For all these reasons and many more, I reserve the right to not be polite, to not obey, to use what is but a tiny fragment of the force and violence used by those within the G20 every day.
And really, compared to the more powerful psychopaths condemning our barbarity, what have we done? I threw a rubbish bin, maybe. I shoved a cop, possibly. Someone damaged a police car, it seems. In most countries this would rightly be regarded as trivial. In any rational society it might be seen in its actual context: the never-ending horror show that is our world.
I’m not sure what is the appropriate response to this horror show, but it sure isn’t giving money to Make Poverty History, voting for the ALP or Greens, beaming positive energy into the G20, praying to the sky god, trying to ‘get our message across’ over the corporate media through ‘non-violent protest’, signing a petition or sending an angry e-mail to my local member. And more to the point, if anyone doesn’t want to or can’t obey anymore the horrible rules that are supposed to make up our lives, and make up the limits of what we do, and what the hell throws a rubbish bin or two, damages some cop property, damages some cop whose very existence is a provocation, I for one am not going to spend my time tut-tutting their naughtiness.
They are mass murderers, they maintain their positions with exploitation and oppression. We threw bins at their violent stooges.
Though in some ways I don’t find the intent of this text particularly clear, I would suggest that the organising idea appears to be contained in the phrase “sense of proportion”. Having a sense of proportion about the nature of capitalism or ‘the world’ i.e. as an oppressive nightmare with the rules of which no-one should be obligated or expected to conform. About the events at the G20 as actually very minor violations of these rules. About those who condemned the anti-G20 actions as precisely lacking a sense of proportion. About the ensuing repression as a step up in some disturbing ways and something to be vigorously opposed, but not something which is likely to land the ‘activists’ with prison terms.
And about the backing away from an actual defence of these actions as failing to reflect the actual stakes involved, and as accepting in broad terms a worldview that makes it hard to say what the writer says: of course it is legitimate to refuse to play nice, and not only when immediately attacked or ‘provoked’ by the forces of the state - the attack and provocation happens at every moment, every day.
The writer doesn’t really engage with the arguments of those who would presumably accept much of the above, at least in theory, but who nonetheless criticise the actions undertaken as counterproductive to ‘the movement’ or to ‘activists’. But in a way that only becomes relevant if there is an underlying acknowledgement - the absent acknowledgement that the negative reactions of the ‘activists’ and/or of those speaking for the supposed ‘community’, reactions to such refusals to play nice, the public condemnations that echoed or preempted the condemnations by the more mainstream establishment forces…these negative reactions reflect no sense of proportion about what has been done. These negative reactions place no value on saying, against this mainstream, that there is something, everything valid in needs and desires to move beyond the terrain of what the writer calls being ‘polite’, the terrain of the codes and practices of liberal-democratic participation by good citizens pursuing good works (not foreigners, outside agitators, criminals…)
Relative to the behaviour of those ‘radicals’ who felt that whatever they believed was ‘counterproductive’ in anti-G20 actions justified reinforcing the disproportions to which the writer refers, I find something reasonable in the comments made. And in what I take as a sense of bewilderment at the homogeneity and defensive liberalism of those who were presumably thinking in slightly different terms on the day.
Comment by benjamin rosenzweig — February 19, 2007 @ 3:09 am
This post (the one to Indymedia) is probably the most interesting thing I’ve read yet on the defence campaign. I’m really astounded about the extent of the moral and political outrage being expressed by the so-called left about “violence”. Both “our” lawyers - the fucking scumbag from the Federation of Community Legal Centres - and even people in the defence campaign seem to struggle with the idea of defending and rejoicing in what we did. The charges and damage done are reminiscent of many campus occupations. We always managed to run the old media line about the damage we did being nothing compared to the damage that the feds and the admin were inflicting on [insert name of precious institution or principle here].
And then the discussion about broken doors would go away, cos it really isn’t very interesting. As a media line it got tired, but its a shit load better politically than the apparent reluctance of many to articulate a defence of $1000 damage to a cop van, and with the added bonus of being true - the damage we did is not on any comparable scale, unfortunately, to the damage inflicted on us by them… us being the world, the “mums and dads” the “ordinary community members” who are apparently outraged at what we did according to some in Stop G20…
As for legal strategy - my legal strategy is to not trust lawyers. If we don’t make an argument to people about not relying on a purely legal strategy (which is generally ensuring people don’t talk to anyone else in the campaign, and certainly don’t articulate a political defence of their actions) they may get convictions. This would be bad for all of us on the side of good, worse in paticular for the incarcerated…. not that I actually think that this will end in incarceration for anyone….
I think its important for people to talk about instances of being royally fucked by a legal strategy devoid of a political defence - like the brilliant move of Rob Stary’s that resulted in an apology letter being published in the Monash student paper from students up on a whole bunch of criminal damage and trespass charges from the 2004 occupations. There are others who contribute to this blog who can speak more directly about that and should. It was mad and bad and I think he’ll do it again…
Those running the argument that we should be ‘defending the right to protest’ in some broad liberal sense need to understand that that is not the reality of what happened. What occurred on that day was outside the “acceptable” bounds of ritualised protest. That’s what was exciting - that people didn’t stand around waiting to be victimised by police violence. So any defence of the actions that took place, to be coherent, to be believable, to have any point, needs to articulate more than a defence of walking down the street behind marshalls, and appealing to the rule of law in a democratic society, and other forms of nonsense that we don’t actually believe.
By the way - did people know that our “comrades” Slater and Gordon, have signed on to be the Police Association’s legal team? That’s $14 mill worth of Police Association money that comrades Adam Bandt and Marcus Clayton, both partners, both in the industrial area, can use to buy themselves another house. People like that should be punched in the head.
Comment by liz t — February 22, 2007 @ 2:20 am
Given the $14 mill worth of business up for grabs from the Police Association, why should Ambulance Chaser and Gordon give a shit about the G20 arestees?. They are (rightfully) going with the winning team. 14mill will buy plenty of Portsea real estate, Porshe’s and Dom Perignon. Anyway, any of the arestees convicted (other than the mad Turk) will probably only cop fines, so who cares?
Comment by Amulance Chaser and Gordon — February 22, 2007 @ 9:05 am