Fuck martyrdom
by Vk
[edited a little]
Well sorry but i’d have a letter with a few angry things to say in reply to all this too but now i’m gonna be in Melb on Tuesday hopefully i can talk with people. But don’t expect me to be at the rally out front.
Firstly i do agree with some of the sentiment of the open letter. The last paragraph in particular. Arrestees should get in touch. There’s not many times when you’re faced with the full shit of the system when there will be so many people willing to support you. The most important thing in all this is that the arrestees get off. That is what the campaign should be aimed at. Even before i became particularly tied up in all of this i had serious concerns from the statements that have been released that this was the case.
What has really got me pissed about all this is the talk around whether people are running a political case or not. I will make certain decisions when i know more about my case and if anyone tells me i’m not being ‘political’ i will verbally rip their heads off. Additionally in the assumption that by only following what y’all have decided are people being ‘political’ it has pretty much shown that the agenda for this campaign is set.
I don’t blame people for that. The Solidarity Network got it’s shit together very quickly in a difficult situation. That was important. But unfortunately there seems now to be a fairly unchangeable vanguardist tendency that is getting some (fairly inconsequential) media and as a result media statements are being thrown out like they’re going out of fashion.
If people have decided that the political agenda of fighting further police repression is more important than the solidarity side then y’all should change name. I obviously agree fighting police repression is important but that isn’t the same as solidarity with the arrestees, especially if you’re forcing people to distance themselves because they aren’t taking on a particular version of being ‘political’. Again i know that people have done a lot of solid support stuff for arrestees, but unfortunately for many of us that has to be separate from the politics.
It’s very early for many of us - we’ve got months of this to go. And on that point it is shoddy to try to make people decide how they’re going to run their cases before we’ve even received a brief of evidence. Once that happens i will suppport all arrestees who choose to be as pragmatic as possible in getting off. And i will strongly defend that as a political choice with anyone who chooses to take it up with me.
This is where i’ll add that i’m not new to being arrested or having an early morning knock on the door from the cops. In a similar situation previously i took the lawyers advice over the solidarity campaign’s and i was bloody grateful for it. In our lives we constantly navigate a line between wanting to be outside the system and being forced back in. This is a really odd time to ask the arrestee’s to choose absolutely to not compromise ourselves. Please give me a recent example of a public political campaign getting someone (a protester especially) off.
And here’s my harshest point. Even if i could i would not be involved in the political campaign as it stands. The politics being articulated are shit. Civil liberties and right to protest. Who for? And why are we pleading that we are legitimate? Who wants that? I don’t want to be legitimate within this system. Why don’t you just get Thomas Kenneally to say that protest is the birthright of Australians as he did out the front of my previous court case. Too bad for all of us born outside Australia then.
This liberal democracy line is bullshit. There’s an opportunity here to run a campaign that doesn’t back down on the politics, but it seems like too many people are watering it down (or maybe they are just liberals at heart) just to get a media bite. I’d put more trust in a lawyer that takes on my case being helpful than i ever would in the media being useful to us.
Running a campaign with politics that aren’t watered down would mean it has to be separate from direct solidarity stuff with the arrestees but as i’ve already said that isn’t necessarily a problem as long as no-one tries to talk on behalf of us. It’s not like the current campaign is being run with a heap of input from the arrested. If it became possible arrestees could decide for themselves if they wanted to be involved in the political side of things without fearing that what’s at stake is losing the suppport of the solidarity network. But at the moment i’m not able to be involved, and i imagine many others don’t feel in the headspace to really take that on. Fuck martyrdom and fuck Che.
I feel that I am always one step behind the politics of everything - but I just wanted to say that I fully support the arguments made,… and that my eyes started to water at the sheer anger so rightfully vented. All my love.
Comment by Dumpstered Twin — March 19, 2007 @ 4:44 am
Howdy all and Vk in particular,
I started to write a response to some stuff a few days ago but that has all been overtaken by events, so I’ll just move on… And I always wonder where exactly on the page I should post this, but I hope the administrator will know best…
Getting in touch was really the main focus of my post. Its precisely because I don’t think it is a great thing that any kind of political line is being solidified without input from those arrested that I wrote the letter. The problem is we’re struggling to decide anything in the absence of info about what is happening. I figured if i put something out there that was a little provocative I might get a response…. sorry for any upset to those already suffering, but I am glad that we’re talking about it. Will work on my people skills, i promise.
I know that sometimes lawyers can be right, sometimes wrong. I don’t trust the fuckers, but if others do, that is fine, and I certainly believe in making use of them at times like this. The problem is exactly with information flow - lots of people are unsure what’s happening, what lawyers are saying, what you guys are saying, thinking, feeling and so then it becomes very difficult to know what we should be doing in support.
I’m not trying to push a particular version of being political to the exclusion of all others. Of course I have my particular political opinion, and am putting forward an argument about what I think should happen with the very little information I have about what is going on. My point is precisely that I want to have these arguments, discussions etc not in the abstract entirely, which is how I feel its happening. And again - I’m not expecting anyone to martyr themselves, bloody hell.
I too am concerned about lots of the media and statements coming out from all over the place about civil liberties and the right to protest. And I’m sure that the media work done by some in StopG20 at the very beginning (the condemnatory nonsense) is a big part of the reason that some are reluctant to trust those who were in the Stop G20 campaign.
But I suppose I think its still worth debating - is there a way that we can defend ourselves against further police repression, in a way that is more interesting that the civil liberties line, as part of the defence campaign? You seem to think that they have to be seperate - I’m not sure, and I need to talk about it, argue about it more with people to try to clarify what I think. I think that it is obvious that the law is not our friend. From this it seems to follow that the best thing politically is to get people out of its clutches in the quickest and most painful way possible. Maybe it then follows that we do whatever the lawyers tell us cos they know the system best. But just an example - I was talking to someone about the media stuff being run by the lawyers before being put out - obviously we need to be careful about not putting anything about individuals that could go to the case, but I s’pose that after what some people had told me about some lawyers’ input, I felt they were making political judgements that were more overarching and beyond the legal case and were about reinforcing the liberal line that was being run in defence from the word go. And I think reinforcing that can’t possibly be good for those at the sharp end - and of course I also just disagree with it fundamentally. And I think I would like to be able to challenge the preserve of expertise of lawyers, cos my experience doing student rights work is that once you’ve been working the system for people for so long (with the best intentions of course) you start to tell yourself that you know best and disempower those who you are supposed to be acting for. Its why I got out of it - was scared of turning into a lawyer….
And I stand by what I said about internal repression - I am genuinely concerned that some out there may be feeling totally isolated, and that they may believe some of the nonsense thrown by both the media and other ‘good’ protestors, that they did something wrong. By nature I find it difficult to keep my opinions to myself - I don’t want people to think that they did anything wrong! How that is to play out legally, I don’t know. It would be good to hear the opinions of those who have been through the legal stuff before more recently - my experience was quiet a few years ago and the crew I was with were all being represented by the one team: so it was much easier to move as one beast than it is with this campaign, where many of us have never worked together before and don’t know who we should trust and how reliable we all are under pressure. I feel like I’ve been around a bit, yet I’m unsure as to how to move forward, and am really really unused to doing this stuff without much input from those at the sharp end - even with detention stuff it seemed easier to have direct, unmediated communication….
Okay - so if people’s political priority is to get off in whatever way possible, I don’t see that as problematic, as long as it doesn’t involve fucking over anyone in the process - as I think I said in my last post, I don’t really think anyone is going to put anyone else in it. But let’s have that discussion then - what can we do to get people off? If everyone’s strategy is to wait for the brief of evidence, that’s fine. That was put across to me the other day by someone at a meeting. Then I have a clue about what’s going on, and can see the point of your argument about why you’re waiting for the evidence brief. I’m still not sure if I agree with it, but if that’s what everyone thinks is the way to go - cool. But again - I know what a small group of people think (who I happen to know personally). I am not sure what other arrestees want to do - so keep the smackdowns coming people. As Chief Wiggam once said “its the only way I’ll learn”
Liz “smug till I get my front door kicked in I suppose [you’ll have to follow thw whole thread to get that one]” Thompson
Comment by Liz Thompson — March 19, 2007 @ 9:33 am
Is the bigest issue with the police and lawyers contrition - that you must show remorse - and that any campaign will damages this?
If so is their any reason why people facing charges can’t say they are sorry to the judge…even if a campaign was going on, not speaking on behalf of the defenents, that asserted that the action of the arrestees was justified (on their own terms not a twisted liberal basis?
Comment by kernal.corn — March 19, 2007 @ 11:06 am