Are you thinking of going to the G8 in Scotland? WHAT FOR?

international | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis Wednesday February 09, 2005 16:51 by Atlantix

All aboard the "travelling anarchist circus" ??

Hoping to start some sort of heated but rational debate about the worthiness of summit protests.

The G8 summit is taking place in Gleneagles in Scotland in July of this year, more than six months away. Already there are cracklings of noise on bulletin boards, email lists and Indymedia about people from Ireland making the trip over there. Next week sees the first of what will probably be many benefit nights in the run up to the summit, being put on by the "Anti-G8 collective".

Inevitably there will be a re-run of every summit protest you've seen and heard about over the last five years. Seattle, Prague, Quebec, Melbourne, Genoa, Miami, and to a lesser extent Davos, Brussels, Cancun, Washington DC, New York, and even Dublin. The model of the protests has not deviated much from its inception - blockades, marches, lockdowns, property damage; then met with varying levels of police violence. Although the strength and depth of the "turtles and teamsters" alliance (between anti-capitalists and traditional union workers) in Seattle has passed into psuedo exalted mythology at this stage, it did exist. This was perhaps what made it such a refreshing change. Now the state knows how to play the game, it is easy to cause divisions between the protesters themselves because of tiny narcissistic political differences; the unions are long gone; and it is simple for the state to set up a media image that the protesters play into, which distances them from ordinary communities, especially near and around where the summit takes place.

So, what is the point of summit protests any more? What do they achieve? Are they a waste of time or are they a stepping stone to "the revolution" (tm) ??

On the positive side, they act as a magnet for people to come together and make their resistance to capitalist leaders very physically visible. Putting your body on the street with thousands of others is in itself a powerful message. They act as a unifying gathering for disparate individuals scattered in different countries, so they can share ideas and thoughts, and stand side by side against the police. People can educate themselves by talking to people of different traditions, and consolidate relationships often forged solely by email and bulletin boards.

As a media spectacle, they are also beneficial, because they send out images of the demonstrations across the global corporate media, which get picked up by local syndicates. This channel reaches an infinitely larger amount of people than alternative media ever could. The demonstrations are seen by people in the global South, whose struggle is far more important and genuine than those in the richer North (be honest!), and it gives them hope and solidarity that people in better economic conditions are fighting for the same things that they are. Generally speaking, the more violent the protest, the better media coverage it will get.

On the negative side, they are fast becoming a cliché, inevitably ending up in massive amounts of police oppression, with beatings and jailings, which the state pre-justifies with the media hype beforehand. Anyone who monitored the build-up to Mayday 2004 in Dublin will be familiar with this. This is already happening in Scotland, with the usual talk in local Perth papers of violent anarchists, rubber bullets, etc. When these predictions are realised, it only plays into the hands of the stereotype, the "violent anarchist thug", and means that all people associate with resistance to capitalism is anti-police violence. Unfortunately this was one of the outcomes of Mayday 2004, where representatives from the Dublin Grassroots Network (DGN) had gone on the national media repeatedly assuring there would be no violence or rioting. Another negative effect from the "Ruck at the Truck" was that the black-and-white, cut-and-dried cases from RTS 2002 of police violence could now be seen in a different light. Perhaps this is why the State chose to repeatedly postpone the cases, until the Garda media image had been repaired - or demonstrators portrayed in a bad way.

Summit protests act as a magnet for multinational demonstrators to gravitate towards, however a net effect of this is the vacuum it leaves behind. There is an old Irish saying that "All politics is local". By putting effort and energy into organising travel to a distant place, other campaigns - that are often directly related to the issues thrown up by the G8 - are ignored. It means that local communities are ignored in favour of already-familiar or popular anti-globalisation cause célebres. In practise this means that people will travel to Scotland to stand in solidarity with Mexican or Brazilian farmers; but dont act when Greencore shuts down a sugar plant for naked profiteering. It means that people will protest for better textile worker conditions in the far east, but when Fruit Of The Loom shut down in Donegal, there were no benefit gigs or bus trips. Work is due to begin on the expansion of the M50 in the summer, why not an anti-road campaign similar to the No M11 campaign in the UK in the 1990's? Where has the resistance to US troops in Shannon gone? Why not an orchestrated smashing of Adshel bus shelters, an outlet of Clear Channel? Why not an occupation of Greencore?

With the last five years in mind, people need to question whether it is worth the resources required. Will travelling to Scotland for a summit protest really bring our society closer to "the revolution"? Around 200 Irish people travelled to Genoa. DGN will probably mobilise people to go there, and even Globalise Resistance will probably revive itself from the dead to bring people over. If we take it that 300 people travel this time, because it is closer than Genoa or Evian, and each of them spends an average of 100 euros getting there (bearing in mind bus trip costs, food & drink, crap sterling exchange rate, and some people will fly there & stay in hotels or B&Bs), then that is a total of 30,000 euros. People do not seem to realise this. What could 30,000 euros buy at home? Numerous sound systems, rent on a huge social centre for a year, steel doors & CCTV setup for a squat, a bus, printing of a million leaflets, a high powered radio transmitter, printing of a book, food and drink for a weeks occupation, huge amounts of equipment, legal defence for a serious direct action, whatever. Use your imagination.

The debate around the value of summit protests is only beginning. In the run-up to the RNC protests in New York, many anarchists did not get involved. They felt that people were only interested in the excitement of running around, instead of building long-term community links and working on positive projects or actions. Will the G8 summit in Scotland be any different? Are people travelling having questioned the necessity and benefits, or are they just going for an adrenaline-rush tear gas holiday? Will a journey to a summit blockade raise people's awareness here of alternatives to capitalism, or will it re-inforce the media image in the mind of the public? Will the arrests, beatings, violence, tension, repression, confusion & division between groups contribute in any way to empowering and educating communities?

(You may already know how I feel about this from reading this article, but I'm open to people's ideas and arguments. I hope that a debate happens on the worth of people going, rather than a blind acceptance or a given that a large amount of people are travelling to Scotland.)