2009-04-07
Alex Foti
dear girls and guys,
i don’t know how to put it adequately, but i was witness in London vs the G20 and in Strasbourg vs NATO of momentous developments in european radicalism which cannot but be called historical. In London we fought the inequality and immorality of financial capitalism that started the crisis (as the economist titles: “get the rich!” is a slogan gaining momentum all over europe), and in Strasbourg we went to urban war against the securitization of internal politics and the militarization of external politics.
In terms of my soon-to-be-published chromatological baedeker to european activist politics, Anarchy in the EU (Agenzia X), the London rebellion was mostly pink and green, with brushstrokes of black, while the Strasbourg insurgence was pitch black, with splashes of red and pink. After the suspension of habeas corpus at the climate camp in kingsnorth last summer (people were stripsearched in a detention center, while manacled arrested activists were placed standing at the entrance) i had vowed to not return to england for a long while. British-style schizopolicing (i chat with you amiably, while my colleague files and beats you next) i can’t stand. It’s psychologically vicious and it can turn violently nasty for relatively minor infractions, as the murder of the newspaper seller by riot cop charges around threadneedle sadly proves. In Italy and France you know who you are against and lines are drawn in the sand. If you get caught, beatings are normal, but the crowd of the demo will defend its members as one. It’s not as easy to get arrested. It’s two sides clashing, and no snatch squads can usually penetrate demos. German policing is instead a combination of the two: psychological aggression supplemented by invariably muscular policing.
Anyway, Financial Fools Day (mixing climate and bank protests) was a stronger draw than my lingering fear of the filth. I made it to London with belgian co-conspirators of radical europe, euromayday, and rhythms of resistance. They stayed at ramparts, but luckily went back to the continent before the raid thru the roof made by special forces armed with taser guns on April 2. Others were not so luckily. Although Rampart was behind the black horse of the apocalypse, which had a great spokeswoman in Marina Pepper, its approach was ‘fluffy’ rather than ‘spiky’, pink rather than black; activists were in fact sporting pillows on which they had written slogans and demands on housing and social spaces. It was the silver horse which exhibited a black practice. The red horse (vs war) was hegemonized by trotskysts and commies of all stripes, some frankly embarrassing (pro-putin signs??), while the green horse attracted anarchogreens and eccentrics of all sorts. From the start, they tried to ‘kettle’ us, an english expression for the illiberal tactics of cordoning the protesting crowd to sharply divide it from the rest of the multitude. So either you stayed out of the kettle and lost your friend and loved one or had to get in and have your freedom of mobility sequesterd by the cordon of bobbies surrounding you at every step. But the people were so many, that in fact it was the rest of protesters surrounding the cops, as it became evident when we turned the street and got at the heart of the City, the Bank of England. The incredible spectacle of 10,000 activists filling the square and surrounding the institution that has bailed out chronic swindlers like rbs and northern rock left soon room to anger at the fact that we were completely surrounded by thousands of cops: we could not leave the square. Drinking and peeing soon became very problematic. The four rivers of activists had converged on the heart of financial capitalism, but Gordon Brown’s government had put dams all around. After hours like that, patience grew thin and the carnival mood turned sour. We pushed back the riot cops all the way down threadneedle. RBS had sailed its flag high on its main building on the other side of the square, and the haughtiness of its gloden-parachuted management made it a target for all the rage against banks that is spreading across the UK, in the middle as well as the working classes (viz. the occupation of ford-related plants by fired workers). An rbs branch was left exposed and activists broke 2 (two!) window glasses, sneaked in a tent, wrote S-C-U-M in reverse for the bankers to read the next day. The 1000-strong block behind them cheered. There was the first heavy charge. Then things quieted down for a while.
Around 3:30 we finally found a way outside the square and made it to the Climate Camp, which had squatted the 200-meter stretch of asphalt in front of the Carbon Trading Exchange and covered it with hundreds of tents, food stalls, renewable-energy power systems, etc. Beyond the banner “Nature doesn’t to bailouts” a world of joyous solidarity and pragmatic ecoactivism awaited. If the atmosphere in the City was decidedly anticapitalist, here it was markedly postcapitalist, to use the word that John Jordan employs to describe the second wave of the movement that has taken off in late 00s and is apparent for all to see in the last few days. Same-name green, black, pink-dotted pins were distributed around, the sun was shining and there was a festival mood. It was great! But as darkness fell (and I went to UEL for the conference of the left vs G20; the university, frightened, had shut down the whole complex to students for three days; half-a-kilometer fron the ExCel center were the summit was held, for three days) things turned ugly in the City: charges got very violent, and several banks were smashed in response. It is then when Ian Tomlinson was killed. Another victim of the european police state and its draconian securitization of public politics, after Carlo, Rachel, Alexis, and many others. Around the ame time, cops started to kettle the camp. The voice had spread that an ecohacktive party was taking place at Bishopsgate and hundreds of youngsters were coming with beers in their hands from liverpool street. They found they couldn’t get in and got pissed. So legions of riot cops, some mounting horses, starting kettling protesters, layer after layer, in a police tactics my belgian buddy calls “pasticcio” (like pasta in the oven: a layer of activists, a layer of cops, a layer of journalists, and so on).
In comparison to what happened in Strasbourg on April 2, 3, 4, London’s protesters were incredibly good-natured. In the city on the Rhine associated in the public mind with the European Parliament (altho now most of its works take place in Brussels) and Franco-German postwar entente, a soldily binational contingent of thousands antifas, anarchists, autonomists, and radicals of other allegiances (including clown army, die linke, revolutionary socialists, kurdish revolutionaries etc) set up camp at the no nato village near the proletarian neighborhood of neuhof, determined to raise hell for the summit marking the 60th anniversary of atlantic militarism and the return of once-gaullist france in the american fold. After the news that the yet-to-be-identified corpse of the protester (the muzzling of the uk media on that event has been as unprecedented as disconcerting) had been found near the bank of england reached the camp, at least two thousands people started rioting in ganzau. They were joined by arab kids living in the hood’s projects. The police was overwhelmed. Rioters also attacked the police barracks (left unattended) and managed to seize back many scooters that had been earlier sequestered by cops. In the next days the roar of those scooters could always be heard. On the 3rd, barricades were erected (and the first set ablaze) while a rain of projectiles fell on the police who had brutally charged a peaceful contingent of clowns trying to reach the city center. The blacks were determined to exact vengeance for the aggression suffered by the pinks. The police had to back off from the camp. It is then that i arrived at the camp organized by dissent.fr, the libertarian network which came into being at Gleaneagles in 2005. It was great. Altho more chaotic than Rostock, it was more beautiful. It was set in a very large area and was supplemented by a smaller are filled with stands, bars, concerts, djs one kilometer down the road. Getting there thru the night was beautiful and magic. The place was part rave part country fair and had the wildly free effervescence that all events organized by free4all usually have. Congratulations! I stood there rummaging thru antinazi tshirts waiting for Paolo to arrive from London, where just the day before had been manhandled by special forces at rampart. Around midnight we can hug again after we last saw each other at threadneedle two days before. It’s great to be free together again! I have two bottles of meteor beer and enough to smoke ourselves silly into sleep.
The next day i have breakfast with Markus of euromayday helsinki. The black bloc starts to move out of the camp. We follow it. About 2000 people, circa half of the camp. It’s opened by the french who have a great banner that says: “Pas de guerre entre les peuples, pas de paix entre les classes”. CNT flags abound. A slightly larger german block follows, which has many bilingual banners. Then it’s sympathetic creative activists. A block of red flags follows. We take a turn on a boulevard. Karcher barrier-trucks are in store for us on the left. On the right, the Pont de l’Europe to Germany. In between, loads of trucks packed with CRS in riot gear. The crowd grows and grows. We gotta pass that bridge. The black head of the demo tries to smash thru. It wavers back and forth. Injured protesters are ferried in the back lines. A deluge of tear gases and stunt grenades are thrown. Protesters respond with flings and stones. A pyre is set alight. We hear the subbass echo of a series of fireworks bombs: boom, boom, boom. The police line opens retreats behind a gated field on the side of the bridge. We conquered the bridge! The black bloc could surround the cops and beat’em up, if it wanted to, but it doesn’t, because its job is to smash and burn things, not hurt and humiliated people. They say we’re hooligans, if not terrorists, but we have never killed anyone, unlike the police that faces us down. A graffiti went as far as to say something like “we’ve got more in common with you cops than with the élites you protect”. Walking across the liberated bridge makes us giddy with euphoria (or europhoria). We get to the island that separates Strasbourg from Kehl. We want to make it either to the other side of the Rhine or into the city center. They won’t let us. And the more they try to wall us in the rowdier the riot becomes. The first thing we see is the franco-german customs post. It’s soon spraypanted “no border, no nation”. Then its glasses are broken. Soon a fire engulfs it. It’s visible from the other bridge where berlusconi is taking a phone call. Then we pass a vast expanse with a stage. The trotskyites try to detour the whole demo in their chicken pen, but anybody under30 refuses to do so and keep going forward. Problem is there’s a huge block of german riot cops blocking access to the other side, with armored vehicles and wotnot. What do we do now? For a while we hang out in the island in a surreal mood. CCTV cameras as smashed by activists. The ibis hotel gets smashed by local kids. Accor has a history of exploitation of poor immigrants, would tells us later that night a local who gave us a ride back to the camp.
They also set a barricade on fire too close to the hotel. Some german black blocs would like to set off the fire with extinguishers, problem is a teenager has just thrown another extinguisher in the fire, and it might explode at any time, so nobody can get too close. A pharmacy also gets smashed, and later burned. But the two churches in the vicinity are completely spared. Somebody chalks an anarchist heart followed by the slogan “2000 years of lies” on its gates, but that’s about it. Then the official demo start. The french keufs have fucked it up. They block the road with 12 vans, but the demo (around 20,000 people) has to go past them, and fire trucks are trying to get thru in the opposite direction. We follow the developments from the first of two railroad bridges. Markus predict that the cops will be surrounded by the black blocsters who are now the tail of the demo, since we have switched direction and are going back to strasbourg. The peace vans and all the demonstrators squeeze on the rightside of the street to let les pompiers thru. After this, the vans full of cops find themselves surrounded by a stream of black hoods. Nothing really happens. A few windows get smashed. But that’s it. We move on. The black block has a sense of honor. Only in battle, fighting is commendable. We walk for a short while but then we find an impassable wall of karcher trucks that target my group with shock grenades (two of my friends get minor bleeds; one uses his sense of hearing from his left ear for a while). It is then that it starts to get really ugly. Pursued by the wall of police caterpillars, we managed to get two feedstock train wagons in their way (pretty incredible feat; we’re in an industrial zone and train tracks crisscross streets). The bastards lob tear gas grenades like crazy past them. They sting a lot more than before. Then a scene that seems taken from Grapes of Wrath or Roma città aperta occurs before our eyes. A beautiful dark-haired woman with a toddler in one arm, hands out hundreds refilled bottles of water to the street rebels. I’ll never forget that poignant image. French cops start closing in from the opposite side. The last battle is on the second railway bridge, with antifas defending it as non-violent protesters try to find refuge in the industrial port. Rioters get on it and pelt the CRS with stones taken from the tracks. If they take that bridge it’s over for us. For half an hour the battle rages. But we’re tired. A small contingent of cops manages to climb the bridge. They are caught in the crossfire of raining stones. But altho scared they resist and finally manage to get at the top. The french anarchist soundtruck puts himself sideways to protect protesters who now put their hands in the air to signal their will for a ceasefire. The bastards make us choke with gas in response. I make my way into an expanse where tv crews are assembled and a turkish bar is incredibly open. We eat, drink beer, and watch euronews. An amused black-clad old lady claps when completely unwillingly i drop a can of beer that sprays the face of a cop sitting in a riot van with his window open. Everybody laughs so hard and vans behind him are honking that he has to move and can’t do shit about it. The day of the largest urban rebellion in recent european history comes is unwinding. Before the sun goes down we walk past the burned skeletal remains of douane and ibis back to the camp. The day after we will be searched on the way out by taunting cops, one of whom wears a peace flag as mantle (“do you thing it fits me?” he asks, “no”, i reply). These are some of the slogans that struck me in strasbourg: “smash nato” (color graffiti, with the social center symbol with feminist crossed circle), “monde de peur, monde qui meurt”, “Legal, Illegal, Scheisslegal”, “contre le kapital, intifada mondiale” (k in the original).
To close this long chronicle, I’d like to point out that the franco-german sink nato network managed to build cohesion and efficacy and must be defended from criminalization by all leftists in europe. The London repression is directly linked to the Strasbourg insurgence, which makes the days between april 1 and april 4 probably the first paneuropean social rebellion. If protesters had been allowed to reach the two city centers without being oppressed by tens of thousands of cops, the rioting would have been very limited. Like in Genoa, maximum police security leads to total insecurity, both for the city and the demonstrators. London-Strasbourg was a protest full of rage against the two decades of neoliberal lies and monetarist arrogance that have caused inequality and depression, disjointing society and broinging immense social suffering. Especially strasbourg has seen arab kids (also headscarved young girls could be seen at the demo) joining forces with anarchoautonomists, as we have first seen in malmoe last fall. An insurgent, precarious/immigrant youth is emerging as the european revolutionary subject, while the black bloc could (ok, this is an enormous stretch, but i surmise it as tendential hyphothesis) potentially emerge as a european liberation army of sorts, the shock forces we need to dislodge, if not completely overthrow, the current élites in Strasbourg, Brussels, Frankfurt, Paris, Berlin, Rome that are responsible for the crisis. The Great Rebellion vs the Great Recession. This is wot we must accomplish in europe. The process has been ignited.