beyondclicktivism

By Tim Hardy

Everybody who took part in the demonstrations on 26 March in person or at home through virtual protest should be proud.

As exhaustion kicks in and the adrenaline levels subside, doubts arise. As politicians and their pets in the media unite in blanket condemnation, it’s easy to entertain thoughts of despair.

But the outrage and propaganda from sections of the press and the House of Commons benches says it all. Don’t listen to their words – ask yourself why they are saying them.

We are winning the argument and they’re absolutely terrified.

This government is fatally weak and is now falling back on the age-old tactic of divide and conquer.

I believe in the power of the unions and I also believe in the effectiveness of direct action. It saddens me to see anti-cuts groups fall for this and attack each other.

Changes are already underway as a result of UK Uncut’s actions. It is misguided for those following the TUC flag to condemn UK Uncut and bad manners to believe that they can dictate when and where UK Uncut may act.

But it is also deeply misguided for people engaged in direct action to condemn the unions who made mistakes but still managed to bring hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of London through grass-roots organising and communication.

There is a grave danger for those who organise and discuss mostly online to believe that our little social media bubble represents the whole of the UK. We might sniff that the March for the Alternative site managed to gain only 8317 online pledges to march – yet they mobilised half a million on the streets. This is the polar opposite of clicktivism.

Protest has to be effective otherwise it becomes entertainment, a hobby like a sporting pastime that lets us blow off a little steam but nothing more.

The unions are the most powerful political tool we have. They are far less powerful than they need to be but fighting them is not going to make opposition to the government stronger.

Let’s put this in context. Any remaining hope that so-called liberals in the coalition might reverse the authoritarianism of New Labour is dead.

From the following description of the Select Committee on Policing of Protests, it is quite clear that the government are happy to make no distinction between different types of direct action.

The Chair of the Committee, Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP, said:
The update by the Assistant Commissioner Lynn Owens will give the Home Affairs Select Committee an opportunity to look at the tactics and resources used by the Police. There appears to be two types of protests, a peaceful march attended by thousands, followed by the violence carried out by a few on Saturday afternoon. It is now important that we have some firm direction on how to proceed to policing of further protests.

From Vince Cable’s words it is pretty obvious that even half a million marchers aren’t going to change their minds:

We’re not going to change the basic economic strategy. No government — coalition, Labour or any other — would change its fundamental economic policy simply in response to a demonstration of that kind.

Clearly half a million isn’t enough. It took many months to organise the march. It will take many months to organise the next one even if it eventually mobilises two or three times as many people.

UK Uncut and direct action groups are more agile and have been embarrassing the police and the government week after week for months now. The crack-down has finally started.

Unionist are being encouraged to denounce UK Uncut and UK Uncut are being encouraged to denounce “violent anarchists”.

Now, you might believe that if you do what the state says and just denounce black bloc tactics then you’ll be fine. After all, you can trust the police. They would never lie to you. Or if you’re still not convinced by that you could just ask the family of Ian Tomlinson.

Personally I favour non-destructive protest – but I don’t think a few broken windows and a bit of paint even begins to compare with the devastation being caused by government policy.

I would like to see activists adopting something similar to the Saint Paul Principles. These are a set of principles of unity for resisting the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC) agreed in February 2008 by those planning to confront the RNC.

The principles are:
1. Our solidarity will be based on respect for a diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups.
2. The actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain a separation of time or space.
3. Any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events.
4. We oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others.

Until they can legislate away dissent, the state are using the police and their powerful friends in the media to quieten people through fear. We must not be intimidated. We need to learn from and support one another even when we do not agree on tactics and restrict ourselves to only criticising in public those behind the vicious ideological reforms that punish the most vulnerable in society.

The solidarity demonstrations outside various police stations in London on Sunday where UK Uncut protesters and others were being held were a good start.

Getting back on the streets with UK Uncut for more action next weekend to show that we will not be frightened away is the essential next step. Keep an eye on UK Uncut and get ready to follow.

By Tim Hardy

We’re not going to change the basic economic strategy. No government — coalition, Labour or any other — would change its fundamental economic policy simply in response to a demonstration of that kind.

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, BBC One’s Politics Show.

By Tim Hardy

View Larger Map

(Google map shared by UK Uncut of points of interest around the main protest route.)

Yesterday’s sessions at the March Weekend were long, intense and exhilarating.

The March for the Alternative on the 26th is going to be extraordinary: while thousands unable to make it take part from home through DPAC’s virtual protest and with the Armchair Army, we hope to see a million people take to the streets and make their voices heard.

Although not officially recognised by the TUC, there will be many other feeder marches in London bringing thousands of protesters from different points on the map to join with the main march before the final rally in Hyde Park.

But for many, for dissent to be effective requires more than:

A return of the stewarded A-B march, some riveting political rhetoric at the end, a bit of self-policing and a morose pint afterwards, as our protest is registered and politely ignored.

(DSG: Clockwork Futility.)

It is to art that we might look for ways to resist a vision of the world in which man-made legislation about taxation, for example, is viewed as though it was an immutable law of physics and most people find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

Artist Seth Price in his work Dispersion (2002) wrote of the need for art to present a rupture, citing a response to Duchamp’s question, “Can one make works which are not ‘of art’?”:

Sarat Maharaj… sees the question as “a marker for ways we might be able to engage with works, events, spasms, ructions that don’t look like art and don’t count as art, but are somehow electric, energy nodes, attractors, transmitters, conductors of new thinking, new subjectivity and action that visual artwork in the traditional sense is not able to articulate.”

On the fringes of the marches, a host of beautiful, creative, actions will draw attention to and offer different ways of resisting the injustice of the cuts, with a whole host of actions planned to start at 2.11pm when:

Everyone will set up areas of autonomous resistance, where each individual or group can engage in whatever sort of protest they want, or just have a good dance.

While those on the main march can rest assured that the combined watchfulness of the TUC stewards and Liberty will keep them safe, those on the margins know that care is needed.

As the DSG warned:

We come into conflict with the police whenever we transgress the boundaries set by the state as an acceptable territory for politics.

As anticipated, the police have already begun their strategy of leaking stories to the press to discredit the protesters.

All it took was a chummy reference to an old BBC comedy for the state-owned channel to regurgitate the propaganda they’ve been fed.

Further briefing notes suggest police believed there had been an increase in “militant activism” and that some students would try to “goad” officers into taking “heavy-handed action”.

“Avoid hasty actions or taking the bait,” the document said. “This will require nerve, discretion and discipline.”

It is not a great surprise that a news organisation happy to describe “cuts” as “savings” is just as happy to pin the blame on the victim.

This is after all an organisation that teaches children to play riot police, teaching them how to “verbally dominate” protesters and “kettle rioters” all in the name of entertainment.

Happily there are alternatives to the corporate media who will be helping to keep protesters informed and safe on the day and telling the real stories that the mainstream news organisations prefer to ignore.

Sukey and IndyMedia London are working in parallel but independently to help keep protesters safe, mobile and informed on the day. VisionOnTv are offering training, advice and a platform for people to make and share their own videos of events. Dissident Island and  Resonance 104.4 FM will both be covering the protests, the latter using art to explore new and interesting ways to present the stories, such as the way in they used surrealist poetry to evoke the horror of CS Spray being used on peaceful protesters.

As I wrote before, those who stick to the main march will be perfectly safe.

There will be other streams that flow around the main river of the official protest engaged in the kind of creative, theatrical and eye-catching peaceful protests we have seen at UK Uncut actions around the country during the last few months. When you go home after the march, others will stay.

You do not need to join them.

All we ask is that when you read or watch the news in the weeks to come, you question what you are being told and make your own mind up about whether, say, turning a bank into a day centre, is an act of peaceful, playful protest or an act by criminal troublemakers.

For those who want to stay, there will be Pentacle after-parties with Battle of Britain bunting, tea and cakes served from 5pm at key points on the map and plenty more exciting and playful events that will become apparent on the day.

These works, events, spasms, ructions that don’t look like protest will amplify the voice of those on the main march and show the world that we have had enough.

26 March is not a goal, it’s a milestone on the journey – but with this much energy and creativity I have no doubt that we will only gain momentum from what promises to be the biggest demonstration in the UK in decades with the core march of a million as the stem around which a hundred flowers will bloom.

By Tim Hardy

In no domain is the law more of an ass than in the realm of computing.

If you are not a software engineer, you might not understand why some – including a contributor to this site – have reacted with horror to UK Uncut’s actions today in staging a virtual protest and posting anti-tax avoidance messages on a Vodafone website. Whether you agree with Latentexistence or not, his post provides a good overview of what happened.

From the press release it appears that what was done merely involves a breach of terms and conditions of Vodafone’s World of Difference programme. As such, it will probably result in nothing more than a few of those who leaked their passwords to UK Uncut in anger at Vodafone’s perceived hypocrisy having their blog access removed.

From the original tweets, however, it initially sounded like an offense under the Computer Misuse Act (1990) which carries heavy penalties.

People are always excited by tales of cyber-sabotage. Even the famously moderate Sunny Hundal was thrilled by the story of the Stuxnet worm. What many outside the technology sector do not understand is quite how draconian the laws concerning computers are or how easy it is to get caught.

Ask the five alleged members of Anonymous in the UK – aged, 15, 16, 19, 20 and 26 – who were arrested in coordinated dawn raids while another forty people were being bust in America by the FBI. They have had their computers, laptops, mobile phones and storage devices including mp3 players seized and are on bail right now awaiting trial. Imagine trying to manage your life if all of your equipment with your files, emails and address book was being held for months while police examined it at their leisure. You have backups, right?

If you value your privacy, encrypting your files won’t help. In the UK you can go to jail for five years just for refusing to give your password to the police under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000).

Do you know about Gary McKinnon who hacked into US computers to look for evidence of UFOs? He risks being tried as a spy in the US – with the risk of torture and execution that entails – and has been awaiting trial for seven years.

We live in a world where rich corporations use the bloody language of “piracy” to describe a teenager copying a song from a friend. In spite of opposition from organisations like the Open Rights Group, the last government passed the Digital Economy Act. This law that makes it possible for a rich music mogul to have your family disconnected from the internet merely by accusing you of copyright infringement. There is no need for them to prove that you’ve done anything wrong. Nick Clegg pledged to repeal the act to students before the election but as we know, for Clegg, promises to students don’t count.

As the world’s governments and international corporations like to remind us, the internet is serious business. To mess with it – even in the most harmless way – is treated by the law as akin to an act of terrorism.

We live in a society in which an 85-year-old man can be classified as a “domestic extremist” for the deeply radical act of taking out a pad and drawing a sketch at a peaceful demonstration and a woman can be found guilty of a crime for reading out a list of names of soldiers killed in Iraq. It was of course the almost pathological authoritarianism of the last Labour government that seduced many into voting Liberal Democrat at the last election.

Criminalisation of dissent is more and more inevitable. Even when it is not criminalised, the police are too often ready to act as if it had been.

In 1963, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. described the goal of non-violent direct action in his Letter from Birmingham Jail:

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.

In any act of nonviolent direct action the question should be not “should I do this?” but “how effective a tactic is this?”

I am not making any judgment as to the legality of today’s action. I wish to ask if it was a good tactic.

That is has lost some support for UK Uncut is undeniable. That is has divided those who act with UK Uncut is also clear. But has it dramatised an issue so it can no longer be ignored and highlighted the way in which bad companies and bad individuals think a little bit of charity work absolves them of all sins?

If it has then, legal or not, it was a good action.

When we walk into a bank dressed as superheroes, we may look like we’re playing it for the lulz but, on- and offline, activism is serious business.

By Guest.

I am the fortunate woman who was raised in a ‘post-feminist’ world where equality has been achieved. The woman who competed at school achieving as easily as the boys. I was the woman who worked long hours, and whose credit card ensured I could buy the expensive shoes and clothes which showed the world my equality. I was the woman who was always mistaken as the admin girl, who was fair game on a work’s night out. I am the woman who knows to put her keys between her fingers, when walking the canal bank alone. I am the woman who hopes never to be raped or sexually assaulted by someone I know, because knowing them is enough to sow the seeds of reasonable doubt.

I am the woman who travelled the world, seeing new cultures. Marvelling at how lucky I was not to live the lives of the women I met. I was the woman who became a social worker, and laughed at tutors who told me social work was a profession done by women, for women. I was the woman whose caseload was filled with women whose route out of poverty was barred by motherhood and violence and the effect of both on their mental and physical health. I was the woman who thanked my lucky stars that I made different choices which meant I was better.

I was the woman whose marriage was dismissed as a man’s mid life crisis, because he couldn’t possibly see further than my pert arse and legs. I was the stepmother who found that the cruel cartoons of any woman who dares to marry a man with children, applied to me regardless of what I did. I was the woman who found I was having the same conversations as generations of women before me, wondering how and why I was doing all the work involved in maintaining a family and a house. I was the woman who was selfish for not wanting a baby of my own.

I was the pregnant woman who found that I was fair game for everyone’s advice and my actions were to be decreed as selfish whatever I did. I was the woman who went back to work when my baby was still on the breast, because I shouldn’t expect an employer to accommodate my choices. I was the woman who worked a full time job in part time hours. I was the woman who was lectured by cab drivers about my failure to be a good mother, because I was coming home late from work.

I was the woman who was selfish working while my daughter was small. I was the woman who saw my earnings potential fall by a third, because I had her. I am the woman who is a mother 24 hours a day, 7 days a week regardless of what else I am doing. The woman who spent half her salary to go to work and give another woman a peanuts wage, to take care of my child.

I am the woman whose concerns are trivial if they are about children or concerned with what goes on in the home. I am the woman whose marriage fell apart like many others, but who became a feckless slut and scrounger as soon as that relationship ended. I am the woman’s whose relationship ending means Britain is broken. I am the businesswoman who was advised to wait till my daughter was older, because I couldn’t possibly focus on it right now. I am the woman who is aggressive for not accepting both inequality and being blamed for the poverty that results from that inequality. I am the woman who should know her place. I am the woman who can make a kick ass sponge cake, and finds few things as therapeutic and satisfying as cooking.

I am the woman who should be careful that I don’t put men off by being too ‘self reliant’. I am the woman who should remember that no matter what I do, the most important thing is to remain pretty and young. The woman who needs to learn that businesses cannot be expected to accommodate the mothers who make up it’s work force, and the state shouldn’t be expected to subsidise the inequality they ‘choose’. I am the woman who is being dramatic if I say that equality till you breed, isn’t actually equality at all. I am the woman who should pretend that women’s equality is an acceptable price to pay for bankers recklessness. .I am the woman who should be constructive and accept that solutions which widen inequality are the only way to cut the deficit, and  accept the expertise of a political system that where decisions are made by men.

I am the woman who has learned that I have things in common with all women, and that their success is good for me too. I have learned that I am no different to the women whose choices I didn’t make, and I believed myself to be better than. The woman whose lifeline has been in the women who are my friends. I am the woman who is hoping that the woman her daughter becomes, sees the world I was raised to believe existed.

Happy International Women’s Day.

Cross-posted from The Top Soil. This is the first of their ongoing series on Women’s Voices to celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. This piece has been written by a woman who wishes to remain anonymous.

This content is published under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

By Tim Hardy

As recent events have shown time and time again, representative democracy as it stands in the UK is anything but representative.

At the level of local government people have been locked out of public meetings in which decisions are being made about their futures. There is little to distinguish between the three main parties – one refuses to apologise for the harm it is doing; one lies that the harm is actually good for people; the third cries crocodile tears then harms anyway. The only party in Westminster showing any kind of principle and political courage is the Greens. This is not what democracy looks like.

In the UK, a significant proportion of the population experience poor mental health. Perhaps the sense of hopelessness that characterises depression is not always endogenous, a matter of chemical imbalance to be cured by the latest magic pill from a multi-billion-pound pharmaceutical industry, but instead a perfectly rational response to a disempowering political and cultural system in which we find ourselves helplessly trapped like the participants in the Kafkaesque nightmare of dealing with a call centre.

The call center experience distils the political phenomenology of late capitalism: the boredom and frustration punctuated by cheerily piped PR, the repeating of the same dreary details many times to different poorly trained and badly informed operatives, the building rage that must remain impotent because it can have no legitimate object, since-as is very quickly clear to the caller-there is no-one who knows, and no-one who could do anything even if they could. Anger can only be a matter of venting; it is aggression in a vacuum, directed at someone who is a fellow victim of the system but with whom there is no possibility of communality. Just as the anger has no proper object, it will have no effect. In this experience of a system that is unresponsive, impersonal, centerless, abstract and fragmentary, you are as close as you can be to confronting the artificial stupidity of Capital in itself.

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

Laurie Penny, a journalist and activist who has shown herself to be a true friend to disability activists with her supportive posts at New Statesman, believes that political participation can be curative. “Many people with depression say they find participating in political activism helps alleviate their feeling of powerlessness,” she told me in conversation with fellow activist Martin Young, better known as Mediocre Dave.

Martin has previously written convincingly on why we must see “any attack on people with disabilities as an attack on us all”. He pointed out that it is is not for nothing that we use the same word - depression – to describe both a particular type of economic downturn and a clinical state of helplessness.

We are social beings. To be ignored is a cruel punishment. For our voices to go unheard, to be made to feel that we are shouting in a vacuum, that what we feel and think does not matter is devastating in itself.

It is even worse when the deliberate exclusion of our voices is used as tacit assent by others, elected on lies and false promises and comfortably sheltered from the impact of their decisions, who go ahead and pass budgets and laws that will further devastate our communities.

It is up to make our voices heard and shake off that sense of helplessness that is politically and personally disabling.

Through this weekend 6 billion ways will be giving you the chance to stand up and do so.

As Lucy E, an artist facilitating the 1 minute manifesto project running tomorrow as part of the event explains:

This project came about because of a growing sense that people are increasingly made to feel unable to participate in political debate – because of their ‘in-expert’ness. Because of the false notion that politics (and political expression) is about perfect expression, that previous qualifications are necessary, slick presentation a must; some sort of kingdom for the confident. That’s a lie. Political expression is not perfect. It oughtn’t be. Politics is messy and perplexing and here and now. It is on the streets and in your school. Don’t wait. We are ‘it’. Have a little confidence and add your voice to the growing call for change.

Don’t wait for the politicians to remember that they are there to represent us not the rich few who fund their parties’ coffers.

Technology can remove the barriers between online and offline. Stand up in person for what you believe in or text or call 07851 390310. If you cannot be present, you can email your one minute manifesto to oneminutemanifesto@gmail.com and have someone read it for you.

This is your chance to share your thoughts, feelings and demands for our future. There is no need to feel helpless any more or to let those feelings stop you from participating.  Take a minute and be the change you want to see in yourself and in the world.

By Tim Hardy

(Image by Bern O’Donoghue.)

The TUC March for the Alternative on 26 March 2011 promises to be the largest, peaceful demonstration in the UK for many decades.

TUC stewards and Sukey will both be doing their bit to keep demonstrators safe, mobile and informed on the day so that we can all exercise our democratic right to peaceful protest.

DPAC and the TUC are working closely to provide greater access to the march and will be helping provide a virtual protest map for those who physically cannot be present on the day.

The Woodcraft folk will be working to ensure a peaceful, playful and supportive atmosphere for young people and children.

Peaceful protest has long been recognised as a fundamental tenet of democracy. Protests allow ordinary people to come together in a high-profile way, to stand up for what they believe in and to have their voices heard. The Human Rights Act protects freedom of expression and freedom of assembly which form the basis for the right to gather with others and protest.

Over recent years we have seen a gradual erosion of our democratic rights including a systematic strategy of vilification by the police designed to deter people from protesting.

In the weeks running up to an event like the TUC March for the Alternative, a slow trickle of misinformation is released to the media who are too often only too happy to collude.

Articles ostensibly about safety on the march begin to appear full of sly references to police intelligence about “violent troublemakers.” The voices of tens of thousands of peaceful protesters fade to silence and isolated acts by a tiny minority are made to stand in for entire movements.

The aim of these stories is to make you too scared to come. Don’t be.

For a glimpse at the kind of values that inform the anti-cuts movement – values of responsibility, respect, health, generosity, non-violence, solidarity – take a look at the unbreakable culture of the occupied Capitol in Wisconsin expressed so eloquently by activist Ben Brandzel. Large crowds at popular events can often be alarming but to be part of a group of people who live by these values is far from being so – it is a glimpse of a better world that we are coming together to build.

It is true that not everyone will be content to march from A to B and to follow the designated route. There will be other streams that flow around the main river of the official protest engaged in the kind of creative, theatrical and eye-catching peaceful protests we have seen at UK Uncut actions around the country during the last few months. When you go home after the march, others will stay.

You do not need to join them.

All we ask is that when you read or watch the news in the weeks to come, you question what you are being told and make your own mind up about whether, say, turning a bank into a day centre, is an act of peaceful, playful protest or an act by criminal troublemakers.

Have faith, take courage from one another and join us on the day.

It is up to each person to participate at a level with which they feel comfortable. Being on the main march is enough. Your presence, protected by stewards and independent legal observers, gives strength to those who prefer to act outside the protection of the TUC.

Protest is a right and a part of healthy society. If you do not stand up now for the services that are being stolen from you to pay for the folly and greed of the rich then when will you stand up? The march for the alternative is a chance for everyone to come together and to show the world that we will not stand for this any more.

I have said it before and I will say it again. I want to see a million people on the streets on 26 March.

Those with the broadest shoulders are slipping off their load and leaving it to the most vulnerable to pay for the recklessness of the banks.

They tell us there is no choice. That is a lie.

Let’s send a message out that our democracy is not for sale. It is our votes that confer power not private donations to party coffers.

Take courage and join us on 26 March and make our message heard. The cuts are not the cure. Our country is not for sale.