Just to expand on my first post, for those who weren't there or involved and have only seen the media version of events.
J18 wasn't organised as a riot, it was a core part of a huge international day of protest against neoliberalist globalisation via the World Bank, IMF, WTO etc that saw at least hundreds of thousands, probably over a million protesting in well over a hundred cities in dozens of countries around the world on the same day to coincide with a G8 meeting, in cluding massive protests in India, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria as well as cities across Europe, North America and Australia.
As part of this, thousands of copies of Evading Standards, a spoof newspaper printed for the day were distributed to commuters in the morning to give background to the action to come, and Corporate Watch produced 'squaring up to the square mile'.
activists groups from around the country spent the morning taking part in autonomous actions across London, with a huge critical mass bike protest winding its way around london....
... and then 10-20,000 of us met at Liverpool Street Station prior to being led down to the main protest site
From here the protest split into 4 groups following different coloured flags through the city...
...before converging on the area outside the LIFFE building, where we were met with sound systems, banners being rigged up,
and a fire hydrant fountain was set off...
and for several hours several blocks of the city were reclaimed and partied while the city traders looked on a bit bemused.
As the day wore on, and the police began moving in, things started to turn more agro, particularly after rumours of a girl being run over by a police van started circulating...
... but that wasn't the point of the day, it was the aftermath of the main event, and focusing just on that enables them to reclaim the memory of the day from us.
Undercover cop or no undercover cop, we took over and held much of London's financial district for several hours at the same time as a million or so protestors targeted their financial districts around the world in protest at the Neoliberalist agenda that was sweeping the world with the City of London as a major force in pushing the agenda and associated casino finance system that's caused rapidly increasing inequality since, and eventually led to the 2008 economic crash.
It was a protest that set the scene for the huge Seattle protests against the WTO later that year, effectively killing off a round of supposed trade liberalisation agreements that have still not been passed (though the EU / US trade agreement now being discussed will re-enact a lot of it if it gets passed), and via the global nature of the protests was part of the partly indigenous based grass roots left resurgence across much of South America resulting in a turn away from US domination of the region.
J18 was no mere riot.
ps Despite coming from google, most of these photos are actually from Urban, which has great coverage of the day
here and
here, and I know that the thread title was unintentional, and Urban's coverage of J18 itself is about the best that's still up on the net. I've just been getting a bit sick of the press coverage of this police undercover stuff ending up without any real coverage of what the protests actually involved, or what we were protesting about.
The undercovers seem to have become the bigger story than either the protests, or the massive inequalities and corruption that's increasingly ingrained in our economic and political system. Not that it's not important, but we definitely seem to be losing badly these days, and these undercovers were no doubt a significant part in that with their betrayal undermining the bonds of trust that need to exist within a protest movement, and increasing the risks for all involved.
Meanwhile the US & EU are on the verge of signing away our few remaining democratic rights to the corporations with the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that will provide the finishing touches to the legal framework to allowing the corporations to legally enforce the global race to the bottom on environmental and social standards.
