Reclaim the Streets - what happened??
- Thread starter wanderlust19
- Start date
mitochondria
full-on emptiness
Blagsta said:
It still suits imo. There has to be some punk in the music. Can't really do a revolution with r'n'b, can you?
Paulie Tandoori said:Can you imagine a contemporary RTS party with broken beats and nu-rave???
I always had an ambition to get a string quartet to show up.
Trouble was, couldn't find a disposable bass or viola - though the picture of cops smashing classical instruments might have been worth a couple grand...
Taxamo Welf
kebagels pls
50 POINTS TO THIS MAN!Brainaddict said:
well said sir, fucking well said
Taxamo Welf
kebagels pls
Nobluestreak said:
LONDON
ACID
CITY
OUR TIME - IS NOW
(seriously, i'm not giving any fucking credit to other genres that weren't involved, its acid techno's glory to revel in and no one else's. Fair?)
Taxamo Welf
kebagels pls
wanderlust19 said:
Yes. What you've got to grasp is that RTS, pretty much wherever one happened, was based on the event - people 'came together' for the event. The splitting off into smaller groups is one way of looking at it, the other is that there could never have been a coherence outside of the events themselves.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
Taxamo Welf said:
you're ignoring all the organised planning and preparation that this event required, though. These were not spontaneous happenings, but the fruit of a lot of subterranean work. The events stopped happening when the networks and groups of people that underpinned the events fell apart.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
my perspective, as someone who was pretty instrumental in organising 2 RTS attempts in newcastle (nearly but not quite proper rts's - sound system getting pigged both times), plus a travelling contingent to most of the bigun's.
1 - the guerillay gardening event in 2000 confused the fuck out of a lot of people who'd been with RTS through the late 90's, and looking for them to build on the J18 success. People went with it, but it was a bit of an odd one, with half the crowd getting stuck in traf square with no music or anything for hours, the rest in parliament square... essentially it was at best a draw with the police, prob a police win compared to j18, and no music in traf square killed it for anyone stuck there.
2 - focussing on mayday after this was IMO a mistake, as there's already lots of stuff happening on mayday, so it'd lose numbers as many people would go on the union march / lots of regional events also take place (newcastle was holding green festival on mayday weekend, so it lost all support from up here). Getting kettled every year as the police learnt and addapted tactics, and RTS (or it's mayday offshoots) failed to adapt fucked things as peeps lost interest.
3 - Not getting sound systems into the events after j18 pretty much fucked it for me, as if you're trapped in an area by the police, but have a sound system to dance to it's not so much that you're trapped, more that you've taken the space and are dancing and protecting the system... if there's no rig, then you're just trapped by the police.
4 - I get the impression that a lot of the main people who'd been involved through the late 90's got sacked off with it for one reason or another, and it would have been a major commitment for the core people (having been involved as a volunteer in putting the green fest on up here, I know that it can easily suck 6 months a year out of your life). I also get the impression that the link was lost between the rave crews who'd had the kit and the fuck the law attitude needed to bring the PA's in (and spread the word to the party crowd) and the more political anticap / ecohippy types. I remember some comments around the guerilla gardening time about wanting to move RTS away from the street party thing, and make it more political, which for me was completely missing the point of why RTS was so successful (I've since been told that a rig did attempt to get in to the guerilla gardening event, but got stuck the wrong side of police lines).
5 - IIRC much of the funding for j18 had come from some compensation some of the rts crew had been given from the met for some incident the year before, which had enabled RTS to really go to town on the J18 thing. I guess it's hard to continue doing stuff to the same level once that one off funding runs out.
6 - 911 really took the wind out of the entire anticap movement IMO, as nobody really knew how to respond. It seems odd to say this now, but it's true IMO.
7 - A fair few of the old rts hands were instrumental in setting up the DISSENT network and organising for the g8 protests in 2005. This was a 2 year plus organising effort, so if nothing much happened from 2003 onwards it was because the focus was on the g8. This also spawned an effort to set up a national network of social centres, which sapped the time and energy of 10 groups nationally, with patchy levels of success.
8 - A lot of the RTS ideas have actually gone mainstream, with council organised no car days, increased levels of pedestrianised areas, cycle lanes, bus lanes etc. On an anticapitalist front, many of the big multinational charities and campaigning groups took up much of the RTS message, and ok watered it down a fair amount, but stuff like corporate social responsibility, and the DOHA 'developing nations' round of the trade talks happened largely as a result of the pressure started by RTS and it's PGA allies around the world OK so these are watered down versions of RTS ideas, but RTS as an instigator of ideas was incredibly successful IMO.
9 - Globalise Resistance - let's not underestimate the role played by the SWP in confusing the situation, claiming credit for the global anticap movement when they'd done fuck all other than sell the odd paper, then attempt to beome the lead player in organising the anti cap movement, pissing loads of people off in the process, ignoring the working methodology of the pre-existing anticap movement, being generally clueless, fucking it all up before eventually moving on to do the same with the Stop The War Movement. Cunts.
1 - the guerillay gardening event in 2000 confused the fuck out of a lot of people who'd been with RTS through the late 90's, and looking for them to build on the J18 success. People went with it, but it was a bit of an odd one, with half the crowd getting stuck in traf square with no music or anything for hours, the rest in parliament square... essentially it was at best a draw with the police, prob a police win compared to j18, and no music in traf square killed it for anyone stuck there.
2 - focussing on mayday after this was IMO a mistake, as there's already lots of stuff happening on mayday, so it'd lose numbers as many people would go on the union march / lots of regional events also take place (newcastle was holding green festival on mayday weekend, so it lost all support from up here). Getting kettled every year as the police learnt and addapted tactics, and RTS (or it's mayday offshoots) failed to adapt fucked things as peeps lost interest.
3 - Not getting sound systems into the events after j18 pretty much fucked it for me, as if you're trapped in an area by the police, but have a sound system to dance to it's not so much that you're trapped, more that you've taken the space and are dancing and protecting the system... if there's no rig, then you're just trapped by the police.
4 - I get the impression that a lot of the main people who'd been involved through the late 90's got sacked off with it for one reason or another, and it would have been a major commitment for the core people (having been involved as a volunteer in putting the green fest on up here, I know that it can easily suck 6 months a year out of your life). I also get the impression that the link was lost between the rave crews who'd had the kit and the fuck the law attitude needed to bring the PA's in (and spread the word to the party crowd) and the more political anticap / ecohippy types. I remember some comments around the guerilla gardening time about wanting to move RTS away from the street party thing, and make it more political, which for me was completely missing the point of why RTS was so successful (I've since been told that a rig did attempt to get in to the guerilla gardening event, but got stuck the wrong side of police lines).
5 - IIRC much of the funding for j18 had come from some compensation some of the rts crew had been given from the met for some incident the year before, which had enabled RTS to really go to town on the J18 thing. I guess it's hard to continue doing stuff to the same level once that one off funding runs out.
6 - 911 really took the wind out of the entire anticap movement IMO, as nobody really knew how to respond. It seems odd to say this now, but it's true IMO.
7 - A fair few of the old rts hands were instrumental in setting up the DISSENT network and organising for the g8 protests in 2005. This was a 2 year plus organising effort, so if nothing much happened from 2003 onwards it was because the focus was on the g8. This also spawned an effort to set up a national network of social centres, which sapped the time and energy of 10 groups nationally, with patchy levels of success.
8 - A lot of the RTS ideas have actually gone mainstream, with council organised no car days, increased levels of pedestrianised areas, cycle lanes, bus lanes etc. On an anticapitalist front, many of the big multinational charities and campaigning groups took up much of the RTS message, and ok watered it down a fair amount, but stuff like corporate social responsibility, and the DOHA 'developing nations' round of the trade talks happened largely as a result of the pressure started by RTS and it's PGA allies around the world OK so these are watered down versions of RTS ideas, but RTS as an instigator of ideas was incredibly successful IMO.
9 - Globalise Resistance - let's not underestimate the role played by the SWP in confusing the situation, claiming credit for the global anticap movement when they'd done fuck all other than sell the odd paper, then attempt to beome the lead player in organising the anti cap movement, pissing loads of people off in the process, ignoring the working methodology of the pre-existing anticap movement, being generally clueless, fucking it all up before eventually moving on to do the same with the Stop The War Movement. Cunts.
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
Taxamo Welf said:No
LONDON
ACID
CITY
OUR TIME - IS NOW
(seriously, i'm not giving any fucking credit to other genres that weren't involved, its acid techno's glory to revel in and no one else's. Fair?)
If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution
No other genres were bloody allowed except gabba IME.
mitochondria
full-on emptiness
Blagsta said:
Come on, jungle is dead just as acid techno. Grime and hip hop are not hardcore enough.
And imagine reclaiming the streets with Alicia Keys blasting the speakers.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
arrrrgh please god nooooo.mitochondria said:
not entirely sure the acid techno's dead line is totally true either, though it's prob nowhere near as big as it was in london i guess.
mitochondria
full-on emptiness
free spirit said:
Acid techno is not quite dead - it is just less acidic and more techno I guess. Immersion still releases records. So do Liberators.
free spirit said:
nice one free spirit.
Not to mention burn out, sell out, people falling out, people dying, groups just growing apart, people getting targetted heavily by the plod, key people moving away.
Its a shame, but things move on and people change. I used to be really active (not specifically in rts but things surrounding it) and started being so just off the back of the Mayday rts, yet havent done much for a couple of years (maybe im a sell out? i dunno
) we used to try and use the same tactics as people had who had done this stuff before us and a lot of the time found that the police had got wise to it. So we tried new things, some of it worked some of it didnt. Thats life aye. The one thing that i did notice after a while was there seemed to be a focus on ''Big actions'' and they happened one after the other. a lot of time, effort and resources went into organising, planning and doing those things and those involved around me (including myself) seemed to get disillusioned and burnt out. There was attempts from various places to create something that was sustainable but that doesnt appear to have worked.
Im not sure what the answer is, maybe there needs to be a new focus, a new way of thinking, tactics and thought has to change and adapt to the time its in and perhaps we didnt do that fast enough. Perhaps we were too scared of loosing what we had, or maybe our dreams werent big enough. Maybe people grew up and had to take on more responsibilitys which meant the risks had to be fewer and fewer. I certainly feel like im one of those people.
Theres still hope yet though i think, though i doubt will see much for another few years.
Kidda said:
That was an issue.
I was in Trafalgar Square mostly to dance, looking at S Africa House and Candada House and thinking "we've taken the centre of the old empire.... now follow that!"
There are some very nice dance spaces about 12km in from each end of the Channel Tunnel
Paulie Tandoori
shut it you egg!
Yep. i got to thinking about J18 and i do think that's when the gloves came off. I had my kids with me and it felt scary for them which i didn't like and was something that had been absent previously. Bastard cops.free spirit said:
mitochondria
full-on emptiness
btw. this thread kinda inspired me to dig through my hd and ...
/nl Routepile02 - Free The State
hellyeah
terrorizing neighbours and flatmates rocks!
/nl Routepile02 - Free The State
hellyeah
terrorizing neighbours and flatmates rocks!
Buds and Spawn
...if I can't dance...
Mostly agree with Laptop. Here's my tuppence worth anyways...
IMO most people not involved with RTS will find it difficult do understand the how's and why's of how RTS worked, was successful, and ultimately disintegrated because the people involved haven't a clue either.. Or rather everyone had there own equally valid story... And to be honest we mythologised ourselves more than we should have (e.g. everything is spontaneous - well apart from a year of planning etc...).
The open meetings WERE dysfunctional nightmares - but it never failed to piss me off that people would turn up to one and think they had sussed RTS. You really needed to go to every meeting for a few years running before getting to grips with why they did sometimes work amazingly.
The gap between 'activists' and 'punters' was a problem. The Guerilla Gardening really showed this up - it was explicit in the agitprop that nothing was being laid on beyond the concept and the usual banners, critical mass, compost etc.. Obviously the expectations were for soundsystems etc.. The real mistake was a genuine 'accident' involving the samba band who many people followed up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square.
What people also forget was the criticism following J18 - it was too full-on for many. In some ways the Guerilla Gardening accommodated this viewpoint. And as a point of general information some of the peeps involved in organising the RTS part of J18 may also (m'lud) have been involved in organising the Guerilla Gardening.
The whole context of activism in the UK also changed.
Gone were the long running large scale on site protests that empowered so many people - there was simply less opportunity to experience direct action and as a result there were fewer up for it savvy activists. People who had been involved for a while moved on, burnt out, changed focus etc.. but weren't 'replenished' - as had previously been the case.
Globalise Resistance, as has been mentioned, appeared and muddied the water for people new to protest. Cheers SWP....
Twits like Monbiot and Susan George put the boot into RTS - presumably from J18 onwards liberals couldn't stomach the fact we weren't towing their liberal line. I think it's a misnoma that RTS were 'anti-car' then became 'anti-capitalist' (although I understand why people think this - I did too back in 96) - just look at the agit prop and you'll see everything was joined up... although it did become better articulated.
If you're interested there is an attempt underway to produce a book of sorts about London RTS.
IMO most people not involved with RTS will find it difficult do understand the how's and why's of how RTS worked, was successful, and ultimately disintegrated because the people involved haven't a clue either.. Or rather everyone had there own equally valid story... And to be honest we mythologised ourselves more than we should have (e.g. everything is spontaneous - well apart from a year of planning etc...).
The open meetings WERE dysfunctional nightmares - but it never failed to piss me off that people would turn up to one and think they had sussed RTS. You really needed to go to every meeting for a few years running before getting to grips with why they did sometimes work amazingly.
The gap between 'activists' and 'punters' was a problem. The Guerilla Gardening really showed this up - it was explicit in the agitprop that nothing was being laid on beyond the concept and the usual banners, critical mass, compost etc.. Obviously the expectations were for soundsystems etc.. The real mistake was a genuine 'accident' involving the samba band who many people followed up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square.
What people also forget was the criticism following J18 - it was too full-on for many. In some ways the Guerilla Gardening accommodated this viewpoint. And as a point of general information some of the peeps involved in organising the RTS part of J18 may also (m'lud) have been involved in organising the Guerilla Gardening.
The whole context of activism in the UK also changed.
Gone were the long running large scale on site protests that empowered so many people - there was simply less opportunity to experience direct action and as a result there were fewer up for it savvy activists. People who had been involved for a while moved on, burnt out, changed focus etc.. but weren't 'replenished' - as had previously been the case.
Globalise Resistance, as has been mentioned, appeared and muddied the water for people new to protest. Cheers SWP....
Twits like Monbiot and Susan George put the boot into RTS - presumably from J18 onwards liberals couldn't stomach the fact we weren't towing their liberal line. I think it's a misnoma that RTS were 'anti-car' then became 'anti-capitalist' (although I understand why people think this - I did too back in 96) - just look at the agit prop and you'll see everything was joined up... although it did become better articulated.
If you're interested there is an attempt underway to produce a book of sorts about London RTS.
editor
hiraethified
It wasn't just the cops.Paulie Tandoori said:
I was at J18 and some absolute cunt toytown anarchists in their little black hoodies and masks started randomly lobbing bottles about. The bottles were bouncing off people, or smashing against walls with the shattering glass spraying the crowd
There was a woman with a small child next to me and she was in tears, she was so scared.
It seemed like all the humour and innovation was fast draining out of the day to be replaced by twats hell bent on pointless vandalism and, err, 'smashing the system'. Or a nearby window. Or scraping someone's car. Anyone/anything would do.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
Blagsta said:Grime and hip hop not hardcore? Wtf?!?!
I am making a genuine point here - the focus on acid techno can feel rather excluding. Not everyone likes it. One of the best things about the M41 RTS IMO was the Unsound rig playing all sorts of different stuff.
mitochondria
full-on emptiness
Blagsta said:
I like all kinds of music and I am not saying there's something wrong with Alicia Keys here (she is a great money-making corporate machine). My point is that the perfect soundtrack for RTS is/was acid techno. You may feel rebellious at an illegal street demonstration listening to (lost) love lyrics or Burial's hypnotic sounds but that just wouldn't work for me.
I need the CHARGE! effect (jungle has it, too).
Perhaps a long slow march of thousands with a dub soundsystem providing musical background would be fiiiiiiine as well. Different kind of demo though. Spliff Parade!
free spirit
more tea vicar?
yeah, towards the end of the day there were a few fucking idiots, mostly brew crew types (the ones I saw actually were sporting cans of special brew) launching bottles randomly towards the police, but not giving a shit really where they went or who they hit. I remember having it out with 2 absolutely twatted lasses who'd just lobbed a couple of bottles passed my head, and about 45 degree angle away from where the police actually were, their response was to try to start on me - we left at that point.editor said:
Earlier in the day though was absolutely incredible, most empowering thing I've been involved in, fluffy as fuck but still taking no prisoners - I remember taking some road junction on the outskirts of the protest with a random female sax player and a few others, about 20 of us just going fuck it this junction's ours, taking it and holding it for a god hour or more with nothing more than a saxaphone.
