we are waiting as well
someone to open the bottle, let out the essence of youthWhat are you waiting for?
It was fun...and there was plenty happening out in the sticks.
But is it different for our generation? Was it easier to be completely involved in a protest movement then? Was the economy better, better enough for somebody to drop out for a few years and then still live a life afterwards? What did all these people do afterwards?
grew along the axis from solution to problem?Thats what i would really like to know...
No, I know which seven breeds she was mainly! Here she is on the right barking at a munter in a camo net.
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my first thought on seeing this thread title was to find a longterm graph of videogame sales, but I can't on 30sec googling so you'll have to imagine one.
second thought is that the 90s were a fairly dull period when the level of youth rebellion was rather low. Compared to the 80s and particularly the 70s when me and my mates were up to all the things we could get up to. That was real, it mattered, we meant it, we were trying to change the world and although we got battered and bruised into submission our attempts would stand as a beacon to be built on. The 90s just kindof rolled through without much to motivate me, just a bunch of kids with marginal ideas messing around. I spent most of the 90s (not to mention noughties and tensies) poised and ready for them, the kids, to click, to become politicised, to rebel, to express a real identity and commitment to change. Still I wait....
grew along the axis from solution to problem?
I'd also suggest that the 90s didn't much have to contend with the problem represented by Urban75. That anyone with a spark of intoxicating excess is immediately crushed by the weight of internet worldweary, btdtgtts, cynicism.
in the 90's the AR movement was quite vibrant, whatever you think of that particular worldview. however, i believe it was starting to negatively impact on the ability of certain private companies, for example HLS - to function properly, plus there was the infamous 'grave digging' incident. so the state showed it's teeth and turned pretty ruthlessly on it with a significant degree of success. they handed down some insanely long prison sentences - longer than many murderers and paedos get - to certain 'prominent' activists, i even remember them sentencing someone in malvern to four years prison basically for running a website. i suppose it's what any social movement can expect if they begin to attain any degree of 'success'.
yeah i fucking hate the internet, which i express best by moaning about on the internet.
someone to open the bottle, let out the essence of youth
my impression of that was that it acted something like a training camp, that taught direct action skills to an increasingly hardened core group who then went on to do all kinds of other activism. Could say it was an equivalent of revolutionaries who in the 60s and 70s went off to other countries to learn guerrilla warfare. The people ive known who were involved with Roads were the most hardy activists after the fact. Is that fair to say?The road protests were a big part of my life for a few years.
I'd also suggest that the 90s didn't much have to contend with the problem represented by Urban75. That anyone with a spark of intoxicating excess is immediately crushed by the weight of internet worldweary, btdtgtts, cynicism.
Bit cynical that given the years of optimism and initiation of activities documented by participants on this site.
Are people still enthusiastically doing stuff though? I dimly remember a more militant/activist time in Urban's history but these days I don't see much of the same energy. May just be me not paying attention though.
Few quick obvious points - cultural stuff in modern capitalism is always on a loser from the start unless it can develop roots and make connections with wider stuff and wider concerns - hospital closures and stuff about the conditions that everyone has to live their lifes in, rather than just a small section. Otherwise you do end up with 'dissenting communities' self-ghettoised and people being cut off from the skills, knowledge and experience of others (in both directions). People weren't unaware of this at the time though.The closest this came to happening was with the roads stuff actually impacting on wider plans of capital development (if you can't strike, where can you stop the circulation/operation of capital?) and the attempts at rts linking up with the locked out liverpool dockers, which didn't really work out in the long term. But it is interesting that we're discussing this in terms of cultures - which misses all the mums out campaigning for speed bumps or against mobile phone masts, or people working on casualisation or other safety at work (reminds me of another crossover here, the simon jones/casualisation campaign).
Thats what i would really like to know...
Definately...
I think the fact that a lot of the ideas floating around the time of the road protests was primmo anti-civ definately did that movement no favours in regards to linking into the circulation of capital and probably alienated that movement from the average person as well.
my impression of that was that it acted something like a training camp, that taught direct action skills to an increasingly hardened core group who then went on to do all kinds of other activism. Could say it was an equivalent of revolutionaries who in the 60s and 70s went off to other countries to learn guerrilla warfare. The people ive know who were involved with Roads were the most hardy activists after the fact.
Should also say there were committed activists throughout the 80s who also had an important role in handing down skills. Your point about dole and student grants is an interesting one - it definitely feels more unfordable to drop out and do full time activism than it did.
Are spectacular situationist stunts/Temporary Autonomous Zones a rejected tactic now (whether consciously or not)?
I think in the 90s there was pretty deep anti-party politics feeling, and although that has deepened even further and spread into the wider population my impression is that theres more interest in getting 'organised' in some shape or form now, though a healthy fear of hierarchy and general commitment to horitzontalism has made that process more.... fragmented perhaps, and less visibly successful than it might otherwise be.
I'll start, Rebbeca Blum(nee Lush)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Lush
She was an anti-road campaigner at the Campaign for Better Transport until 2012.
Just thought of another attempt to make connections, the exodus collective in luton - not perfect, but aware of the problems facing the wider class.