BY SARAH PEART & JACKIE LYNCH
Activists around the country are once again practising their anti-corporate chants for the blockades of stock exchanges and business districts on May 1, buoyed by the success, beyond most people's imaginings, of the S11 protests against the World Economic Forum.
S11 put activists in good stead for M1 — not only do we have a successful action to build upon but we have experience in organising an effective and democratic mass blockade. As the graffiti still visible around Melbourne says, "S11 — we won!"
One of the hallmarks of the new anti-corporate movement in the First World is its creativity and diversity. Flashed across our TV screens have been the green turtles of Seattle, the pink "IMF pig" of Prague, the grotesque corporate puppets on stilts of Melbourne.
Those present have used these protests to organise their own activities and express their own particular concerns — they have had ownership over their actions and space within which to voice their ideas. Such an approach has allowed broad, previously unimaginable, coalitions to be built.
What is underappreciated is that the strength of these anti-corporate protests has also come from their unity. It has been their coming together, their unity in action, that has allowed protesters to maximise their collective power.
If all the different groups and individuals who protested in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation or in Melbourne against the World Economic Forum had done so separately, rather than together, their impact, on both the conferences and on public awareness, would have been negligible. Instead, united they put the corporate bosses on the defensive.
But, as those who've been part of these protests have come to realise, if unity in action is to become a reality the protest needs to be coordinated. A certain amount of infrastructure needs to be in place to enable not only broad, hopefully massive, participation but also to enable the participation of the various affinity groups organising actions of their own.
Central coordination helps ensure that the broad agreement to non-violent tactics sticks. It doesn't guarantee it, but it does weaken the ability of any small group to engage in tactics unacceptable to the majority. Central coordination can also help avoid a street riot and police violence, by ensuring consistent tactics get implemented protest-wide.
Such coordination is also needed to ensure the political content of the protest is up-front and clearly articulated, and not garbled.
The primary purpose of the massive anti-corporate protests is to win people to our cause. We can only do this by vocalising our demands and our opinions so that everyone can understand them. Those who come to a protest for the first time want to hear about the political issues; bystanders and passive supporters need to hear our message if they're to join us in protesting; the media needs to hear what we're about with a clear voice; and even veteran activists can benefit, by gaining a better grasp on what unites us (and what still divides us).
We have come to this conclusion — that the anti-corporate movement requires both diversity and breadth and unity and coordination and neglects one or other at its peril — because of our direct experiences in two of the largest mobilisations to date: S11, the blockade of the WEF summit at the Crown Casino, and S26, the mass protests against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Prague.
We won S11
In the darkness and rain of the early morning of September 11, protesters started to arrive at the Queensbury Street stage, and kept arriving constantly throughout the day. S11 marshals and representatives of those groups which had volunteered to run a blockade point of their own fanned out to the 15 blockade sites, taking contingents of willing blockaders off to set up human chains across roads, gates, and casino entrances.
Pretty quickly, the blockade formed a seal around the casino complex. No more delegates were able to enter. All the while, alliance representatives helped people to find blockades, to get help with cuts and bruises (and later with more serious injuries) and spread the news coming constantly over their walkie-talkies.
Blockade democracy developed quickly and flourished over three days. Soon, blockaders were discussing how to organise their line, and, often using the marshals as a conduit, communicating their news and decisions to the other blockade points. As the days wore on, blockades voted on when to rest and sit down, when to leave at the end of the day, what to do if and when the police attacked.
All around the casino, activists undertook a rainbow of creative protests — drummers visited the blockade lines, musicians and artists entertained and inspired — a carnival of the oppressed developed around the soulless and barren walls of the casino.
The S11 protesters expressed a kind of radicalism rarely seen in this country. This radicalism was perhaps most eloquently expressed in the internationalism of the demands and slogans which were emblazoned on hundreds of placards, banners, "home-made" T-shirts and the graffiti painted, drawn and sprayed up on every available surface around the casino.
"Hey WEF — Millions live in poverty — Have a nice lunch", read one person's banner as he stood at the Spencer Street entrance of the casino.
The protest truly was three days which shook Melbourne as the eyes of the world were turned not to the gangsters in Gucci suits meeting inside the casino, but to the colourful, brave and inspired thousands who chanted and sang and stood on blockades for three days.
The mainstream media made much of the claim that the S11 protest was "headless" and that the international movement was completely spontaneous and without real direction. In the lead-up, Melbourne papers ran stories on how this movement was brought together "via the internet" in a loose, disorganised way — with the implication that S11 would be a marginal, ineffective joke of a protest.
But S11 didn't just "happen", it wasn't "headless". Hundreds, even thousands, of people put months of planning and effort into ensuring that S11 was an exciting, vibrant, militant and effective mass expression of anger against the horrors of capitalism. It was highly organised and well-directed.
For months before S11, many groups and individuals — Friends of the Earth, S11-AWOL, the Independent Media Centre, the construction and manufacturing workers unions, Jubilee 2000, the DSP, the ISO, other socialists and many others — prepared their contingents, publicised the action, went on poster run after poster run and put enormous thought and energy into making the protest what it was.
The centre of all this, the S11 Alliance, met nearly every week for seven months to approve the political demands for the protest and to discuss and re-discuss the tactics of the day. Hundreds of different people attended the alliance at different times: socialists, anarchists, feminists, queer rights activists, trade unionists, student activists, amongst others.
The largest part of the alliance's planning and effort went into discussing and then deciding how to best facilitate the biggest, most successful demonstration possible and, specifically, how to carry out an effective, tight blockade.
In meeting after meeting, activists poured over maps and debated organisation and coordination techniques, out of which eventually came a clear plan for building the blockades. It was this plan, when swung into action, that helped make S11 the success it was.
One of the most crucial decisions the S11 Alliance took was to elect marshals to facilitate its plan, on the basis of agreed-upon protocols and priorities. To ensure the protest was coordinated and effective, the marshals were empowered to help organise blockade points, advise those wishing to join a blockade point of which ones most needed strengthening, act as communications "clearing houses" and help the first aid and legal observers' teams.
Another crucial decision was for the S11 Alliance to set up a stage and organise speakers, who could outline some of the many issues which had motivated the decision to blockade the casino. The alliance also used the stage to urge people to join the blockade and to give up-to-date reports on what was going on at any of the 15 blockade points.
This stage proved a vital central rallying and meeting point: protesters knew they could get an update on overall progress from the stage, the trade union march on September 12 rallied at the stage, the September 13 "victory march" set out from there.
'Prague, Seattle, continue the battle'
On the morning of September 26 the streets of the Czech capital slowly filled with thousands of people from around the world who wanted to show their anger at the destructive policies of the IMF and the World Bank. By 11am the main square was filled with colourful balloons and placards displaying messages such as "IMF and WB out of indigenous land" and "Make love not profit".
Red flags were everywhere, papier mache globes rolled around the crowd and papier mache IMF pigs sat on fences. Some people had made huge towering skeletons to symbolise the 19,000 children who die each day from preventable causes in countries burdened by debt.
As brutal as the policing in Melbourne was, the activists in Prague on S26 were faced with much greater repressive force — 11,000 riot police, tanks, tear gas, water cannons and NATO back-up, as well as the Czech state's attempt to stop people entering its borders. On top of this left-wing activists were also targeted by the extreme right.
During the day protesters faced extreme levels of police violence as they blockaded the conference centre. Protesters were gradually forced back to their original meeting point and headed to the opera house to blockade the delegates' planned evening entertainment. Protesters sang alternative operas and chanted "Prague, Seattle continue the battle" and a huge cheer went up when it was announced that the opera had been cancelled.
S26 achieved its political aims by putting a question mark over the IMF and the World Bank as legitimate institutions. The protests also put an early end to the annual meetings and were a vibrant show of resistance to corporate tyranny.
However, they also suffered from a lack of coordination and organisation, making them less effective than they otherwise could have been.
The coordinating body, INPEG, was very broad and was "united in its stated goals of: an end to IMF/WB; an end to economic globalisation; a commitment to the principles of non-violence", one of its spokespeople Scott Codey told Green Left Weekly.
Its plan was based on "encouraging groups to engage in autonomous acts of non-violent direct action".
But in Prague the blockade points were not organised in a coordinated and democratic fashion. There was no direction given to activists as to what the overall plan was (or even if there was one) and there were no assigned marshals to help facilitate any discussion.
As a consequence, some blockade points worked well — but a lot did not. One blockade point organised a five hour "lockdown" of some 2000 people — but it relied on the chance that some activists knew how to organise such an action.
Many blockade points were left without any direction. The 250-strong blockade I was on was a case in point. A small group of anarchists decided (on behalf of everyone else) to attack the hundreds of assembled riot police, who were equipped with tear gas and tanks, with long planks of wood. Predictably, the police counter-attacked and chased us all down the back streets.
Not only was the blockade broken but people became separated, disoriented and quickly demoralised.
Encouraging groups to organise autonomous activities or action is great — as long as it is within a general coordination framework for the protest as a whole. Otherwise it is an exclusive form of organisation: people who come to protest on the day who are not already organised in such a group are left out of the picture.
We want to bring the spirit of S11 and S26 to our protests on May 1 but we also want to learn from our movement's experiences there: a determined, strong and successful anti-capitalist demonstration is based on both our diversity and our unity.