_This is an all-out war at this point, and it is amazing to me that in the face of body armour, batons, grenades, gas, pepper spray, rifles, and what is pretty much a tank, we are defending ourselves with only wetted bandanas, swim goggles (if you're lucky), baking soda, water solutions, and solidarity._ Anonymous account of the Seattle protests, 1999
How can people respond when they are faced with the full military onslaught of the police state? The rules have changed. The military has brought fear weapons into the city and protest is now forced to take place in public spaces meticulously designed to offer no protection to demonstrators. Protest has to choose whether it is prepared to give up the street and retreat into remote politics. Its only alternative appears to be the development of new tools and tactics that allow protest to survive in the street. In response to the first generation of anti-crowd weapons people used simple defensive tools to try to protect their own bodies. Now with the second generation being introduced we need to move away from weak personal tools towards active, collective tactics. While the police have abandoned any attempt to hide their militarisation the protesters must be seen to maintain the rules of the 'game'. Any new tool needs to tread the subtle balance between humorous provocation and serious confrontation.
_We need more tools of non-lethal defence; baton grabbing jaws and giant magnets, tennis bats for returning tear gas, interlocking shields, itching powder grenades, stink bombs, cream pies laced with stinging chemicals, poo cannons, urine holding tanks connected to hand pumps and hoses!_ Anonymous protester mailing list
[Photo Caption] Naples, March 17th 2001. Giant Plexiglas shields and foam rolls are used to push back the Italian police lines. In desperation the police are forced to use their rifles as crude clubs. In order to sustain baton and projectile blows the shield must be at least 1.5 cm thick. Leather straps and ropes affixed to one side act as handles.
Barriers
_We march with a mission and should those in power order others to stop us, we have a right to defend our bodies as much as our message._ Bodyhammer Manual, 2001
In the last couple of years shields, helmets, armour and large barriers have started to emerge on the protester side. Made of foam, inflatable rubber, tarpaulin and other soft materials these tools have become DIY versions of ancient armour made for the physical contest of the modern street. Once stacked together in a roman tortoise formation the tools create a communal barricade that offers safety from riot batons and non-lethal projectiles. By interlinking arms and tightly grabbing the handles of the barrier the combined body weight of the crowd can be brought to bear against the police lines. Any technological advantage the police may have had is neutralised as the conflict becomes a proto-democratic scrum of pushing and shoving. Crucially the barrier acts as a psychological tool as well as a physical blockage. Activists who have used the tactic comment that the shield wall becomes a visual divider that blocks the sight of individuals on both sides and thus depersonalises the conflict into two opposing forces. Being unable to see each other all personal aggression is nullified. As the human wall of polypropylene starts to push through the police lines, accounts tell of individual officers becoming isolated and panicking. Routeing, they break their own lines and try to reform in small defensive circles.
[Photo Caption] Genoa. This example of police brutality illustrates well the central need for close cooperative crowd tactics. Once isolated the individual can easily be overwhelmed.
_People can see images on the TV news that can't be manipulated: a mountain of bodies that advances, seeking the least harm possible to itself, against the violent defenders of an order that produces wars and misery. And the results are visible, people understand this, the journalists can't invent lies that contradict the images; last but not least, the batons bounce off the padding._ Ya Basta – White Overall Movement.
Mayday 2001, London
We are still trapped in Holles Street. Walking through the crowd I bump into a man carrying his crying daughter. He tells me that he was one of the drummers from the samba band when the police pushed back the crowd and frightened his daughter.
Now he wants to get out. Bringing the band together they decide to coordinate the crowd and push through the ranks of riot police. It had worked earlier in the day enabling them to break multiple police cordons until we all finally got trapped here by the mounted police. While it's impossible to push against horses we should be able to push though the double row of riot police behind us. The band leader motions to the band. Drums start beating, the crowd cheer and we begin to move.
Coordination
_The critical aspect to moving in any shield wall formation is unison. While demonstrators would discourage any individual to marshal a march, a form of organisation is necessary._ Bodyhammer Manual, 2001
The human barrier is only effective as long as it remains unbroken, which requires considerable coordination and organisation. The dilemma is how to achieve this unison without adopting the kind of rigid hierarchical systems used by the military style opposition.
_Unless it is possible to prepare and practice these tactics ahead of time, the best way is the use of simple commands that can be shouted, including warnings of what is ahead for those who cannot see. For keeping tight in a march at any pace, the best method is a drum near the front [...] or the calling off of steps,, one, two, one, two..._ Bodyhammer Manual, 2001
The protest manual proposes a system where every member is forced to take responsibility for themselves as well as the group. Command has become an autonomous system with no overall control. This anarchic method still allows complex coordinated manoeuvres to be carried out because the crowd is united by a regular internal stepping rhythm. Mobile samba bands work tightly with the crowd to provide the necessary timekeeping drums. The polyrhythmic structure of samba consists of many rhythms played by separate parts of the band and the 'beat' only emerges from the way these rhythms engage and communicate with each other. Samba offers a concrete vision of the relationship between the individual and the group where the individual is not forced to compromise their identity, but rather the collective only functions because of its internal counterpoints. Protest samba in particular emphasises this call and response relationship and externalises it to become an interaction between the drums and the crowd who participate by shouting, cheering and whistling. Rather than functioning as listening music, this is a mobilising sound which aims for a functional hybrid between marshal drums and a participatory carnival.
Community
_Marching aimlessly about on the drill field, swaggering in conformity with prescribed military postures, conscious only of keeping in step so as to make the next move correctly and in time, somehow felt good. Words are inadequate to describe the emotion aroused by the prolonged movement in unison that drilling involved. A sense of pervasive well-being is what I recall; more specifically, a strange sort of personal enlargement; a sort of swelling out, becoming bigger than life, thanks to participation in collective ritual._ William H. McNeill, 1995
Moving in unison inspires a sense of collectivism amongst all crowds. While the military use this physical sensation of drill to establish hierarchical obedience, for the protesters physical coordination is often the first collective experience which sparks off further personal involvement. The contemporary sociologists John Drury and Steve Reicher argue that protest crowds form through a 'simultaneous co-occurrence of social determination'. Contrary to Le Bon, they argue that the individual does not lose their identity in the crowd but actively gains a common social identity with the group. In 1997 they interviewed a cross section of protesters at the 'No M11' campaign and found that the people were split into two groups. The first group had no previous experience of protests and thus shared a general perception of the police as upholding their right to protest. The second group with extensive experience of the police had no expectation of police restraint. Based on post-event interviews, the researchers argue that participation in the protest caused a verifiable transformation in the novice group. They suggest that this occurred through two mechanisms: firstly, by witnessing police brutality, people's illusions about the role of the police were dispelled, and secondly, through acting oppositionally, protesters, to their own surprise, started to perceive themselves as oppositional. Disguised by the language of sociology, the two researchers actually present an empowering vision of transformation through physical participation. The implication is that emotional action prefigures a rationalisation of one's own position, and that by working closely with the full range of people in the crowd, the individual has become more sympathetic towards radical sentiments that they would have previously rejected.
_I went home to make a cup of tea and I was shaking. I mean, you don't expect [the police to be violent], do you? But then you don't expect someone like me to be someone who kicks fences, do you? But things change._ Anon at the 'No M11' campaign
Mayday 2001, London
We have been here for many hours now and everybody is getting restless. Our earlier attempts to push though the police cordons had only resulted in people being hit with riot batons. One guy with a bleeding head-wound was not even allowed to leave the cordon to get medical attention.
Everybody is feeling seriously frustrated. Two people manage to shimmy up the 'turn left' sign and climb onto the low roof of the John Lewis shop. The crowd respond by cheering and encouraging them on. They grab the CCTV camera mounted on the side of the building and pull until it begins to give. It swings loose, attached only by the mains electricity cable. They find a Stanley knife lying on the roof and with one spark-filled cut yank the camera free. A huge sustained cheer reverberates throughout the whole street. The camera has been turned on the police.
[Photo Caption] Mayday 2001, near Oxford Street. A riot police officer stands helpless in front of the £50,000 Jaguar he has failed to protect from 'vandalism'.
Trashing
Property damage has always been a controversial aspect of protest as it has often been perceived as the unwanted byproduct of 'democratic' protest. Yet the systematic and principled tactic of property destruction has its own distinctive history. The Peasants' Revolt in 1381 saw protesters attacking carefully selected palaces and grand houses in order to methodically demolish them. Their aim was to destroy oppressive property rather than to loot, so all that which could not be smashed or burned was thrown into the river while the empty shells of the buildings were blown up. One account tells of a rioter being found by his comrades to have kept a silver goblet for himself, and was subsequently killed for doing so.
Today, disciplined property damage is considered a valid tactic by the pacifist 'Swords to Ploughshares' movement. In their most remarkable action, four women managed to break into a British air force base and attack a Hawk ground attack aircraft causing £1.6 million worth of damage in order to prevent it from being exported to Indonesia, where it would have been used to continue the genocide being committed in East Timor. The event generated a huge public outcry at the British arms export policy which culminated not only in the policy being changed but also in the women's actions being publicly vindicated. The Seattle anti-globalisation protests in 1999 highlighted a different kind of organised property damage. During the protests a number of Black Bloc groups strategically avoided confrontations with the police in order to concentrate purely on their real corporate targets: GAP, Nike, Levi's, McDonald's, Starbucks, Warner Bros etc.
_When we smash a window, we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds private property rights. At the same time, we exorcise that set of violent and destructive social relationships which has been imbued in almost everything around us. We contend that property destruction is not a violent activity unless it destroys lives or causes pain in the process. By this definition, private property –- especially corporate private property –- is itself infinitely more violent than any action taken against it. [...] By destroying private property, we convert its limited exchange value into an expanded use value. A storefront window becomes a vent to let some fresh air into the oppressive atmosphere of a retail outlet._ ACME Collective, Seattle N30
Reaching up to grasp the golden arches feels strange. The yellow plastic is hollow and flimsy not like I had expected. The bottom of the M has been shaped with just enough depth to get a proper handhold. I pull myself up and fold my legs around the object. I am swinging free, suspended from the world's most famous brand. For one moment a corporate symbol solidified as a physical entity that could be grasped and ripped down. For a split second a solution appeared, a direct way of dealing with the amorphous nature of global capital. Frustrated at the lack of corporate accountability, these destructive tactics aim to create economic pressure, but more importantly generate a sense of personal and public empowerment. Even these minor displays demonstrate the potential for real transformation outside the narrow constraints of symbolic protest. Spaces, property and institutions that previously seemed distant and inviolatable suddenly reveal their vulnerability. Even things written in stone can be transformed.
_After N30, many people will never see a shop window or a hammer the same way again. The potential uses of an entire cityscape have increased a thousandfold._ ACME Collective, Seattle N30
We have been trapped here for eight hours and everybody is numb with the cold and boredom. The police have managed to frustrate and intimidate us but they haven't won.
By trapping us together they have forced the crowd to focus inwards and get us to talk to each other. Looking round the street I see people huddled together in little groups. These kind of temporary connections will remain as networks long after we have left this street. Plans are already being made for the next protest when they will bring their own camping gear so that when they get trapped again they will be more comfortable than the police. Finally the police decide to let us go in ones and twos, making us squeeze in between the their lines of spotters. One woman waits patiently behind the police cordon giving out hot tea to everybody. She had been watching us on the television all day and felt sorry for us.
Cracks
On April 14th 1831 the Sixtieth Rifle Corps was crossing the Broughton Suspension Bridge near Manchester when suddenly an accident occurred. The troops had been marching in unison following standard army procedure when suddenly the bridge collapsed from underneath them. They had been oblivious to the fact that their marching was causing the bridge to vibrate in a very exaggerated manner leading ultimately to its collapse. This incident gave rise to a military order which remains even today: 'Break step' -– to walk out of sync -– when crossing bridges.
Over 150 years later the newly built Millennium Footbridge in London named the 'Blade of Light' has a strangely similar problem. As the public arrived on the opening day and first walked across the bridge, it immediately reacted by swaying horizontally by up to 70mm. While the bridge designers maintained that there was no danger of collapse, the discomfort caused by crossing the bridge proved so severe that the structure had to be closed after only two days. While neither as dramatic or destructive as the Broughton incident the same phenomena was at work. Every structure and object has a unique resonant frequency also known as its natural frequency which is determined by its material, shape, size and support. The impact of people's feet produced rhythmic forces that happened to coincided with the structure's own unique frequency, causing it to react so intensely. The designers of the Millennium Footbridge had used statistical surveys and computer simulations to predict the speed and force of the crowd and had built a considerable safety margin into their design. Their crucial mistake was to misunderstand how people interact. Textbook studies and guidelines only ever consider very small numbers of pedestrians walking or running in step. What occurred in reality, was that hundreds of people arrived at the newly opened bridge in little groups. Within each friendship-group the people were chatting with each other and so naturally walking in step with one another. This communal walking created just enough vibration for the bridge to sway very slightly. What the designers had not expected was that all the separate groups found it most comfortable to coordinate with the main sway of the bridge creating one huge united group composed of hundreds of individuals. Incredibly, this force of hundreds of simultaneous footfalls happened to coincide with the natural resonant frequency of the bridge causing it to react so strongly. The bridge builders made some futile suggestions designed to break up the crowd by limiting the number of people allowed on the bridge or forcing them to undergo an obstacle course with bollards. Neither of these suggestions was going to be able to control the raw force of the crowd so the bridge was quickly closed and a major redesign started.
[The Millennium Footbridge] cost far more than a simple bridge crossing the Thames, it's a symbol, isn't it, not just a bridge; it symbolises London and the millennium and ambition. Robert Benaim, engineer, 2000
[Photo Caption] Albert Bridge, London. After the collapse of the Broughton Suspension Bridge signs were erected at all vibrationally vulnerable bridges. Albert Bridge has a centre span of 55.5 metres which means its resonant frequency matches exactly the average walking frequency of 2Hz.
<http://www.mobilevulgus.com/book/protestors.pdf> --- Sent from UnionMail Service [http://mail.union.org.za]