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| PICTURE Reclaim The Streets Party - Bannermaking\Workshop on sunday national | miscellaneous | news report  Friday April 19, 2002 22:46 by Irishvidhead It is our creativity and diversity which makes us strong workshop in spacecraft on sunday to make RTS banner and finish the BUSHMONSTER! Reclaim The Streets party comes to Dublin May 6th, so dust off your old raving shoues don the gas mask and get on down to what is promissing to one of the most kickin partys of the year! Planes are well under way for all kinds of peaceful direct actions and partying, the bycicle powered sound system is being referbished, line up to be announced! Street games, food, dancing, painting, Gurilla gardening, subvertising, live music and good people. Its time to take back what is rightfully ours. meet 2:30pm GPO Dublin bankholiday monday 6th May - bring whatever you can, be creative! It is our creativity and diversity which makes us strong http://rts.gn.apc.org/sortit.htm http://rts.gn.apc.org/subvt.htm http://rts.gn.apc.org/gbrpaper.htm http://rts.gn.apc.org/index.htm http://www.sinkers.org/posters/archive02.html The activity of "reclaiming the streets" typically involves taking over an intersection for a street party, often held in conjunction with some political event. In this respect, it may be seen as a more fun form of protest. So is it just for fun or is it serious too? Under capitalism, the primary dimension of human activity is offering up the human body (and mind) as an instrument of labor. In this process, the owners of the mean of production (the capitalists) will dole out a portion of the value of useful things you have made back to you in the form of wages, which you must then return to the capitalists to receives some of the products of that labor to use for your own subsistence. The procedure of labor is not necessarily designed or intended to be fun, enjoyable or rewarding as such--it's governing orientation is maximizing production and thus profit for the capitalists. When, say, a saw is operated to cut logs, this is not done for the sake of the saw's enjoyment--it is merely a tool used for a specific purpose. The same is true of people (workers)--they are tools used for specific purposes in accordance with their job description. However, a tool can't always be operated continuously--it may require occasional lubrication or the like. Similarly, having undergone their daily or weekly dose of exploitation, people are then permitted (instructed?) to "recharge" themselves through a procedure of "entertainment", which is procured by relinquishing one's remaining wages to the capitalist class, who also own the means of entertainment. While the ruling-class psychological warfare apparatus relentlessly propagandizes the notion that entertainment or fun is all about "you", about giving expression to your quirky and proud individuality and indisputably personal and irreducible tastes, the reality of capitalist-controlled entertainment is in fact permeated by the spirit of submission and docility, a sheepish slave mentality of total obedience and fearful clinging to the status quo. Like all spheres of human activities, "fun" is increasingly subject to same rigorous free-market discipline, which imposes a systemic inevitability of oppression and domination for the sake of maintain the existing power hierarchies. In this context, the act of reclamation becomes a valid modality of resistance. As a form of direct action, the reclamation forgoes the fruitless task of petitioning rulers for a redress of grievances, which they are organically incapable of redressing anyhow, and instead reuses the tools and technologies of the governing system (such as streets) for a different purpose. The neoliberal capitalist project seeks to install a totalitarian world order whereby all spheres of human activity are to be subjugated to, and expressed solely in terms of, market relations. To do so, it imposes artificial boundaries and restrictions intended to focus people's creative energy solely into activities which either serve to reinforce that order or else deplete people's energy to prevent its use for revolutionary purposes. By blurring and shifting the lines between "work" and "play" in a way that defies the strictures imposed upon either, the street reclamation process opens up a space for viewing the world differently and creates a moment of critical resistance. It actively fosters an amorphous atmosphere of creative chaos which defies the capitalist system of institutionalization and marketization, thereby poignantly fucking with the system and its various enforcement mechanisms. It is serious fun.
The streets belong to the people: they seize control of the city's elemental matter and make it their own. DIRECT ACTION is founded on the idea that people can develop the ability for self rule only through practice, and proposes that all persons directly decide the important issues facing them DIRECT ACTION is not just a tactic, it is individuals asserting their ability to control their own lives and to participate in social life without the need for mediation or control by bureaucrats or professional politicians DIRECT ACTION encompasses a whole range of activities, from organising co-ops to engaging in resistance to authority A Street Party is in full swing. 1000s of people have reclaimed a major road and declared it a "street now open". Music, laughter and song have replaced the roar of engines. Road rage becomes road rave, as tarmac grey is smothered by the living colour of a festival. The Street Party, itself reclaimed from the inanities of royal jubilees and state "celebrations", is just one recent initiative in a vibrant history of struggle, both to defend and to take back collective space. From the Peasant's Revolt to the resistance to the enclosures, from the land occupations of the Diggers to the post- war squatters, on to the recent free festivals, peace camps, land squats and anti- roads movement. Everywhere, extraordinary people have continually asserted not only the need to liberate the commons but the ability to think and organise for themselves. For the city, the streets are the commons, but in the hands of industry and power brokers the streets have become mere conduits for commerce and consumption - the economic hero of which is, of course, the car. A symbol and a symptom of the social and ecological nightmare that state and capitalism create, the car which promises individual freedom ends up guaranteeing noise, destruction and pollution for all. For Reclaim the Streets, the car is a focus - the insanity of its system clearly visible - that leads to questioning both the myth of "the market" and its corporate and institutional enforcers. With a metal river on one side and endless windows of consumerism on the other, the street's true purpose: social interaction, becomes an uneconomic diversion. In its place the corporate - controlled one-way media of newspapers, radio and television become "the community". Their interpretation our reality. In this sense the streets are the alternative and subversive form of the mass media. Where authentic communication, immediate and reciprocal, takes place. To "reclaim the streets" is to act in defence of and for common ground. To tear down the fence of enclosure that profit-making demands. And the Street Party - far from being just anti-car - is an explosion of our suppressed potential, a celebration of our diversity and a chorus of voices in solidarity. The road is mechanical, linear movement epitomised by the car. The street, at best, is a living place of human movement and social intercourse, of freedom and spontaneity.
The Nottingham RTS on Mansfield Road was a first for me. I write to you now as a convert. I do not share all of RTS's political views, but for me the point of the street party is to question the established hierarchy, encourage better policies on public tranport, and have a fucking good time. Where else can you dance ecstatically surrounded by police in broad daylight? When else do you see thirty-somethings, children, Big Issue Vendors and up-and-coming young executives discard their differences and share in a truly solid community event? The car will never be destroyed (not before we have really fucked the place up), and capitalist ideas of economic progress are here to stay. And there are positive things to be said for both. But I am an idealist, and hope that the continued RTS carnival will have some effect, might reduce the traffic, might encourage subsidised public transport, might see more city centres wholly pedestrianised. The important thing for me however has been to make me stop and see that it doesn't have to be this way, that if I WANT to stop the traffic and dance all afternoon in the street I can. And in a street empty of quotidien bustle, noise and dirt, no-one can deny the atmosphere is more congenial than usual.
Reclaim the Streets is a party with a purpose, a celebratory taking back of the street space, normally off limits to anyone who values their safety. Dominated by inneficient, noisy, polluting and dangerous machines, one third of our cities is devoted to cars. Unlike demonstrations or rallies, RTS is all about having fun, it is an experiment in what the world would be like without the omnipresent automobile that fills the air with fumes, noise, fills our media with its image, warps our economy with its hunger for resources, and which is responsible for a quarter of a million deaths annually. Reclaim the streets started in England in the early nineties and grew with the anti Motorways movement there, spreading around the world. It came to Melbourne in 1998, when Streets for People organised the "opening" of Victoria Street in March, attended by around seven hundred people. This year the event was planned to be bigger than ever with two stages of Doof, live bands, skate ramps and DIY lounge areas. Come the day it was looking promising. A huge crowd had turned up in the Carlton Gardens to march to the secret site. Streamers, drums, jugglers and giant puppets led the march to Smith Street, a few blocks away from FoE Fitzroy, accompanied of course by dozens of police and horses. At the end of Smith St a line of mounted police formed, blocking the march. Apparently the police were worried that the aim was to disrupt the Moomba parade, held on the same day. It didn't worry us too much, as we'd actually reached the party site, so work got underway to get it all going. That's when the cooperative attitude of the police vanished. Attempts to put up road blocks, banners, generators or skate ramps were met with threats of arrest and confiscation from the Police. This didn't stop the party, only made it harder work. Crowds of people surrounded the generator used to run the sound stage, chanting "we want the music", sound gear was snuck in behind the police's backs, and finally the whole stage was up and pumping. It took a lot of negotiation from the dedicated liason people, a bit of trickery from the organisers, but mostly it was people power that got the party started right. To some extent the drawn out negotiation to get the music started had drained the energy of the organisers, and of those who had just come along for a good time. The event had became something an us-versus them struggle, of people versus police, rather than focussing on claiming back a piece of urban land for the enjoyment of all. But we had reclaimed the street and we'd had fun doing it. Streamers and ribbons adorned the street, people lounged on old couches and seats dragged out for the occaision, played hackey sack, juggled, skated and of course danced late into the night. At the end the feeling was clear. We had done most of what we wanted to do, and we would be back as soon as we could. Stay tuned for a creative streets for people action coming soon to a street near you. Resistance has no vote! Add Your Comments >>  printable version with comments    |
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