Breaking the law with a commitment to getting away with it: after the G20 : Melbourne Indymedia

Ever since a bunch of us threw some things, plastic rubbish bins mainly, and broke the window of a police van, and had a bit of push’n’shove with the cops, everyone has gone crazyworld. All of these respectable anti-globalisation people said we were bad, as did a few socialist groups and of course the police and politicians. The media have printed images of us to help the cops track us down, police have raided our homes and seized our property and charged us with riot and affray and such, people have even spent time in remand with sometimes substantial delays in getting bail. We have been marginalised by most and condemned by many, even by Community Legal Service lawyers and others who presume to adjudicate the legitimacy of our actions.

I hadn’t really paid that much attention since the actual events – I was sick for a few weeks afterward – and now it is like I’ve woken up and the world has gone nuts. I read the Arterial Bloc statement before I turned up at the G20 thing. Those Arterial Bloc people were talking pretty radical before the G20 and during, and now people are being hunted down all the ‘defence’ stuff seems like people are terrified and yapping apologetic nonsense. Because people are mad at them. For throwing a bin!

Where is your sense of proportion? The G20 are mass murderers, and now we’re being hunted down. Hunted down! For throwing a bin!

I know Arterial Bloc doesn’t equal those who took action or those charged. And I wasn’t in Arterial Bloc and I haven’t been arrested and my photo is not on display on wanted posters decorating newspapers and media websites, so I guess so far I’ve got away with it. Unlike the thirty odd people charged by now, I suppose. This could change, but so far I’ve avoided their attentions. I don’t speak for anyone except myself, of course.

But really, people charged now have lawyers who seem to have already said all over the place that they condemn everything that Arterial Bloc types and other radicals said they were about. Lawyers who made these statements not just as general principles but specifically in relation to the anti-G20 events.

And if I get arrested, I really think the odds of doing time are pretty small, even if I did throw a bin.

The hysteria of our critics all over the spectrum was revolting but not all that surprising – but I guess it provided the soundtrack for the police taking repression a bit further than had previously been experienced by some of the kind of people at the protests. Some of whom were, not to put too fine a point on it, white and middle class and not notable amongst the participants at Palm Island or Redfern. (All but the ‘middle class’ bit is true of me too, of course.)

We – whoever ‘we’ is - need to resist this repression for so many reasons. So we can do similar things in the future being one. So it is accepted that antagonistic people acting together can have the social weight to prevent some exacting enforcement of law. Because we should be able to attack the G20, and what the hell the police too.

Because the G20 is a club of governments who are mass murderers many times over. Because these governments and the capitalist system they further are one face of the status quo, and the status quo, the state of affairs that is this world, doesn’t require some extra reason to justify disobedience, some new ‘crime’ to make legitimate an active contempt, a destructive criticism.

Because in the world these people defend and recreate all the time, every day has its holocaust. Because they seek to control us and when people don’t want to be controlled by them this is fine, to be encouraged. Because their efforts to control us should inspire our hatred.

If you want reasons why not: Because Australia has been at the cutting edge of creating new types of concentration camp. Because Australia helped to enforce the ‘sanctions’ on Iraq in the nineties which killed over a million people and now pretends the hatred of Iraqis for the military might of their saviours is shocking. Because Australia keeps throwing its weight around ‘the region’, Because ‘our rights at work’ are not something I want to be told is ‘worth voting for’.

Because everyday life in Australia for people who aren’t rich is getting worse not better and I expect this trend to continue. Because the police are the violent defenders of the local version of our collective global hell, the army policing our lives as occupied territory.

For all these reasons and many more, I reserve the right to not be polite, to not obey, to use what is but a tiny fragment of the force and violence used by those within the G20 every day.

And really, compared to the more powerful psychopaths condemning our barbarity, what have we done? I threw a rubbish bin, maybe. I shoved a cop, possibly. Someone damaged a police car, it seems. In most countries this would rightly be regarded as trivial. In any rational society it might be seen in its actual context: the never-ending horror show that is our world.

I’m not sure what is the appropriate response to this horror show, but it sure isn’t giving money to Make Poverty History, voting for the ALP or Greens, beaming positive energy into the G20, praying to the sky god, trying to ‘get our message across’ over the corporate media through ‘non-violent protest’, signing a petition or sending an angry e-mail to my local member. And more to the point, if anyone doesn’t want to or can’t obey anymore the horrible rules that are supposed to make up our lives, and make up the limits of what we do, and what the hell throws a rubbish bin or two, damages some cop property, damages some cop whose very existence is a provocation, I for one am not going to spend my time tut-tutting their naughtiness.

They are mass murderers, they maintain their positions with exploitation and oppression. We threw bins at their violent stooges.

They won. You lost.

Diddems.

These are very brave assertions! I am in awe of your courage to post this and show your disregard for the global machinery in an anonymous forum. Indeed, if you are so staunch why don't you have the guts to walk into police headquarters and tell them what you did? At least then you will have the ability to tell the courts and the state that you are politically opposed to the trial and that damage and violence and generally breaking the law are totally justifiable and understandable as long as it is done supporting your particular philosophy. I ask you this: if you or a loved one were scared, injured, endangered or otherwise victimised by another who would you call? Yes - the cops of course. And if they infringed your rights who would you call - another form of law enforcement I'm sure. Or is it a case that only YOU are allowed to break the law?

Though in some ways I don’t find the intent of this text particularly clear, I would suggest that the organising idea appears to be contained in the phrase “sense of proportion”. Having a sense of proportion about the nature of capitalism or ‘the world’ i.e. as an oppressive nightmare with the rules of which no-one should be obligated or expected to conform. About the events at the G20 as actually very minor violations of these rules. About those who condemned the anti-G20 actions as precisely lacking a sense of proportion. About the ensuing repression as a step up in some disturbing ways and something to be vigorously opposed, but not something which is likely to land the ‘activists’ with prison terms.

And about the backing away from an actual defence of these actions as failing to reflect the actual stakes involved, and as accepting in broad terms a worldview that makes it hard to say what the writer says: of course it is legitimate to refuse to play nice, and not only when immediately attacked or ‘provoked’ by the forces of the state - the attack and provocation happens at every moment, every day.

The writer doesn’t really engage with the arguments of those who would presumably accept much of the above, at least in theory, but who nonetheless criticise the actions undertaken as counterproductive to ‘the movement’ or to ‘activists’. But in a way that only becomes relevant if there is an underlying acknowledgement - the absent acknowledgement that the negative reactions of the ‘activists’ and/or of those speaking for the supposed ‘community’, reactions to such refusals to play nice, the public condemnations that echoed or preempted the condemnations by the more mainstream establishment forces…these negative reactions reflect no sense of proportion about what has been done. These negative reactions place no value on saying, against this mainstream, that there is something, everything valid in needs and desires to move beyond the terrain of what the writer calls being ‘polite’, the terrain of the codes and practices of liberal-democratic participation by good citizens pursuing good works (not foreigners, outside agitators, criminals…)

Relative to the behaviour of those ‘radicals’ who felt that whatever they believed was ‘counterproductive’ in anti-G20 actions justified reinforcing the disproportions to which the writer refers, I find something reasonable in the comments made. And in what I take as a sense of bewilderment at the homogeneity and defensive liberalism of those who were presumably thinking in slightly different terms on the day.

Beaver, I don't think that this person is arguing for martyrdom, for a political practice which would deliberately get arrested for show purposes - quite the opposite. I think they are arguing for the legitimacy of 'breaking the law with a commitment to getting away with it'. Your cop-loving nonsense would require a separate response, but you're total failure to angage with what is being argued is obvious. Do you just troll around looking for places to deposit your crap? Since the issue has been raised: is 'beaver' your real name? Are you too scared to be anything but anonymous even in the absence of very real threats of state action?

I knw Indymedia attracts idiots like you a lot, and you have indeed succeeded in being very dull.

Seeing as you choose to criticise me for using my family name of "Beaver", I have to ask what is "lumpnboy"? Does this appear on YOUR birth certificate or passport or are you merely casting aspersions upon the validity of another's opinions from behind anonymity? Have a look at yourself before you accuse others of being idiots. Your comments are not only sanctimonious but fail to contribute to the debate.

By the way, lumpnboy (and all reading), while you may criticise my input into the debate, can you deny it with fact, proof or rational argument? Do you deny the fact that when needed you and others will call on police or others to protect your rights and safety? OR is it simply that you cannot and therefore are forced to resort to insult rather than intelligence. My statement was submitted to provoke debate and gain the opinions of others. Your comments fail to debate the issues and in actual fact are elitist in themselves, or does your dogma close your mind to other ideas completely. If so why are you here at all on this site for you have obviously made up your mind without the need for discussion or consideration of other possibilities. By the way - yes I can read...

Beaver

The point about anonymity was that you sneered at the author for being anonymous even though you presumably know that police have been raiding peoples' homes and seizing material, charging people with serious offences etcetera - and suggested that they should turn themselves in as this would somehow have more courage or integrity, whereas, as I tried to point out, I think they were trying to argue for a politics not based on martyrdom of that sort.

As to the cops: there have been far more occasions in my life when I have or have wanted to call upon others to help protect me from the cops than there have been occasions when I have wanted the cops to protect me from anyone. But either way, if we had created a world in which people had no option but to use the existing institutions in the way you mention, that really isn't an argument that those institutions are a good way for the world to be organised, and it isn't an argument against any particular way of relating to those institutions. Nor, even if your claim was true which it really isn't, would it be an argument against the view that existing institutions, such as the police, as bodies whose purpose is to help impose a structure of exploitation and oppression.

So lumpnboy, by your argument there is no place for police or any other forms of authority in our society. You essentially see them as a means of oppression rather than any form or service or protection. Don't you think that this is a rather egocentric view and that the experience of others may not accord with your own? Or could it be that you are so pompous that you have placed yourself in positions were you suddenly feel the need for protection from police or others. To confine yourself to such a view is not only narrow but excludes the mviews and experience of the greater masses. Oh then again, they don't know what they are talking about because only you seem to know the real truth and they are just deluded fools. Contribute to the debate rather than trotting out a broken record without proof!