Jack Daw’s COP15: Our Climate, Not Your Business

After a group meeting in the morning we met at 10am at Nytorv for the anti-corporate ‘Don’t Buy the Lie’ protest. While we were milling around, not knowing what to do or where to go, some people went around handing out a map of corporate targets across the city. The plan was to go between the targets and for us to split into four groups: a noise brigade who’d make as much noise as possible, a visual group with banners and who’d do graffiti, an inside ruckus group who’d go inside targets and disrupt business and an outside ruckus group to hold the space outside of the targets.
 
A drum beat starts and we come around the street band, dancing and pumping ourselves up for whatever is going to happen. Someone passes by whispering in our ears that we’re going to number 3 target. We’re already surrounded by the police and many cameras. I feel a wave of energy come through me as the drum beat gets louder and faster. I just want to take down corporations but know this isn’t the place or the time.

This is one of the worst places possible to do illegal activities. There are at least 100 camcorders filming the demo. It feels like there is so little possibility to really stop business when there would be so much evidence. There are so many journalists desperate to film protestors fighting with the police or destroying corporate property.
 
We move on, chanting, dancing, singing, having fun. At least we’re blocking the traffic and stopping economic activity in the areas we’re protesting in. We make new friends/political contacts and we build up the courage inside of us to do something, anything, to stop the destruction of the planet. We know that we are not alone in these feelings, and the group gives us strength and courage, at least temporarily.
 
We get surrounded by the police on one street. We dance and chant “Our Climate, Not Your Business,” “A A A anticapitalistaaa” and “What do we want?…Revolution.” I think the police wont let us out as everyone seems to be staying where they want us to be, but when I go up to the police barrier I can just walk through. They made lines but didn’t actually stop us from walking through them (this time). It really shows how much fear we have of them – and authority in general – if only their presence can stop us from walking past them. After a couple of minutes, most of us realise we could go through, and we split up to get to the first target, the ‘Bright Green Expo’, a greenwashing corporate expo for the COP15.
 
We find many police when we get there. They are more aggressive, grabbing and pushing us onto the sidewalk, shouting, surrounding some of us. We break free and dance wild and make noise. The visual group had tagged the building with “Our Climate Not Our business.”  I really feel the joy of my body dance and move in the middle of the road while surrounded by police, blocking the traffic and chanting slogans at the corporate expo. I can see why protests can be addictive. The adrenaline, the thrill, the energy of being surrounded by so many beautiful people and confronting the cops and the corporations in whatever (limited) way we can do together.
 
We move on, trying to make it to the next target, but continuously get surrounded by the police. We run through the streets trying to avoid them with some of us breaking through their lines. The adrenaline floods my body as we run, my breath heavy, hundreds around me shouting us on.
 
The police manage to split us up and no-one seems sure which is the next target. Different people say different numbers. Some of us are blocked in by the police. Some of us make our way to one of the targets but it feels like there are too few of us to do anything. The police succeeded in splitting us up and disarming what little power we have as a group. Many of us wander off after protesting for a few hours, tired and confused as to what to do. Some affinity groups split off to do actions throughout the city.
 
The chase through the streets felt like a cat and mouse game between us and the police but with them mostly having the upper hand. They had helicopters to monitor us from above; advanced communication and surveillance technology to co-ordinate their activities and monitor us; vehicles to move quickly between targets; weapons and the threat of arrest to put the fear into us.  It felt like they succeeded in doing what they wanted – disbanding and disarming the protest without violence or too many arrests (I saw two of us getting arrested) so there wouldn’t be a city-wide retaliation by protestors over the next few days. We’ll see what happens over the next few hours.
 
Protests feel outdated and ineffective when the police have so much technology so they can easily monitor and disband them. They are also perfect places for police to collect information on who attends these kind of actions. Protestors pictures are put on databases and we may be profiled or picked up in the future if illegal activities happen in areas where we live.
 
It feels like a thousand activist writers have written similar accounts to this one with similar lessons drawn, but we seem to keep coming back to group protests even though they are mostly ineffective. Even the general public seem to be numbed to them.
 
The thing is that we have to do something against these corporations which are destroying the earth. They are legally obliged to profit maximise on behalf of their shareholders at whatever cost to the planet. They are cutting down forests, polluting rivers, building dams, covering the land with chemicals, keeping animals in brutal conditions (the list goes on), and this destruction gets worse as they expand and the economy grows.
 
Any kind of  system or way of organising humans which genuinely attempts to be ‘sustainable’ cannot have corporations. They are a big part of the problem. We must try to stop them at whatever cost or face runaway climate chaos and the general continued destruction of the planet. We may even face extinction of our own species, or at least a massive population collapse, if we let business as usual carry on. Lobbying the state, as I put in my first post, seems useless when they are so much in bed with big business and are so wedded to the ideologies of the market, economic growth, production, industrialism, work, technology and money.
 
So what can we do which would actually effectively stop these corporations? What can we do to hurt their profits, the only thing they seem to understand?
 
So many of us are afraid to do what is necessary. We have so much fear of being arrested and going to prison. So many of us feel powerless to do anything which could actually stop them.
 
Many of us think we should just focus on creating positive alternatives. However, no matter how many permaculture gardens or straw bale houses we build, if they continue to exist, they will continue destroying the planet we are dependent on to live. Eventually they will destroy us and our families.
 
To say we should just focus on alternatives is like saying to someone in a concentration camp that they should make a garden as a positive alternative while waiting to be gassed. Instead I would tell them to resist, break out, use whatever means necessary to free themselves or face the death chamber.
 
Similarly, we need to try to resist the with whatever means necessary. We need to explore tactics which are actually effective in stopping these corporations. Positive alternatives are very important (how else can we feed ourselves if we don’t know how to grow our own food without corporate chemicals and tractors?) but they can not be our only focus.
 
I would recommend that we, as many have done before, form small affinity groups with friends we really trust to do effective actions. I’d recommend we use NO technology to communicate with each other about this as it is monitored and recorded by states and corporations (this includes not having mobile phones in our pockets while we discuss tactics or do actions as they can be used as tracking, recording and transmitting devices). I’d recommend that we only communicate with those in our affinity group, and no-one else, about the tactics we use. I’d recommend choosing low risk but highly effective targets. I’d recommend that we are highly organised, make detailed plans and are very careful. I’d recommend that we start with small targets so we can build up trust with each other and see how we react in stressful situations. Finally, I’d recommend that we do it from our hearts, that we do it from a deep love for the life around us, that we feel the joy of resisting.
 
We need to do something to stop all of this destruction, exploitation and oppression. I hope that if you are reading this you’ll think seriously about doing something actually effective to try and stop it.

/Jack Daw, COP15, 11 december 2009
 
Further reading:
Endgame – Derrick Jensen
Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching -  Dave Foreman
The Corporation – Joel Bakan
When Corporations Ruled the World – David C. Korten

~ av iamhampus den 11 december 2009.