Jack Daw’s COP15: Reclaiming Power? Report of the 16th December climate justice protests

After writing such a cynical post about the ‘Don’t Buy the Lie’ anti-corporate protests on the 11th December I thought I’d give protests one more try at COP-15. I decided to go to the ‘Reclaim Power – pushing for climate justice’ protest as this is what everything was supposed to building up to. I went to action training and some planning meetings for the protest beforehand and the energy at the these meet-ups was ecstatic. We were cheering and howling and full of energy. We were determined to get in to the Bella center and have our voices heard.

The police had been successful at splitting and disbanding protests all week and we had many ideas of how to avoid the police. The plan to split up the police was for there to be several different blocks all going to the Bella Center at the same time where the politicians were meeting. The plan was for people to get over the fences and into the Bella Center grounds to hold ‘peoples’ assemblies’ with delegates and NGOs who would walk out of the Center. The plan was to show those inside that we can reclaim the power and make decisions in a non-hierarchical and horizontal way.

There was the blue block, a mass legal protest, going from Tarnby station to the Bella Center and would try to get into the centre. There was the green block, which was going to have an ‘illegal’ protest by using the ‘five fingers tactic’ which came out of the German anti-nuclear transport movement and was successively used at the 2007 G8 summit in Germany, to get to the Center from the south and climb the fences. Watch a video here. There was the bike block which would cycle round and disrupt police activity. There was an autonomous block which would do autonomous actions in the area. There was a yellow block of NGOs who had been refused entry into the protest. And there was a block involved with organising the peoples’ assemblies, an attempt to discuss and make decisions together in a non-hierarchical and horizontal way.

I went with the blue block and saw many of us being arrested, beaten by the police and sprayed in the eyes with pepper spray. We made it to the Bella Center, but after we tried to push through the police lines and cross a canal at the center with an inflatable bridge, the police retaliated with yet more violence and arrests. We failed to get in and some of us held peoples’ assemblies outside the center in the road.

The bike block was supposed to be a big new activist tool for summit protests but many of the bikes to be used for the protest were seized the night before by the police at the Candy Factory (Bolsjefabrikken). Some of us blockaded and threw our bikes in front of police vans, but we were moved on within a few minutes. Some of us were arrested. We cycled around, doing what we could.

Many of the Green block were arrested very quickly. The police were very effective in stopping the block. It seems like the ‘five fingers tactic’ is more effective when there is more of us and we are in the countryside, as for the G8 protests in Germany, and we have more room to spread out instead of being trapped in by buildings either side of us.

A few hundred NGOs and delegates walked out of the Bella Center to join the protests but were told that if they left the fence they would become part of the protest. They were then held inside the center by the police for “their own protection.” Meanwhile some NGOs held a sit-in inside the Center.

Have a look at this timeline for more details from the day.

I came away from the day feeling even more disillusioned with protests as a form of effective political activity. The corporations continue profit maximizing at whatever cost to the planet. States continue being in bed with the corporations and depending on fossil fuels. We didn’t even achieve the limited aims of the protest to get in to the Bella Center grounds and hold peoples’ assemblies inside with delegates and NGOs inside. With such power and technology, the police easily prevented us from getting in.

I end up asking myself: What is the aim of this protest? If it is to do something serious and effective to try to prevent climate chaos and drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, did our protest really do anything? Has it stopped any corporations from being so destructive? Has it stopped states from being in power and in bed with corporations?

I even ended up feeling that protests encourage some kind of perverse martyrdom. For many of us it seems that if we get arrested or gassed we have achieved something. When I told one guy that I didn’t get arrested he seemed disappointed that I “hadn’t done my best.” Getting gassed or arrested supposedly shows that we stood up symbolically to the police and those in power and that we don’t agree with what they’re doing. Many of us tell each other our battle stories after the protest and console each other with words like: “I did everything I could do today” and “You did a good thing by going to the protest.”

But what did we really achieve by doing this protest or getting arrested? It feels like many of us are confusing our aims and our tactics. We seem to congratulate ourselves on doing tactics which don’t achieve our aims – such as stopping out of control climate change or becoming independent of fossil fuels. This makes me wonder if many of us going on these protests are just here to make ourselves feel better, or to feel like we’re doing something, but not actually doing anything effective. Why should we get ourselves arrested if we don’t believe that it will really achieve anything? Why do we throw ourselves into the arms of the police instead of doing more effective political actions where the police are not?

Our tactics don’t seem to correspond to the drastic situation that we are in. Corporations and governments are polluting the soil, water and air. They are killing countless species. They are causing a climate change which, if many scientists are right, could cause absolute chaos and is already killing many of us around the world. We are facing resource shortages and climate changes which could kill millions, maybe even billions, of us if we are not prepared enough. There is a long list of our destructive behaviour. Maybe our tactics are not effective, as I wrote in my last post, because we don’t yet feel the effects of this destruction ourselves? Or because we are too rich and comfortable in our lives? Or maybe we keep going back to the same ineffective protest tactics because we don’t know how – or are too scared – to do anything different?

The thing is that those in power don’t feel threatened enough by our actions. Politicians and corporations are used to protests, often even numbed to them. They can easily ignore them. Just think about the effect of the 1 million of us protesting against the Iraq war in London – around 1.35 million dead and rising.

Now, it is important for me to say that not all protests are ineffective. I remember one friend telling me of a protest in Switzerland which helped distract the police while others broke some ‘illegal’ immigrants out of prison. I also know that we did achieve some things at the Reclaim Power protests:

- We defied the police and states in a symbolic, but not effective, way. We showed them that we do not believe – or agree with – what they are doing.
- We helped shift the way COP-15 is debated and presented in the media. We opened up space for more critical ideas to be discussed and disseminated and we showed that many of us are not with the governments. This might affect how states behave if they feel enough pressure.
- We helped introduce new activists into the scene. We showed new people many protest tactics and how to work together in (ineffective and limited) political action.
- We met many people and talked and thought though many political issues and tactics. We made new political contacts.
- We stopped some economic activity in the areas we were protesting (although many of us were buying a lot of food around the protest sites)
- Many of us developed less fear of the police and being arrested.
- We saw and experienced how it really is. We saw how state power really works in Denmark. We learnt how effective the police are at splitting and disbanding protests. We learnt just how repressive Danish laws are. We know we live in totalitarian times when the police can arrest and hold us for 12 hours for doing nothing or for just having a scarf in the vicinity of a protest which might be used to mask ourselves. At least they’re not killing us, as they have done at previous summits, but many of us have been really badly beaten for doing very little. The police have broken many of our bones and split many of our heads.
- We experimented with new tactics of how to resist those in power.

However, it is very important that we are honest with ourselves about whether our activities were effective or not in achieving our real aims, rather than deluding ourselves with activist propaganda or revolutionary spin. The least we can do is be honest with ourselves. Most protests are ineffective at achieving their aims. This protest was ineffective at achieving its aims.

For me, this is the last protest I go on unless there is some kind of revolution or I believe that it will be effective at achieving something that really changes things. Although the police were effective in disbanding and suppressing this protest, many of us have learnt what does and doesn’t work and will hopefully use more effective tactics in the future. It is important that we don’t just go away disillusioned with protests but focus on what tactics are actually effective and put our energies into them. As I saw on one wall in Copenhagen, we need to fight the system, not the police.

/Jack Daw, COP15, 17 december 2009

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