Reclaim Power, 16 Dec
Posted by: filastine in General, tags: bella center, Bike Bloc, climate summit, COP15, copenhagen, direct action, Sound SwarmThe last post I made here was in the middle of a police raid of the Bike Bloc’s production site, The Candy Factory, sorry for not updating sooner. It’s been impossible.
Disappointed at not finding some bombs or grappling hooks, the police seized one of the double tall bike chariots, inventing a new danish word that translates as “war bike” to describe it as a weapon. They also took some computers & other items. They didn’t find my laptop because it was hidden under a trick seat (pretty sneaky, no?). Lucky we were behind schedule building the Sound Swarm, or they would have invented a danish word for “terror sound bike” as a pretext for sequestering them.
It was late in the evening when they let us re-enter. We went into the overdrive to get our shit done, stumbling around until four in the morning- cutting, wiring, welding in that totally inefficient way that you work when exhausted. Then it was time to pull my computer out of it’s hiding place and deal with the audio rendering & loading the MP3 players, this took until 7:30am, complicated by the constant power failures that would plunge the buildings into darkness.
It was more than a bit creepy being alone editing audio in an big building in total darkness, bundled up in a a puffy survival suit, my exhales creating great plumes of fog, constantly removing the headphones and looking out the windows to make the police weren’t about to burst in again. At 8am I left for our rendezvous in full white-out blizzard conditions.
Then began one of the hardest feats of endurance I’ve personally experienced. Pulling a heavy steel trailer of loudspeakers across Copenhagen, on a crappy discarded 1-speed bike, after a night without sleep, with neither breakfast nor dinner the night before, in a motherfucking blizzard, while we were stopped multiple times by van-loads of riot police to be searched and harassed en route. It was equal parts torture and bliss, as some combination of the snowstorm, the paranoia, physical exertion, and sleeplessness brought on a personal serenity I’ve rarely known.
Many things happened this day, I’ll describe just one. Faced with no other option to arrive at the site of the COP15 (official name of the Climate Summit), the Sound Swarm turned our speakers up to 11 and invaded a highway in a kamikaze mission directly towards our goal. The traffic came to an abrupt snarl behind us and a pair of motorcycle cops came out of nowhere to make a thin blockade. The gap between the concrete divider and the motorcycle was too small, my sound trailer was ripped off and capsized into the roadway.
We were barely free of this first blockade when some riot vans drove at us head-on, disgorging police. It was all slow motion, a lot like being in a car accident. It was also comedic, we were the protagonists of one of those early video games where the player must navigate through an obstacle course filled with zombies. but instead of an 8-bit theme song, we had distorted megaphones. I collided with one of the zombies, uh, I mean police, and was tackled to the ground. Only 2 lives left! and somehow we did get away.
From my narrow perspective the week felt like a fusion of Burning Man, the iditarod (or at least the Idiotarad), and the Seattle WTO. I’ve learned some personal lessons on this trip as well. First: duct tape doesn’t function below freezing, nor do cheap MP3 players, nor do my fingers. Second: never, never, never trust a COP.
In Copenhagen we witnessed the world’s biggest ever collective failure, a failure that demonstrated the obsolescence of the nation-state and our precious economic systems. We also witnessed the birth of a new movement. I went to Copenhagen to do whatever I am physically capable to change the outcomes of this summit, so did about a hundred thousand other people. We were pissed off before the Summit. Now we are livid.
This is the uber-issue, the biggest problem that humanity has ever confronted, it’s bigger than nations, bigger than wars, bigger than AIDS, bigger than the black plague, bigger than capitalism vs socialism, and definitely bigger than those worthless corporations that were all “too big to fail.” Either we keep this planet inhabitable, or is it game over for us & what’s left of earth’s biodiversity. Skeptical? Have a look at some climate models
What does it take to change the way humanity wrecks this planet? Everything. There should be no technique in the toolbox that is off-limits: hunger strikes, green investing, kidnapping, lifestyle changes, petitions, education, art & media, insurrection. If you’ve got a skill than bring it.
We’ve also got to recognize that the burden of responsibility falls on us, that small fraction of the earth’s population that has a plenty to eat, is literate, has a computer, some free time, and some minimum of civil rights. The other 90% are too busy trying to survive. Bad news reader, if you are looking at this or any other blog you are probably disqualified from inaction.
foto: Sound Swarm hatching a plot while hiding in some bushes
December 20th, 2009 at 15:08 pm - Edit
SALVE GREYGORIUS!
Very happy that Filistine/the Soundsystem of Nessesary Action and Resistence (SNAR?) made it through the blizzards of the north, mostly succeding in creating furious sounds and fighting off the stormtroupers, thus creating a very special appropriate vision of a solstice scene fit for a greeting card to round off the noughties.
To be brought back from COP 15 (15??? There must at least have been 1500 batonhappy cops in “Clubbinghagen”!) by all: Very, very cold bums, bruises, dogbites and one very hot planet!
Remember: THERE IS NO PLANET B!
VALE
December 28th, 2009 at 1:34 am - Edit
How are you? I’m in post-action hangover mode too and catching up on all the news is really depressing. But I do still feel a high from all the effort and improvised cooperation that went into all that action. I think it’s really important that we cling to this indignant exhilaration and keep putting it to use. Why not have a sound swarm in the middle of a traffic jam, or during the Xmas shopping madness?
Can you believe we actually built those sound swarm bikes, despite the raid and subsequent power shortages, despite the sleep deprivation, wet socks, freezing temperatures and paranoia? I bet even a tear gas canister fired into the Candy Factory wouldn’t have fazed us. There’s something so poetic about that post-raid evening of furious workshop activity: using power tools past midnight, stumbling around looking for unlikely bike pieces and welding and duck taping into the wee hours of the morning, fueled by chocolate, scotch, and a defiant race against time, cops, and the looming sense that whatever we were trying to give birth to was likely to be stillborn, if it wasn’t aborted outright. Nights like that one almost give me more hope in humanity’s potential to muster all its ingenuity, endurance and commitment to avert global warming than the next day’s actions.
The COP 15 talks were a failure, unsurprisingly, and we never managed to breach the fence or enter the Bella centre. But what are the chances that neither those broken bikes we had selected, fixed and mounted with megaphones the previous day, nor the affinity group members hastily assembled hours before the action, would break down or fail us? It shouldn’t be necessary to go to a weeklong carnival of protests in Copenhagen to keep the pressure on and practice direct democracy. Then again, a swarm of bicyclers usurping the highway bus lane, blasting music and ramming through two police lines without being arrested and detained could probably only have happened at that particular time and place. So Cheers to the grime, bone-cold, fumes, fatigue and police BOLLOCKS (and that sticker); they have crystallized in my memory and imagination as something beautiful and hopeful.