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Take Back The City - FREE PARTY!
xeirecorex
Submitted by xeirecorex on 1 September, 2005 - 19:03.
Yes, apparently there are plans afoot to storm the castle, burn all the official documents, hoist the red and black and declare libertarian communism. The barbers syndicates are poised and ready to collectivise (unlike the pretentious and largely counter-revolutionary unisex hair stylists who don't believe being a prole is cool anymore) while the free drum and bass collective will treat the citizens of Dublin to repetitive beats.
Organisation and communication is, like during the Easter Rising, a bit on the flawed, confused to non-existant side (some of the 'leadership' of the movement have countermanded the call to action) and the other workers are as yet unaware that they will be caught up in a malestrom of revolutionary potential and the realisation of desire that this event will unlease.
Its all geared towards provoking a clamp down by the maan and allowing the drones to see the true face of 'democracy' in Ireland. 
But then again it might be a bit of fun - y'know sometimes it is fun to get pissed in the afternoon, but these days I really need to make sure I eat and soak up most of the alcohol or I have to go home real early. That and its probably not a good idea to be pissed in a situation where theres even a slight chance that the Garda might start beatin' you about the head with a baton.
Cheers;
oh, and I'd suggest ripping down that ugly fuckin' spike - apart from the fact that it helps folks from outta town find their way back to the train and bus stations. So thats a reprieve for the spike them i suppose, drat.
I had the misfortune of being at RTS that year where I had some wanker with a blue (how zany) goatee beard flick paint on me and told me to "chill out and party" or something, even though I was just standing with my hands in my pockets minding my own business and obviously wasn't some fuckin hippy wierdo that thinks a bit of finger painting is radical. How I managed to contain my rage that day I will never know. Part of me still thinks I should have broken that guys nose, utter cunt, stupid beard twat.
that time you gt paint flicked at you was possibly one of the funniest yet scary things i've ever seen. i really thought you were going to kill him.
I remember Claire went down aswell and i spent most of my time making apoligies to her about the hippies and general shitness of it all.
Yes what a shit day it was, the best part was going to a shopping centre and getting some food.
Ha it would have been funny if I twatted that fella but I'm too nice for that 8) , instead I walked around with speckles of yella paint over my tracky top. Actually fuck it I'm away down to Dublin to find that blue-bearded bastard!
I'm defo not joking, I thought RTS and street parties were the most self-indulgent shite the times I went. I actually don't know why I thought they'd be worthwhile - it's a party, just that, nothing more, and I hate parties! Oddballs like jugglers, finger painting, and the bellend that smokes in a petrol station forecourt with a circle A scrawled on his chest sum it up. I guess I'm just a conformist drone that doesn't get into the spirit of it and open my mind.
Anyway I'll be livin in london from next week!
I do hope they have fun though.
wow, such cynicism.
It's not just going to be a street party, it's going to be more than a street party, it will hopefully even involve local community..
Probably best if you don't go - don't think dublin could handle another scrawling of "belfast black bloc" across an empty building.
xeirecorex wrote:
It's not just going to be a street party, it's going to be more than a street party, it will hopefully even involve local community..
Probably best if you don't go - don't think dublin could handle another scrawling of "belfast black bloc" across an empty building.
Does anyone from Belfast who has expressed cynicism towards street party stunts sound like they would do that?
I'll just make the point that this is going to be very different from RTS, you might even go mad and suggest that this is why its not called RTS... I appreciate the cynicism about RTS past and present, but don't apply it immediately to this event. This is going to be radicalism first, getting drunk in the afternoon second, so don't be totally dismissive of this. Honestly, I think you will be impressed by the event, whether its through reading indymedia.ie after the fun is over or taking part in one of the best actions to happen in Ireland for some time.
If you don't think it's a useful action (which you can't really say at the moment, seeing as you don't know the plan) then say it on the day and discuss your idea of better tactics. At the very least, this will be an attempt to do something totally unprecedented, if it fails then we'll learn from it. But if it works... 
well if i don't know the plan then i can suss that it's more activisty wank, reclaiming public spaces yet you yourselves are just reclaimed, as bourgeois liberalisms proof of it's own strength.
Oh look how lovely, the radicals are out, don't they make the city look nice, bit o character sure.
It's the very nature of the event that is unradical, it's just an invented hobbie horse for the activist/anarcho community, another wee event for the scrap book.
as i said, your criticisms are based on your idea of RTS. This is not RTS. If you want to just stand on the sidelines then go for it, but ignorant bitching accomplishes even less than what you think this will. Read about it on indymedia after the fact (a story should be available quite soon after the event starts), then you might acually have something to base your criticisms upon.
"It's the very nature of the event that is unradical, it's just an invented hobbie horse for the activist/anarcho community, another wee event for the scrap book".
the 'nature' of the event is, in my view, autonomy. I seem to recall that being a fairly crucial part of anarchism. RTS may be 'reclaimed', it is certainly not massively radical. This is why we're changing it. As I said, we don't know if it will work, but experimentation in tactics keeps us unpredictable and dangerous.
Your criticisms put me in mind of a quote from one of the Autonomen in Berlin in the '80s.
" "They (anarchists) are scared of us," is how one autonomous activist put it, "because we do the kinds of things they only talk about." To accusations of being anarchists, autonomists sometimes reply they believe in freedom. "
- from THE SUBVERSION OF POLITICS: EUROPEAN AUTONOMOUS MOVEMENTS AND THE DECOLONIZATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE by George Katsiaficas
There are many ways to challenge our exploitation and work towards the creation of a world based upon the freedom of the individual. Part of our struggle is searching for new tactics. We'll soon see if this tactic is useful, it is my personal belief that it will be.
and how is standing about in the middle of the street creating autonomy?
I'm sorry but that is based ona lifestylist load of wank, which isn't suprsing cos you seem to think the german autonomen are anything more than a bunch of retarded punks who've read too many books (nothing is more dangerous than a punk whose read a book).
do get back to me when you develop the capability to formulate a rational reply without resorting to ignorant insults.
george stapleton assures me that you're more pleasant in the real world, i hope this is true.
it seems that your responses are based upon slurring movements that a) you disagree with and especially b) that you know little about. In between doing these you have failed to address any of my points. I cannot go into a detailed discussion of the ins and outs of the action because it is necessarily secret. In my opinion it will be an actual creation of autonomy (certainly more than sitting in a union meeting) and will be an incredibly empowering action for the organisers and the partcipants. Also, it will engage with how capitalism affects people in their everyday lives and will show a model of what we can do to create the alternative. I see no reason for you to insult 'punks' in general, how many do you know? How does this contribute to the discussion? Is there some sort of collective and compulsory identity that all punks have?
Despite the comments of virtually every other user of this forum I know personally, I attempted to engage with you in rational debate. If you have a criticism of 'Take Back the City', I'll read it after the 24th. until then, your attacks are invalid and uninformed. get over you personal gripes and try to do something constructive (like creating a critique not based on name-calling). It is very easy to insult without engaging a subject and to dismiss with an empty label.
This thread's been a bit harsh on RTS. It had a good run and pushed the limits at the time. Taking over a street in defiance of the cops is positive in my opinion. Especially when nobody else was doing it. And what's wrong with doing that and having a party? Sounds good to me. Successful actions in themselves are good, they give us confidence to build to better things.
After the riot by the Guards in May 2002, we were under pressure when having the next RTS in September 2002. We pulled it off, and it showed anarchists (and friends) could organise under a lot of pressure from the cops (were they going to attack us?) and the media (were they going to provide cover for the cops?). You can mock the RTS of May 2003 with your man on the Top Oil forecourt, but it was a political action which took hundreds of people from a party to shut down a station of a company which is refuelling American planes at Shannon. That in itself is good. If you don't think so, then presumably you oppose the pickets in support of Shell to Sea.
A good few anarchists, including myself to some extent, got involved in practical activity through things like RTS and many of the same people were also getting involved in anti-war activity and later MayDay protests, G8, social space, community radio and many of us showed up to support the Dominick Street residents when they were demonstrating for safety measures on their street. The successful RTSes gave a lot of us confidence that we could organise stuff independently of the Trots (and move out from being their left-wing critics). This manifested itself in 2003 when the libertarian left was capable, for the first time ever, of pushing the agenda on an issue, i.e. anti-war. A lot of things contributed to this, but the coming together of people in grassroots, rts etc was one of them. No single organisation could have done it.
I suppose Revol etc is probably taking the piss to some extent, but there seems to be a perception that all those involved in it are blinded by their own sub-culture, which is just ignorant really. It's simply an inaccurate caricature. My experience is that people were quite aware of its benefits and limitations. It's great to see that folks are thinking about how to improve it and move it on. And great to see that there's a load of 'new' people involved in it.
Anyway it was great to meet and work with everybody in RTS over the years, punks, environmentalists, WSMers, undescribable. Dunno if any of us read Gramsci apart from George (and ff of course!), but things got done nevertheless.
James O'Brien
WSM
Jimmy wrote:
You can mock the RTS of May 2003 with your man on the Top Oil forecourt, but it was a political action which took hundreds of people from a party to shut down a station of a company which is refuelling American planes at Shannon. That in itself is good. If you don't think so, then presumably you oppose the pickets in support of Shell to Sea.
In fairness I think people were laughing at that pic because RTS seems to be the kind of event that attract eejits that scrawl shite on their chests, bang drums,juggle, and smoke cigarettes in petrol station forecourts (hey but it was spontaneous, at least the explosion would have been! 
) and generally make the left look like a bunch of clueless reprobates.
As far as this Take Back the City goes, how do you expect to build support for an event that is "secret"? I'm not even having a go, saying the point is "autonomy" isn't really good enough - I can't really see how you expect to gather support if you don't express at least some aims and let people know what it's actually about - or would the normals be too stupid to possess such info?
"Just wait til after it happens" isn't really convincing.
