A recently made acquaintance of mine called round my flat yesterday on his way home from a Reclaim the Streets meeting, and gave me and my flatmates what might be called an 'insider's view' of what the activist community is planning for this year. And yes, there did seem to be a lot of infighting between the Judean Peoples' Front and the Peoples' Front of Judea.
Anyway, Globalise Resistance are marching from (I think) Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square with the Unions. This is an annual, officially approved demonstration. The Mayfair (Mayfair being defined as the area bordered by Oxford St to the north, Piccadilly to the south, Regent Street to the east and Park Lane to the west)protests/actions or whatever you call'em are basically being left to individuals and groups to organise whatever happenings they may decide on. There are four main suggested activities; carnival-type stuff, a Critical Mass blocking-the-roads-with-bikes thing, a resurrection of an historical English game in which the inhabitants of a town carried a ball from one end to the other (basically turn up with a large spherical object), and the 'wake for capitalism', which involves dressing in funeral/day of the dead type costumes.
The last of these is the one that interests me most; I really like the idea of running around in a big cape and a skeleton mask. Anyway, the fact that there's no specific meeting place means that the day would lend itself very well to the kind of thing Lyra's talking about (completely agree with you about last year, btw). It also strikes me that a meet would be needed beforehand, the board not being the best place to discuss specifics. |
