Shutting Down the Streets: Political Violence and Social Control in the Global Era

6 Antirepression: Resisting the Social Control of Dissent

123   6 Antirepression Resisting the Social Control of Dissent San Francisco police have repeatedly frustrated protesters by using spatial control tactics, including holding pens, and mass arrests. Preparing another antiwar protest in 2008, rather than announcing a single location or march route, protest organizers released a large list of potential targets for protest. Dissenters subscribed to a Twitter.com feed to receive text messages identifying targets and gathering times, some simultaneous. Meanwhile, activist DJs on a pirate radio station provided information about police massing and action and relayed reports from protesters in the streets. Why did activists feel that such an elaborate infrastructure was necessary to express their dissent? Clearly, they wanted to escape spatial channeling, but why is this so important? We believe that activist responses to social control contain profound insights into its meaning and significance. This chapter describes antirepression , the tactics activists use to protect themselves from the social control of dissent. We have organized our analysis of antirepression work to match our three approaches to social control, by looking at space, political economy, and violence. Resisting Spatial Control We have identified five antirepression tactics that resist spatial control: confronting the zones with blockades or invasions, marching disobediently , organizing in decentralized affinity groups, disturbing police control through observation, and distributing spatially aggregated information about the protest territory. 124  Antirepression Breaching the Zones, Blockading Back Protesters fight back against spatial control with their own spatial tactics. The fundamental spatial project of summits is to exclude all but elites from the conversation and decision making about the global economy. Since this exclusion is not only symbolic of the issue but is the actual issue, it can be challenged in the most direct manner by attempting to get into the meeting site, showing the world just how difficult it is to participate by generating mass-media images of police keeping people out. In the Tute Bianche tactic, a group stays close together while wearing personal body armor made of household products such as cardboard, foam, rubber, and empty plastic water bottles.1 Over the armor, many dissenters wear white painter’s coveralls and life preservers, resulting in a comic, bulky look. They carry collective shielding such as massive rafts made of balloons, old inner tubes, or plexiglass. Invoking a medieval army (in a humorous way), they ponderously approach the police lines, stop and announce their intention as citizens to pass “with arms up” peacefully through the police lines to attend the meetings. Then they push slowly against the police, producing comic mayhem. This way, they protect their bodies against police violence and also stage theatrical (and often successful ) attempts to push through police lines while getting clubbed. After several spectacular interventions using this tactic in Italy (followed by its near-total disappearance after the clashes at Genoa 2001 G8), protesters applied this tactic in various other countries and at many other summits, mainly in Europe.2 Protesters also organize to refuse the exclusion more assertively. There are two striking examples. At Québec City 2001 FTAA, a large march arrived (after a very long walk) at the fence, promptly breached it, and walked in to the Red Zone. Unfortunately, most marchers were not expecting or prepared for this turn of events and didn’t seize the opportunity , so the few who did were shortly rebuffed by police. At Cancún 2003 WTO, where protesters (organized by the very well-prepared South Korean delegation) collectively tugged down the fence with big ropes, protesters did not pass the fence. They stayed where they were and left the torn-down fence as a message. Protesters at Seattle 1999 WTO used a different spatial and symbolic strategy: if ordinary people wouldn’t be allowed to enter the meetings, then they proposed that no one should be able to go in. Protesters blockaded the flow of delegates into the meeting by blocking intersections, Antirepression  125 using a variety of creative methods. Since the successful blockades in Seattle, similar (and more or less successful) attempts have been staged at all subsequent summit protests. When global summitry shifted to remote rural venues, protesters applied more decentralized blockades, such as at Évian 2003 G8 and Heiligendamm 2007 G8. Marching Tactics and Organizing Crowds Various marching tactics are used to evade spatial control during street actions. In Europe, linking arms is a frequently used tactic for protecting the space of a...