Using the media?
It is quite amazing that after many months of recorded media hysteria or liberal wishy-washyness about the G8 meeting and protests, finally an article depicting the radical side of the movement has broken into the mainstream press. Kay Summer and Adam Jones (both involved in Dissent!) in their comment piece “The first embedded protest “, in the Guardian, explain that the Live 8 “protest” concerts are to protest what embeded journalism is to proper journalism — a parody that serves only the status quo.
Blair and Brown do not want a repeat of Seattle, or Genoa, or any of the other summits that have been accompanied by mass acts of disobedience. They want a stage-managed, benign spectacle, and so they play along with Live 8 and Make Poverty History, creating the world’s first “embedded” mass protest.
This article opens two questions, one of political substance and one about political tactics. The question of substance is to what extent something that looks like protest is by itself a protest. Or in other words what is the substance, the beating heart of protest — beyond the mere actions that protesters perform. This debate is only a slight generalisation, of the “I cannot see the point of marching from A to B type protests” discussion, repeated many times in the anti-war movement.
I would attempt to answer this question: it is a question of who is in control. If at any point an organisation’s hierachy or the state itself is in control of the protest then the protest has effectivelly been already neutralised. If on the other hand decision making structures have been set-up for protester themselves to decide all aspects of the protest it has some liberatory potential. Of course this devialtion is exactly what the state fears, and for this reason, in the UK, it stamps out even minor digressions (i.e. playing Samba in a street without permission) to regain control. Not by coincidance Sarah Young has already spoken about this “control doctrine”, in a different context:
Whenever our protest deviates from what the state has decreed as being acceptable (i.e. writing to MPs or marching from A to B), we inevitably come into contact with the forces of the state.
The second issue concerns the difficult relation of the protest movement with the media. So far we have reclaimed the media, mainly for communication inside our movement. We have also abused the media, by learning how to run stories that are often a bit exagerated or doctored for the audiance. The Guardian article though shows that there might be a possibility to put messages accross in their pure form, without ‘toning down’. Still just one example in 6 months of crap journalism…
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It was good to see that in the paper yesterday. ‘Embedded protest’ is a phrase worth trying to get into people’s heads, I think.
Comment by Tim @ 6/19/2005 11:37 pm
Hi there, M-Phatic.
“Of course this devialtion is exactly what the state fears, and for this reason, in the UK, it stamps out even minor digressions (i.e. playing Samba in a street without permission) to regain control.”
I think it’s more that playing samba in the street is a dreadful bore - but we’ll agree to disagree.
Forgive me, but your post sounds a bit like someone moaning that their band has sold out - they were much better when no one liked them. You seem to be more bothered about feeling like an outlaw than alleviating poverty.
But anyway… Keep up the good work!
Comment by Alistair @ 6/20/2005 8:14 am
Hi Alistair,
I agree on the Samba — I much prefered the rave / goa trance music days, but the cops kept nicking our sound systems :-)
I wish a million people march could make poverty history, or a two million march could stop a war — I wish it so much that I went there just in case it works. It never does by itself though…
So what I am trying to understand is: why?
Comment by manos @ 6/20/2005 12:45 pm
In case there was any doubt about the milquetoast liberalism of geldof and his live 8 protest party, this article on the CBC Arts webpage pretty much annihilates it.
Praising Bush? What has protest come to?
Comment by elise @ 6/21/2005 3:34 am
and also, 6/21/2005 9:24 am
Criticising Bush *no matter what he does*. Nice one.
Comment by Alistair @ 6/21/2005 9:54 am
the link didn’t seem to work. here is it is
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/06/10/live8.albarn/
Comment by elise again @ 6/21/2005 10:39 pm
I’d agree, the state’s will is to divide the protest into good protesters vs. bad protesters to neutralize it. When Clinton cinically invited protest in Seattle he had no idea what he was in for. Since then, the state has been more prepared to handle protest mobilizations in the US. The best example of this being the outright beatings and shootings(rubber bullets) of the bad protesters in miami, while the good protesters(AFL-CIO) get to have a march, since their demands don’t really threaten any economic or state institution and the workers are internally controlled by the collaborationist union.
Comment by dirge @ 7/10/2005 8:43 pm