First! Bumper Rabid Navel Gazing Issue So Another Issue of Do Or Die Is Out

gart!} cr>Y bo d y plRG COY SPIRIT we ARe bowLmq out of Tbe CAqes ini Ttie a r c d s op eTei^Kinv ct>y s o u l it RAês ct>y 1?cart is cryimq, ct>y so u l is on fme rve uKiLeAslêO coy OeoôMS a m D a r c p g D ct>y O esm e — Casey Neill Voices From Earth First! Bumper Rabid Navel Gazing issue So another issue of Do or Die is out. You're probably as surprised as we are; it's been a year and a half. This is largely because DoP is written, produced and funded by activists who are more likely to be found occupying someone elses's office, than in their own doing Do or Die. It's also because people are atrocious at respecting deadlines- We got an article from a Catholic priest hased in the Phillipines a month alter requesting it. but had to wait six months to get an article about Newbury. Sort it out. This lime the deadline is for real. This issue is a bit of a departure for us. We have concentrated less on reporting action after action, more on analysing the strengths anti weaknesses of our movement. As one contributor puls il: "From the outside, the direci action movement appears to be stronger than ever. From the inside the picture is quite different". We need to talk about whai we are try ing to achieve, anti the strategy we intern) to use to get there. There is a dan ger that if we do not do this then we will be crushed by slate violence. Or worse, we could become an accept able part of the political environment—strange and a bit annoying yes. bul essentially irrelevant. The Socialist Workers' Party in trees. We've got loads of stuff from other countries because wre can learn a lot from them. For instance while British activists have only just begun sabotaging genetic fields. Germans have been doing it for years. By communicat ing with activists in other countries we can realise the strengths and weaknesses of our own tactics and ideas Do or Die: “missing deadlines and suicide attempts since 1992" A Bureaucrat Tendency EF! production Contributing Groups Orders and Submissions Ecodefense Russia. EF! Finland. DELTA. Send your articles, rants, artwork, photos, Avon Gorge EE! Melbourne FOE! Cascadia poems, letters, international news, reviews and Forest Defenders. PIANO (Prague), Green turbid pseudo-academic tracts (whoops, I for Partisans (Poland). The Anarchist Teapot, got—we take care of them...) to: Freiburg tree Camp. Naturfreundejugend, l)o or DTP collective, d o South Downs EF! Groen Front! (Holland), South Downs EF! Prior House , 6 Tilbury Place EPIC/Headwaters EE! Big Mountains Brighton. BN2 2GY EFI(Vancouver), Primitivist Network. Road Although not essential, we would prefer articles Alert! Warwick EF! East Devon EF! as text files on disk (Mac or PC) cos we’re good Umweltprojektw'erkstatt. SHAG! Reclaim the little primitivists. All hatemail gratefully Valleys! Manchester EF! Reclaim the streets, received. and various other undesirables. Thanks to the Subs £7 eheque/PO (4 issues), normal si/e is countless individuals we can’t name. And to about half the size of (his issue. For hulk orders the capitalist © freaks, fuck you. ha ha ha! contact SDEF! International rate: US$5 per issue, Please send extra donations to enable us to distribute free copies to prisoners, groups and random Naggers. NEXT ISSUE DEADLINE November 5th 1997 Make our day —submit late! Reclaim The Streets! " We are not going to demand anything. We are not going to ask for anything. We are going to take. We are going to occupy. ” : , • _ -• ■ ' " .V \ ." ' ~ I- The direct action group Reclaim the Streets (RTS) has developed widespread recognition over the last few years. From road blockades to street parties, from strikes on oil corporations to organis ing alongside striking workers, its actions and ideas are attracting more and more people and inter national attention. Yet the apparent sudden emergence of this group, its penetration of popular alternative culture and its underlying philosophy have rarely been discussed. The Evolution of RTS RTS was originally formed in London in Autumn Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. Overnight civil 1991, around the dawn of the anti-roads movement. protesting became a criminal act, but what the govern With the battle for Twyford Down rumbling along in ment hadn't counted on was how this piece of legisla the background. a small group of individuals got tion would unite and motivate the very groups it was together to take direct action against the motor car. In aimed iit repressing. The fighi of the anti-road activists their own words they were campaigning: became synonymous with that of travellers, squatters “FOR walking cycling anil cheap, or free, public and hunt saboteurs. In particular, the suddenly politi transport, and AGAINST cars, roads and the system cised rave scene became a communal social focus for that pushes them. many people. Their work was small-scale but effective and even The M11 Link Road campaign culminated in the back then it had elements of the cheeky, surprise tactics symbolic and dramatic battle of Claremont Road. which have moulded RTS s more recent activities. Eventually, and with the repetitive beats of’ The There was the trashed car on Park Lane symbolising Prodigy in the background, police and security over the arrival of Car-mageddon. DIY cycle lanes painted powered the barricades, lock-ons and the scaffold overnight on London streets, disruption of the 1993 tower, but the war was only just beginning. The period Earls Court Motor Show and subvertising aciions on of the Mil Campaign had linked together new politi car adverts around the city. However the onset of the cal and social alliances and in the midst of the cam No Mil Link Road Campaign presented the group paign's frenzied activities strong friendships had been with a specific local focus, and RTS was absorbed tem formed, W'hen Claremont Road was lost, this collective porarily into the No M 1) campaign in East London* looked for new sources of expression and Reclaim the This period of the No M11 Campaign was significant Streets was reformed in February 1995. for a number of reasons. Whilst Twyford Dowrn was The years that followed saw the momentum of RTS predominantly an ecologies] campaign-defending a flourish. Street Panics I and li were held in rapid suc ■natural' area-the urban setting of the resistance to the cession in the summer of 1995 and there were various Ml 1 construction embodied wider social and political actions against the likes of Shell, the Nigerian issues. Beyond the anti-road and ecological arguments, Embassy and the 1995 Motor Show, More recently, in a whole urban community faced the destruction of its July 1996 there was the massive success of the M4I social environment with loss of homes, degradation to Street Puny, where for nine hours 8.000 people took its quality of life and community fragmentation. control of the M41 motorway in West London anil par- Beyond these political and social considerations, the tied and enjoyed themselves, whilst some dug up the Mil developed the direct action skills of those tarmac with jack-hammets and in its place planted involved. Phone trees were established, lots of people trees that had been rescued from the construction path were involved in site invasions, crowds of activists had of the M IL to be manoeuvred cunningly to outwit police. The pro At a base level the focus of RTS has remained anti- testers also gained experience of dealing with associat car but this has been increasingly symbolic, noi specif ed tasks such as publicity, the media and fund-raising. ic. RTS aimed initially to move debate beyond the anti Then in late 1994 a political hand-grenade was roads struggle, to highlight the social, as well as the thrown into the arena of the Mil campaign: the ecological, costs of the car system. I Do or Die-Voices from Earth First! No.6 Saturday 13 July 1996 M41 Motorway “The cars that fill the streets have narrowed the customers at out-of-town supcrmarkets-it is all about pavements.. IIff pedestrians ... want to look at each increasing "consumption", because that is an indicator other, they see cars in the background, if they want to of “economic growth”. The greedy, short-term look at the building across the street they see cars in exploitation of dwindling resources regardless of the the foivground: there isn't a single angle o f view fm m immediate or long-term costs. Therefore RTS’s attack which cars will not be visible, from the back, in front, on cars cannot be detached from a wider attack on cap on both sides. Their omnipresent noise corrodes every italism itself. moment o f contemplation like acid. "Our streets are as full o f capitalism as o f cars and Cars dominate our citics. polluting, congesting and the pollution o f capitalism is much more insidious. ”3 dividing communities. They have isolated people from More importantly. RTS is about encouraging more one another, and our streets have become mere con people to take part in direct action. Everyone knows duits for motor vehicles to hurtle through, oblivious of the destruction which roads and cars are causing, yet the neighbourhoods they are disrupting. Cars have cre the politicians still take no notice. Hardly surprising- ated social voids: allowing people to move further and they only care about staying in power and maintaining further away from their homes, dispersing and frag their ‘authority’ over the majority of people.

Load more