Dr D, this wheatpasting vandal I know, rings up. “You still doing your telly things?”

Yes.

“What you doin tonight?”

Erm…. I scrabbled around for a camera.

“Wanna meet me at six or seven around [redacted]?”

So after I convinced Emily James to come out shooting with me, we met D on Curtain Road in East London. Then we made this film:

He gave a rousing sermon livelinked with our friends in New York City.

We went off to an independent coffee place called Get Coffee on Fleet Street [run by a former Starbucks employee] and recorded an interview which has since been lost to the ether of technology…. He agreed to do it again via telephone when he got back to Brooklyn. And this is our conversation for my show, The Left Bank Show, on Resonance FM 104.4.

Left Bank Show 18.11.2011 [Reverend Billy] by Resonance FM

A series of Home Office proposals could ban protests during the London 2012 Olympic games. In reaction to the longevity and scale of recent Occupy London takeovers of public and private space at St Paul’s Cathedral, Finsbury Square and a former UBS bank, ministers are reported to be drafting legislation loosely based on part 3 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 – paying particular note to restricting tents and “sleeping equipment” for up to 90 days around exclusion zones. Police and “authorised officers” will be allowed to disperse protests quickly. Presumably with “reasonable force”.

Don’t be too shocked or too quick to compare this to Beijing 2008. Then, the Beijing Organising Committee banned all foreign visitors and non-Beijing-resident Chinese from attending, watching or applying for the right to demonstrate in authorised protest zones. Athens had protest zones in 2004. So did the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002.

The reasoning behind these restrictions is always to “preserve the festivity” of the Olympic experience. And security. Always security. In London’s case, security means Britain apparently waives its own rights and customs to allow America to oversee its own security operations, laying on 21,000 private security contractors and enforcing the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006.

That allows police and “enforcement officers” the right of entry to private buildings suspected of contravening legislation on Olympic advertising. This includes: “advertising of a non-commercial nature” and “announcements or notices of any kind” paying particular attention to “the distribution or provision of documents or articles, the display or projection of words, images, lights or sounds, and things done with or in relation to material which has or may have purposes or uses other than as an advertisement”. In other words, protest.

Artist Peter Kennard, noted for overtly political art in a public context says: “The Secretary of State has regulations banning ‘advertising in the vicinity of the Olympics’. How big is a vicinity? Words fail me and because I make public art in the ‘vicinity’ of the Olympics it might be safer for me if both words and images continue to fail me until after the Olympics”.

A London swamped with police, security officers and spy drones might just dampen all the fun. Providing you sing along with the hymn sheet laid on by the Games’ sponsors and ignore the £9.3 billion price tag, you’ll be fine. But if you argue that a corporate agenda and exploitation is being sold under the auspices of uniting the world under sport and “generating jobs”, you might be in trouble.

The proposed legislation and the laws already in place only serve to secure the profits made by those with heavy financial stakes in the Olympic Games. These corporations read like an anti-capitalist wet dream: McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Dow, G4S, BP…. They may bring jobs to an area, but totally undermine the community-building that encourages grass roots businesses and the local relationships and interactions that stem from that.

It’s interesting to note that the Home Office sees protest as a threat. They’re not only worried about homegrown “domestic extremists” with a grudge against capitalism but international groups seeking to use the Olympics as a platform to air their grievances about authoritarian regimes around the world. Syria, China and Bahrain spring quickly to mind. So instead of giving an example of a functioning democracy where everyone gets a voice and can practise free speech, Britain hides dissent in an attic like it’s an invalid child.

The idea that ministers are considering bans on protest off the back of a global Occupy movement further legitimises the idea that these restrictions are directed at those who oppose one of the greatest and most murderous regimes of the world…capitalism.

So here we go. I hate the Olympics. Arrest me.

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This article was first published in the Index on Censorship. Reprinted with permission from the author [ie., me].

“Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police.”

That was Sunday. The swell of internet-driven murmuring rage brought Project Griffin’s 33-word definition of anarchism and its appeal to dob in your Chomsky-reading neighbours to front page news on the Guardian.

Twitter tweeps retweeted shortened URLs prefixed with disbelief and Facebook folk guffawed about handing themselves in to Belgravia police station. Here was a document from the Metropolitan Police that, in one dinky box decorated with clip art, pushed McCarthyism to the local businesses and public institutions the newsletter went out to. The reds under your bed were back. But this time they wanted a smaller state. No state. A bigger society. A Big Societ…oh. Erm.

Queue the crash of arguments pointing out that the likes of Alan Greenspan, the American Tea Party and David Cameron are proponents of smaller states and stateless societies. Running alongside that is the Orwellian scenario of thought crime. Because you are an anarchist, you should be reported as dangerous. You are here being mentioned alongside Anders Breivik –– the bad man who killed all those people in Norway. You are here mentioned alongside terrorism. It says so. Right here.

Within 24 hours, police issued a climbdown blaming bad wording. “The Metropolitan Police service does not seek to stigmatise those people with legitimate political views. People purporting to be anarchists have caused criminal damage this year to business premises, and government buildings in Westminster. The message we were trying to convey was to gather information on criminal acts to help us prevent crime and bring offenders to justice.”

Here was a document that seemed to have copied and pasted its definition of anarchism from the first line of Wikipedia. Here was a document that, on the same page, asked people to report all sightings of a yellow dot topped with Arabic script as an Al-Qaeda symbol and misspelled “beach volleyball”. Like a badly designed school handout that’s gone a bit wild with a text box, it would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so serious.

Okay. It’s still laughable. But the subtext of their climbdown isn’t. It’s nose-on-face clear that policing priorities lie in the protection of commercial interests and business. Project Griffin is a “product” for raising “awareness of crime and terrorism issues within the business community”.

Opening a document by declaring the UK’s threat level from international terrorism as “substantial” in bold red letters and closing it with the mantra “if you suspect it, report it” in a bright red box cements paranoia. What the Counter Terrorist Focus Desk has done is equate anarchism with terrorism –– a calculation that criminalises a philosophy. By doing that, they have engendered fear. And to do that is an act of terrorism.

As threatening as the word seems, anarchy is rooted in unwavering optimism because it trusts individuals to come up with ethics and freedoms collectively. At the heart of the myriad of anarchist philosophies is a fundamental belief in fairness.

What Project Griffin has taught the wider public is that there is a section of the establishment with dangerously simplistic views of politics. It is the section concerned with running around the yard like a dog barking at anything that moves in the name of vigilance.

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This article was first published on the Index on Censorship, 02 August 2011

We never got kettled. Cramming thousands of kids on the streets of London could only lead to burning bus shelters and bad PR. Somebody in the polices thought that would be a stupid thing to do. Mebbe.

But Jonnie and I became companjeros. My camera and I were invited along to various guerilla stunts. This gig in Soho Square happened during the largest trade union march in recent memory.

Forgive the shaky cam action. This is a rough cut meant to form part of a larger piece of that event.

The day after any major demonstration always brings out the hungover “mostly peaceful, shame about the violent minority” mantra from the meeja-darling bloc. Whenever there’s an alternative popular movement that grips the national imagination, left-ish commentators and journalists fight whitened tooth and manicured nail for public alliance to this season’s worthy cause of resistance. Yet, when things become ever so spiky or unsightly, they are also the first to publicly sever connection with people who choose to vent their anger in more visceral ways.

The sight of burning barricades on the streets of London is too much for the press to resist and one of the biggest demonstrations since the Iraq war protest turns into riot porn for the newspaper columns and airwaves.

Many groups who organised actions at the March for the Alternative never take direct action beyond staging peaceful sit-ins. They challenge the norms of the A-to-B protest but never damage anything and always clean up after themselves.

Most of those who marched would never take their anger out on inanimate objects. Violence is an act of the few with an effect on the many. Regardless of where you stand on the “smash stuff up” divide, the spectacle is part of the whole. If anybody “ruined things for everybody”, it was the police with their wholesale arrests and wanton baton action.

Something out of the ordinary is happening – parts of Britain aren’t bothering to be so polite anymore. Sometimes, to make your voice heard, you have to speak softly and carry a big stick.

There are no “good” protesters and no “bad” protesters. The state sees anyone who publicly declares their dissent to its laws and policies as one thing – a threat. When a state is threatened, it sends its henchmen out to quell it. When 500,000 people take to the streets of London against public sector cuts that will affect each and every Briton, the henchmen are the police. And you – student or teacher, patient or nurse – are that threat. It matters little that you’re partying in Trafalgar square or throwing paint-filled eggs at Topshop on Oxford Street.

You can’t balance the violence of the oppressor with the violence of the oppressed. One leads to the other and violence isn’t always just a punch to the face or a brick through a window. When faced with the reality that each and every one of us will live more desperate lives, the smashed windows of a multinational or a hotel that can charge £4,000 a night matters little.

The coalition government sees no difference between a firefighter trying to hold on to his job and a student struggling to study. To try to make distinctions between a “peaceful” and a “violent” protester is inherently flawed. Dissent is a violent reaction. Saying “no” is resistance. To publicly condemn the “violent minority” is a betrayal of the cause you claim to fight for. David Cameron and NIck Clegg see no difference between protesters – and neither should you.

Westminster council say the damage to property is likely to total “tens of thousands” of pounds. More than 200 protesters were arrested, 149 have been charged and there were at least 50 reported injuries. Of the 4,500 police officers deployed on the 26 March demonstration, 31 were injured, with 11 officers requiring hospital treatment.

Although there are concerns that sporadic violence to property weakens strong arguments on the depth of spending cuts, we must remember that because cuts affect everybody, everybody is going to have a different reaction to them. Some may wish to fight back with local campaigns, others may wish to take more direct action. The point is to maintain a momentum, a united show of resistance, against a spectre that shadows us all.

The impunity with which this coalition is implementing cuts while bolstering the greed of the very businesses that got us into this mess is neither peaceful nor benign. So – many apologies to those who wish to distance themselves from the “violent minority”. But we’re in this together. You may not like having to share a boat, but it’s a lot better than drowning.
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This article was first published in the Guardian’s Comment is Free.

©Leah Borromeo – if you want access for non-commercial purposes and reposting, link to me and tell me. If you want access for commercial purposes, ask me.

Footage has emerged of TSG officer U1202 punching a man in the face at the student demonstrations in Central London on 30 November 2010.