It's 1988 now. Margaret thatcher is entering her third term of office and talking confidently of an unbroken conservative leadership well into the next century. My youngest daughter is seven and the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for person with aids. The new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against. I'm thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It's cold and it's mean-spirited and I don't like it here anymore.
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Alan Moore (Quoted form preface of Canadian Version of 'V for vendetta', 1988)
The Seattle anti-WTO protests of 1999 were characterized by an extraordinary form of distributed organization: smaller affinity groups representing specific causes—anti Nike critics, anarchists, radical environmentalists, labour unions—would operate independently for much of the time, only coming together for occasional 'spokes council' meetings, where each group would elect a single member to represent their interests. The images that we associate with the anti-globalization protests are never those of an adoring crowd raising their fits in solidarity with an impassioned speaker on a podium (which was the iconography of an earlier model of protest). What we see again and again with the new wave are images of disparate groups: satirical puppets, black-clad anarchists, sit-ins and performance art—but no leaders.
A recent protest, Day of 'Global Revolution', in London on October 15 2011 inspired by the US's Occupy Wall Street and Spain's Indignant movement shows great example of self-organisation of political and social level in reality. Thousands have descended on the area known as the Square Mile - under the banner 'Occupy the Stock Exchange' - for a 'peaceful protest' against the global financial system. They take Paternoster Square, where the Stock Exchange is located, but police cordoned off the area prior to the protest. A notice was put up stating the square is private property and access would be restricted. The event kicked off at midday outside St Paul's Cathedral and initial reports on Twitter talked of an 'amiable' atmosphere. Activists carried banners with slogans such as 'We are the 99%' and 'Bankers got a bailout, we got sold out'. The protest was contained within the vicinity of St Paul's Cathedral, and some demonstrators started to put up tents, wearing Vedetta's mask, playing guitar, or holding pickets. Occupy London follows occupation movements from across the world. And Thousands have also taken to the streets in Sydney, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Rome.
