Keep up the good work!

It might be worth thinking about why the British movement doesn’t seem to be grasping Heiligendam. Obviously part of that was the media response, which was to ignore the protests as you say. Closer to home though we need to reflect on Indymedia’s coverage, there seems almost a structural bias within it towards victim hood and a concentration on repression. One jarring anecdote was reading the daily newssheet Indymedia produced, I mean it was fantastic that it was produced but the headlines gave equal weight to both the harassment of a Dutch media bus and the most successful summit blockades ever.

The other more serious reason though was a lack of engagement with Block G8 by many British participants leading them to miss the most exciting and interesting aspects of the protests. I went to one meeting of English speakers at camp Reddelich (a meeting which was also called the brit bloc although I didn’t see Damon Albarn there). The summary of what was going on that was given there was one I didn’t recognise from all the information I’d had before or since. It was heavily weighted against block G8 and towards German dissent creating an impression of animosity between the two groups that they’d worked really hard not to create. This was all part of the fall out of the Saturday mini-riot and the hardening of positions but the more back tracking of the block G8 coalition had a chance to turn again during the blockades because they were engaging with others who disagreed with them. Non-engagement meant no chance to act and change in common with others you don’t agree with.

On that point Dave asks how to avoid rupture during these transition periods, in particular transitioning from periods when the need for clandestine knowledge creates the need for temporary leadership to a period where the best decisions will come from maximum collective intelligence and we resort to the consensus refrain. That rupture and conflict might be unavoidable at the time but perhaps the issue is how to avoid it hardening after the event. We know that one of the Block G8 action council from that gate has written about how exhilarating it is to have the basis exceed the organisers by instituting a more democratic structure and extending the blockade. Perhaps on the blockade it was a case of the difficulty of giving up the sense of ownership of the demonstration but more important might be the ability to give up a sense of ownership of decisions that were wrong and not defend it retrospectively.