Fwd: [g8-sheffield] An active week in Sheffield, and thoughts for the future

[Nat]

> .... this may have been recieved already onto the list, I have had 
> alittle trouble sending stuff
>


> On 19 Jun 2005, at 01:47, Benjamin Major wrote:
>>
>> What was most interesting to me about the counter-G8 actions over the 
>> last few days was the varied assemblages of people who turned out to 
>> make their voices heard. From filthy dirty autonomist radicals, 
>> families sporting Make Poverty History sashes, the socialist choir, 
>> the newly sprung Independent Socialist Youth Forum, and our amazing 
>> little anarchist punks who took it upon themselves to start up a 
>> separatist sit in on the road at the Rice for Dinner event. Though I 
>> declined to join the latter on their ill-fated (but worthwhile) 
>> venture I do nevertheless think their show of rebellion was 
>> remarkable and is an energy to be harnessed. It has been a while 
>> since such collective shows of defiance against authority has emerged 
>> in Sheffield against such young people. I am in my early Twenties and 
>> I cannot remember there being such a politically motivated 
>> mobilisation with which to put all my passion and rage into when I 
>> was at school or college in the working class northern estates of 
>> Sheffield in which I grew up (that’s maybe why I sent those years 
>> beating myself up instead). Though I don’t subscribe to the ACAB 
>> school of political philosophy in any shape or form, I nevertheless 
>> felt that what these kids were doing was partially exciting- true, 
>> out there on the front line of the demo, so to speak, any distinct 
>> notions of world peace and justice might have escaped their heads to 
>> be replaced by a ‘us and them’ mentality, but just some of those kids 
>> might just have the potential some day to be fully equipped fighters 
>> for the global justice movement, and for local issues too. This 
>> doesn’t necessarily imply a ‘mass mobilisation of working class 
>> people’ as it may have done before, but merely a chance to join us 
>> all in a social space where they can share experiences and ideas with 
>> long time campaigners (helping to locate those nodes in the political 
>> and cultural space which are looking fucked) in the way they have 
>> been able to at the convergence space in the last few days. At least 
>> until the call from their mum that dinner’s on the table.
>>
>
> 	Why did this interest you? Of course lots of people came together to 
> do what they needed to do. Not one persons actions are any the more or 
> less valid then 	that of anothers. Nor are any actions "ill-fated". If 
> that was the case then what is  the point of doing anything at all. To 
> group people together defined by 	age, family status, political 
> status, class, the educated, the uneducated, the well informed, the 
> ill- 	informed is getting away from everything we are achieving. To 
> patronise an action at the same time as comending it is still 
> patronising. The status of those 	carrying out an action is 
> irrelevant, whether you would by involved in this type of action or 
> not also irrelevant. Your posting implied that those involved were 
> 	young and naive and that as they gather years their methods will be 
> more appropriate and 	productive.I think that your last sentence was 
> particularly patronising. We must not make sweeping judgments of 
> people. Those involved in that particular 	action crossed all of your 
> groups. Which is the way it should be.
>
>
> 	L P & A, Nat