Category: Articles

On the morning of December 6, 1999, marching with over four hundred people protesting the presence of WTO officials at Bank of America in downtown San Francisco, I found myself once again doing the cake walk with this city\’s bankrupt left/ Following the tremendous earth-shattering explosion in Seattle, where some 500 kids rocked the multinational corporations to their foundations, exposing for all the world to see that US capitalism is no longer safe within its own borders, it was truly insulting to see the old guard in SF up to their usual theatrics. There were, of course, the innocuous hootenanny types singing godawful folk songs that always remind me of Christian tent revivals, the Birkenstock peaceniks, the sectarian lefties hawking their tired rags, but most unnerving were the self-promoting \”spokespeople\” laying claim to \”The Battle of Seattle,\” all the while decrying the \”violence.\” You can\’t have it both ways, folks. Had the black-hooded anarchists and animal rights activists not taken the initiative to trash the storefronts of corporate America, there would have been no news, no headlines, no electronic media reporting as to just how fed up a sector of the American population is with \”business as usual,\” and consequently, no \”Battle of Seattle.\” At a time when members of the emerging new generation have demonstrated their aversion to wage slavery by destroying the very edifices of bourgeois capitalism, the dried-up crusty rinds of what is left of the left were only able to recite their tired old litanies of \”jobs not jails.\”

So it was with a sense of humor that I started chanting \”Jobs are Jails!\”, a turn of words that my young anarchist and animal-rights friends found amusing, and also began chanting. The knee-jerk left found our message so offensive that Rebecca Solnit found it necessary to walk up to me and accuse me of \”elitism.\” That was a remark I found to be both racist and elitist, coming from a white woman in a black flannel suit who likes to brag she\’s studied art and aesthetics at the Sorbonne.

\”My dear,\” I informed her, \”my mother was a campesina, and worked in the fields as a child. I myself have done every shit job in the universe, from washing dishes to picking up garbage, and let me tell you, jobs are jails!\” Her comment seemed to encapsulate everything that is wrong with the left, afraid of revolt, hoping to legitimize itself by promoting bogus \”pro-union\” agendas, trying not to offend the tourists and Christmas shoppers, leashed in, muzzled, with blinders on, just where the union bosses and their bosses, the corporate elite, want them. These (anarchists) don\’t want to sit at the table and talk-they want to turn the table upside down and pull the plug on high finance capitalism, and all I can say is that it\’s about time.

Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange made quite a show of herself after the initial trashing of downtown Seattle. Decrying the violence, getting out brooms, aiding the police, such activists did us all a favor by showing their true interests. In their desire to sit at the table with representatives of the corporate establishment, they have sold out the very people we must support if we are serious about bringing on the real changes this planet so desperately needs to survive the next century.

Whether it is Global Exchange, Mother Jones, the Sierra Club, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Pacifica Radio, or other despicable examples of the corporate left, one thing is clear-none of these organizations are interested in destroying the system, as they need to ensure their positions as \”paid staff.\” For those of you who are afraid of flying glass, who only see \”elitism\” in the cause of freedom, who insist now is not the right time to bring down the system, who prefer to sing rather than riot in the streets while the children of Indonesia are denied bananas and rice and millions across the nation are denied the simple pleasure of having a place to live, I say, stand clear. We are entering a new era that demands new ways of strategy and subversion and the only thing limiting us is our own lack of imagination and daring.

A communique from one section of the black bloc of N30 in Seattle

On November 30, several groups of individuals in black bloc attacked various corporate targets in downtown Seattle. Among them were (to name just a few):

Fidelity Investment (major investor in Occidental Petroleum, the bane of the

U\’wa tribe in Columbia)

Bank of America, US Bancorp, Key Bank and Washington Mutual Bank (financial institutions key in the expansion of corporate repression)

Old Navy, Banana Republic and the GAP (as Fisher family businesses, rapers of Northwest forest lands and sweatshop laborers)

NikeTown and Levi\’s (whose overpriced products are made in sweatshops)

McDonald\’s (slave-wage fast-food peddlers responsible for destruction of

tropical rainforests for grazing land and slaughter of animals)

Starbucks (peddlers of an addictive substance whose products are harvested

at below-poverty wages by farmers who are forced to destroy their own forests in the process)

Warner Bros. (media monopolists)

Planet Hollywood (for being Planet Hollywood)

This activity lasted for over 5 hours and involved the breaking of storefront windows and doors and defacing of facades. Slingshots, newspaper boxes, sledge hammers, mallets, crowbars and nail-pullers were used to strategically destroy corporate property and gain access (one of the three targeted Starbucks and Niketown were looted). Eggs filled with glass etching solution, paint-balls and spray-paint were also used.

The black bloc was a loosely organized cluster of affinity groups and individuals who roamed around downtown, pulled this way by a vulnerable and significant storefront and that way by the sight of a police formation. Unlike the vast majority of activists who were pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed and shot at with rubber bullets on several occasions, most of our section of the black bloc escaped serious injury by remaining constantly in motion and avoiding engagement with the police. We buddied up, kept tight and watched each others\’ backs. Those attacked by federal thugs were un-arrested by quick-thinking and

organized members of the black bloc. The sense of solidarity was awe-inspiring.

THE PEACE POLICE

Unfortunately, the presence and persistence of \”peace police\” was quite disturbing. On at least 6 separate occasions, so-called \”non-violent\” activists physically attacked individuals who targeted corporate property. Some even went so far as to stand in front of the Niketown super store and tackle and shove the black bloc away. Indeed, such self-described \”peace-keepers\” posed a much greater threat to individuals in the black bloc than the notoriously violent uniformed \”peace-keepers\” sanctioned by the state (undercover officers have even used the cover of the activist

peace-keepers to ambush those who engage in corporate property destruction).

RESPONSE TO THE BLACK BLOC

Response to the black bloc has highlighted some of the contradictions and internal oppressions of the \”nonviolent activist\” community. Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of those who engaged in violence against black-clad and masked people (many of whom were harassed despite the fact that they never engaged in property destruction), there is the racism of privileged activists who can

afford to ignore the violence perpetrated against the bulk of society and the natural world in the name of private property rights. Window-smashing has engaged and inspired many of the most oppressed members of Seattle\’s community more than any giant puppets or sea turtle costumes ever could (not to

disparage the effectiveness of those tools in other communities).

TEN MYTHS ABOUT THE BLACK BLOC

Here\’s a little something to dispel the myths that have been circulating

about the N30 black bloc:

1. \”They are all a bunch of Eugene anarchists.\” While a few may be anarchists from Eugene, we hail from all over the United States, including Seattle. In any case, most of us are familiar with local issues in Seattle (for instance, the recent occupation of downtown by some of the most nefarious of multinational

retailers).

2. \”They are all followers of John Zerzan.\” A lot of rumors have been circulating that we are followers of John Zerzan, an anarcho-primitivist author from Eugene who advocates property destruction. While some of us may appreciate his writings and analyses, he is in no sense our leader, directly, indirectly, philosophically or otherwise.

3. \”The mass public squat is the headquarters of the anarchists who destroyed property on November 30th.\” In reality, most of the people in the \”Autonomous Zone\” squat are residents of Seattle who have spent most of their time since its opening on the 28th in the squat. While they may know of one-another,

the two groups are not co-extensive and in no case could the squat be considered the headquarters of people who destroyed property.

4. \”They escalated situations on the 30th, leading to the tear-gassing of passive, non-violent protesters.\” To answer this, we need only note that tear-gassing, pepper-spraying and the shooting of rubber bullets all began before the black blocs (as far as we know) started engaging in property destruction. In addition, we must resist the tendency to establish a causal relationship between police repression and protest in any form, whether it involved property destruction or not. The police are charged with protecting the interests of the wealthy few and the blame for the violence cannot be placed upon those who protest those interests.

5. Conversely: \”They acted in response to the police repression.\” While this might be a more positive representation of the black bloc, it is nevertheless false. We refuse to be misconstrued as a purely reactionary force. While the logic of the black bloc may not make sense to some, it is in any case a

pro-active logic.

6. \”They are a bunch of angry adolescent boys.\” Aside from the fact that it belies a disturbing ageism and sexism, it is false. Property destruction is not merely macho rabble-rousing or testosterone-laden angst release. Nor is it displaced and reactionary anger. It is strategically and specifically targeted direct action against corporate interests.

7. \”They just want to fight.\” This is pretty absurd, and it conveniently ignores the eagerness of \”peace police\” to fight us. Of all the groups engaging in direct action, the black bloc was perhaps the least interested in engaging the authorities and we certainly had no interest in fighting with other anti-WTO

activists (despite some rather strong disagreements over tactics).

8. \”They are a chaotic, disorganized and opportunistic mob.\” While many of us could surely spend days arguing over what \”chaotic\” means, we were certainly not disorganized. The organization may have been fluid and dynamic, but it was tight. As for the charge of opportunism, it would be hard to imagine who of

the thousands in attendance _didn\’t_ take advantage of the opportunity created in Seattle to advance their agenda. The question becomes, then, whether or not we helped create that opportunity and most of us certainly did (which leads us to the next myth):

9. \”They don\’t know the issues\” or \”they aren\’t activists who\’ve been working on this.\” While we may not be professional activists, we\’ve all been working on this convergence in Seattle for months. Some of us did work in our home-towns and others came to Seattle months in advance to work on it. To be sure, we

were responsible for many hundreds of people who came out on the streets on the 30th, only a very small minority of which had anything to do with the black bloc. Most of us have been studying the effects of the global economy, genetic engineering, resource extraction, transportation, labor practices, elimination of indigenous autonomy, animal rights
and human rights and we\’ve been doing activism on these issues for many years. We are neither ill-informed nor inexperienced.

10. \”Masked anarchists are anti-democratic and secretive because they hide their identities.\” Let\’s face it (with or without a mask)–we aren\’t living in a democracy right now. If this week has not made it plain enough, let us remind you–we are living in a police state. People tell us that if we really think that we\’re right, we wouldn\’t be hiding behind masks. \”The truth will prevail\” is the assertion. While this is a fine and noble goal, it does not jive with the present reality. Those who pose the greatest threat to the interests of

Capital and State will be persecuted. Some pacifists would have us accept this persecution gleefully. Others would tell us that it is a worthy sacrifice. We are not so morose. Nor do we feel we have the privilege to accept persecution as a sacrifice: persecution to us is a daily inevitability and we treasure our few freedoms. To accept incarceration as a form of flattery betrays a large amount of \”first world\” privilege. We feel that an attack on private property is necessary if we are to rebuild a world which is useful, healthful and

Joyful for everyone. And this despite the fact that hypertrophied private property rights in this country translate into felony charges for any property destruction over $250.

MOTIVATIONS OF THE BLACK BLOC

The primary purpose of this communique is to diffuse some of the aura of

mystery that surrounds the black bloc and make some of its motivations more transparent, since our masks cannot be.

ON THE VIOLENCE OF PROPERTY

We contend that property destruction is not a violent activity unless it destroys lives or causes pain in the process. By this definition, private property–especially corporate private property–is itself infinitely more violent than any action taken against it.

Private property should be distinguished from personal property. The latter is based upon use while the former is based upon trade. The premise of personal property is that each of us has what s/he needs. The premise of private property is that each of us has something that someone else needs or wants. In a society based on private property rights, those who are able to accrue more of what others need or want have greater power. By extension, they wield greater control over what others perceive as needs and desires,

usually in the interest of increasing profit to themselves.

Advocates of \”free trade\” would like to see this process to its logical conclusion: a network of a few industry monopolists with ultimate control over the lives of the everyone else. Advocates of \”fair trade\” would like to see this process mitigated by government regulations meant to superficially impose basic humanitarian standards. As anarchists, we despise both positions.

Private property–and capitalism, by extension–is intrinsically violent and repressive and cannot be reformed or mitigated. Whether the power of everyone is concentrated into the hands of a few corporate heads or diverted into a regulatory apparatus charged with mitigating the disasters of the latter, no

one can be as free or as powerful as they could be in a non-hierarchical society.

When we smash a window, we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds private property rights. At the same time, we exorcise that set of violent and destructive social relationships which has been imbued in almost everything around us. By \”destroying\” private property, we convert its

limited exchange value into an expanded use value. A storefront window becomes a vent to let some fresh air into the oppressive atmosphere of a retail outlet (at least until the police decide to tear-gas a nearby road blockade). A newspaper box becomes a tool for creating such vents or a small blockade for the reclamation of public space or an object to improve one\’s vantage point by standing on it. A dumpster becomes an obstruction to a phalanx of rioting cops and a source of heat and light. A building facade becomes a message board to record brainstorm ideas for a better world.

After N30, many people will never see a shop window or a hammer the same way again. The potential uses of an entire cityscape have increased a thousand-fold. The number of broken windows pales in comparison to the number broken spells–spells cast by a corporate hegemony to lull us into forgetfulness of all the violence committed in the name of private property rights and of all the potential of a society without them. Broken windows can be boarded up (with yet more waste of our forests) and eventually replaced, but the shattering of assumptions will hopefully persist for some time to come.

Against Capital and State,

the ACME Collective

\”Peasant Revolt!\”

Disclaimer: these observations and analyses represent only those of the ACME Collective and should not be construed to be representative of the rest of the black bloc on N30 or anyone else who engaged in riot or property destruction that day.

Chants overheard in Seattle: While circling outside the Seattle Jail and feeling a little powerless: \”Let\’s get real, storm the Bastille!\” After the window breaking became the talk of the town: \”No Apologies, No Regrets, Long Live the Anarchist Threat!\” At an intersection after the powerful, pumped up crowd got stopped for unexplained reasons for the umpteenth time by our \”leaders\”: \”The People, Stopped, will never be restarted!\”

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While marching at the WTO, 1960s radical leader and Chicago 7 defendant Tom Hayden, commented that \”if they\’re going to do a conspiracy trial after this week, they\’ll have to indict the puppets!\”

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After the police pushed demonstrators out of downtown Seattle on Tuesday evening, cops with their armored personnel carrier, tear gas and concussion grenades invaded Seattle\’s hip Capitol Hill neighborhood. At 10 p.m., some people built a barricade out of dumpsters in the middle of Broadway and Pine. Bus service was suspended on Broadway as tear gas floated over residential neighborhoods. When a bus unexpectedly showed up at the barricade, a masked barricade defender went to the door to ask \”would you like to get through?\” The driver and passengers said yes, so the black clad youth went back to the barricade and organized the crowd to move one of the dumpsters to the side so the bus could get through. Like Moses at the Red Sea, the crowd at the intersection parted and the bus drove through to chants of \”public transit, public transit.\”

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The puppets in Seattle were great and gave the whole event a beautiful, festive atmosphere. Once the police started shooting, pepper spraying, gassing and beating the non-violent costumed crowd, though, some people started considering a new type of puppet for next time. How about a long puppet of a line of riot police, built with a 3/4 inch plywood backing so that next time we can face down the violent cops with cops of our own, who won\’t be so easily injured as the \”turtles.\”

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Just a week before the shutdown of Seattle, 4,408 people risked arrest by crossing the line onto the Fort Benning military base, protesting the U.S. Army\’s School of the America (SOA). This was reportedly the largest ever civil disobedience action in US history… and got almost no media coverage whatsoever. The November 21st protest was against SOA\’s long, bloody association with human rights atrocities and massacres throughout Latin America.

Sunday\’s action was the culmination of a weekend of protest at the Ft. Benning military camp which drew more than 12,000 from around the country. Of those who braved the line, 65 were arrested and 23 who crossed the line in previous years will face prosecution for trespassing on Federal property. The majority of line crossers were seized and taken in buses to a public park approximately two miles from the base.

The message seems clear. Seattle\’s direct action was peaceful but militant in it\’s effective shutdown of downtown Seattle. The media will no longer cover, and the public no longer responds to, \”polite\” civil disobedience without disruption of business as usual.

History has been made. The mainstream press has said that the debate over global economic system will never be the same and that the alliance of movements is unprecedented. Using direct action and mobilizing tens of thousands of people on the streets, the World Trade Organization conference was completely disrupted. The WTO, representing the pinnacle of capitalism and the domination of our society by the elite economic interests, suffered a deadening blow.

So, after this inspiring victory created by thousands of people organizing, what kinds of lessons can we learn?

Non-Violence and Police Repression

The organizing by the Direct Action Network was great. The affinity group structure, of 5-20 people performing actions together and coordinating through mass meeting of representatives was highly effective in organizing thousands of people in a decentralized manner.

The protests were so effective that within several hours the conference was shut down. We had been able to hold our occupations and blockades of the hotels and intersections by non-violently linking arms and using our numbers. Ultimately the police shifted tactics and began violently attacking the protests with tear gas, pepper spray, concussion grenades and rubber bullets.

I was extremely disappointed by the reactions of some protesters. They demanded everyone sit down and chant – that this would stop the police; the police only continued their attacks without mercy. They argued against erecting barricades to protect ourselves – that this was \”property destruction\”; this caused more people to be brutalized and the crowd was easily dispersed by gassing and grenades. No amount of chanting \”non-violence\” would make the police listen and no peace sign would deflect any rubber bullets.

This is the difference between tactical non-violence and ideological non-violence. Letting people be hurt is itself violent and furthermore defeating to our movement. Instead we need to be prepared, so that when the police use violence against us, we can respond with a reasonable amount of self-defense. During the confrontations, when people threw tear gas canisters back at the police, the gassing stopped. When they erected barricades from dumpsters and newsboxes, the police stopped advancing.

The Black Bloc

During the demonstrations on November 30th, the actions of the members of the Black Bloc were very controversial. But it is important to argue for a diversity of tactics and viewpoints rather than say everyone should only attack corporate symbols or everyone should only sit-down and let the cops kick their ass.

These actions created a great symbol, put the Anarchists into the spotlight, and are making the elites very nervous. But, sensational actions like these draw attention to the most radical parts of the anarchist movement rather than the long-tem, mass organizing that goes unacknowledged.

The black bloc wasn\’t only about property destruction. I saw them earlier in the day blockading the hotel and they were impressive. Where ever they were needed, they went. They held their line against the police, when others were pushed and intimidated.

Seattle Everywhere – Building a Movement

To make our movement grow we need to educate in order to raise consciousness and spread our idea of a free society through all means possible. We need to show that Anarchist principles of organizing from the bottom-up and using direct action are the most practical and effective. The alliance of different movements needs to strengthen and grow.

Organizing in the schools is important because young people are catalysts for social change and full of energy and new ideas. Organizing with workers is equally important. Most existing unions are top-down bureaucracies married to electoral political interest and will never truly fight for workers. Many rank-and-file workers realize this and we need to work with them in advocating for greater militancy and democracy.

Ultimately we need to create independent and militant organizations and unions based on rank-and-file initiative and direct action. We should fight for better conditions and worker control, for the rights of the unemployed and immigrants, and against discrimination in all forms. Working together to organize and educate we can show a viable alternative to the present system and to both endless reformism and the authoritarian politics of political parties. Let the events of Seattle be a catalyst of it all.

On Wednesday I headed to the no protest zone. People said I would be arrested on sight since the police had already swept up 200 protesters. There were police and National Guards in riot gear on every corner, and blocking many streets. I found 200 protesters in a drizzly intersection. We began to march, and the police blocked our action to the convention center, but let us march around. We met another contingent of 300 and marched until it was time for the labor rally at the docks. Many of us got impatient and about 1,000 began to march downtown.

As we approached the \”No Protest\” zone, police blocked our path, then tossed teargas grenades into the crowd. We retreated, and the police opened fire with rubber bullets. An armored car came down a side street and tried to block it. They blasted me in the face with a fire-extinguished sized container of pepper spray. I stumbled down the street, led by some of my friends who grabbed me. I was blinded for the next 10 minutes.

We decide to march north, the only direction open to us. As we crossed under a freeway, police attacked from the side and teargassed, but the wind blew it back at them. I was at the rear, and as I turned away, I was hit in the back with a rubber pellet shotgun. We managed to get to 1st street, but the police were closing in. They teargassed us along with many bystanders and motorists. We were now the captives of the police. Soon, city buses came, and they cuffed us one by one, dragging us on to the bus.

We were taken to Sand Point, where we sat for three hours, with no food, water, or bathroom facilities.

The police finally got to our bus, and told us they would physically remove us if we didn\’t leave when commanded. Given that choice, we took over the bus. At 3 a.m., they dragged us off the bus. We were given jail uniforms and wrist bands that said \”John WTO,\” since we refused to give our names.

We spent hours in holding cells, with only turkey baloney sandwiches. On Friday night, some of us were taken to court in Seattle. We were finally taken in to see the judge, and she decided to dismiss our charges, but gave the prosecutor two years to refile charges against us, since we refused to give our names.

The police told us to get our stuff and leave, but half of us returned and stayed in solidarity with the other WTO prisoners. Finally at midnight, we got to see our lawyers for the first time and we decided to use solidarity to clog the court system. We were released at 2 a.m. on Sunday, and all the others over the next 24 hours (except the dozen or so felonies).

The first major anti-WTO action created a HOME out of a vacant building. During the week hundreds of protesters and homeless folx worked together to make the autonomous zone breathe fire into the steel and glass leviathan of corporate Seattle.

It\’s the 5th day of occupation. 5 squatters are huddled by a window.

\”The fucking media\’s scapegoating this squat for all the shit that went on downtown. They think we\’re the headquarters of the entire Black Bloc, that we\’re coordinating the entire resistance out of this building. They could move on this place like they did MOVE and no one would blink an eye,\” says Tom.

Spyda agrees. \”The media\’s been setting us up for the last three days so when we go down they can say we were violent riffraff all along. They\’ve been given hours of lucid, articulate quotes about housing and social fucking justice and all they can talk about is anarchists from Eugene.\”…

…the first day of the occupation. It was evident that those involved understood the seriousness of the takeover. Within two hours the activists had installed a sink and a toilet, cooked hot meals for 90, reinforced barricades, conducted interviews with mainstream and independent media, and organized security and radio communications teams…

…Everyone in the building worked hard to meet the ultimate goals of the building\’s liberation: providing housing for the homeless! This objective directly bonded to criticisms of the WTO as a global machine fueled by the blood of the working class and the rape of natural resources for capital and consumerist growth…

Working as the point man for the East Bay wingnut affinity cluster, I arrived in Seattle 10 days early to scope out troublemaking opportunities. I got off the plane, headed downtown, and made my way to 420 E Denny Way, home of the direct action network, home to thousands of dedicated activists, home to sprawling tactical maps and lockbox manufacturing stations, the base of what was surely a massively pre-planned action. Theoretically, at least. The scene that greeted me was distinctly different. There was a big room. And, perhaps, a map or two. A few people standing around looking like they knew how to make lockboxes. But signs of a massively pre-planned action? Nope, none of that was to be found.

There were big obstacles to planning the N30 action. Lots of affinity groups were working together. Most had never met before. A good chunk of us were secretive and didn\’t want to share our plans with anyone else. Hardly anyone knew their way around Seattle. Hell, most of us barely knew where the targeted area was. Yet, somehow, come November 30th, we controlled downtown Seattle.

This happened because of a few distinct reasons. First off, locals had been setting up infrastructures for the event months in advance. We didn\’t know what was going to happen, but the structure was fairly evident. The city would be divided into thirteen pieces, each one the responsibility of a different affinity cluster. High powered UHF radios would link the different clusters, and low powered walkie talkies would allow the affinity groups to communicate across shorter distances.

The morning started out well. Flags and banners were distributed, contingents were formed, people started marching out. At this point the high tech, super organized radio traffic consisted mostly of updates on how big the crowd was.

The East Bay wingnuts, organized as our own flying squad, split off from the march to assist an emerging blockade fairly early in the procession. That was when the organization began to fall apart. No one was using the correct radio channels.

Soon, however, all issues over channel usage became moot, as all our radios were jammed. One channel featured a loop tape of a cursing man. Another channel had somebody reading full names of the organizers out over it. We turned our radios off and took to wandering the streets, which at this point, worked as well as any other tactic would have. The streets were packed with people, it was easy enough to find hot spots. By around three o\’clock communications somehow resumed, just in time for us to deal with what was becoming an increasingly brutal police situation.

Police had begun pepper and tear gassing people, and the crowds had thinned to the point that some sort of coordination was needed. \”More lockboxes needed on 4th and Union,\” went one call, \”puppets to University,\” went another. One intersection was asking for lockdown volunteers, while another was calling for media.

Every now and then I would run into the other two tactical folks in my immediate area and we would try to develop a plan. Of course, a coherent plan never emerged. We were all very tired, chunks of our affinity groups had disappeared, and we were scared of being tagged as organizers and going to jail on conspiracy charges.

In the end our preparations helped. We shut down the city, scared the police, impressed the media. And we learned something about planning for these events. The main lesson, detailed tactical plans don\’t really work for large crowds in unpredictable situations. Tightly organized affinity groups do work. Radios are fun to use, but they don\’t really help too much. The most important lesson I learned? If you\’re going to take over a city, provide security for two thousand activists and attempt to have some role in the guidance of crowds while keeping your ass out of jail, sleeping the night before may help.

Manilla,Bacolod and Iloilo Phillipines

Some 8,000 people protested in front of the US mbassy chanting anti-WTO slogans. Thousands also protested against the 1995 Mining Act which allows 100 percent foreign equity in local projects but has been challenged by tribespeople who say natural resources are their heritage and should not be exploited by overseas companies

Euston Station UK

A rally of nearly 2,000 gathered at Euston Station to highlight the links between free trade and privatization of transportation. The rally later turned into a more militant protest when about 500 people tried to block the main traffic artery. An unmarked police van was set on fire.

Halifax UK

A Nestle factory was occupied and a banner displayed outside. 16 were arrested.

Leeds UK

In the Leeds city center, around 50 protestors were faced by over 300 cops. In the face of these great odds, people stuck around handing out leaflets outside scummy companies.

Manchester UK

Lloyds Bank was occupied by 50 activists who then proceeded to block the street outside.

France

75,000 people in 80 different cities in France protested the dictatorship of the WTO. On November 25, 5,000 French farmers with their sheep, ducks, and goats, feasted on regional products under the Eiffel tower in protest of the impact of trade liberalization. 800 miners clashed with cops ransacking a tax office.

Geneva, Switzerland

27 people aided by many outside who were blocking traffic, occupied WTO headquarters. One group, posing as \”visitors\” occupied the stairs leading to Michael Moore\’s office with a banner reading \”No Commerce, No Organization: Self Management\”.

Greece

Protestors clashed with riot police throughout the day and night at demonstrations outside the US embassy. The protests were about a wide variety of issues including world trade.

Brisbane, Australia

Activists protested outside the stock exchange

Milan, Italy

A group of \”white Coveralls\” occupied a McDonalds in Milan, locking themselves to the building façade, hanging enormous banners, denouncing neo-liberalism and its effects, and distributing flyers to the amused passers by. A squatter band provided music.

New Dehli, India

A group, including writer Arundhati Roy, went to the US embassy to deliver more than 11,000 postcards protesting a dam in Maheshwar. They were arrested and held for 2 hours because of a regulation saying 10 people were too many to enter the embassy.

Elsewhere

Other protests November 30 against the WTO, the US and global capitalism were conducted in: Iceland, Prague, Limerick, Ireland, Rome, Berlin, Amsterdam, New York, Padua, Italy, Cardiff, Wales, Bangor, Wales, Totnes, UK, and San Francisco