Violence begets violence…

…or “fight­ing for peace is like fuck­ing for vir­gin­ity” as the old graf­fiti used to say.

I am so dis­heartened by the events of Sat­urday and the sub­sequent over-reac­tion by police that I barely know where to start.

First of all, there was my beau­ti­ful car­ni­val and its hijack­ing by a bunch of people in white paper suits and bandan­nas, who – I under­stand – organ­ised them­selves on Friday night, made rash decisions on Sat­urday morn­ing and acted without think­ing through the con­sequences for them­selves and others. This undid 9 months of plan­ning for a peace­ful car­ni­val – and now there is debate in the act­iv­ist ‘com­munit­ies’ about refus­ing the media dichitomy of the good protestor/bad protestor. But it’s hard when I feel betrayed and feel des­pond­ent about the future of my soci­ety… if in a rad­ical autonom­ous organ­ising envir­on­ment, we cannot com­mu­nic­ate enough to garner respect, how will this soci­ety func­tion in post-cap­it­al­ism? Sat­urday is not the com­munity I want to live in… and one of my man­tras is to “be the change you want to see in the world”. So, I am dis­il­lu­sioned. For now.

Part of the prob­lem is that I do believe in the ‘bad pro­tester’ – or at least the idi­otic one. Akin, who has been named now in the Age so I guess it’s okay to name him, is a bloody twit. He’s Turk­ish, on a pro­tec­tion visa for human­it­arian reas­ons. He was hoping for cit­izen­ship, or so he said. What sort of idiot in that situ­ation goes into a protest, smashes up a police van and steals its log­book? As the art­icle says, he had a ticket to go over­seas for three months on Wed­nes­day. Nutbar. 

Then there was the State response: abso­lutely dis­grace­ful use of force against people who either hadn’t been there or wer­en’t respons­ible. Where Akin and his cronies threw bins and signs at vehicles and bar­ri­cades, the police hit bodies with batons. A 20-year-old girl is still in hos­pital with her injur­ies. They smashed into a party we were having in the middle of the road on Sat­urday night, tip­ping over a guy in a wheel­chair. They smashed into people dan­cing near the Mel­bourne museum yes­ter­day, smash­ing into bodies, the same over­head blows con­demned in the Ombuds­man’s report in 2001 [full video].

But I can’t help but see that this time, they feel they were pro­voked. Because the white-suits were fool­ish if they thought their cute con­fetti-on-the-cops tac­tics would­n’t encour­age idiots like Akin. Because Akin and the drunken yobbos who saw a good oppor­tun­ity for a brawl hurt their friends, for no known reason. And they see pro­test­ers dressed in dreads and figure they’re the same people… and some­how they fail to see the *chil­dren* in the stroller before they start swinging. Noth­ing, abso­lutely noth­ing, though, excuses abduct­ing random people off the street who happen to be sweet veget­arian cooks for Lentil as Any­thing, pre­par­ing food for the G20 Altern­at­ive Forum.

On the good side, I went to the G20 Altern­at­ives Forum and listened to Heriberto Falas of the Zapatis­tas talk about organ­ising in Mexico and what’s hap­pen­ing in Oaxaca and I got to ask him about how they deal with diverse tac­tics and people who want to be viol­ent, and he said there are armed groups in Oaxaca who are respect­ing the request from the people not to use force, and that devel­op­ing clear prin­ciples and guidelines and com­mu­nic­at­ing them clearly is the key. That was inspir­ing and power­ful to hear.

And now, we are here. And I no longer no what to feel… I flip-flop from one argu­ment to another as I listen to people’s reas­on­ing… and at the same time, my lover and I struggle to find a place for ourselves in this new life together under one roof, in the face of a pretty emo­tional and rocky exper­i­ence Monday and Tues­day. This has not been an easy week.