Very hastily written notes based on conversations with people in Sydney:

People in Sydney for anti-APEC protest are being hassled by cops, very obviously followed by undercovers all around the city, the whole bit.

So the intimidation is continuing, a significant context for the Stop Bush meeting which took place tonight, attended by approximately one hundred people. This meeting debated how to respond to the police successfully applying to the courts to ban the previously declared demonstration route. The Stop Bush people have until this point publicly emphasized that this route was non-negotiable, that this route would be followed even if the state criminalized this walk down the street, as an act of collective, peaceful civil disobedience if necessary. At this meeting, however, representatives of the DSP, Socialist Alternative and the Greens (in the form of Kerry Nettle’s advisor Damien Lawson) argued that Stop Bush should capitulate totally, and declare publicly that protesters will comply with the ban on the previous protest route and only march from the Town Hall to Hyde Park - maybe a few hundred metres - without ever approaching the heavily policed edge of the walled off “declared area”.

By declaring this capitulation in advance, these ‘organisers’ create the situation where no matter how many turn up, police are under no pressure at all to let people march the previous route - at least if they believe that ‘organisers’ can fulfill this de facto promise to have everyone behave like obedient children.

People from ACDC, Solidarity, the Flare in the Void collective, the firefighters union and others argued that any decision to capitulate should be made at Friday’s meeting, which may be substantially larger, with many more protesters likely to turn up at the meeting immediately prior to the event, and with interstate people having arrived in Sydney by then. However, those pushing public, immediate capitulation insisted that this needed to be declared as a fact to the media now, effectively presenting people with a fait accompli and reversing the very public position taken by these very ’spokespeople’.

An amendment was moved by Firies to the effect that this decision can be revisited on Friday, which was eventually included. But of course by then these same DSP/Socialist Alternative/Greens people will be able to argue that. by having stated in public that protesters will do absolutely everything the state wants, defending our ‘right’ to ‘protest’ by agreeing to only do it in the corner while obeying every repressive law now on the books, organisers have now promised to everyone coming that this will be the case, and to do otherwise, with its increased risk of police violence, would be irresponsible.

Damien Lawson of the Greens also pulled out the one about how tonight’s meeting represented the real organisers of the event and so was the democratic will of ‘the movement’, while Friday’s meeting would also include people who weren’t these real organisers, but who instead were only people who happened to be coming to the protest or who were organising with an unofficial status. Thus, he stated, Friday’s meeting actually shouldn’t be able to overturn anything anyway.

By contrast, members of Solidarity argued particularly strongly that Friday’s meeting should decide if there was to be any capitulation, and when it became clear that a decision was going to be pushed through tonight, argued that Stop Bush should publicly reaffirm its commitment to its already announced route.

The vote to publicly declare the change of route - contradicting, as I’ve mentioned, everything the Stop Bush people had said until that point about their commitment to their ‘right to protest’ - was about sixty-forty in favour of public capitulation.

I suppose that it is imaginable that Friday’s meeting may reverse this decision - it was hardly an overwhelming majority as it is - but even should this occur, these groups and their allies control much of the protest infrastructure: the Stop Bush spokesperson Alex Bainbridge is DSP; the Stop Bush ‘tactical group’, whose membership was determined long ago, is made up of these types and is empowered to make decisions between Stop Bush meetings; and they will probably seek to have as many of the marshals as they can. They are very very likely to act as if this demonstration belongs to them as ‘organisers’, not to the people demonstrating. There are certainly groups and many individuals who are not going to automatically follow the commands of these self-proclaimed representatives/leaders, but they are certainly going to use their control of infrastructure both before and during the event to try to impose their will and present people with a fait accompli.

Those who don’t want to passively comply with these rightward-moving tendencies may have some capacity to contest, but this is something that needs to be thought out - the risks of police violence and state repression are real, the currently hegemonic organisers know exactly what they are doing, and things are moving fast. I’m going to Sydney. Some kind of clear goal would be good, something worthwhile which can be judged possible.

In the land of the hysterically blind, the barely-sighted may end up king, but it probably isn’t a great idea to institutionalise this arrangement. And if the barely-sighted are enjoying the situation, you’ve got a problem.

In the land of the severely near-sighted, the authoritarian optometrist may be king, but it is hard to see why anyone should feel grateful about it.

what I did on my holidays
People keep asking me why I’m going to Sydney. Does there have to be a reason for everything? Can’t they just be happy for me?

In response I tend to cycle through a half-dozen justifications but always back-peddle fast at the first sign of an intransigent critical intelligence. So how about: (i) our police forces and intelligence agencies need to experiment with and practice their urban pacification, and so; (ii) I want to watch them do it; (iii) even though the ALP is doing its now-familiar impersonation of whatever the Liberals look like, maybe that protester violence, condemnation of which police, politicians and ‘journalists’ are ready to cut-and-paste, will give the Libs an electoral boost as admirably tough on troublemakers - and maybe I can help; (iv) I really enjoyed representing myself in court so much a couple of months ago that I’m looking for a chance to do it again; (iv) I either want to be a useful idiot for groups trying to recruit, and what a dull thing to say that has become, or I’d like to see those ‘official protest organisers’, who have been acting as if protesters are going to be peaceful on principle, pushed into the position of trying to explain why they couldn’t even get people to be peaceful when it isn’t even a matter of principle, but rather, faced with the prepared, empowered and eager repressive arms of the state, of simple sanity and self-preservation; the Greens want to use the event for their own opportunistic - not to mention slimy and manipulative - purposes, and it would be nice if this hurt them, and if protesters ended up hating them; (vi) the usual reason I have for going to a demonstration - to see who is there and why, try to sense what people think and want, what people might be up for then or in future; (vii) I just want to fit in.