Description

Shut Them Down! is an essential collection of reflections on
the movement against the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles,
Scotland. As well as action stories from the frontlines of
resistance to the summit, there are detailed accounts of
how various aspects of the mobilisation were organised,
and analysis of the lessons to be learned. But Shut Them
Down!’s relevance extends far beyond the Gleneagles
experience. It addresses fundamental issues such as the
nature of openness and ‘horizontality’, and the limitations
of the ‘activist’ identity. Most important of all, Shut Them
Down! poses the question: how can we take those worlds
we glimpse in such moments and generalise them so that
they make sense in the rest of our lives?
Visit the Shut Them Down! web site.
Contents
Introduction
The Editors 9
1 On the road
The Free Association 17
2 ‘This is how we do it’
Kara N. Tina 27
3 Gleneagles: breaking time
John Holloway 39
4 Reaching the parts where we fear to go
AG 43
5 Dr. Sachs, Live8 and neoliberalism’s ‘Plan B’
George Caffentzis 51
6 Reinventing Dissent! An unabridged story of resistance
Alex Trocchi, Giles Redwolf and Petrus Alamire 61
7 Free-wheeling and control-freaking
Maff, Bristol 101
8 G8 on our doorstep
Sarah 103
9 The carnival continues…
Lydia Molyneaux 109
10 Getting off the activist beaten track
Members of the Trapese Collective 119
11 Private Parts in the General Mayhem
Commodore Koogie 127
12 ‘It’s the politics, stupid’. How neoliberal politicians, NGOs and rock stars
hijacked the global justice movement at Gleneagles… and how we let them
Paul Hewson 135
13 The international mobilisation to Gleneagles
Alex Smith 151
14 The feeding of the five thousand
Isy Morgenmuffel 163
15 Inside and outside the G8 protests
Anonymous 175
16 Diary of a compost toilet queen
Starhawk 185
17 When the kids are united, they will never be defeated!
Kate Evans 203
18 The ‘brat bloc’ and the making of another dimension
Massimo De Angelis and Dagmar Diesner 207
19 Gleneagles, activism and ordinary rebelliousness
Ben Trott 213
20 Cre8 Summat: planting a garden of activism
Leon Roman 235
21 The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army goes to Scotland
via a few other places
Kolonel Klepto and Major Up Evil 243
22 Operation Splish Splash Splosh
Corporal Clutter of CIRCA 255
23 Activist trauma: mutual support in the face of repression
Activist-Trauma Support 257
24 Strathclyde Police slumber party
Major Hassles 263
25 Notes on movement and uncertainty
Werner Bonefeld 265
26 G8 secrets: we are more powerful than we can possibly imagine
Haley Burton 273
27 A knock at the door: Special Agent Paranoia and the G8 Info-Line
Anonymous 281
28 Anti-G8 resistance and the state of exception
Stefan Skrimshire 285
29 Ginger takes on the G8
The Ginger 291
30 Nothing is what democracy looks like: openness, horizontality
and the movement of movements
Rodrigo Nunes 299
31 Media, movement(s) and public image(s): CounterSpinning in Scotland
CounterSpin Collective 321
32 From Gleneagles to Heiligendamm
Some people from the No G8 Coordination Berlin 333
33 After Gleneagles: where next?
Simon Tormey 337
34 The end of the world as we know it
Kay Summer and Harry Halpin 351
35 Cows are scarier than pigs
Anonymous 361
CONTACTS 364
CREDITS 366