Shut Them Down!: The G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the Movement of Movements

Published by Dissent! and Autonomedia


Bob Geldof's appointment as an advisor to the Conservative party seems to have provoked a further round of disillusionment with the legacy of the Live8 concerts and the Make Poverty History campaign. It seems timely for our movement to reassess our protests and mobilisation against the G8 in Gleneagles last summer. This reassessment will be aided by the publication of a new book full of first hand accounts by those more interested in shutting the G8 down than lobbying it.

Edited by a group within Dissent!, the network which coordinated anti-capitalist resistance to the Summit, Shut Them Down! contains 35 chapters, including a hilarious cartoon, an editors' introduction and dozens of powerful photographs over 368 pages.

As well as first hand accounts from protestors, there are detailed accounts of how the various aspects of the mobilisation were organised, and analysis of the lessons to be learned. Shut Them Down!'s relevance, however, extends far beyond the Gleneagles experience; it addresses issues fundamental to anyone involved or interested in social movements, such as the nature of openness and 'horizontality' and the limits of the 'activist' identity. Most
important of all, Shut Them Down! attempts to pose the question: how do we take those new worlds we glimpse in these moments and apply them to the rest of our lives?

Contributors include: Werner Bonefeld, George Caffentzis, Counter-Spin Collective, The Free Association, The Ginger, John Holloway, Colonel Klepto and Major Up Evil, Starhawk and Simon Tormey.


Available from Shutthemdown.org for £4.95, €7.50 and US$9.95 plus p&p.

Review copies are available from the editors:  editors@shutthemdown.org


A review of the book by Greenpepper Magazine is also available here:  http://www.shutthemdown.org/reviews_greenpep.html