look pal, these things come up every year, go away, come to mayday meetings, get involved, don't just fuck about & tell us what "we" should do. Like we haven't actually considered or thought about or encouraged the above...

Critical Mass was peaceful, effective, noisy and happy, and went on all day. Even the police came on bicycles and ended up doing all the work for us, stopping traffic so we could cycle, and generally being unbelievably friendly and peaceful and co-operative. I never thought I would say this but I think the police operation that accompanied the Mass was excellent. I know they were really heavy in other places.
I don't think there has been lack of planning or lack of ideas...I just wish more people would join us, if they don't, we shouldn't necessarily blame those people who do all the work!!

Sorry, didn't mean to cause offence.

I guess "crap" is a pretty harsh word if you are one of the organisers and you've put a lot of time and effort into it.

That post wasn't directed at you. It was more directed at the people who didn't go to the meetings but who just turned up on the day.

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Also, with all due respect, I think if I have something to say then I can reach more people by posting stuff on indymedia than by going to next year's meetings. Having said that I probably will be going to the meetings and I would have gone this year if I had been in the UK at the time.

But I would say that while meetings are all very well, you're only ever going to get a minority of people actually coming to the meeings.

If your idea of mayday is that the people who come to the meetings get to dictate the way the day is going to go then with all due respect what kind of an anarchist are you?

What about all the other people who want to do their own thing?

The meetings should be about organising some core activities that can be a significant part of the focus of the wider event, but mayday will work best as a loose coallition of different people doing their own thing.

My critisism was of us in general, not you guys at your meeings specifically.

I think it's important to discuss how things went after the event. In caling it "crap", I was deliberately being brutally blunt and cold because everyone else is too polite to say something that needed to be said.

And it's true, this year's mayday really wasn't up to last year's levels of mayhem.

If we want to make it better next year then we should acknowledge the truth and think about how to move on.

Please don't take personally, most of my criticisms don't apply to you. It's not the fault of you and your meetings people that not enough individuals brought musical instruments or whistles or chalk or whatever.

I see the annual mayday protests as being a movement rather than an event that is organised by any one specific group. My thoughts were directed at this movement in general, which is far wider than the people who went to your meetings. And don't get me wrong, you lot played a really important part by making all those stickers and maps and stuff... that was brilliant, the even would have had much less publicity if it wasn't for all that.

And I do think the idea of there being a map with targeted locations is really good. But we should admit that people didn't really go to any of those places apart from the main meet-up points. If we don't accept that that went wrong we're not going to learn from it.

Keep doing what you're doing :-)

And other people should also make their own stickers and publicity (this happened a bit). Let's not have a monopolised mayday.

And I really do want to promote the affinity group idea. I know everyone knows about it but it doesn't really happen in practice. I just think people should really focus on doing stuff in affinity groups next year and at demonstrations in general :-)

I don't want to come across as arrogant trying to tell people what to do. Rather the intention is to give my thoughts on the matter and to encourage everyone else to do the same. We need to have a proper public debate about this.

I wrote my second post in reponse to the "yeah right now piss off" thing. But now the post by "cyclist" has just appeared.

Addressing that post, I just want to clarify that I wasn't suggesting there hadn't been lots of planning and that I wasn't blaming "those people who do all the work".

Rather, my thoughts were aimed at the movement in general.

It achieved nothing other than giving the police an excuse to exercise their new "powers" over people.

I completely agree with you that there needs to be discussion and criticism and people should be open to criticism, and we should learn about our mistakes.
In the end a very small number of people go to the meetings, the rest just turn up and wait for something to happen. And a lot of people don't turn up at all, and this is a real problem, I mean it's great that thousands turn up but what if it was tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands... I have to admit I feel a bit disappointed that more people didn't turn up.

... apart from millions of pounds disruption

... apart from Lockheed Martin offices shut down for the day

... apart from hundreds os people participating in breaking through police lines

... apart from putting the spotlight on arms and oil companies!


... at the moment the most important thing is for people to talk. we have seen the start of the next ten years of foreign policy. we need to understand the implications of this - and that's just what most people are wrestling with.