First thing is that struggle is good, it improves independence and confidence and shows that people care, direct action is the way. Problem is, joining a march which is lobbying government doesn’t become direct action no matter how riotous it gets. People may have had the impression that the point of the demo was to get lib dems to vote no to the rises, it was for some, was the violence then just a more coercive lobbying? Punching a copper isn’t useful unless it helps you get what you need, like getting out of a kettle, fair enough if people are angry but we should realize that there’s nothing directly revolutionary about a push around with the pigs. Especially since when the opportunity for direct action came in parliament square it wasn’t used at all. People stood for hours with no dignity waiting to get out of the kettle and when they were finally turned back again they pathetically chanted ‘let us out!’, why didn’t we organize and force our way out? We were there for so long we could have done a workshop on getting out of kettles, then got out with pride and energy. How empowering would that have been? Having said all that congrats to people on Oxford Street, that’s the sort of thing we should all have been doing. We should plan (decentralized) mass actions rather than marches.

So the first point, direct action not lobbying, AND use your anger constructively.

Second, we are getting ‘royally’ fucked by the BBC (and other press), they are really showing themselves for what they are, an arm of the state. How are we fighting this? I don’t agree that any publicity is good publicity, especially when the police are using it to ratchet up their repression. People who were there might not realize just how differently the public feel about these protests to us. They think we’re stuck up and are just out for a fight and that the police couldn’t have done a thing wrong. Nevermind the fact that 1000s of people were just imprisoned in the cold without toilets or water! It’s hardly been mentioned. Good effort to the people keeping up solidarity with Alfie Meadows as well. I don’t know what to do about the press but maybe if we’d had an aim for the day, like shutting something down, or building something up, the media wouldn’t be able to portray it like mindless thuggery.

Finally, we have to organize and educate ourselves a lot better, maybe having an anti-capitalist direct action network specifically for this movement. We were pushing each other around on Thursday as much as we were pushing the police, we probably injured ourselves as much as the police did because some idiots choose to throw from the back of a crowd. There were arrests that just didn’t need to happen. Worst of all we got stuck in a square for 8 hours, and took it out on lowly PCs rather than their bosses (which is exactly what they want). Now we’ll have to face water cannons.

Sorry to be so negative, there was really good stuff on the day as well. Hope people will respond to this so we can discuss and learn.