Streets of Fire (III)
I remember having a conversation with the wife of a friend, about my activism. She said it was great that I did what I did, but she couldn’t do it, with kids and home and all. I told her if I had kids, I would only be more committed to extreme activism. She said she doubted that.
A few years later, when I did have kids of my own, I knew I had been correct. It only made me more determined to make a better world.
I was there, during the very first COP conference in Bergen in May 1990, before the Blue Stone was put up, on what is now King Olav’s Place. We sang bla la bla then, too, even as we never even imagined that we would still do so thirty-three years later on the same spot. If anyone had suggested that we would, we would have ridiculed that person. Now, all illusions have long since fallen from our eyes like a stone.
The police, true to form had constructed an iron ring of themselves around the hotel. We made several attempts to get inside, to confront the delegates with their gross inadequacy, in vain. The delegates, however, was set to have dinner outside the hotel at some point, and we blocked both directions out for the bus. The bus backed off fast, and either the driver didn’t see us, or he didn’t give a shit. He almost ran us over. We stayed locked to each other arm in arm. The bus didn’t get out, and the police set out to carry us off. I and several others had cut our hair extremely short just for that eventuality. The cops had torn off lots of long hair in unrelated incidents in the months before, but now they no longer had that option. They struggled with pulling us apart from each other, but managed, even as they got more and more pissed. They didn’t exactly treat us with velvet gloves. Several of us had bruises on the arms and even faces. One girl had her arm broken.
The establishment media was there. We tried, in our stubbornness to tell them about the police brutality. They just kept asking us if we had been violent. «Do you see any cops with bruised faces», I asked them. They weren’t interested, or rather were interested in keeping the lid on it, as usual. The Bergen Police Department was well known for its brutal ways, but still enjoyed the protection of the fourth, supporting estate.
The conference, true to form agreed to agree on something non-binding at a later conference. That hasn’t changed either. The early conferences led to the Kyoto Accord, a ridiculous document without any real commitment. The delegates traveled with planes and had lots of spa moments at luxurious destinations and hotels during the three decades since the start, and have achieved absolutely nothing significant… except that the lack of it most certainly have had a horrible impact on human life and chances of survival.
I returned to London and my extended family not long after the conference ended, filled with renewed purpose. We, as a truly autonomous group kept fighting the inhuman society surrounding us in a number of ways. We confirmed to ourselves that groups that want to change society should not join with it or work within it, but work on its edges and outside it, creating our own society with a network of autonomous groups. The communes were a great invention in Paris in 1848. It still is. We participated in protests, not speaking to various oppressive governments, but other people. Speaking to governments except with four letter words is basically useless, downright counterproductive. We must make the new, better society. The establishment never will.
We joined the anarchist conference in London in 1994. I and several of the others were a part of the protests in Gothenburg in 2001, where the cops shot and killed a man, and once again attempted to present their fake version of events. I wasn’t at the COP in Copenhagen in 2009, but some of the others were, and experienced more of the brutal police regime.
My attempts to participate in current, inhuman society have always been halfhearted, a kind of passive default. I see my ongoing cries of true rebellion as the true value of my life. My books, my art continue to be unflinching, uncompromising rebellion. The need for that, in art and life is bigger than ever.