(en) What is Direct Action? (translation from Sans-Titres - bulletin n01)
 ________________________________________________
      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
           http://www.ainfos.ca/
________________________________________________

What is nonviolent direct action?

This expression has been applied to an enormous variety of activities, and to rise up and act is much more important than to argue eternally around definitions.
in brief, direct action implies one's acting for one's self, in a fashion in which one may weigh directly the problem with which you are confronted, and without needing the mediation of politicians or bureaucrats.  In the same way, if you see some bulldozers about to wreck your house, you engage in direct action to directly intervene
to try to stop them.

Direct action places moral conscience up against the official law. Direct action implies not caring about the rules and procedures that the economists and politicians apply, and deciding for yourself that which is just and that which one should resist.  It is good that direct action would be considered simply a powerful tool at the militant's disposition, but it is also something much more than that.  It is the expression of the individual's readiness to fight, to take control of his life, and to try, directly, to act on the world that surrounds us, to take responsability for one's actions and as well for the achievement of the pursued aims. Non-violent direct action is necessary in the sense that it is necessary to leave the sterile routine of the traditional mode of political actions like lobbying, well-behaved and gloomy marches through the town on a well-established route, tracts, meetings, or petitions; not that this cannot represent a useful stage at such and such a moment of a struggle, but, because political action limited to these elements appears quite often, and appears, in the eyes of the great majority of our fellow citizens who as individuals or as members of organizations are the target of these actions (governments, institutions, bosses, etc.), to be a big, inoffensive game; predictable, boring, and lacking in the impact necessary to make our adversaries fold.  In these conditions, it is not surprising to see a large number of vitally important people become disillusioned or completely disinterested in political action.

Direct action's goal is to replace political action and create a confrontational environment, concrete, playful, creative, where the goal is discussion about troubles and economic problems and the about the taking into action of the wish to prevent them from taking their projects (like the expulsion of an illegal immigrant or the finishing of a highway project for example) to the point at which they can mark deeply the spirit of the people or the mass media, by the use of symbolic, spectacular, imagined or subversive actions.  Direct action should permit at its beginning point a change reflected in the behavior of individuals, and it should attack directly the image of economic or political structures.  The term, nonviolent direct action, or civil disobedience, includes and brings together, in our concept of it, myriad possibilites for extremely varied actions : blockages, occupations, street theater, reappropriation of goods, street festivals and anti- capitalist carnavals, the redirection and subversion of advertising, the creation of living and active space in unused areas, the construction of concrete alternatives to the system like the establishment of workers cooperatives, local exchange systems, local agriculture systems, sabotage, community meetings, the free distribution of food in the streets....

Nonviolent direct action proposes to show that political action can have a real impact without having some necessity to assemble thousands and thousands of people in the streets (resounding actions can be effected with only 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 persons) and that it can come to prove that political action can sometimes also be something extremely amusing.  It lets people develop confidence in themselves and to become conscious of their individual and collective force.

Direct action is not just a tactic; it is individuals affirming their capacity to take control of their lives and to participate in social life without the mediation of bureaucrats or professionally political people being necessary.

The type of struggle we take on is qualifiable as nonviolent direct action, since although at times material properties may be attacked, attacking people physically is categorically refused.

All over the world, the power of people in struggle should not be underestimated.  The influences working on the press don't allow it to speak of many formidable actions which have taken place over the course of 1999:

- A general strike immobilized 80% of the peruvian economy thanks to a union of students, workers, and some other citizens.

- More than 100 persons were arrested each day as a result of their resistance to the construction of a nuclear power plant on an sacred native site in Australia.

- Greek railwaymen blocked a train surface-transporting military equipment to Kosovo

- French citizens demonstrated at a McDonald's in- construction and began a public debate on the IMF and industrial production of food.

- The Columbian U'wa indians threaten mass suicide if the petroleum companies do not leave their lands.

- The ecologists of Reclaim the Streets, acting in solidarity with the London metro workers, occupied the headquarters of the company, and organized a Mayday festival in the interior of the metro tubes.

- The opposition to OGM expanded throughout the 5 continents, in France and England the militants made a number of field studies, the Indians and French sabotaged research laboratories in Montpelier, at the same time as in India the "let's burn up Monsanto" operation was inaugurated by the burning of OGM fields.

- The Longshoremen of the american west coast went on strike to protest the execution planned for Political Prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.

- Some thousands of indians threatened to flood their homes to resist a series of hydroelectric dams that would destroy hundreds of villages on the Narmada river banks.

- Illegal immigrants to whom free passage on a train was refused, who wanted to demonstrate in Paris, passed the night by having a party in a train tunnel.

- At the same time as ecologist militants completed one year of their occupation of trees to protect the ancestral forests of Oregon, english activists resisted for 17 days blocking underground in a tunnel to prevent the destruction of a community park and cost some hundreds of thousands of dollars for the construction companies.

- Russian workers occupied their factories to protest against the non-payment of their wages.

- Greek high schoolers occupied dozens of schools.

- In Ecuador, Jamaica, and Nicaragua, the increase of gas prices caused important riots.

- American Indians, Radical ecologist militants and syndicalists united local communities to protest against highway construction projects.

- In Nigeria, young Ijaws started the "climate change" operation, and occupied a large number of petrolium platforms.

- Indigenous women and children blocked a bulldozer belonging to a petrolium company in the Ecuadorean jungle and took their drivers hostage, demanding the ceasing of the construction of a pipeline that would have contaminated their resources for drinkable water.

- The director of the International Monetary fund was ambushed and pied by the Biotic Baking Brigade, organization specializing in the throwing of cream pies, which has already attacked in 1999 alone some dozens of criminals in 3 piece costumes and other CEOS of multinational corporations.

- The Korean government repressed the unions after thousands of employees participated in a mass strike movement that expanded all over the country.

- Nonviolent resistance continues against the construction of a trans-israeli highway that threatens to destroy dozens of villages.

- Some hundreds of zapatistas continue to organize "autonomous municipalities" towards the reclaiming of control of their lives from the landowners, fat companies,
and from 70 years of dictatorship from the party in power.

- 2500 American Airlines pilots came to a simultaneous sick out strike.

- At the time of the resumption of the construction of axis E7 in Aspen valley, citizens, local people, and militant ecologists united to occupy the area and to impede the work by camping around bulldozers.

- In Prague, squatters prevented their expulsion from their home by police forces by staying on the roof for 3 days.

- On July 18th, 1999, 700 militants united to destroy a genetically modified sunflower the size of 24 football fields.

- In Brazil over the last 10 years, about 140 000 families were rehoused on retaken lands thanks to direct action.

- In London, militants entered the general headquarters of Shell, barricaded themselves in the office of the director one morning and sent messages of solidarity to the people of the Niger delta.

- From Geneva to Prague to Berlin, squatters retake living space to make places for autogestive activity: crashes, libraries, workshops, movie halls, community
gardens, etc...

- In Ecosse, 2 pacifist militants swam for an hour and a half towards a military base and attacked a nuclear submarine; they damaged and defaced, causing considerable economic loss.

What is a street festival?  Funny question; everyone can see what a street festival might be.  It seems interesting to talk about a certain "anti-capitalist" street party,
such that have been taking place around the world during some years now.  These "street festivals" are in effect part and parcel, in a certain number of countries, and are becoming more, modes of action (and amusement) which are particular to alternative political movements utilizing direct action.  In 1994, the english direct action group "reclaim the streets", engaging in a struggle against the "car culture" organized a false pile-up at the intersection of 2 big London boulevards.  Very quickly the militants showed up, installed a cafe, a sound system, and a carnival ambiance around 2 blocked cars in the middle of the public eye and reappropriated during some hours this space reserved for cars.  This resounding action gave the spark to the street party movement in England with Reclaim The Streets, so that local groups, disseminated throughout the area, multiplied these surprise actions with a bustling imagination, humor, but often also some not-bad confrontations with the cops.

Quickly enough, the discussion that underpins these "revolutionary carnavals take a more global orientation in their denunciation of the capitalist system in their setup. Inspired by situationist discourse, Reclaim the Streets proposes ludic (playful) contestation, spectacular and subversive reappropriation of space, freeing it from commerce, the car, consumption, work, etc.  One of the most beautiful successes of the movement, without doubt, was the occupation, on July 13 1996, after a good knuckle and chat with the police, of a north London highway for 9 hours by more than 9000 people dancing, communicating, and attacking the route with a pneumatic drill and planting some trees in the street.  On the 16th of May 1998, a global street festival against the IMF took place in many large cities all around the world.  In France the first festival such as this took place at the same time as the international conference for cities without cars in November 1998 with the utilization of a tripod (from 7 to 9 meters in height to the top, where a demonstrator placed himself, causing the police much difficulty in getting him to come back down) to realize the blockage.