David Harvie, "Shut Them Down!," New York City, March 6, 2007

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"Shut Them Down!"

David Harvie


Tuesday, March 6th @ 7PM — Free

Bluestockings

172 Allen Street @ Stanton (1 block south of Houston)

212.777.6028 http://www.bluestockings.com/

The book "Shut Them Down!: The G8, Gleneagles, and the Movement of Movements" is an essential collection on the resistance movement at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005. Please join David Harvie in stories from the frontlines, accounts of the mobilization, and perhaps share a glimpse future possibilities."If you go to a demonstration and then go home, that's something. But the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps on building, groups that keep on doing things, people that learn from the last time and do it better next time."


Something's afoot. A spectre is haunting Germany. Plans to disrupt the G8 summit in the tiny Baltic resort town of Heiligendamm in June 2007 are already well underway and the counter-mobilisation is shaping up to be one of the events of the year. Similarly July 2006 was marked by two events. First, the protests against the G8 leaders' summit in 2006 in St. Petersburg. Second, the breakdown of the Doha round of trade talks, precipitating a crisis in the World Trade OrganizationŠ the institution against which thousands took to the streets of Seattle in 1999, both catapulting the anti-capitalist/alter-globalisation movement into global consciousness and launching the current cycle of counter-summit mobilisations.


In this context, the publication of "Shut Them Down! The G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the Movement of Movements" is timely. "Shut Them Down!" is an essential collection of reflections on the movement against the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. As well as action stories from the frontlines of resistance to the summit, there are detailed accounts of how various aspects of the mobilisation were organised, and analysis of the lessons to be learned. But "Shut Them Down!" is far from an historical document. Its relevance extends far beyond the Gleneagles experience: to Heiligendamm and the wider struggle against capitalist globalisation and to create other worlds. "Shut Them Down!" addresses fundamental issues such as the nature of openness and "horizontality", and the limitations of the "activist" identity. Most important of all, it poses the question: how can we take those worlds we glimpse in such moments and generalise them so that they make sense in the rest of our lives?