You are reading a single comment by @dst2 and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
dst2
This is quite interesting along with the reports of arrests being made for possession of drugs and offensive weapons.
What that demonstrates is that there was a core of people attending this protest had simply no interest in bringing about meaningful change in a system they find fundamentally unfair or fit for purpose. Because if you did actually want to do that, the things you don't do is endanger public safety or give the police a good reason to arrest you. Very critically, these things go against an essential goal of raising public awareness and securing public support for your cause.
Also, and although it's been said elsewhere before it bears repeating, if the stated aims of the protest are true then the police are natural allies. Like all other bodies in the public sector, they are being squeezed both financially and operationally and, unsurprisingly, they don't like it any more than you like cuts to the NHS for example. Some early groundwork with the local force teams and not antagonising them during the event would have meant that your protest would have been much more positively visible and effective. As it is, you fucked up that relatively simple task and ended up being made to look like a bunch of jumped up asshats.
So Goldsword, what is Anonymous going to do next? Are you satisfied that a couple of hours of pseudo-anarchy is enough to change the world or do you have plans to sustain and develop your campaign to end pernicious activities of the current government? Like a lot of people, I suspect that almost all of the attendees at last night's shitshow will go home under the illusion that they've "done something" and do exactly fuck all until the same time next year. Are you going to prove us right or wrong? Because at the moment the only thing Anonymous seems to have achieved is to eat up a chunk of the local policing budget that now can't go on to be used to tackle things like CSE and domestic violence, both of which are critically underfunded. This isn't to suggest that you shouldn't have protested, exercising the democratically established right to protest is important. However, you seem to have made an utter pigs ear of it and failed to consider the onward impact of your actions which is a completely wasted opportunity.