Just Do It Documentary - Bikes as tools of civil disobedience

hi,

a close friend of mine is producing a documentary called Just Do It: Get Off Your Arse & Change the World.

i thought you might be interested in checking out this sequence from the film which shows the bike bloc - people transforming bikes into ‘machines of creative resistance’ at the COP15 climate conference in copenhagen, december 2009.

http://just-do-it.org.uk/about/video/cop15-candy-factory-raid

enjoy!

phil

^This is not going well is it?

^That's better

That guy was a pretty good singer-guitarist.

I'm here as a representative of the world

A little beyond herself.

They could have arrested the guitarist when he started singing. The strumming was acceptable but the singing was a little too far.

that girl's a royal pain in the arse.

i got no inkling as to what they were up to that warranted folk songs and whiteboards. I could see they were discussing water at some point. were they saying they might need some if it's sunny on the ride?

Do I know you, Phil?

At least one usual suspect in that video.

Disrupting protests before they happen is one of the worst consequences of the combination of the memory of N30 in Seattle and terrorism fears.

it's early in the morning Mr Schick. your facetiousness radar not warmed up yet?

that girl is a pain in the arse though. there are recorded confrontations like this all over the net. some ring true and warrant admiration; others just smack of self-importance and arrogance.

any documentary about the need for protest arguably benefits from some scenes of confrontation. but the inclusion of this particular confrontation - a directorial descision - hampers the whole sequence. the rest of the bike bloc camp are mellow and affable and despite the daftness of the modern-day minstrel they come across well; the girl ruins it for everyone by being argumentative and full of herself, however valid she may have thought she was. If this film is to exist for any other reason than to preach to the converted, she will send a village hall audience's sympathies for bike bloc plummetting. no-one likes a bleater.

In the editing room it's always exciting to create dramatic tension through the manipulation of assembly footage. But if this film is trying to celebrate and increase interest in today's protest movement rather than show the spiky earnestness of some of its activists, the director should have discarded the girl-cop scene.

Everyone knows protests are disrupted before they happen; what is difficult is getting people off their arse to become protesters. In my opinion the only way protests will have any real capacity for change is if the people who have disengaged because they have seen protesters to be whiny, arrogant troublemakers are persuaded otherwise. There are enough examples fed out by news channels to have established the prejudice already; a film trying to be a rallying cry shouldn't include any more.

it's early in the morning Mr Schick. your facetiousness radar not warmed up yet?

Oooops--I meant the OP! I totally failed to notice that you'd posted just before me.

you telling me the last twenty minutes cobbling a response to your dead-to-me fury was totally unnecessary...?

christ on a bike.

And I don't even disagree with you. :)

The tendency to disrupt protests before they happen, i.e. in the preparation stages, did take on a whole new dimension after N30, though. Today it's gone so far as to call a lot of protesters 'domestic extremists' who really don't deserve that title. Brought to mind again by this Guardian article yesterday:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/25/peace-campaigner-classified-domestic-extremist

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/27/g20-toronto-protest-riot

Ho hum.

A little beyond herself.

They could have arrested the guitarist when he started singing. The strumming was acceptable but the singing was a little too far.

I thought he had a good voice, it was the scarf-beanie combination that I had trouble with.

hi all,

for those interested in how else bikes might be used, check out the nascent forum Bike Lab - a place to learn & share details and ideas on bike powered projects.

p

http://api.ning.com/files/VNwCVg75pIinDZz3umEBqjICU6icAH6Jt26XIicA8j8pQ9RVjHtLAs-1WqEH4*3uf6hGdIvQf7lID73Ym6-z7S8ueFudXZcC/revolve_509.jpg

shudder

"Just don't do it?" :)