Activists gather outside the fences of the Bella Center to hold the People's Assembly.
On the morning of the 16th December, 2009, I cycled through a snowstorm to meet up with my affinity group – the Santa Swarm – to participate in the Bike Bloc, part of the global day of direct actions against the UN Climate talks being held in the Bella Center. The motto of the Bloc was to “put the fun between your legs”, and the Bloc formed part of the protests in Copenhagen. Resistance consisted of the Blue Bloc ( a police-approved march that would culminate in the People’s Assembly [see below]}; the Green Bloc ( a mobile demonstration following its own logic); the Bike Bloc ( a series of mobile swarms (affinity groups) on bikes; and an Autonomous Bloc who would pursue their own tactics.
The main purpose was for the Blue Bloc to march to the Bella Center and hold a people’s assembly, by which global southern delegates at the UN climate talks would disrupt the talks and make a mass walk-out to join the protestors on the outside in a people’s assembly. Here there would be a convergence of mass movements from the global south; NGOs’; government representatives from poor global southern states; and direct actionists. There were few Unions however. The people’s assembly was to be a show of solidarity between Global North and Global South activists. However, unsurprisingly 200 delegates were stopped from leaving the Bella Center and were then not allowed back in. Meanwhile legal protesters were met with pepper spray and police violence.
On reflection, mixing direct action with the people’s assembly seemed like a strategic mistake. Symbolically powerful, if it had worked, but in a sense we were all seduced by this particular narrative. It would have been more effective to have conducted direct action but to have had the UN delegates announce to the media the day before that they were going to boycott the talks on the 16th in order to come to the Klimaforum (where the alternative climate justice workshops, talks, films etc were taking place) in order to have a people’s assembly.
Naomi Klein and Michael Hardt (amongst others) were there and there was a lot of talk about this being the next wave of a global movement, building on the alter-globalisation mobilisations. No doubt there is a wave rising, but it appears to be one of overlapping, interacting, competing, and resourced networks rather than a coherent 'movement of movements'.
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