Critique as you will, these are some lessons I've constructed from the experience in Philly. Most are just personal observations, but oh well.

1. Comms should go in camo.


People doing strickly messenger and coordination services should blend in as much as possible to the typical garb of the area of action. Business suits demand repsect and the police seem all to willing to offer it. We cannot afford to have people nabbed off the street just for holding a cell phone or a radio.

2. 8 people can take an entire street in the right situation.


In Philly the police were incredibly spread out. It took at least 15 minutes to gather enough forces together for them to make an arrest. From what I saw, when a street was taken over it mattered nothing that 2-3 cops were on the corner. They obliged. The police would not make arrests until they outnumbered the protesters. 10 minutes later when bike or horse police arrived, the protesters were able to disperse to take down another street.

I understand that that tactic is something specific to the Philly actions and that other protests wont be dependant on shutting down a massive business district.

3. Always have your head up.


In DC we knew where the police lines were. That was usually quite clear. In Philly the bicycle police were a new tactical force to deal with that often ended up in our rear - not just to block us, but actually moved in while we were facing the wrong direction and made arrests. We need to make sure we have people watching all sides when attempting to make barricades.

4. Keep mobile.


It was rather frustrating to see people ocntent with taking a street and staying there. In Philly the point was multiple street actions, blocking traffic in a range of directions. I noticed that the police were very quick to redirect traffic. When we parked ourselves at an intersection for a half hour, the police had already remedied much of the traffic snarl. Only by staying mobile did we keep them guessing, prevent being blocked in and spread the disruption.

And probably the most controvercial issue:

5. Don't protest major media events.


Its taken some time to realize this, especially as I had my hopes raised so high for the attention we could recieve at the RNC. But contrary to that, the media at closed door boring meetings such as the WTO or IMF dont care to broadcast the meetings. They find the street demos fascinating.

But the spectacle, as orchestrated and as boring as it was last week, was in the First Union Center, not the streets. The organized program did not allow for coverage of anything much out of the ordinary. Special interest stories about the food the Republican delegates were being served got more attention than we did.

Why? Becuase the spectacle is pre-arranged. But with something like the WTO, the press wasn't going to give much coverage of the actual meeting anyhow. You cannot compete with a network sit-com with some street plays.

Evidence of this is the amount of pre-convention attention the protests gathered compared to the near-blackout afterwards. Time magazine had a sidebar previewing the protests 2 weeks ago, but Monday's issue has nary a word on the subject (even though a Time reporter was there). The press seemed eager to give us attention, but when it came down to the editors having a say, we didn't exist.

My only conclusion is that protesting events that are not media-spectacles anyhow will give us so much more coverage.

I know the raid on the puppetspace hurt our visual imagery and hence the messages, but the cameras were not there anyhow.

I agree with your assesment of the media attention in Philly. They were entranced by the pretty colors and flashy pagentry. But this should not keep us out of the streets. We cannot rely on corporate media to spread the word. They will twist it when they can and ignore it when they cant. continue to take to the streets whenever and wherever we can. we dont need mainstreem media. our voices will be heard.

Philly was the first time (in comparison to Seattle and DC; it seems as if the same type of situation occured recently at the ISAG conference in Minneapolis which I was not at) where the police outnumbered the protesters - and by a lot!

Some numbers say there were 7,000 police and about 2,000 protesters and I don't doubt it for a minute. Be prepared to alter your plans of action in such a situation - I think in preparation for the RNC protests much larger numbers of protesters were expected; yet in the end the numbers were not there and we still went ahead with our attempts to seriously disrupt the convention and the city which may not have been the best tactic. It seems as if when there are huge numbers of police deployed they have this 'getting their money's worth' mentality of using whatever force they have to to make it look as if such a large number of police is needed - in Minneapolis they used tear gas, etc. In Philadelphia they beat the living shit out of us (when the mainstream media wasn't looking, of course...they cornered us into alleyways, etc, they were VERY clever about this) and arrested people on ridiculous charges.

I guess there are many lessons to be learned from Philly:

not only be prepared for some kind of raid on a space but expect it. Don't keep all of the visuals (puppets, banners, signs, costumes) in one place - they tried to strip us of our messages so we looked like a bunch of directionless idiots, get messages out to the media and the public BEFOREHAND about the importance of freedom of speech and assembly and the history of civil disobedience in history as well as the possibility of a total mainstream media blackout so that when it DOES occur it will be much easier to demonstrate it to the world.

and last, be careful.

our movement can't afford to lose anyone to either jail or the hospital. they are obviously scared of something, they obviously think we have power. and we do. we just must act with intelligence and caution, and we must do it together.

free the pps in philadelphia.

good luck in LA.

- Sera

Make this action successful!

In order to do that, the mistakes of Philadelphia must be considered.

More Deception and Deviation are clearly needed. The Philadelphia actions followed much the same script as those in DC and Seattle. Nearly the same thing happened. The only ones who employed much of a derivative of deceptive plan in Philadelphia were the cops -- employing bicycles and other novel means of carrying out their brutality. The protesters used nearly the same tactics.. The police have caught on, and they now know EXACTLY how to disrupt you as was shown in Philadelphia. IN ORDER FOR THIS ACTION TO BE A SUCCESS, IT MUST BE DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT FROM ALL PREVIOUS ACTIONS. THE POLICE MUST NOT KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT, OR IT WILL SURELY FAIL.

Your observations about the mainstream media's coverage of protesters -- pre & post RNC -- is BRILLIANT! I was watching throughout the precedings, and would have to say the same as you...

LA IMC might want to follow the advice about blending in with the mainstream media, with respect to workaday "uniforms," so that the police do not sweep you away with the rest of the protestors... Good Luck!!