Indymedia Present J18 & Seattle 1999 - Reflections & Strategies 10 Years On

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Mon 1 February 2010 // 20:00

(Mon 1st / 8pm / £2, no one refused for lack of funds)

The Bristol anarchist bookfair collective and Bristol Indymedia present an evening of films and discussion that look back to the global protests of 1999, and consider where next for the movement of movements.

In 1999 protests, street parties and riots in Cologne, London, Seattle and worldwide put anti-capitalism firmly on the political agenda and the police and state on the back foot. As the cutting edge of the misnamed 'Anti-Globalisation' movement that opposed unrestricted neo-liberal global free-market expansion, the anti-capitalists weren't just asking for debt cancellation for poor countries, they wanted to smash the G8, IMF, WTO and
World Bank, and tear down the whole capitalist system. These movements had been building slowly for a decade, usually outside of and separate to the established political parties and structures. They developed their own organisational infrastructures, normally based on non-hierarchical and consensual formats, and utilised various supporting tools, not least the internet and the birth of Indymedia in November 1999. Alongside established NGO's and a huge variety of groups and campaigns, they co-existed under slogans such as 'one no, many yesses' and employed a 'diversity of tactics'.

Yet within a couple of years they appeared to have peaked as police tactics & repression escalated and the economy boomed, and then along came 9/11....but movements and protests have continued worldwide, often ignored in the western media. Now 10 years on the environmental and financial crisis foretold by these movements have come to pass, whilst the structures of capital and the state remain in control as they condemn billions to poverty and take the planet to the edge of the abyss.