The German artist Joseph Beuys always seemed to be in Edinburgh, when I was young. Exhibiting at the Richard Demarco Gallery, or discussing art, democracy and socialism with whoever was around.

Born in Germany in 1921, his influence as an artist and an activist during his 64-years of life was so effective that we are, in many respects, all Beuys’s children. Take this as his defintion:

‘...one of the most influential and extraordinary artists of the twentieth century.

Artist, educator, political and social activist, Beuys’s philosophy proposed the healing power and social function of art, in which everyone can participate and benefit…’

Beuys’s best known works are the performance pieces How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965), Filz TV (1970) in which Beuys responds to a TV covered with felt, I Like America and America Likes Me (1974), where he shared a room with a coyote for 3 days, and the social sculpture 7,000 Oaks, which he explained to Demarco in 1982 as:

“I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in itself is a concept of time. The oak is especially so because it is a slowly growing tree with a kind of really solid heart wood. It has always been a form of sculpture, a symbol for this planet ever since the Druids, who are called after the oak. Druid means oak. They used their oaks to define their holy places. I can see such a use for the future…. The tree planting enterprise provides a very simple but radical possibility for this when we start with the seven thousand oaks.”

Beuys always dressed the same in his artist’s uniform of Trilby hat and multi-pocketed fishing vest, to keep the focus on his art, as he believed art must work towards a better social order:

Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build ‘A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART’… EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who – from his state of freedom – the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand – learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER. work included.

Political activism was important to Beuys. I recall in 1980, when he presented Jimmy Boyle Days, where he went on hunger strike in protest over convicted killer Jimmy Boyle’s move from Barlinnie’s Special Unit, where Boyle had rehabilitated himself as an artist and sculptor, to Saughton Prison, where he was no longer able to practice his art. Beuys saw little difference between art and activism, and his support for Boyle led to a huge outcry over the place of art in society, that led to the Scottish Arts Council removing its key financial support form the Demarco Gallery.

In 1982, he surprised critics and fans alike with his one and only single, “Sonne statt Reagan”, a disco attack against President Reagan’s stance on nuclear arms. The song’s title, “Sun Not Rain/Reagan”, was a pun on the German word “regen” for rain and Reagan. Some critics thought Beuys had sold out, but they failed to see his humor, and the serious intention behind the disc. Beuys may have been unpredictable, but his work is always life-affirming.
 

 
Joseph Beuys’ ground-breaking Filz TV, after the jump…
 

 
The other day, whilst looking for something else in the garage, I happened across some old photographs taken by me in 1984 during a major demonstration that I participated in, in London, called “Stop The City.” The idea, for what was described as a “Carnival Against War, Oppression and Destruction,” was to put enough bodies in the way to effectively cut off the routes whereby the bankers and stock brokers would get to work, block the entrances to the office buildings themselves and stop business activity in “The City” (as London’s financial district is known) for a day.

The 1984 demo that I was at was the second such “Stop the City” event. The first had taken place six months before, but the second demonstration was a lot bigger. I don’t know exactly who was behind it, or organized it, but certainly the vast majority of the young people taking part could have been described as “Crass punks” or anarchists. I heard of it via my friend Ron, who was at one point in a punk band either called “The Living Legends” or “The Apostles” with Ian Bone of Class War infamy. Class War, as well as London Greenpeace, were certainly involved in getting out the troops. There were many anti-nuclear protesters and an anti-vivisection contingent which formed a significant subset of the demo. An item on the excellent Kill Your Pet Puppy blog posted by editor Al Puppy reads:

What I can add is that the idea for Stop the City came from Dave Morris – of McLibel trial fame, longest trial in English legal history – and London Greenpeace. It was organised from a house on Ickburgh Road, Upper Clapton, Hackney. Dave and others (including my future wife Pinki) had been given the house by the GLC so they could organise an anti-nuclear march from Faslane in Scotland to Greenham in Wiltshire.

The tactic to “occupy” London’s financial district was inspired by the heroic anti-nuclear weapons blockade of the RAF Greenham Common by the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp.
 

 
Protesters met at 6am outside one of the underground stations. I got there five minutes early (I am nothing, if not punctual, even for a riot). At first it looked like nobody was going to show up. Then it went from almost no one there, to hundreds and hundreds of people streaming into the area within a matter of just minutes. In France they call uprisings of this nature “manifestations” and that’s what it felt like was happening that morning as the numbers of spiky-haired anarcho-punks and squatter-types arriving in the area grew very, very suddenly. It was an absolutely magical moment to partake in as people seemed to “materialize” in the light London rain that morning. It’s worth pointing out to the (ahem) younger generation that this was long before cell phones, Facebook and Twitter. Most of the people at this demo, I’d wager, didn’t even have land-line telephones because they lived in squats (as I did then). This was basically a word of mouth thing.

For a long time it was just a bunch of young punks milling about, trying to be threatening to stock brokers and bankers and yelling stuff at them. The cops had already partially prepared the area and there were crowd control fences everywhere, but they’d underestimated the size of the crowd. The metropolitan police were badly out-numbered for the first few hours of the protest as the lobbies of several office buildings were occupied and a general “mild” ruckus was caused.
 

 
It got pretty nuts pretty fast when a hot-headed stockbroker-type actually decided to try to run some of the protesters over with his car, which was then upended by furious onlookers. That’s what ignited the next phase of what happened when a small faction started tossing smoke bombs and balloons filled with paint. A friend of mine chucked a trash can through a bank window. I spray-painted “Smash Capitalism” on the side of a building. Good times!

At a certain point, hundreds of police reinforcements, including some on horseback, arrived and surrounded the epicenter of the activity and started squeezing about 3000 of us into a pedestrian area near the Stock Exchange. Several military trucks blocked the streets completely. I got stuck in that maneuver and had to stay there for several hours. The tactic the cops used to neutralize and disperse the rioters was pretty clever, or at least it worked: The street grid made it easy for them to herd perhaps as many as 25% of the protesters into this cordoned-off area which they surrounded with metal fences and a line of Old Bill standing shoulder to shoulder staring defiantly into the protester’s eyes as they moved them tighter and tighter together. Several people on my side of the barricades covered the police officers and their horses with “Silly String.” (There was a LOT of “Silly String” around that day). After five or six hours, everyone who had been squeezed into that spot really had to pee.
 

 
After they were able to disperse much of the crowd outside of this area, they started to let people out a few at a time. A long line of London bobbies brandishing truncheons made sure everyone kept moving along a narrow path cut via the crowd control barricades. Gagging for a piss, I, like my wilted anarchist comrades, was only too happy to wuss out without much of a fight to seek out the nearest pub for a slash.

Revolutionary fervor has its limits when nature has been calling for hours on end and keeps getting a busy signal…

Stop the City was one of those mythical events that if you weren’t there it’s almost as if it never happened. I saw little major coverage in the London newspapers the next day. Only The Evening Standard, The Times and Sounds really covered it, if memory serves and it simply disappeared into the mists of history. There’s hardly anything on the Internet about it, but when you do see it referred to—and I stress that this is rare—it’s usually in the context of how the “Stop The City” demos were, historically speaking, the very first major anti-globalism/anti-capitalism demonstrations, and the precursor to the Poll Tax Riots of 1990, the Battle in Seattle demonstrations of 1999 and the London Carnival Against Capitalism that same year. As those events, in turn, are referred to as being the precursors to Occupy Wall Street, then Stop The City would be the granddaddy of them all. Still, it doesn’t even have a proper Wikipedia entry, just a couple of Flickr slide shows.

I can’t recall how many people were there over twenty-five years-ago, but I do recall that a pregnant friend of mine who did not attend STC told me that BBC radio reported all day long that there were approximately 12,000 demonstrators in the City, but then late in the afternoon they changed their tune and said there were but 3000 protesters. I think it was certainly closer to the original, higher number as there were close to 3000 of us trapped like sardines in the cordoned-off area alone.

Here’s one of the fullest accounts I was able to find of Stop the City, on the LibCom website:

The idea of the “Stop The City” (STC) demonstrations was hatched by three London anarchists at a party in the early eighties. At around the same time people in Australia and America had had the same brainwave. The plan was to bring together the radical end of the peace - ecology - “third world” - and anarchist movements to attack the root cause of all their problems - Capital - by attacking the heart of finance. It took a lot of work to promote the idea of STC and then hold together an uneasy alliance of radical liberals and anarchists. The main problem was the issue of “violence” - many pacifists were worried that people might defend themselves against police attacks/arrests and buildings could be damaged by “violence (sic) against property”. Pat Arrowsmith, veteran CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) labourite did her best to successfully sabotage CND involvement.

Police freaked
The police were freaked out by the idea of an organised demo which wouldn’t consult/inform them - very rare in modern Britain. They repeatedly tried to contact the organisers and on one occasion two plain clothed senior cops turned up to a London anarchist meeting pleading to meet with people only to be met by an angry silence and sent away.

On the day of the first STC the phone of one of the main organisers was ‘mysteriously‘ cut off, and on the night before a large number of riot cops stormed the ‘peace centre’ near the Angel in Islington (a large anarcho-pacifist squat where many of the demonstrators were crashing, searching for weapons - none were found).

Several Stop The Cities were held in London and caused a lot of disruption in the square mile - the first caused and estimated £100 million losses. A number of ‘Stop Business as usual’ demos also occurred Numbers involved ranged from 3,000 in the first STC, dwindling to 500 odd at the last one as energy and enthusiasm were sapped by arrests, greater police sus, etc.

Repression
A repressive Public Order Act was passed in response to STC and the activities of hunt saboteurs, etc. Close to 1,000 arrests were also made over an 18 month period.

 

 
Comedian David Baddiel was apparently in the same penned-off pedestrian area with me. He told The Mirror on April 9th, 1997:

“I used to joke: ‘At least when you’re being beaten up by skinheads, you can pray that the police turn up. But when you’re being beaten up by police, there’s no point thinking some skinheads will save you’.””

David, then a 19-year-old student with a radically big haircut, had travelled to the City of London to join a Stop The City demonstration run by a fringe anarchist group called Class War.

What followed was an eight-hour encounter with the strong-arm of the law that saw him hurled around a police van and thrown into a crowded cell.

“There were quite a few of those demonstrations in the Eighties,” says David, 32, who was studying English Literature at Kings College, Cambridge.

“There were no proper political motives. The intention was just to cause a disruption. I went along only because I thought it would be a laugh.

“At the time, I had really big hair and everyone else did so I fitted in and looked the part. Basically, the demo was people walking up and down shouting slogans. ”

“But the police tried to get us all into a small pedestrian area off Threadneedle Street where we were bounded in by railings.

“I was up against the railings and thought I was going to get crushed. So I climbed over and tried to get through the police cordon.

“The police wanted to throw me back into the crowd but I said: ‘No, I’m not moving.’ When I said I was going to be crushed they ran me off into their van.

“Inside the van about five of them started throwing me around. I didn’t suffer any serious injury but basically they were beating me up. “One of the policemen put his fist in my face and told me if I caused any more trouble, it would be going through my head. They filled the van with some other people then took us off to the police station.

“We were put in a cell with about 25 other blokes and one toilet in the middle of the floor.

“We were there for hours and I was bursting but I couldn’t face having a pee in front of all these other men just in the middle of the floor.

“Right at the end, after hours in there, the police gave us one polystyrene cup of water to drink - between all of us. By the time it got to me, it was just spittle.””

David was accused of trying to lead an aggressive charge and charged with obstructing the police and the highway. But when his case came before a magistrate, he was cleared.

“A young junior barrister took on my case for free. He pointed out that the police evidence contradicted itself and the case was dismissed.

 

 
And finally, here’s the description from Punk Torrents of a long out of print documentary film, Stop the City: 1984 made by Mick Duffield and members of Crass that came out in the mid-90s. I had no idea this even existed:

The Stop the City demonstrations of 1983 and 1984 were described as a ‘Carnival Against War, Oppression and Destruction’, in other words protests against the military-financial complex.

Activities that formed part of these events were separate day-long street blockades of the financial district (‘The City’) of London — which supporters of the protest argued are a major centre for profiteering and consequently a root cause of many of the world’s worst problems.

One blockade involved 3,000 people, which succeeded in causing a $100m shortfall on the day according to The Times. Around 1,000 arrests were subsequently made by the police over 18 months.The first demo took place on the 29 September 1983 and involved hundreds of protestors, but six months later on 29 June 1984, thousands brought the City to a standstill. This rare documentary by Mick Duffield and Andy Palmer of Crass offers unique footage of the day’s events. Stop the City is widely regarded as being the precursor of modern protest such as the J18 Carnival Against Capitalism in 1999 and the birth of the Anti-Globalisation movement in the 21st century.

Stop The City in its entirety:
 

 
UPDATE: More on Stop the City from History is Made at Night

 
This is a video from today’s Occupy Wall Street protest in New York, at Citibank near Washington Park Square. Protesters were at the bank to close down their accounts and this shows a female customer of the bank, in a business suit, being manhandled and then arrested with what is quite clearly excessive force. She doesn’t appear in the video until 1:24. I wonder if the woman in this clip is the person mentioned as “resisting arrest” in this Associated Press report?

24 people were arrested at a Citibank branch when they refused a manager’s request to leave. Activists had entered the bank to close their accounts in protest of the role big banks played in the nation’s financial crisis.
Police say most of the people arrested were detained for trespassing. One was arrested on a charge of resisting arrest.

 
Thanks to Paul Shetler.

 
Go Harry!

Thanks to Gary Parkinson and Tim Bakker.

Demonstrations for Global Change are taking place today, October 15.

The demonstrations are against financial mismanagement and government cut-backs, and it is expected that 951 demonstrations will take place in 82 countries world-wide. 

A statement on the 15october.net reads:

“From America to Asia, from Africa to Europe, people are rising up to claim their rights and demand a true democracy. Now it is time for all of us to join in a global non violent protest.

“The ruling powers work for the benefit of just a few, ignoring the will of the vast majority and the human and environmental price we all have to pay. This intolerable situation must end.”

At the biggest rally In Rome, tens of thousands marched on the street and were involved in skirmishes with the police.

In Belgium, 7,000 marchers brought Brussels to a standstill. Smaller protests took place in Paris.

5,000 demonstrators also gathered outside the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany.

In Berlin, 4,000 marched demanding the end of capitalism.

In Madrid, Spain, thousands of all ages have gathered for an evening rally in the Puerta del Sol Square, the site of May’s “Indignant” demonstration.

400 people marched through the streets of Dublin, towards a hotel where delegations from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank are currently resident.

A thousand demonstrators occupied London’s financial district and Wiki-Leaks founder, Julian Assange addressed a rally of around 500 outside St. Paul’s Cathedral.

500 people gathered at a rally in Stockholm, holding up banners that read “We are the 99 percent”.

In Sarajevo, Bosnia, hundreds marched behind a flag that read, “Death to capitalism, freedom to the people.”

Poland’s former President, Lech Walesa announced he supported Occupy Wall Street

Hundreds of people have marched in New Zealand, and over 2,000 demonstrators, including union leaders and Aboriginal groups, occupied outside of the Reserve Bank in Sydney, Australia, waving signs that read “You Can’t Eat Money”.

Demonstrations also took place in Melbourne and Brisbane.

“Occupy” protests were also held in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
 

 
As we all know by now, Mayor Bloomberg blinked and the “cleaning” of Zuccotti Park was postponed. Allison Kilkenny writes at The Nation blog:

Brookfield Properties, the owner of Liberty Park, which had planned to schedule a cleaning of the property where protesters have been camped out these past weeks, cancelled its maintenance plans suddenly last night to the surprise of many.

Reportedly, Brookfield handed down the decision to the city late Thursday, though the announcement didn’t reach Liberty until Friday morning when two thousand activists erupted in cheers as they huddled at the center of the camp. I’m sure Brookfield and the Mayor will stick with the story that this decision was made late last night, but the presence of thousands of determined occupiers probably sealed the deal if there was any indecision left in the board room.

Confused murmurs served as a prelude to celebrations – a haze of disbelief best articulated by a fellow reporter, who stumbled from the surging crowd to exclaim, “We don’t WIN! We’re the ones who get the shit kicked out of us!”

This was the first protest I’ve ever covered where the activists won – if only a battle, and not the war, and if only temporarily. And the victory is definitely temporary. Major problems have not been resolved and large questions remain: Will the protesters be able to bring their sleeping bags back into Liberty Park? Will they be able to sleep on the ground? Fourteen hours ago, Mayor Bloomberg declared protesters wouldn’t be able to return their gear to the park, and now the decree came down to postpone the cleaning entirely. Why the change of tune?

Considering the sorts of electronic images that would have been instantly transmitted to the rest of the world had a bunch of NYPD riot cops tried to evict 5000 committed citizens from Zuccotti Park this morning, Mayor Bloomberg dodged a seriously stupid bullet that he was threatening to shoot into his own foot.

This is an important victory. It shows you that they’re afraid and it also shows you the limits of what they think they can get away with.

You can see the jubilant moment when the news was announced early this morning, in the video below.
 

 
There have been a number of great short films and moving moments of video vérité being created by supporters of Occupy Wall Street and uploaded to YouTube, but this might be the best one so far.

It’s a very eloquent warning to the powers that be to get on the correct side of history.

This needs to be spread far and wide. I think it probably will be! Put together by Corey Ogilvie.
 

 
Thank you, Glen E. Friedman!

 
Well-played, sir!

STANDING FUCKING OVATION!!!!

Follow @UncleRUSH on Twitter.

Via Glen E. Friedman

 
From the Occupy Wall Street website. Please help get the word out. If you’ve got friends in the New York area, guilt them into going if you have to. If you live in New York, are you really going to sit at home and watch this happen on NY1??? That’s so lame!

Prevent the forcible closure of OWS

Tell Bloomberg: Don’t Foreclose the Occupation.

NEED MASS TURN-OUT: 6AM FRIDAY EVICTION DEFENSE
**SHOW UP AT MIDNIGHT**

This is an emergency situation. Please take a minute to read this, and please take action and spread the word far and wide.

Occupy Wall Street is gaining momentum, with occupation actions now happening in cities across the world.

But last night Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD notified Occupy Wall Street participants about plans to “clean the park”—the site of the Wall Street protests—tomorrow starting at 7am. “Cleaning” was used as a pretext to shut down “Bloombergville” a few months back, and to shut down peaceful occupations elsewhere.

Bloomberg says that the park will be open for public usage following the cleaning, but with a notable caveat: Occupy Wall Street participants must follow the “rules”. NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has said that they will move in to clear us and we will not be allowed to take sleeping bags, tarps, personal items or gear back into the park.

This is it—this is their attempt to shut down #OWS for good.

PLEASE TAKE ACTION

1) Call 311 (or +1 (212) NEW-YORK if you’re out of town) and tell Bloomberg to support our right to assemble and to not interfere with #OWS.
2) Come to #OWS TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT to defend the occupation from eviction.

For those of you who plan to help us hold our ground—which we hope will be all of you—make sure you understand the possible consequences. Be prepared to not get much sleep. Be prepared for possible arrest. Make sure your items are together and ready to go (or already out of the park.) We are pursuing all possible strategies; this is a message of solidarity.

Click here to learn nonviolent tactics for holding ground.

Occupy Wall Street is committed to keeping the park clean and safe—we even have a Sanitation Working Group whose purpose this is. We are organizing major cleaning operations today and will do so regularly.

If Bloomberg truly cares about sanitation here he should support the installation of portopans and dumpsters. #OWS allies have been working to secure these things to support our efforts.

We know where the real dirt is: on Wall Street. Billionaire Bloomberg is beholden to bankers.

We won’t allow Bloomberg and the NYPD to foreclose our occupation. This is an occupation, not a permitted picnic.

You can also add your name to this petition from Bold Progressives that is going to be delivered to Mayor Bloomberg tonight. Over 100,000 have signed it in the past few hours.

 
Activist group Bankster USA are pushing for a common-sense financial transaction tax on Wall Street transactions. The proposed rates are low—0.25 percent on a stock purchase or sale and 0.02 percent on the sale or purchase of a future, option, or credit default swap—and are proportional to transactional costs in the financial industry. It is projected that this tax would more than $100 billion in revenue annually while dampening speculation.

I personally don’t think this is nearly enough, but these kinds of things tend to happen incrementally in a democracy like ours, so I’m supporting this and you should consider signing it yourself. It’s time to start leaning on the financial sector quite heavily and this kind of tax would be a step in the right direction of reining these bastards in and confiscating some of their ill-gotten gains…

Tell Congress there’s a sensible tax on Wall Street that would help solve our budget problems.

When reckless trading on Wall Street crashed the global economy, American taxpayers bailed out the big banks to the tune of $4.7 trillion. That is trillion with a “T”.

Today, Wall Street is booming. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo executives are earning just as much as they did before the financial crisis. In 2010, the CEOs of these three banks made $52 million dollars combined.

Yet on Main Street family incomes are tanking, job creation has stalled, and 42 million people are living in poverty, more than at any other time in the last 50 years.

We have done our part, now it’s time for Wall Street to do more – through a tiny sales tax on each Wall Street trade called a financial transaction tax.

Right now Congress is considering huge cuts to Medicare and Social Security as well as other important programs in health, education and housing.

Enough is enough! We know where the money is. A tiny tax on financial services can generate billions of dollars.

Join the Americans for Financial Reform, the AFL-CIO, SEIU, Demos, Public Citizen, Jobs with Justice, the National Nurses United, National People’s Action and the other groups saying:

It’s time for Wall Street to start Paying US Back!

You can sign the petition here

It’s about time that the Tea party dumbshits start to realize their commonality with Occupy Wall Street and who their REAL enemy is!

Hint: The smug millionaire 20 or 30-something Wall Street traders who got as rich as hell while your pension fund tanked? Where the fuck do you think your money went, chuckes? They didn’t burn it!