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Peace News #2439: Editorial
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Guest editorial
by Sian Jones
Violence...
Five months after Seattle, and people are thinking things have changed... two editors and a dog set off to
Londons May Day 2000... Guerilla Gardening... part of a global day action against capitalism. It was a long
time since I'd been on an action where I knew that there would be violence, not just from the police but an
anticipated and declared tactic of protest ... but a tactic for what?
As Viv Sharples shows in the Tools section of this issue, Seattle was not a haphazard happening, but an
extremely well planned action, where participants were empowered by organisation and by each other. But not
May Day in London. It wasnt really the violence that bothered me (I didnt see it or experience it) I was
elsewhere planting cabbages at the Ministry of Defence (futile but nice!)I merely watched what was doled out
on the television news that night. What bothered me was the lack of strategy in the violence beyond smashing
a few windows. The irony of seeing those who trashed MacDonalds handing out burgers and other trashers eating
them may have been lost on many TV viewers but for me it seemed to express the complete futility of it all. As
Howard Clark points out later in this sectiona rallying cry is not a strategy for change.
... and disempowerment
The riot police, armed and supposedly dangerous, were not confronted by empowered actors, but with people with
no idea of their potential power. Instead of Reclaiming the Streets (one of the main slogans for the day)
protestors (and quite a few unwary tourists) were herded into Trafalgar Square. The rest of us were backed up
side-streets by the riot police. Someone yelled sit downbut only seven of us didand five hundred others
obediently backed up the road and let the police reclaim the streets. 500 people had had no idea of how easy
it is to sit down and feel no fear, to know the worst thing they can do is arrest you or hit you and still
feel empowered.
From fear to empowerment
The articles that follow take us through many processes of empowerment: from personal empowerment, so
lacking on May Day; to that realisation of the empowerment gained when we work with others towards a common
goal; and finally and the linearity of this argument should not be taken to suggest that the road to social
empowerment is not a long, deviating and often tortuous paththat we, as a social community, can confront those
with power and change our lives.
Whatever it is that we fear, confronting fear is the first stage of our own personal empowerment. When we are
small children, we fear the unknown, the paths we've never walked with confidence or knowledge; and often as
adults as Vesna Terselic points out we use apathy as a defence mechanism to stop us from feeling that fear. But
as Roberta Bacic so powerfully reveals it is only through feeling and facing that fear that we know we are alive.
The long and winding road...
Each stage of empowerment described by Julia Kraft emerges in this issue, which looks at the real work of
empowerment that goes on, step by step, bit by bit. As women in Croatia start with a laundry and end up as
significant political actors within their community; as gays and lesbians in Zimbabwe reach out for international
support with often mixed results; as deaf people in Britain struggle for recognition of their culture and language.
Empowerment is about taking or making space for ourselves (see Ellen Elsters post-script raising the question of
the disempowering effects of professional campaigns) whether it is about claiming identity, claiming the rights
to economic empowerment or literally taking space, as in David and Ippys squatting photo-essay.
Perhaps this is best expressed in Saswati Roys account of Swadhina, equipping rural women in India with the skills
they need to empower themselves and their communities. Here, as for so many women, the key lies in economic
empowerment from which their dignity, their right to be themselves and their control over their lives can begin.
Yet, the community of identity often described as social empowerment can also, in itself, be disempowering. In
examining the ins and outs of gay identity politics, Andreas Speck reveals how our needs for a political, social
or sexual identity can not only empower us, but can equally limit our capacity for political action.
What power do we want?
In a deconstruction of traditional notions of power, positing power not as necessarily oppositional but as
transformative and ultimately creative, Cecilia Moretti looks at the power that we want and crucially, at what
we want to do with that power when we have it. She sees power for change from within, from below and across
the boundaries we construct between ourselves, themes potently reflected by Gustavo Estevas narrative of struggle
by the people of Chiapas. The Zapatistas may not have seized power from the militaristic society in which they live,
but in a spirit of hope, have transformed life and social relationships within their own autonomous communities.
The power to transform our lives lies within us allall we have to do is work out is what we want and how to get
there thats the hard part and together we can do it. The rest is easy: as the saying goes,
Be realistic, demand the impossible!
Sian Jones is involved with Aldermaston Womens Peace Campaign, a WRI affiliate.
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