Climate Justice Action 2

The two main images that Climate Justice Action tried to establish was the breaking-thru-the-barriers-of-the-COP15 and the Peoples Assembly. Both are to be seen as symbolic gestures in the sense that neither event was plausible and the Peoples Assembly could easily have been held in another place without police restrictions. So the only reasons to create those two situations was symbolic. Then how to descibe the symbolic values of the two images:

The breaking-thru-the-barriers-action presents the desire and the power of the movements not only to confront the police but also to conquer the barrier. The barrier is a strong symbol of the undemocratic eksclusiveness of COP15. Its only a conference for the selected few. If the demonstration had succeded in breaking into Bella Center it would have been a symbolic break through the symbolic barrier, opening up the conference for everybody, for the people, the mulitude.

The Peoples Assembly is the symbolic realization of this new openess. And it symbolizes a democratic proces where everyone has a possibility to join. Even though the actual assembly would only have been shared by a few hundred people it would have worked as a symbolic representation of an open, all inclusive version of democracy.

What really happened was more blurry. The idea of breaking thru the barrier was obviously unrealistic as the police presence was far too overwhelming. The number of demonstrators was also too small to push through the barricades. So the push became a manifestation of confrontation with the police. Two opposing forces meeting in a clash. This is where my doubt comes in; if the purpose of the symbolic gesture was to break open COP15, the result were quite different. The event manifested an image of confrontation. This negative image is of course not only produced by the Climate Justice Action, but also by the police, maybe even mainly by the police. But I think it is a problem that the Climate Justice Action chose a symbolic gesture that had such a strong element of confrontation – mainly because this confrontation was what the danish government and the police had been building up as a negative expection in the media in the month preceding COP15.

At the same time I am really astonished and suspicious about the way the police handled the situation: The sober solution would have been to wait out the activists big push. There wasn’t at any point any threat of anybody breaking through the defence line of the police. If they had just kept this line and waited that extra half an hour, the defining moment of Climate Justice Action would have blown over and the push would have dissolved by itself. Instead the police choose to close down the demo, threat everybody with arrest and clear the street in front of the barried entrance of Bella Center. This – unnecessary - police action created turmoil and violence on both sides, but it seemed like a conciously violent act by the police forces. A show of force. And it could be interpreted as a strategic way of fulfilling the negative expectation of the violent activist. A strategic move that produces the images of the violent activist.