Action Framework
Spokescouncil Information Updated
Comms for G-20 Protests
Information is Power
Be Part of the Revolution
Tin Can Comms Collective (http://tincancomms.wordpress.com/ )is coordinating a communications infrastructure which you can be part of. It is based on our experiences doing comms during the 2004 Anti-RNC protests. To be part follow the instructions below:
Step 1: Get a cell-phone that can receive texts. (We suggest a pre-paid phone for added security.)
Step 2: Pick a comms group/s you wish to follow:
- g20pgh—the general group and has most messages
- g20pghlite—general info but only the most important messages and has lower volume
- g20pghlegal—covers specific information like arrests
- g20pghmedic—covers specific information like injuries
- g20pghfood—covers specific information like meal times
Step 3: Set up a twitter account by sending a text message to 40404 that reads:
Follow [name of group]
If you already have a twitter account you are done. If you do not you will receive a text requesting a user name to be sent back. Follow the directions in the text.
REMEMBER: When you are on the street and you see relevant information, text it to 40404 or speak to an operator at 412-567-1420.
If you want more detail info or how to set up an affinity group comms list please go to http://tincancomms.wordpress.com/
Sept 23: PGRP's Wednesday Spokescouncil Information
On September 23, the night before the Thursday mass action, at 7:00 pm, there will be a spokescouncil meeting for information sharing and coordination at our convergence space, located at 4374 Murray Ave.
The spokescouncil is a place for affinity groups to share decisions that they have made and identify things that they need to do and decisions that they need to make. The spokescouncil is not the place to debate the merits of the already agreed upon framework or specific tactics. We will have a process at the spokescouncil for claiming locations for Friday actions.
The spokescouncil is open to one representative from each affinity group, plus invited representatives from action-related working groups. For the purpose of the spokescouncil, we will consider an affinity group any grouping of three or more people who plan on participating in action roles. Larger affinity groups, clusters, or organizations are invited to send additional representatives, proportionate to one representative per six members.
Representatives of affinity groups will be asked to sign-up to participate at the convergence center starting on Tuesday prior to the spokescouncil. This representative should come with at least two other affinity group members to sign up. Sign-up ends immediately prior to the start of the spokescouncil.
Action Framework Working Group of the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project
www.resistg20.org/framework
NO MEDIA: CORPORATE, INDEPENDENT, RADICAL OR OTHERWISE.
This is meant to be a space for people participating in the action to discuss it amongst themselves. Only those who sign up as representing an affinity group or who are otherwise specifically invited will be allowed at the spokescouncil.
Call to Action - Resist the G-20!
September 22-25, Pittsburgh, PA
Leaders of 20 of the most powerful governments in the world, representing 19 countries and the European Union, are descending upon Pittsburgh in late September. We, concerned residents of Pittsburgh, are asking for individuals and organizations that are seeking a better world to come and show their opposition to these undemocratic, closed meetings. Our future belongs to us, not to our governments!
We are asking you to join us from September 22 through September 25. We are calling for a diversity of actions throughout the week, and we hope that you can join us for some or all of these actions, as you are able.
On Tuesday, September 22, neighborhoods in Pittsburgh will be having community picnics, where long-time residents, short-time residents, and the early-bird protesters can share a meal and talk about the better world that they want to live in. The G-20 tries to present itself as leaders getting together, but whenever they meet it seems to cost millions and involve police hitting people over the head with batons. Let's show them how a real civil gathering works: good people, good food, good times. Locals in the East End have already confirmed an Anti-G-20 Community Gathering in Friendship Park from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm Besides food, music and conversation, Rustbelt Radio, a project of Pittsburgh Indymedia, will be on hand collecting stories for its G-Infinity Media Project. The live, streaming audio project is a non-corporate, participatory media forum for the voices of the people who will not be in the room during the summit, who are affected by the G-20 economic policies but whose stories go largely untold.
Wednesday night, September 23, at 7:00 pm, there will be a spokescouncil meeting for information sharing and coordination at our convergence space, located at 4374 Murray Ave. The spokescouncil is a place for affinity groups to share decisions that they have made and identify things that they need to do and decisions that they need to make. If you are planning on attending, PLEASE READ this page on the spokescouncil format.
Thursday, September 24, will feature a People's Uprising, a mass march to disrupt the G-20 summit. We'll be starting at Arsenal Park at 2:30 pm in Lawrenceville, a vibrant working class community in the city, and marching to the G-20 summit downtown. Our theme is "Power from Below, Not Impositions from Above." Our only permit is our feet and voices. The G-20 is in the house, throwing a party. Let's crash it.
Friday, September 25, we'll be working to undermine the G-20 summit by attacking their power, making connections to the local manifestations of their neoliberal agenda. The folks that gather in the convention center represent large governments that draw their power from collusion with powerful corporations, governments that draw their wealth from resource extraction and destruction to our world, and governments that maintain their forces through the direct violence of police forces and militaries. Without these structural supports, their power will disintegrate. The G-20 is in a house of cards: let's shake the table.
The action working group of the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project has drawn up a list of 100 potential targets, and many groups will be claiming a destination somewhere in the city. We call for these coordinated actions to end at 11:30 am in which we will demonstrate: we do not need to be together physically to be together in struggle.
We encourage people to form affinity groups with those that they know and trust, to have a familiar faces to stick with in the streets and people to organize and take action with. An affinity group is when you get together with folks who are on the same page as you about what kind of action you want to do. Maybe they're your friends from work or school, maybe they're your marching band mates. What each group’s action will be on Friday is up to that person or affinity group. We ask that each affinity group send one member of that group to our spokescouncil on Wednesday night to share information, coordinate and to pick a focus for Friday, if one is not already chosen.
After the actions end at 11:30 am, there will be an anti-authoritarian contingent in the Thomas Merton Center Anti-War Committee's state-sanctioned People's March to the summit site. This contingent will adhere to the Pittsburgh Principles, respecting the tone and tactics of the march organizers.
We are working hard with many groups and individuals in order to ensure there is a solid foundation for all of these actions to be a success. We ask those who are able to contribute more than their bodies – those who are interested in helping to provide legal support, scouting, staffing the convergence center, medical support, food, housing, etc. — to do what they can to help the resistance. If you see a need that you can fill, fill it. You don't need our permission, nor should you be asking for it, to resist. If you're not exactly sure how to do that but want to try, get in touch.
Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project
www.resistg20.org
Sept. 24: Mass March on the G-20 Summit: The People’s Uprising!
Power from Below, Not Impositions from Above
Community Solutions, Not Corporate Institutions
People Before Financial Profits
Meet: Thursday, September 24 at 2:30pm, Arsenal Park (40th Street & Penn Ave.) in Lawrenceville.
This September 24-25 the G-20 will be meeting in Pittsburgh. Finance ministers, central bank governors, presidents and lobbyists from the world’s largest economies will come together to discuss and plan out the international financial system.
Historically, the G-20 and similar institutions have been instruments of economic destruction, helping to promote and construct a world system built on “free” trade agreements such as NAFTA, financial consolidation and corporate control, privatization and deregulation, and the idea that profit and growth are more important than people and ecological sustainability.
On Thursday, September 24, Pittsburghers opposed to the G-20 will hold a mass march in recognition that the summit is much more than a simple meeting.. The summit is a big deal because governments, global financial institutions and corporations are putting out vast sums of money, prestige and media to make it important. This huge media-driven spectacle is intended to lull the public into believing that everything is fine, that the world should continue on the same basic path it’s been on, and that it’s perfectly reasonable for a few people and companies to hold vastly disproportionate power and decision-making rights over everyone else.
This Mass March on the G-20 Summit is intended to be a creation of space in which diverse forms of resistance can occur. This means it is an opportunity to show the synergy and diversity of our struggles, not an attempt to impose one message or theme on everyone. Anyone dissatisfied with the state of our society has a reason to resist the G-20. Far from a liability we see that as a strength of this global movement for justice.
In such an interconnected world, the many problems people have result from the pro-corporate, pro-profit worldview imposed on us by institutions such as the G-20. Rising student tuition and unequal access to education are connected to union-busting and privatization at home, and to the expansion of sweatshops in the global south. The decline in real wages and loss of manufacturing here are tied to "free" trade agreements that force farmers off their land, workers into low paying jobs and students out of school. Police brutality in Pittsburgh and occupation in Iraq are part of the larger militarization of our world.. Environmental justice concerns in rural Pennsylvania and West Virginia, just as with health care reform, can’t be addressed without tackling the problem of corporate influence and the power of money in our political system. It’s clear that the only real change we can believe in requires systemic solutions.
At this march there will be student feeder marches and worker contingents, numerous musical groups, and, of course, efforts to disrupt the summit. The march is unpermitted and intended to allow people the space and freedom to oppose the G-20 how they see fit. The rest is up to you!
At this time in history, with the very architects of the global financial collapse gathering in our city we need events that start from the premise that it is people who matter, not permits. Our decision to not ask for permission from the system we protest has much to do with our belief that our future lies in community-based solutions, in power from below, in putting justice before the law, and in a rejection of the G-20 as a legitimate body for global decision-making. We build, not beg.
On September 24 we invite you to take to the streets with all of your love and your anger, your determination and your defiance, your rejection and your vision.
In solidarity,
Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project
www.resistg20.org
Say "No" to the G-20…and "Yes" to Community Gatherings!
This September, the political elites will be gathering in Pittsburgh to push policies that harm workers, human rights, the environment and our local quality of life. On Tuesday, September 22, Pittsburghers who are opposed to global destruction will be gathering in Friendship Park (from 5:00pm to 7:00pm) to share food, music and conversation. This is not a protest; this is a chance to directly tell our story of the world for which we’re fighting.
Organizers will provide some tasty food, but bring something delicious to share if you can! Local singer/songwriters will be on-hand with tunes and feel free to bring your own acoustic or percussive instruments if you feel musically inclined.
And a special highlight of the evening… the Pittsburgh Independent Media Center will be collecting stories for its G-Infinity Media Project — a local forum for the voices of the people who will not be in the room, who are affected by the G-20 economic policies but whose stories go largely untold. The G-20 summit brings together 19 national leaders from nations controlling 85% of the world’s wealth to make major economic policy decisions; is this a democratic forum for decision-making that affects all 203 nations and 6.7 billion people in the world? The Pittsburgh IMC (indypgh.org) exists for community-based, non-corporate, participatory media. Members are committed to countering the narrative that obscures the experience of those individuals and communities who have been left behind by economic transition, who continue to suffer discrimination, disenfranchisement, violence, epidemic health disparities and lack of access to opportunity. By bringing together people working in their communities to tell their own stories in these forums, the project aims to create a full-spectrum media picture much broader than that of the G-20. Come tell your story!
This event is sponsored by the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project. We are encouraging allies in other parts of the East End and beyond to hold similar gatherings in neighborhoods throughout the city. These events will work to bring together community members already active against the G-20 with their neighbors and locals with out-of-towners who care enough to come to Pittsburgh to resist the G-20. This is a chance to create webs of solidarity between the people of Pittsburgh and the world.
Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project
www.resistg20.org
Sept. 25: Localize and Broaden the Fight Against the G-20
TGIF. The global is local, the local is global and our resistance is everywhere.
Friday, September 25th. Simultaneous actions in different areas of Pittsburgh, all ending at 11:30 am
By this point, the G-20 summit circus will be in its final hours in Pittsburgh. Earlier in the week, we focused our energy on the summit more directly and now, we will turn towards the institutions where the G-20's worldview manifests. The places that symbolize the kind of world the G-20 works to protect and sustain. Institutions that pepper the landscape of our city, just like most other cities.
We reject the idea that some issues are local and others are global. The local is the global and the global is the local: the problems we face locally are overwhelmingly not unique and in fact, the "global" problems created by the G-20 have translated into problems that are being felt in every locale across the world. When we talk about the decline of real wages, we're talking about the sweatshop labor in Asia, we're talking about the sweatshop labor in California. When we talk about anti-union activities on Columbia, we're talking about anti-union activities in Pittsburgh. And everywhere we're talking about housing, healthcare, food and education becoming more expensive and less accessible.
With this in mind, we reject the G-20 not just because their meetings are an undemocratic farce or because they don't have our interests at heart. We reject the G-20 because the world that we have inherited is neither fair nor just and we recognize that our governments are either unwilling or unable to help. It is from unjust social and economic relations that our misery springs, that these institutions exist and prosper and while we make no claims that one day will bring about a new society sometimes you just got to say fuck it and get down. Our resistance on Friday is an attempt to show that mass movements of people, not governments, are the only things that we can trust to create the world we want to see. We are going to undermine the G-20 by exposing and confronting the institutions %mdash; institutions that the G-20 protects and defends %mdash; that directly affect us.
For Friday, September 25, we've created a menu of places in Pittsburgh at which we're asking affinity groups and organizations to adopt as sites for protests and other actions. We don't care when your action starts, but ask that it end exactly at 11:30 am For those who want to do an hour-long picket start at 10:30 am, for those who want to do a 30-second street theatre piece kick things off at 11:29 am At many locations nothing will happen and that's okay as we see part of the point in simply drawing attention to those places where oppression and injustice exists on a daily basis. Some locations will have previously advertised public protests. Many other spots will have creative actions determined by the groups that adopt them. The tactics and the tone should be determined by you. We see this as the creation of space in which others can bring their visions to fruition while drawing on the strengths of coordination, decentralization, diversity of tactics and differing risk levels. We intend to create a way that groups can avoid going to the same areas, and we'll later release a more in-depth look at how we see this playing out and why we believe it will be successful while some other (in our view, more problematic) variations have not met expectations.
After the actions end at 11:30 am, there will be an anti-authoritarian contingent in the Thomas Merton Center Anti-War Committee's state-sanctioned People's March to the summit site. This contingent will adhere to the Pittsburgh Principles, respecting the tone and tactics of the march organizers.
We encourage people to form affinity groups with those that they know and trust, to have a familiar faces to stick with in the streets and people to organize and take action with. An affinity group is when you get together with folks who are on the same page as you about what kind of action you want to do. Maybe they're your friends from work or school, maybe they're your marching band mates. What each group’s action will be on Friday is up to that person or affinity group. We ask that each affinity group send one member of that group to our spokescouncil on Wednesday night to share information, coordinate and to pick a focus for Friday, if one is not already chosen.
Our liberation was never, is not and never shall be, dependent on the G-20 governments, ministers or summits.
Make Total Resistance.
Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project
www.resistg20.org
Sept 22-25: Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Strategy Update
The Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project (PG20RP) exists as a space to aid coordination and actualize resistance to the G20 summit happening this September 24-25 in Pittsburgh, PA. The group has coalesced around a shared desire to deepen ongoing social resistance locally, to demonstrate and build new and existing alternatives to the worldview represented by the G20 and the direct policies it promotes, and to disrupt the summit and undermine its attempts to gain legitimacy.
Towards these collective goals, the PG20RP is creating a strategy that recognizes the unique opportunity created by an influx of outside supporters during the four-day period around the summit and the challenges presented by the incredible amount of state resources that will be directed against us. We are steadily addressing how to effectively focus on and integrate these four days into the bigger picture of ongoing local social resistance.
On Tuesday, September 22, the PG20RP and allies will host an Anti-G20 Community Gathering in the East End of Pittsburgh and are encouraging other groups to hold similar gatherings in neighborhoods throughout the city. These events will work to bring together community members already active against the G20 with their neighbors, and locals with out-of-towners who care enough to come to Pittsburgh to resist the G20. This is a chance to create webs of solidarity between the people of Pittsburgh and the world. This is not a protest; this is a chance to directly tell our story of the world for which we’re fighting. The gathering will involve the sharing of food, music and stories.
On Wednesday, September 23, other Pittsburgh organizations are tentatively holding a major march, followed by an evening concert. We are calling for a Red and Black contingent within this march. In accordance with the Pittsburgh Principles, this anti-authoritarian presence will not be a black bloc and will not be masked. Later that night there will be a spokescouncil (a meeting of representatives from groups participating in street actions) to discuss the following day’s schedule.
On Thursday, September 24, we will meet at 2:30pm in a location TBA in the East End to “March on the G20” summit at David Lawrence Convention Center downtown. This event is a space for the active expression of diverse forms of resistance by all those wishing to oppose the G20. This is not a state-sanctioned event. We hope to also create a way to coordinate the participation of those with varying risk levels, and those who may not want to participate in more direct actions themselves but would like to stand in solidarity with those do.
On Friday, September 25, events will begin at high noon with dozens of simultaneous actions that connect the struggle against the G20 to a broader arena of local and international social resistance. The aim is an event that puts dozens of groups in motion, drawing on the strengths of coordination, decentralization, diversity of tactics and differing risk levels. Individual groups will choose what they do and while we’ll be unaware of what is planned, we have faith that people will act creatively and effectively in ways based on respect for the principles driving the overall mobilization and the Pittsburgh Principles. We’ll soon put out a list of a hundred or so places already being resisted in Pittsburgh and some generic ideas, and we’ll come up with a way for groups to avoid going to the same places. Afterwards, groups will converge at Fifth and Craft avenues in Oakland to participate in the march and rally being organized by our allies, the Thomas Merton Center Anti-War Committee. Although we would like to march as a PG20RP contingent, we would ask people to avoid police provocations and ensure their actions during the march stay consistent with the Pittsburgh Principles. After the conclusion of the march, we will move as a group to begin a jail solidarity encampment outside the local jail and wherever they hold folks arrested during the summit.
In general, we are calling on individuals and groups to participate in, and self-initiate, efforts consistent with the following goals:
- Defend our communities and contest state control of space in our neighborhoods.
- Occupy to reclaim space from the clutches of neo-liberalism, before, during and after the summit.
- Confront and disrupt the G20 and its political, corporate, and institutional enablers throughout the city.
- Connect the G20 to local and global struggles.
The PG20RP is actively working to:
- Provide a mobilization infrastructure and an information clearinghouse
- Create and distribute publicity and educational materials
- Create space for folks interested in resisting the G20 through articulation of a broad action framework
- Ensure that some of this space is utilized through actions organized and carried out by the PG20RP and supportive individuals and groups
- Build hype and momentum through a series of lead-up actions directed at local supporters of the G20 and its agenda (such as the Allegheny Conference), and state-organized propaganda events designed to present the illusion of community support that lay the groundwork for repression of dissent.
More details will be released as the Action Working Group and General Assembly flesh out more specifics.
