Statements

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.

The intent herein is not just a call to gather in Pittsburgh in opposition to the G20 summit. It is more so one persons desire to help create the conditions that will propel a new wave of participation, excitement and hope. While this is a personal statement, in writing this I hope to engage others that may feel the same way. At best, this note will be passed on to anyone that has interest in strengthening and building a movement that can sustain itself and begin shaping a new world, while taking into account the challenges ahead.

Ten years ago, an energy and enthusiasm swept many of us, including me. For different reasons, a whole lot of people began organizing and defying the alienation and desperation that defined the height of corporate globalization. Instead of utilizing the traditional and accepted channels of change, inspired by movements and heros from the past, we focused on direct forms of organization. Most important, our actions inspired countless people to believe that, what is, does not have to be. That anything given time, strength and action can and has to be created.

This week, the G20's smaller, even more elite buddy in global destruction—the G8—met in Italy as rabid media publicized quote after quote from world leaders fashionably remarking on how the G8 is just so passé. On the eve of the meetings, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Parliament in Berlin that she was saving national firepower for the bigger forum of the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh in September. She said the G8 forum alone was not up to the challenges faced by the world in 2009.

Capital and its protectorate, the State, continue their scheming and we persist in our resistance.

The working groups of the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project (PG-20RP) are ramping up their activities. Local Outreach has started going door-to-door, discussing the G-20 and its effects with residents; Legal is in the process of organizing a Radical (Play)Date Raffle; Logistics is hunting down space for all of us to eat and organize; and the (Im)Material Group is working in spurts to add and build more content for the website,

One of the ways that POG is readying for the G-20 meeting in September is to use our annual anarchist picnic as a way to build stronger connections between those in the radical community, and also with our friends and neighbors. Though the days of action are very close, there will no doubt be a long aftermath, both in terms of legal battles and a giddy police force with eager trigger fingers...