Recently 25 life-size figures appeared in front of the Deutsche Bank branch at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. The cut-out figures were cardboard ‘clones’ of Occupy activists from around the world. In October 2011 two designers from Berlin visited Occupy Wall Street, Occupy DC and Occupy London to meet occupiers and take their photos. “The protests of the Occupy movement address global issues,” said Paul Stabe. “We wanted to give protesters the opportunity to make their voice heard in other countries.”

Deutsche Bank was heavily involved in bringing about the financial crises, knowingly selling “junk” subprime mortgage-backed securities that it’s own analysis’s described as “crap”. Although the German bank received $11.8 billion of United State’s bailout funds, European governments insist that the costs of the financial crises be paid for by working people as part of the hugely unpopular austerity programmes.

The cardboard protestors will join global day of action against austerity on the 12th May. The march to Alexanderplatz starts at 2pm in Berlin.

wallstreettoyourstreet.com

We interrupt this blog, to give you a special Olympic welcome from Signs Of Revolt Exhibitors, The Space Hijackers-

“In the summer of 2012 the eyes of the world will be on London as the best gather from around the globe. The Olympics, Para Olympics and Cultural Olympiad have set the stage for a spectacular showcase. You don’t want to miss your chance to say “I was part of the greatest show on earth”.

As the official protesters of London 2012 the Space Hijackers don’t want you to miss the opportunity to celebrate and be inspired. Taking place in venues across London you can now sign up to be part of the official protest of the games. You can make a start by registering your interest with us.

Tickets to the official protest will be released by us in Spring 2012. Tickets to officially protest will be dispatched in Summer 2012.

Get ready to be part of a lasting memory of London and the Games!

Be wary of bogus sites claiming to give you access to protest at the Games. Ensure you only register with our authorized website. Tickets are strictly non-transferable and must not be redistributed or advertised for redistribution on the internet, in newspapers or anywhere else other than via the official London 2012 protest redistribution programme.”

http://www.protestlondon2012.com/

And if that doesn’t convince you here at some reasons why you might want to take part…

THE OLYMPICS WILL SHOW OFF OUR CITY TO THE WORLD.
But it doesn’t. The Olympic Marathon had its route moved to Pall Mall because Tower Hamlets, the poorest borough in London, doesn’t quite make the right impression.

THE OLYMPICS WILL BENEFIT LONDONERS WITH JOBS.
It depends. Not people affected by the Games – only 25% of the Olympics workforce are from the five Olympic boroughs. However, Atos Origin, who run the volunteering scheme, are generating colossal profits from contracts. They’re less charitable to their workforce, who won’t get a penny for their time and energy.

THE OLYMPICS WILL BENEFIT LOCAL BUSINESS.
When the Athlete’s Village is turned into homes it will become part of the Stratford Citydevelopment, now wholly owned by Westfield (after they bought out the other shareholders). Residents can look forward to having their environment controlled at the whim of a corporation whose reason for being is to sell stuff. Local business doesn’t really stand a chance in the long run.

THE OLYMPICS WILL CREATE MORE HOUSING.
Yes, if you can afford them! The rest of the site is being given over to homes is being developed by the Mayoral Development Company, Olympic Park Legacy Company. They promise 11,000 new homes, and 35% of them will be affordable. Only 675 of them will be social housing though, so if you’re on the list in Newham get ready to wait. The average wait is around 10 years.

Previous Olympic cities, like Barcelona, Sydney and Seoul, have seen huge rises in property prices, forcing local families out of their neighbourhoods. This is already happening in Londonand thanks to confidentially agreements with the London Organising Committee of the Olympics and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) you won’t hear about it in the media.

THE OLYMPICS WILL CREATE MORE PUBLIC TRANSPORT.
Well, not quite. Huge swathes of London roads will become dedicated ‘VIP lanes’ during the Games. Thousands will struggle to get to work for the whole 10 weeks. There has been little word on how much the public will have to be in fare increases in future years.

The DLR extension is finished but the new (old) platforms at Stratford International have been rebuilt out of wood. The cable car (officially the Emirates Air Line) that goes from not-quite-the-o2 to not-quite-the-ExCeL centre might be finished by the time the games happen. Nobody wants to say if it’ll be ready or not. But at least it’s only costing the taxpayer £24million in exchange for Emirates to get their logo on tube maps for the next decade

THE OLYMPICS WILL MAKE THE CITY A SAFER PLACE TO BE.
Well, yes, they are sending in the army and putting missiles on tops of peoples homes, then forgetting to guard them. You’ll be monitored the whole time by hundreds of security personnel, CTV and flying drones developed for use in Afghanistan. Stratford is set to be the guinea pig for yet more oppressive surveillance tactics. Studies show that CCTV does little to reduce crime, but a lot to create a climate of fear.

The police also have a new temporary police station built on Wanstead Flats. Although planning permission was only sought for a temporary structure, its been constructed as a permanent building – stealing a large chunk of public green space enjoyed by local residents for centuries.

THE OLYMPICS WILL BE THE GREENEST GAMES EVER.
Not quite. The Olympic Park is built on a former landfill site. Excavations have disturbed buried toxic chemicals, spreading them into the land. Radioactive thorium from an old watch factory has also seeped into the water table. DOW Chemical, the company that bought Union Carbide (responsible for the as yet to be cleaned up Bhopal disaster) are major sponsors. Plus BP is the Olympics official sustainability partner. Their involvement in the Tar Sands is a glowing indicator of their lack of commitment to ecological sustainability and social justice.

THE OLYMPICS IS AN INVESTMENT IN LONDON’S FUTURE.
We’ll it is quite an investment. £9.3bn, according to the Olympics Quarterly Economic Report in May 2011. The original estimate in 2005? £2.4bn according to the Labour government. The most recent figure doesn’t include costs associated with the acquisition of land, remediation, government departments and quango spending. 10% of the cost for the Olympics will come from Londoner’s taxes and 67% from national taxes.

THE OLYMPICS WILL PROMOTE DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
We’ll it will certainly be promoting many things through its corporate sponsorship deals. LOCOG are interested in protecting their benevolent sponsors but seem to have little interest in anyone else’s freedom of speech or expression, even handing out ASBO’s to anyone opposing the games. Their crack team of branding Police will be enforcing laws expecially drawn up for the olympics which are far more stringent than any other copywrite law. With everything from an “Official chocolate bar of the Olympic Games” through to banning anyone using the words “olympics’, “2012″, “Summer Games” “Twenty Twelve” and many more, the games is more than anything an experiment in extending corporate control of social life.

THE OLYMPICS WILL INSPIRE A NEW GENERATION.
It will but the International Olympics Committee isn’t only interested in inspiring future athletes. It’s going for the gold and hoping to inspire as many people as possible to buy more stuff.

It’s not quite clear what kind of future taxpayers are being asked to invest in. It seems to be one that favours a particular London vista – Pall Mall, oppression, privatization and the erosion of public space.

We’re not opposed to the sports events, and we’re all in favour of having a big party – but only if everyone’s invited.

A Hamburg street artist is adding a Photoshop toolbar to the ubiquitous new H&M outdoor swimwear ads, the ads had already been criticized for the ads by the Swedish Cancer Society for using a too-tan model, but this great simple intervention shows what was really responsible!

via: http://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/hm-bikini-posters-get-nicely-adbusted-by-street-a

This is a great new book from the States, ideal for anyone wanting a handy guide to the ‘how-to’ of creative activism and protest.

But that’s what we here at Signs Of Revolt say, this is what they say…

“From the Arab Spring to the American Fall and beyond, a new global people’s movement is being born. The impossible suddenly seems possible, and all around the world ordinary people are trying out new tools and tactics to win victories where they live. In the shadow of austerity and ecological crisis, the urgency of this political moment demands resources that will transform outrage into effective action. Beautiful Trouble is a toolbox for the next revolution.

Beautiful Trouble is a book and web toolbox that puts the accumulated wisdom of decades of creative protest into the hands of the next generation of change-makers.”

Indeed, get a copy!

http://beautifultrouble.org/

On the 25th revolutionary 1st of May demonstration in Berlin-Kreuzberg, protesters were throwing huge inflatable cobblestones, made of silver-reflective foil and tape. The creative intervention was initiated by the art-activist collective “Eclectic Electric Collective” (EEC) and was meant as a celebration of an object which is both a symbol and a material weapon of anti-authoritarian struggle everywhere. It also aimed to bring new strategies of tactical frivolity into the demonstration.

A member of the collective explains:
“Through 25 years of riots, the cobblestone has become an icon for protests at the May 1 in Berlin Kreuzberg. The use of cobblestones in social uprisings is however much older: from ancient Rome, to the Paris Commune in 1871 to the ´68 movement, cobblestones have been used for barricades and as a weapon of defense. Taking stones out of the pavement is a favoured act of those who refuse to consent to an oppressive social order.”

The May 1st demonstration in Berlin has long been a testing-ground for police tactics of crowd control and restrictions on protest. This year, 7000 highly-armed and aggressively shielded cops matched some 15 000 protesters, who were warned that a new water cannon, with a 10 000 L water-capacity, would be ready to be used against them. The inflatables are a collective creative intervention against this growing repression of protest and dissent, in ways that are both concrete and as well as symbolic. The experiences of the inflatables on May 1 proved their many uses in situations of protest, which can be summarized by the term “tactical frivolity”. Inflatables bring celebration and play to a demonstration while at the same time having strategic functions in situations of conflict… Cops can be easily perturbed by the unpredictable and un-categorizable.

At first the cubes appear to be shiny, desirable, playful objects; a visual spectacle which attracts little suspicion from cops looking for glass bottles and stones. The gigantic 3 x 3 x 3m cobblestone spontaneously attracted a crowd of people bouncing it up in the air. This brought a strong visual element to the demonstration1 similar to the use of giant puppets in protests. The advantage of inflatables in contrast to puppets however is that although they look massive, they are lightweight and easy to handle. Carrying a giant inflatable together creates a sense of crowd unity, while it can also keep the group moving forward despite a demo having been attacked and dispersed by cops.

More info: http://eclectic-electric-collective.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/under-pavement-beach-gigantic.html

Tate à Tate is a site-specific sound artwork themed around the issue of BP sponsorship of Tate presented by Platform and Liberate Tate. Tate à Tate is created by Ansuman Biswas (Tate Britain), Isa Suarez, Mae Martin and Mark McGowan (Tate Boat) and Phil England and Jim Welton (Tate Modern).

How do I take the tour?

Either:
> Download the different parts of the audio tour directly onto a phone on which you can play mp3s
> Download the different parts of the audio tour onto your computer, and then transfer the mp3s from your computer onto a portable mp3 player or an iPod, or onto a mobile phone on which you can play the mp3s.

The tour starts from any of the three different locations:
For Tate Britain, stand in the lobby just beside the stand where audio guides are for sale.
For Tate Modern stand at the entrance to the Tate Turbine Hall at the top of the ramp leading down into the hall
For the boat journey simply press play once you have boarded the boat and sat down.
For the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern, you will receive directions as part of the audio tour as to where to go inside the building.

http://www.tateatate.org/

The riots that hit London last Summer have been dismissed by the Establishment as reckless criminality. But the question that is never asked is why so many young kids were prepared to risk jail and revolt in the way they did. Riots are complex and of course many involved went along with the ride, wanted to freeload or just cause  a bit of trouble but as the most extensive research into the riots so far has revealed, the Neo-Liberal policies that have increased inequality have hit areas of working class London and other urban centres particularly hard. In London these processes are particularly obvious, in areas like Hackney, some of the poorest people in Europe live cheek by jowl with City Bankers taking home million pound bonuses and houses. Mix into this a shocking level of Police brutality and racism that sees Black kids seven times more likely to get stop and searched and the ConDem governments austerity agenda meaning that grants for college have been cut and university tuition increased three-fold to £9000 a year and you begin to understand both the sense of no hope in the future, the  looting of unaffordable consumer goods and the hatred of the Pollice and Establishment that was displayed.

But at last the view from below has found expression in a fantastic track from Plan B, Ill Manors, which deals with the demonisation of the poor, their sense of frustration and the visceral energy the riots no doubt contained and many involved enjoyed. Although superficially it seems to be a celebration of the events, a closer reading of the lyrics and the video suggest that Plan B, while supportive of the kids in the areas affected, is also critical of the way the riots played into the hands of the authorities, which is why he is planning not just a film about the subject, but some kind of charity of social enterprise that will help kids in the poorest areas, here is talking about his ideas and what he wants to do to help at a TED event in London.

http://www.time4planb.co.uk/splash2012/

Pussy Riot are a collective of Russian feminist punk rockers who have been staging illegal actions against the Russian State and the corrupt regime of Vladmir Putin. Expressing the frustration and rage of a young generation is Russia unhappy with a society run by Oligarchs.

Lyrics feature such provocations as “Occupy city with a kitchen pan, Go out with a hoover, achieve orgasm, Seduce an army of female police, Naked cops are happy about new reform.” and “Egyptian air is good for the lungs / Do Tahrir on Red Square!” all sung while wearing day glo clothing and balaclavas.

There actions are both daring and brave. On the 3rd of March two members were arrested for being part of a group performance of an obscene song on February 21 in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. The song included an appeal to the “Holy Mother, Blessed Virgin” to “chase Putin out.” Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were charged with “hooliganism” but have denied being members of Pussy Riot. On March 16, a third member, Irina Loktina, who had earlier acted as a witness in this case, was similarly arrested and charged.

A support page has been set up on Facebook for arrestees as they face possibly long prison sentences. You can support them here:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/317168765007434/

And for more info on the group see:

http://pussy-riot.livejournal.com/

FREE PUSSY RIOT!

Dr.D has been doing some great street level interventions over the last few years, his most recent action was to set up this great fake crime scene to protest the privatisation of the NHS by the ConDem government, below are pics of the crime scene and one more recently subvertised billboard.

http://www.drd.nu/

BP’s Olympic branding defaced throughout London

Hundreds of BP signs across London have been targeted by activists protesting against the company’s role as ‘Sustainability Partner’ of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Around the capital, protesters hit petrol stations, advertising hoardings, and BP-sponsored cultural institutions, disfiguring hundreds of the famous BP ‘sunflower’ logo. Advertisements with the company’s Olympic strapline ‘fuelling the future’ were altered with the addition of three asterisks to make ‘f***ing the future’.

Activists said the ‘subvertising’ action, dubbed ‘Brand Piracy’ day, would escalate public debate of BP’s sponsorship after headlines in recent months had focused on the Dow controversy. The action was said to be “the first of many” with “more BP branding to be targeted in the run up to the Olympics”.

One of those taking part in the action, Bridget Peterson, said, “BP has just closed its solar business and is now plunging into highly polluting tar sands, exploring the pristine Arctic and restarting its deepwater drilling operations. These extreme forms of energy extraction are incompatible with stopping climate change, yet BP pursues them greedily while gloatingly advertising itself as ‘Sustainability Partner’.”

Another activist, who wished to remain anonymous, explained, “The Olympics gives BP the chance to look ethical and yet lead the public down the garden path. BP pays millions to manufacture a false reputation as a ‘sustainable’ company, and deflect all attention from its actual operations. This sickening marketing spree amounts to a major cover-up – and so today we took our own action to cover it up.”

A website, f-ingthefuture.org, shows pictures of the action and outlines the problems with BP’s sponsorship of the Olympics.