Mayday, Guerilla Gardening - London 2000

On May 1st 2000, about 6,000 people met at Parliament Square for an advertised 'guerrilla gardening' anti-capitalist global day of action. A minority of the crowd dug up the grass of Parliament Square and planted seeds and shrubs, while probably the majority moved up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square where they were blocked in by the police. There was a small amount of confrontation with the police, some statues and war memorials were graffitied and a branch of McDonald's and some other shops got smashed up. It was all over the newspapers the next day which made a great deal of the graffiti done to the statues and war memorials. A lot of people got arrested, not much was achieved and it was not generally considered to have been a brilliant success.

In a way we ended up in a situation which was the worst of both worlds - neither fish nor fowl - a squatted garden which we didn't defend and occupy, 'guerrilla' gardening which was in no sense 'guerrilla' - totally bloody obvious actually.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Activism
• Public Space
• May Day

[achuntarme]

Social service for a capitalistic reform.

[achuntarme]

Social service for a capitalistic movement.