Yeah

Some bright spark has done some anarchist graffiti on my way to work. They've gone with the oddly spelled, but encouraging "Fite for freedom", but I was also glad to see the old favourite "Smash the system" up there too. It usually raises at least a chuckle on what can otherwise be a fairly grim cycle ride into work through the morning traffic. It's also got me thinking about some of the things that politicised me when I was younger. Something that was fairly pivotal for me, was the unrest in Seattle in 1999*. I was a student, and I used to come through Euston every morning on the underground with a fair number of suits, and I definitely felt some kind of affinity with what was happening in Seattle that I knew already I would never feel with someone in a suit. I'd always been quite politically conscious before, but as far as my political identity and sympathies went, although at the time I was very ambivalent about such violent activity, I think that seeing that unfolding on the news really gave me a sense of ownership of the idea of anti-globalisation. And maybe pulled me off my natural position on the fence and into some kind of alignment with a political movement.

I know that's kind of a load of stream of thought bullshit but it's also, you know, you see these things, and wonder what's the point of damaging acts and I guess there's a kind of poetry in them that makes people think. Like in Donnie Darko, where someone says "destruction is a form of creation. They wanted to see what would happen if they tore the world apart". But I really don't know where I stand. Still happiest on the fence maybe.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTO_Ministerial_Conference_of_1999_protest_activity