We Are The University

Reclamation: Theory into Practice

Live Site

Original post

Johnny Truant

Sun Mar 18 2012 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)

Plan a Campaign:

Every action should be a part of a clear and defined campaign narrative with established goals and rationale. Remember, reclamation is a tactic, not a strategy. Furthermore, civil disobedience is the last resort, never the first and can never be a substitute for community organising, awareness raising and lobbying.

• Research: Check facts and allegations; form an airtight case against opponents and prepare for counter-charges. Analyse why the problem exists and have an alternative strategic plan of how the problem could be rectified. Furthermore, your campaign needs a vision to work towards so that your actions don’t simply become reactions.
• Establish the power dynamics for allies and opposition in relation to the issue. Create an inventory of your main resources, create a list of your supporters, your potential supporters, which groups you want to engage with.
• Prove the failure of institutions to the public.
• Prepare the conditions for a social movement. This includes building community support and approaching groups with common goals.
• Actions, when the time is appropriate, should function to be:
  • An announcement or alarm: Shine light on an issue that needs immediate public attention.
  • Reinforcement: Clearly define the injustice to add to public understanding alongside the ongoing campaign.
  • Punctuation: Direct action can sustain interest in a campaign.
  • Escalation: Raise the stakes of an ongoing struggle.
  • Morale: Direct action can serve to raise spirits and renew the struggle during an extended campaign.

Building a Group:

• Start from the base of affinity groups. Autonomous groups of 5-15 people who know each others’ strengths and weaknesses. This dynamic can be useful for both starting a campaign as well as for a supporting structure in reclamations.
• Accept others into affinity groups so that mutual support can be spread during the stress of reclamations. This also helps to lighten the workload.
• Specialise. Differing individuals excel at varying things. Work to your strengths within campaigning and actions.
• Work on a consensus based model where everyone engages with plans and is able to affect the group’s direction.
• Ensure that you start as you want to continue. Don’t replicate the same social structures that you are campaigning against, for many groups this means forming as a leaderless movement.

Be Flexible, Explore Diverse Types of Actions:

• Direct Action: A form of creative resistance and intervention against the mechanisms of power as well as a step towards visionary forms of society.
• Direct Communication: An action or communication form aimed at directly influencing stakeholder who can effect change.
• Photo Opportunities: Play the media angle. Boost knowledge of your issue in the public sphere whilst subjecting your opponent to negative publicity.
• Protests: Do you have an opponent vulnerable to public opinion and is your message already widely understood? Hit the street with people power and demonstrate the power of your discontent.

Any action you undertake won’t restrict itself to a single one of these categories but will rather be a complex mash of all of them. Explore this, be creative and have fun. Humour and fun don’t only get people on board and interested but also keep you from burning out.

Recommended Established Styles Are:

• Culture jamming: The art of hijacking the mainstream media, corporate advertisers, and the public domain to get a across a message against one-way communication. Basically, the sabotage of corporate or public property for political purposes.
• Monkey Wrenching: Disrupting the normal operation of a corporate, political or private entity with the goal of demonstrating the indispensability of workers, the public or students.
• Blockades: Either form a human blockade or lock a gate to ensure that the issue is temporarily suspended.
• Strikes: Walk out, sit in, refusing to pay, whistle blowing, circumventing power hierarchies, the list goes on.
• Cyber activism.
• Reclaim!

Planning a Reclamation:

Plan ahead: Whether you reclaim as a small group of clandestine adventurers or a part of an inspired crowd, it’s a good idea to plan ahead.

Draw a crowd: Draw a crowd by calling a meeting. At the meeting, announce that a reclamation is imminent or, dependent on the vibe, convince people to reclaim with you and then do it immediately.

Control a door: When you scout out a building, you want to figure out how to open up the space to others once the reclamation is underway. Choose a means of getting people into and out of the space (for example, a door or window). Lock entrances in such a way that it can be opened and closed more easily. If you can’t control an entrance, control a supply line. Depending on how long you are reclaiming for, you’ll need a resupply of essentials.

Open the space: Activists often debate whom they should let into the space. Don’t let paranoia dominate this conversation, but also don’t be flippant. Whether you let people in and who you let in should be analysed in the context of your location and your numbers. Be wary of infiltrators and individuals who just want to cause trouble but don’t let this immobilise your action, you need to build interest and numbers in order to spread your message effectively.

Transform the space: Buildings you take may be designed for administration rather than education. Transforming the space will reclaim it for education and boost morale (as well as saving you from the drab nature of the previously mentioned corporate husk). While the issues you are contesting are serious, remember to still have fun and keep yourself entertained. Bring art supplies and instruments.

Have an exit strategy: Before you enter into an action make sure you know how you’re going to leave it. Ensure you leave from a position of strength, as this will affect the narrative created by your group in both the media and folklore. In order to do this successfully the whole nature of your action may need constant revision.

Reconnaissance:

Choose a building in a central location and which has either a symbolic value or as a means to disrupt the flow of capital. It is not always necessary to take a whole building; sometimes you can secure a floor or even a large room whilst leaving the rest of the building intact. Find out who owns the building, its history and its current usage and use this information to your advantage. Don’t be afraid to take space from those who label themselves your representatives: unions, student government, etc.

When doing reconnaissance, be discreet but thorough.  Look for:

• How many doors need to be secured?
• What do the doors look like, how can they be opened or secured?
• What can you use to build barricades?
• Is there a bathroom and running water?
• Can you control an entrance or get supplies in and out?
• Establish:
  • Supply routes.
  • Security shifts.
  • Communication channels.
  • Escape routes.

Things you need to take:

• Maps and aerial photos.
• Binoculars.
• Camera and recording equipment.
• Blue prints.
• Hardhat, hi-vis vest and clipboard. The best place to hide is in plain sight.
• Measuring tape.
• Watch.
• Location specific items.

If possible, take pictures or at least notes. See if you can find access to blueprints. Before the action, work out what kind of locks you need and have them readily available. Bring extra locks. In the moment other locations could be spontaneously reclaimed.

Securing Doors:

Whether a door opens inward or outwards and what kind of handle it has, will radically change the fashion in which you secure it. Doors that open inwards are your friends. Well, as much as a door and a human can be friends. With these kinds of doors simple options such as barricading, wedging or even just using a doorstop become plausible. If none of these are practical you’ll have to rely, as with outward moving doors, on handle-based security.

• Doors with turning handles: Loop one end of a cable lock around the door handle. Tie the other end to a structural support or to another door handle.
• Doors with push bars: If there is no space between the bar and the door, secure a C-clamp to the bar to create the space. Either loop a cable lock through the space, slide a length of wood through the handles (dependant on orientation) or secure the push bar to a structural support. If none of these options are available, spend some time thinking about solutions, after all, that’s why you go to university right?
• If there is a space between two doors, ensure that the securing device can’t be moved or sliced when the door is unattended. Chains, D-locks and bracing material will avoid this issue. Ratchet straps, due to their length and versatility (and relative price) are also highly recommended.
• Doors with no handles: These are almost impossible to secure without damaging doors. Unless they are opening inwards, avoid them. Hypothetically this issue can be remedied with welding, though in no way is this encouraged.
• Jamming the lock: Something as simple as super glue in the lock barrel can render a locked door secure. Be wary though, this will also make it impossible for you to utilise the door as an emergency exit and, alongside welding, can be considered property damage.

Building Barricades:

Use heavy furniture distributed evenly among entrances. Keep barricades functional, you may have to push back if someone is trying to force their way in.

Supplies:

• Food and water
• Locks and cables
• Blankets
• Duct tape
• Banners
• Megaphones
• Applicable beats
• Sleeping bag
• Entrainment
• Internet and phone connections
• Computers and communication devices
• Cameras and media equipment
• Supplies specific to a role
• Supplies specific to location

Outside Support:

Legal: Please refer to legal article: http://wearetheuniversity.org.nz/a-legal-guide-to-reclamation/

Media Team: It is important that you supply your version of events to the media and ensure that your message is broadcast to other students. Outside and inside media representatives should be elected to ensure that everything from photos to interviews are accessible.  Individuals who are interviewed should make sure they identify as delegates of the reclamation rather than leaders or representatives. Ensure that activists interviewed are informed, calm, concise and simple. Don’t make too many points and ensure that your point can summarised in three lines.

Press releases: press releases should be prepared before any action so that they can be distributed as soon as possible. Furthermore a media list should already be compiled. Don’t lose the surprise advantage by wasting time as the action progresses. Write press releases in a pyramid structure with the most important information at the top with more expanded points nearing the end.

Ensure that your message gets out to all media forms. The morning is the best time to send out releases as news developments after 3:00pm, other than major disasters, won’t get covered on the evening news (however, don’t give away any major details if the action is yet to start).

Medical Team: Have medical teams both on the inside and the outside. Medics should know about any specific needs of individuals involved in the action and have a first aid understanding.

Safety and welfare: Society is a shit place. There is nothing that makes your group any different to what is shit about society if you simply replicate the unsafe conditions of wider society in your own operations. Ensure that everyone on the inside of the reclamation is aware of the importance of respect and emotional safety and take steps to pre-empt these concerns with a safe spaces policy and specifically appointed welfare officers, both male and female. Make sure that no one feels intimidated or silenced out of raising safety concerns.

Debrief:

It is important to debrief after an action. Do this as soon as possible, ideally on the same day. It’s a great way of learning lessons and giving everyone a chance to express how they feel the action went. Make notes and use them to improve future reclamations.

Things to consider:

• Vision, strategy and objectives
• Preparation
• Tactics
• Organisation
• Impact
• Audience

Miscellaneous things to remember:

• Publicise and enforce a ban on alcohol and drugs during actions: People agitated by your actions will attempt undercut your credibility. These are petty counter-arguments but still; don’t make it easier for them.
• Communicate with the usual occupiers and workers of the space you are reclaiming. This point is especially important with regard to security officers, as by reclaiming a building you are directly challenging their authority. Clearly communicate the reasons behind your actions and stress that it is not an affront to them.
• Critically think about every action you take and ensure that you’re considering the context, the meta-context and all parties involved. This will involve a lot more effort and thought but after all, what else is the university environment for?
• Finally, whatever happens, remember rule number 1, don’t be a dick.