From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia.
Reclaim the Streets (RTS)
is a group of people with a
collective ideal of
community ownership of
public spaces. It has been
characterised as a
resistance movement to the
corporate forces of
globalisation, and, more
significantly, as a form of
opposition to the
car as the dominant mode of
transport.
Protests
The Barney Rubble Mobile
a recently-constructed
mobile sound system used by
RTS in Sydney, Australia
Reclaim the Streets often stage
non-violent
direct action
street reclaiming events such
as the 'invasion' of a major
road,
highway or
freeway to stage a party.
While this may obstruct the
regular users of these spaces such
as
car drivers and public bus
riders, the philosophy of Reclaim
the Streets is that it is vehicle
traffic, not pedestrians who are
causing the obstruction, and that
by occupying the road they are in
fact opening up public space. RTS
events are usually spectacular and
colourful, with
dancing,
traffic disruption and
occasionally violence. All these
allow a
Temporary Autonomous Zone. The
style of the parties in many
places has been influenced by the
rave scene in the
UK.
Reclaim the Streets events have
also been known to be followed by
the subsequent arrival and
confusion of police officers and
drivers. Sometimes the parties
produce enough noise to drown out
the sound of the jackhammers which
have been used to dig up sections
of roads, and plant over them with
sod.
Reclaim the Streets is
also used to denote such types of
political action, regardless of
their actual relation to the RTS
movement.
History
Reclaim the Streets began in
the
United Kingdom in the 1990s,
and was taken up as a form of
protest around the world. These "street
parties" have been held in
cities all over
Europe,
Australia,
North America, and
Africa. Initial instances
confounded authorities, but over
the years it has become
institutionalised in many places,
where it occurs much like other
forms of legal protest in that the
march is arranged with
authorities, the only difference
being the form of the march
itself, which involves music and
dancing on roads, and involves a
period in which a road is occupied
without marching.
See also
- Wall, Derek 'Earth First and
the Anti-Roads Movement: Radical
Environmentalism and Comparative
Social Movements' London:
Routledge, 1999.
ISBN 0415190649
Transport related
General
